Abstract
A core ethical value of many professions, especially those where power dynamics and potential for injury in practice exist, is minimising harm to those served. The same expectations, however, cannot be linked to the use of classroom-based experiential practices in management education settings. In this article, we explore ethical issues associated with experiential learning practices and the potential for student harm. In particular, we confront the issues of power dynamics, deception and informed consent in classroom exercises, the ability to opt-out of simulated experiences, and the facilitation skills required to responsibly manage and debrief the experience. We review the state of ethics attention in management education, and challenge the assumptions that experiential educators both know, and take steps to resolve, ethical issues associated with classroom exercises. We consider experiential practices of other professions, and discuss findings from a study of institutional declarations of ethical principles or policy statements related to experiential learning practices among Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business accredited business schools. Finding none of the latter, we argue that responsibility for student welfare in a learning environment requires values-based standards for the utilisation of classroom-based experiential learning practices and offer suggestions for establishing expectations with respect to various experiential approaches.
Keywords
Consider these two scenarios:
A freshly appointed professor at a business school that promotes experiential learning for its students decides to conduct the (in)famous Stanford Prison Study as a classroom exercise to teach his students about power. He searches for guidelines on how to responsibly implement active classroom experiences but finds nothing at his institution to help him. He decides to run the activity based on the written report of what was done.
At the request of her Dean to implement active teaching methods, an experienced professor uses Jane Elliott’s controversial ‘Blue-eyed, Brown-eyed’ exercise (see Elliott, 2016, for a video) to teach students about racial prejudice. Students complain about their surprise and discomfort in the classroom, but there is no policy or standard guidelines that prevent the instructor from using such provocative teaching methods. Because the instructor believes the exercise ‘works’ for learning about this sensitive topic, she continues to use the exercise.
In both of these scenarios, the educator is trusted or exhorted to create an experientially oriented environment to meet the course learning objectives. These exercises involve the exploitation of power, subordination and overt discrimination of others, and direct manipulation of interpersonal relationships in a real time simulated environment. They potentially offer very powerful learning opportunities to meet learning objectives related to human behaviour in institutions. However, they also present the risk for immediate and lasting student harm, and raise ethical issues related to deception, informed consent, the ability to genuinely opt-out when class participation is mandatory, and the skills required to responsibly facilitate and debrief such intense experiences. In this article, we present an analysis and discussion of the potential harm of experiential learning (EL) practices. We explore the assumptions embedded in the asymmetrical power relations between educator and student, and provoke a conversation on the seemingly ‘undiscussable’ aspects of ethical tenets in EL teaching practices. Our intention is to challenge the assumptions that ethical issues in EL (a) do not exist; (b) are managed through training, common-sense and individual virtue; and (c) involve isolated or rare negative instances.
We confront this issue in light of the increasing advocacy for EL practices in lieu of passive lecture methods in business and higher education (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), 2017; Gallup & Purdue University, 2015; National Society for Experiential Education (NSEE), 2009; National Survey of Student Engagement, 2014). In fact, AACSB Standard 13 explicitly encourages the use of EL in business school curricula to arrive at ‘meaningful’ learning outcomes (AACSB, 2017). Because experiential teaching practices engage students’ emotional responses as a catalyst for learning (Pekrun et al., 2002), and can help students gain lasting understanding of complex topics in management, EL practices deserve specific attention as to how they might be facilitated in ethical ways.
Organisations such as the Academy of Management and the British Academy of Management publish a code of ethics to guide members towards responsible actions as management academics (Academy of Management, 2006; British Academy of Management, 2013). Such general ethical norms are important to articulate, but provide little practical assistance within which to practice EL methods. For example, the Academy of Management’s Code of Ethics establishes a set of principles, ‘… to enhance the learning of students and colleagues and the effectiveness of organizations through our teaching, research, and practice of management’ (Academy of Management, 2006). Similarly, accrediting bodies such as AACSB and EFMD Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) establish standards for addressing ethics in the delivery of management education within higher education (AACSB, 2017; EQUIS, 2017). Hence, while it is clear that academic associations and accrediting bodies recognise the importance of ethical standards coverage in curriculum content, there is little acknowledgement of the evolving nature of teaching practices in higher education and their ethical ramifications. And despite management educators being challenged to respond to a changing learning environment, there has been little guidance on how to do so in ways that recognise the ethical aspect of EL.
