Management Students, Instrumentality and the Big Wide World
Abstract
Management Students, Instrumentality and the Big Wide World SAGE Publications, Inc.1977DOI: 10.1177/135050767700800102 Stephen Fineman . As a lecturer in Organizational Behaviour to undergraduates in Business Administration, I have recently become particularly aware of comments from my students of the following sort: "Yes, that topic is very interesting but what direct use will it be to me as a manager?" "You show that there are a number of different ways of explaining the processes of motivation - but which one is the right one?" "I couldn't be bothered reading right through that article because the author gave so many different views about organisational design that he really couldn't have had his own ideas straight". These comments often come from first year students - eighteen and nineteen year olds recently out of school. My initial reaction was one of concern about my teaching methods. Yet I soon came to realise that the problem was far more deeply rooted than this: it involved the nature of the student expectations of what was "valid" knowledge, and ultimately it posed important questions concerning the purpose of a university for students of management studies - and indeed for any student. These issues have been