Management Education Through Service-Learning

Business has been under scrutiny from government agencies, employees, and community members regarding management’s over emphasis on the bottom line while ignoring the consequences of managerial decisions on other stakeholders. After the excesses of the ‘80s and the widespread coverage given to Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, the Savings and Loans fiasco, and the fall of British Bank in Singapore, just to mention a few, the professional literature has been inundated with books and articles on servant leadership (Greenleaf, 1977; Block, 1993), the role of spirituality at work (Hawley, 1993; Conger, 1994) and principle centered leadership (Covey, 1990). Management educators must act prudently to explore ways in which we can educate students to become effective in their fiduciary responsibilities to corporation stockholders as well as in their civic responsibilities to the communities in which their organizations function, to their employees and their families, and to their customers. This paper explores the uses of service-learning as a valuable teaching tool within the dominion of management education by focusing on three main areas: an introduction to service-learning theory, pedagogy and academic integrity, and teaching management through service-learning.