Recently, I published a letter in the Wall Street Journal (Armstrong 2004a) with the basic message that business school education has been losing effectiveness. Most important, students are not learning to do things, such as making an effective oral presentation, writing a persuasive management...

Problems in the use of factor analysis for deriving theory are illustrated by means of an example in which the underlying factors are known. The actual underlying model is simple and it provides a perfect explanation of the data. While the factor analysis explains a large proportion of the total...

The importance of the researcher's interpretation of factor analysis is illustrated by means of an example. The results from this example appear to be meaningful and easily interpreted. The example omits any measure of reliability or validity. If a measure of reliability had been included, it...

The Panalba Role Playing Case was designed to get participants to examine their behavior in a situation where their role can lead them to act in a socially irresponsible manner. A description of the case is provided along with instructions to the administrator. Much research has been done on...

I reviewed the published empirical evidence concerning journal peer review, which consisted of 68 papers, all but three published since 1975. Peer review improves quality, but its use to screen papers has met with limited success. Current procedures to assure quality and fairness seem to...

An attitude survey and a role-playing case were used to identify the typical approaches people use to implement important changes in organizations. This typical strategy, suggested or used by over 90% of the subjects, was not successful in producing change in any of the fourteen role-playing...

People are willing to pay heavily for expert advice. Economists are consulted to tell us how the economy will change, stock analysts are paid large salaries to forecast the earnings of various companies, and political experts command large fees to tell our leaders what the future holds. The...

This chapter has described tools to improve forecasting of trends and of the effects of interventions. Among these methods, role playing and rule-based forecasting have seldom been used lot environmental forecasting. Role playing is appropriate when forecasting the outcome of a situation...

Experiential learning refers to learning which uses the learner's experience as a base. This definition implies an active and personal approach to learning. A more operational definition is provided below. While experiential learning has been gaining rapidly in popularity, the evidence on its...

In natural learning the learner takes responsibility for learning. This responsibility applies to setting objectives, selecting active learning tasks, obtaining feedback, and making applications. Self-oriented skill training (SOS) provides a highly structured procedure to help the learner...