Donald D. Bowen

Developing a Personal Theory of Experiential Learning A Dispatch from the Trenches

In this article, I will discuss several ideas and concepts experience has taught me to be most relevant in the development of my own theory and practice of experiential learning. The term theory is a bit pretentious as this will actually be a collection of working principles and hypotheses that have been useful in my developing and using classroom experiential exercises. I will discuss the process whereby these ideas emerged over time, as I did not begin with an explicit theory of experiential learning. Only recently have Walter and Marks (1981) provided a sophisticated presentation of the theoretical underpinnings of experiential learning derived from several paradigms. It would have been immensely helpful if their book had been available to me when I began to use experiential materials. Several of the insights generated by Walter and Marks were principles I had to discover for myself. The development of my own experiential theory as I became increas-

Team-building effects on company performance: a business game-based study

The objectives of the research presented here were twofold to investigate the effects of team building on the economic performance of task teams and to understand further the role of group cohesion within pedagogical gaming applications. Regarding the first objective, the techniques for improving individual and organizational performance are a veritable alphabet soup of panaceas MBO, OB Mod, OD, QC, QWL, TA, and Theories X, Y, Z. Unfortunately very few of these techniques have proven their effectiveness in rigorously applied research investigations (Cummings et al., 1974; Huse, 1980; Locke et al., 1980). As a subset of the general organization development (OD) literature, team building’s advocates have likewise been unable to prove that team building is a viable strategy for improving an organization’s performance. Although DeMeuse and Liebowitz (1981) found positive results in 29 of 36 studies, Nicholas (1982) in 2 of 4 studies, and Woodman and Sherwood (1980) in 19 of 30 studies, none could make firm statements about the bottom line-the economic performance value of the team building applications they reviewed. Many studies lacked internal validity; subjective or perceptual data rather than objective output data were often employed, and the interventions were described in such obscure or indefinite terms

Career Planning for Employee Development: A Primer for Managers

Surveys show that employees at all levels lack explicit career objectives and plans. But increasing awareness of the need for career planning is developing as psychologists and managers identify the contributions that career planning can make in increasing the meaning and purpose of work for the individual, as well as reducing the costly problems of low job involvement and high turnover for the employer. The authors describe and evaluate several strategies available to management in this area.

Dealing With Emotions in the Classroom

an unpleasant intrusion into the orderly processes of teaching? Are emotions in the classroom constructive factors, perhaps to be stimulated by the instructor, or destructive forces to be avoided and discouraged? Are there situations or topics that are more likely than others to elicit strong feelings from students? What is the appropriate response by the teacher to emotional outbursts? Do the more common (but less spectacular) feelings of apathy, boredom, dependency, etc. also require our attention? What ethical clinical, pedagogical, and professional issues are involved in dealing with student emotions? As Craig Lundberg pointed out at the 1985 Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference, emotion is a persvasive aspect of human experience, yet, ironically, the topic of emotion is almost universally absent from the subject indices of organizational behavior textbooks. Nevertheless we recognize the part that emotion plays in understanding the behavior of organizational participants, and our theories would be incomplete without such critical variables as job satisfaction, anger and distrust in organizational conflict, fear and insecurity of the powerless, and triumph following conflict or achievements. Our thesis is that similar emotions pervade the classroom as well. There is little point in debating whether emotions have a place in the classroom, because they exist there as they must in any human endeavor. Students may be artful in hiding feelings of fear, dependency, resentment, or boredom from the instructor (and often from themselves), but they sometimes ex-

Curing Those Ol' "Omigod-Not-Another-Group-Class" Blues

Like many of you, we assign students to work groups in our classes so that they can learn from the experience of working together over the course of the semester. However, we have found that proposing group work elicits strong resistance from many students. They cite bad experiences with groups, both from classes and outside of school. Rewarding or satisfying group experiences are apparently rare exceptions and usually encountered only by those who have participated on athletic teams. Typically, education provides little training in the special skills and knowledge required to make a group work and work well. Left to their own devices, students, like managers, tend to focus on task

Experiential and Traditional Teaching of Ob: a Dubious Distinction

Over the past several years, I have developed a wide variety of &dquo;experiential&dquo; learning materials for undergraduate, graduate, and executive development courses, and have been a frequent spokesperson for experiential teaching at the Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference. If I am such a confirmed proponent of experiential teaching, the reader might justifiably expect me to begin this discussion with an authoritative definition that distinguishes &dquo;experiential&dquo; from other teaching techniques, and to develop a closely reasoned argument for the necessity or superiority of experiential strategies in managerial education.

Self-Annihilating Games in Interpersonal Relations

Lisa is clearly overburdened with work. Yet she invariable says &dquo;yes&dquo; to any request for assistance from her colleagues. Tom’s male chauvinism displays itself in a courtly but patronizing chivalry toward women who defer to him. It is a shock for Tom when he suddenly realizes that sweet, petite Brenda has been quietly manipulating him into making a fool of himself. For some time now, I have been fascinated by the phenomenon of selfdefeating tendencies in the interpersonal behavior of my students, my clients, my colleagues, and myself. Why are examples such as those above so common? Why do we persist in the behaviors when the results are so contrary to what we intend to achieve? Why do we find it so difficult to develop

Transactions in Management

The knowledge of interpersonal relationships that Transactional Analysis provides can be of great benefit to managers and employees at all levels of an organization. The authors discuss the basic concepts of TA theory, citing examples that apply to work situations. They also offer explanations of how TA can be applied to business, particularly when an organization is undergoing planned change or intensive evaluation prior to instituting a program of change.