This article presents an exercise designed to instill growth mindsets in business students and to demonstrate their effects on achievement motivation. The main points of the exercise are to introduce implicit theories of intelligence (i.e., fixed and growth mindsets), demonstrate that mindsets are malleable, apply growth mindset strategies, and…

Design thinking--understanding the human needs related to a problem, reframing the problem in human-centric ways, creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and adopting a hands-on approach to prototyping and testing--offers a complementary approach to the rational problem-solving methods typically emphasized in business schools. Business…

Teaching our successors about the art of theory building can be a challenge. If you have taught a theory-building course in any of our fields, you may have experienced a common hazard: The seminar can devolve into yet another methods course when the more methodologically inclined take over, focusing the class's attention on the flaws in tests of…

This article provides an overview of job design and offers an experiential teaching exercise to help students develop a better comprehension of job design and redesign, as well as learn the importance and challenges of such undertakings. Understanding the core elements of job design is especially important because job design serves as the…

Using stories written for young children can be effective in the education of college students. Storytelling is a helpful instructional method that is relevant to many management topics. This activity uses picture books, which can be read to students in "story hour" fashion and then tied to management principles being taught. This…

Diversity courses cover a variety of relevant topics, but it is difficult to convey the dilemmas those with stigmatized, invisible social identities may encounter in the workplace. This exercise attempts to situate students in the perspective of both the person with the invisible identity and those who may unintentionally place that person in a…

Effective class discussions are often frustrated by dual challenges: lack of participation and poor quality of contribution. To address both challenges, we describe an experiential exercise for managing classroom discussion that is based on an adaptation of a classic creativity model. It motivates student participation by generating structured…

Employee empowerment yields positive outcomes for employees, managers, and organizations. Yet, too many employees feel disempowered at work, and managers, while wanting to empower employees, often do not know how. Contributing to this state of affairs is the lack of published, high-fidelity exercises explicitly designed to instruct students on how…

Using a behavioral ethics framework and YouTube video clips, this exercise engages students in a demonstration of how people employ cognitive errors and self-deception to protect their interests when making ethical decisions. This approach helps instructors supplement lessons using normative theories to teach business ethics. Normative theories…

Theoretical and empirical literature is often assigned in undergraduate and graduate management education. Even though the ability to read, interpret, and evaluate scholarly articles is an important skill for students and practitioners, comprehending and applying the information contained in scholarly articles can be challenging for a variety of…

Global value networks are often large, complex, and opaque. Understanding the relationships among stakeholders involved in these networks or organizations can be challenging. This card sort task provides an interactive way to engage participants in questioning the roles of stakeholders who are involved in a business ethics dilemma or an…

Pairing poster conversations with individual reading selections for students in MBA and undergraduate organizational behavior and leadership courses is a rewarding method for students to share their learning. Presenters share their posters with peers in a gallery walk format. This grants students an opportunity to convey their learning experiences…

This article presents an experiential exercise where students learn the basics of social network analysis, relate social networks to social capital, and analyze their own networks in the classroom. Instructors of all types of courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels can use this activity to teach students about social networks and…

Students are often frustrated and confused by the study of leadership since the field cannot offer an agreed-upon definition of the construct. Students are expected to develop leadership skills without understanding what leadership actually is. The Leadership Exploration Project is a multiweek exercise that gives late undergraduate or graduate…

Encouraging engagement when teaching groups of students can prove challenging. Consensus Workshop offers a low cost and flexible approach to the facilitation of large group discussions, appropriate with all levels of learners and across disciplines. Particularly powerful at encouraging student engagement and collaboration in the classroom, it has…