This study focused upon the values that undergraduates take into work and to what extent Higher Education can impact upon these. Empirical evidence, where it existed previously, has tended to be drawn from postgraduate students, leaving the experiences of the majority of business students under-researched and often discussed as a generic group. Undergraduate business students’ experiences were examined but with a clear disaggregation by subject area and course in order to develop understanding of how development might be supported in different contexts. Clear gaps were highlighted between espoused student values and engagement with (CSR)/ethics compared to what has been identified in the literature as desirable. Gaps were also identified between what students stated that they want from their syllabus and what they had been taught. Evidence was clear that undergraduates do not enter university with all of their ethical perceptions and values firmly fixed and it was also evident that subject-specific teaching contributes to how ethical dilemmas are framed and managed by students. Work experience was also found to impact negatively upon undergraduate values. The study contributes to understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) theory by building upon discussion in the existing literature and presenting the theoretical landscape through a series of diagrams. Additionally, there is development of a tool which enables curriculum data to be analysed for both CSR content and the higher-level language needed if students are to engage with dilemmas and deal effectively with complexity. There was evidence of some support overall for the development of business students’ values but also evidence that much more could be done to enhance the curriculum.

The debate around the relevance of management education to practice is a long standing one. Critics argue that conventional, lectured-based teaching does not attend to practitioners’ needs and their complex realities. Critical management education has been held up as an alternate teaching pedagogy that speaks more adequately to practice. A starting point for a critical pedagogy may be a social constructivist approach where students actively construct their own knowledge and meanings rather than passively receive information. The essence of critical management education is to create more spaces to promote a questioning attitude towards practice and theory and help management students to become active, reflective learners. So far, investigations of criticality seem to have largely drawn on exploring management students’ perspectives about their learning experience. Little evidence is available on what becoming more or less critical entails for management students from within practice. There is no mention of a rigorous framework that would offer insights about what to look for in investigating reflective learning from within its natural setting. As an area that appears to be under developed in critical management education research, the nature of reflective learning evoked in classroom dialogue is considered, and a framework is devised based on Bakhtin’s dialogism to help identify and conceptualize reflective learning. The availability of online courses has grown strongly over the past two decades. A number of commentators consequently see that online management learning is becoming a mainstream aspect of higher education. Yet, serious reservations against the nature of learning that an asynchronous, text-based learning environment can offer management students have been raised. Therefore, an online MBA classroom is chosen as the site of this study. Data is collected through a combination of observations of online classroom conversations and document analysis. The proposed framework is used is to carry out a relational analysis of online, text-based classroom conversations. It is not the asynchronicity of the setting that is inherently problematic in stimulating reflective, emancipatory learning. The potential of online management classrooms to engender dialogic, reflective learning amongst management students responds to the wider critiques of the status of learning in management classrooms. A critical approach to online teaching, which is not underpinned by a critical curriculum, is proposed. There is an urgent need to attend to the role of online tutors and their influence on the nature of learning, which occurs in their conversations with students in virtual classrooms. The study opens up the scope for assessing online management learning as a “dialogical construction of meaning” and offers insights into the online setting beyond the passive portrayals of learners.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the organizational perspective on improvement in performance of its mid-career professionals, as a result of their Executive MBA education in Pakistan. More specifically the study includes the identification of critical roles, which organizations consider important for the performance evaluation of mid-career professionals, and organizations’ perception of how effectively EMBA graduates perform those roles at workplace. The study mainly used a quantitative research strategy and cross sectional survey method to collect data through a structured self-administered questionnaire. Ninety three organizations responded to this survey and provided data about 140 EMBA professionals. The feedback from organisations about important role-based performance indicators and EMBA graduate managers’ performance against those indicators were obtained. Results revealed that organizations consider the work related role as the most important aspect of evaluation, followed by team related, career related, innovation related and organization citizenship related roles. Results on the efficacy of EMBA programs against these role indicators showed that though by and large organizations were satisfied there existed a gap between each of the required roles.

The main purpose of this study is to develop and test a conceptual framework of the antecedents of academic achievement for students studying online. The study is essentially exploratory in nature and an adaptation of Biggs’ 3P (Biggs, 1993a) model provides the theoretical framework. A wide range of antecedent variables is considered, including individual student characteristics and behavioural aspects of studying online. Uniquely, the study positions developmental aspects of the student learning experience (deconstructed at course level using an eight level developmental hierarchy derived from Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956)) as an intermediate outcome. Regression models are calibrated to determine which factors influence both the student learning experience and academic achievement. Variation in the student learning experience (as an intermediate outcome) is explained by student satisfaction with course materials and certain individual student characteristics and behavioural aspects of online study. Disadvantaged students lack previous experience in the study of Economics; have certain learning styles (sensing and verbal); and in the online study context find it difficult both to interact with faculty and to work alone. In terms of academic achievement, the parsimonious model explains 48% of the variance in overall performance in the Economics exam. After student ability the next most important variables of significance relate to developmental aspects of the learning experience, specifically, the level of difficulty experienced both in applying theory to business problems and understanding numerical calculations. The policy implications of the findings are considered and specific recommendations are provided for the enhancement of Edinburgh Business School course resources. The research findings indicate that, in building a theoretical framework for online learning, there is merit in taking into account course-level developmental aspects of the student learning experience. As well as their significance in helping to explain variation in academic achievement, the insights gained on student learning facilitate the design and targeting of interventions to address specific educational needs. It is hoped that this approach may help to address some of the concerns that exist that, in education, technology is not always used in ways which enhance student learning.

