Inside the corporate classroom

Abstract

Client-based management education consists of award-bearing, higher education provision for managers drawn from single organisations. The growth of this type of provision has taken place in the context of pressure on UK business schools to generate additional income for parent institutions and growing competition from large organisations developing their own corporate 'universities'. This paper reports a small-scale interview study of management lecturers at two UK business schools. In addition to mini case studies, four recurrent themes of concern to lecturers are discussed, which include the impact of organisational politics on classroom learning and the effect of powerful client organisations on the traditional student-lecturer relationship. The findings of this study indicates that the corporate classroom produces a range of pedagogic dilemmas for management lecturers and endangers core higher education values, such as a neutral and open forum for debate, and the development of student's critical abilities.