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The aim of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of blended learning as a means of delivering management development in Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes. This research followed an interpretivist and qualitative approach, utilising multiple case study as a research method to explore the MBA programmes of three UK universities. The three case universities offered MBA programmes that were marketed as online learning, distance teaching, and face-to-face learning. Building this study around the theoretical learning models of Cookson (2000); Wilde et al. (2000) and Khan (2001), and their missing dimensions, data were collected by online questionnaires and semi-structured interviews from students and module leaders respectively. The collected data were further triangulated using document analysis to enhance the internal validity of the research. Based on the three theoretical frameworks and the missing dimensions, data analysis for interviews involved coding using a classification scheme, while data from the online questionnaire were analysed using descriptive statistics. Among many others, findings in this study show that; there is a difference between marketing, education and academic language when the language used in the marketing of MBA programmes is investigated; all the programmes in all three Universities were, in practice, blended learning programmes despite the fact that they were marketed as fully online learning, distance teaching, and face-to-face learning, respectively; and MBA pedagogy in the three case study Universities includes different pedagogies in full-time and part-time MBA programmes, i.e., more didactic on full-time and more experiential on part-time programmes. Based on these findings, this research developed a theoretical framework for MBA programmes, with new dimensions that strongly reflect the need for a clearly defined meaning of MBA pedagogy for institutions in the UK.

The history, status, curricula, examinations, cost and staffing of business secondary schools are discussed together with an analysis of the structure of business education within the overall educational framework and its relationship to office work in the 'real' world. The concern of the study is with the working environment which school leavers are about to enter. It identifies and critically analyses the ideas and ideology with which office work is often associated. The study analyses Ghana's economic structural adjustment as it influences current thinking on the relationship between education, the employer and work. Further, the study explores employers' opinions and beliefs about the selection and recruitment of (vocationally-oriented) business secondary education school leavers. The employers' role is also examined as it embraces a set of transactions and experiences that must be included in any valid discussion of the vocationally-oriented education process. Important consideration is given to experiences from other countries that are tackling similar issues and/or share many economic and social problems with those of Ghana. In using theories that attempt to explain the relationship between education and work, the study confronts important questions about the strengths and limitations of the system of vocational secondary education. Particular attention is given to human capital theory, the screening hypothesis and the correspondence principle. The research methodology used for the fieldwork component of the study was the survey approach, with the emphasis placed on the use of questionnaires/interview schedules, analysis of documents and observation techniques. The following populations were sampled: teachers, headteachers, curriculum developers, teacher trainers and education officers, students, employees and employers. The data are analysed in four chapters. Thereafter, employers' recruitment policies as well as policies for business curriculum practice as they exist today are investigated, with a view to offering suggestions for policy as regards the recruitment of school leavers with (vocationally-oriented) business secondary education. The conclusion re-examines the previously explored theoretical approaches in the light of the empirical investigation. It also advocates a linking of policy and curriculum developments in education and training to wider social and economic changes, together with a more co-operative approach between the employer, the student and the teacher in the context of a more successful management of the transition from school to work.

Collaborative higher education refers to an array of different arrangements between higher education institutions (HEIs) and other providers - private providers in the case of this thesis. The main focus of the thesis is to understand stakeholders’ perspectives on collaborative partnerships between HEIs and private for-profit providers in the provision of UK degree courses in business and management. Recent decades have seen the massification of HE. The demand for HE in the UK has been growing significantly. But the state has begun to disengage itself from financing HEIs and thus their continuing state funding is under challenge. Market mechanisms have been introduced. Collaborative HE provision between HEIs and private for-profit providers can be seen as an activity undertaken as part of an increasingly marketised UK HE landscape. Management, staff such as link-tutors, and policy-makers in quality organisations were interviewed: thirteen in the UK and six in Sri Lanka. Five former non-European Union (EU) private college international students were interviewed in the UK. Three focus groups were conducted with non-EU private college international students in the UK. This is an exploratory study, from which it is not possible to generalise, but findings indicate that: a. Non-EU international students choose to study in private HE colleges because it enables them to acquire a UK degree at a lower cost. b. Working with private partners in the UK and overseas is perceived to have an economic motive and collaborative partnerships are seen as a partial solution to the difficult financial situation of HEIs. c. Collaborative HE partnerships help UK HEIs to expand their market. d. Government intervention in the private for-profit HE sector is discernible, for example through the Educational Oversight Review of private providers. This is blurring the boundary between what is described as public and private.

The research was triggered by widespread criticisms from its constituencies about the relevance of MBAs, allegedly instigated by its dual academic and utilitarian purposes in developing functionally and ethically competent managers. Using Malaysia as the research focus, the perceptions of three MBA stakeholders (i.e. business schools/management educators, industries and students) were explored on the adequacy of MBA provisions by its public universities in preparing professionally and ethically competent managers. Their opinions were gauged on several subjective terms, each carrying the dual academic-utilitarian connotations, i.e. the roles of MBAs, the roles of its providers, the definitions of relevance, the definitions of managers and the necessary competencies, and their concerns over the social responsibility of managers and their education. The research employed mainly qualitative approaches. Primary data was gathered through semi-structured interviews, a focus group discussion and e-mails from the three stakeholders. The management educators and students were derived from three selected business schools. The secondary data involved analysis of the MBA websites and prospectuses provided by all the 10 public universities in Malaysia. In total, the research derived data consisting of 28 interviews, 1 focus group, 81 surveys, 3 email questionnaires, and 10 document analyses. The findings suggested that the perceptions of all three stakeholders reflected an imbalanced MBA that was biased towards utilitarian objectives as opposed to social objectives. The findings showed that religion / spirituality and the development of ME in Malaysia had a considerable impact in influencing the perspectives of the respondents. The research contributes to the discipline by demonstrating how a non-western, religious, developing country viewed the research issues dominated by Western literature.