Broadly stated, EL activities are a practical manifestation of ‘engaged’ learning methods where students are actively involved in the learning process and learning outcomes are stimulated by experience (Bowen, 2005). Our attention in this article is focussed specifically on in-person experiential activities occurring in management education higher education classrooms wherein instructors must manage students’ experiences in situ, in real time. While other forms of EL in higher education could pose ethical risks in relation to duty of care and avoidance or minimisation of student harm, such as online learning, service learning, and other work-preparedness learning, a full delineation of ethical issues in those areas is beyond the scope of this article.
EL advocates in management education note the transformative benefits of the approach with respect to a wide variety of learning objectives, including increased cultural intelligence (Ng et al., 2009), enhanced decision making, critical thinking, and communication skills (Bruni-Bossio and Willness, 2016), and career confidence (Caza et al., 2015), among others (for a treatise of the benefits of EL see Kolb, 2015). However, negative psychological effects that some EL activities can have on students present the potential for significant harm (Brackenreg, 2004) and, as a result, may involve career risk for the educator and reputation risk for the institution.
In other disciplines, there is some discussion of ethical risks for activities both outside of and inside the classroom (Calhoun et al., 2015; Gilmore and Anderson, 2011; Keith-Spiegel et al., 2002; Mattson, 2005; Meisel, 2008; Taras and Steel, 2007). Nevertheless, there is limited literature on responsible enactment of classroom-based EL, and only a handful of articles address this theme in the management education domain (Caza et al., 2015; Kolb, 2002; Lund Dean and Forray, 2016; Tompkins and Ulus, 2016). The core of this article, therefore, is a call for considering and establishing guidance on responsibly facilitating EL in the management education classroom.
The problem we explore is that for some types of in-class EL activities (those that are ‘inherently designed to evoke emotion borne of students being taken out of their comfort zones’ Lund Dean and Forray, 2016: 116), meaningful learning outcomes can be obtained only when enacted by skilled educators in an environment that supports the ethos of experience as a basis for learning. In a higher education environment, with increasingly high expectations from students, families, institutions and accrediting bodies, coupled with an absence of articulated standards with respect to educator responsibility and preparation for EL engagements, we see this situation as highly problematic for the field of management education and learning.
After describing why EL practices require attention to ethics, we look to other professions to understand how they set out ethical practice in education where potential harm must be mitigated. To support our assertion that management education lacks critically important ethical guidance about EL practices, we share results from our study of AACSB accredited institutions’ statements of teaching ethics. Finding little specific guidance, we advance ethics assumptions upon which EL practices are predicated and offer discussion and recommendations for creating shared standards of ethical behaviour when facilitating in-class experiential activities.
Problematising issues in experiential management learning
In the service of learning to become effective and responsible managers, students are sometimes placed in ambiguous, complex, and affectively charged situations. In-class experiential activities are intended to make the content more relevant to students and to evoke emotions in the learning process (see Table 1 for representative examples). Experiential exercises are designed to reproduce organisational dynamics such as power, deception, resistance to change, negotiation, leadership, group dynamics, and influence (Bolman and Deal, 1979; Taras and Steel, 2007), and can be effective learning tools precisely because they are complex and deeply involving for students. Some of the move to experiential teaching methods in management education stems from the types of outcomes uniquely relevant to future practicing managers – outcomes that are emotionally challenging and resist being effectively learned by students solely through cognitively oriented methods such as lectures.
Example classroom-based experiential learning activities and ethical issues.
One risk in utilising EL approaches over passive learning techniques is that educators cannot completely control the degree of student reactions and behaviours. While student reactions can (and should) generate powerful learning opportunities, if not facilitated skilfully, the potential for students’ emotionally fraught reactions present a potential for adverse outcomes. Moreover, if such simulated learning is attached to assessment, educators effectively ‘force’ students into experiences where they may be distressed, or feel pressure to self-disclose or trust others, effectively negating the learning outcomes desired.
Psychological safety depicts individuals’ perceptions about the consequences of interpersonal risks in group situations (Edmondson, 1999). This concept is especially relevant in the EL classroom where the potential for students to feel emotional distress, embarrassment, public humiliation, or criticism is much higher than in a lecture-oriented environment. For example, psychological distress can be generated from the anxiety/panic inherent in intentionally ambiguous simulations, being lied to or deceived about the nature of the classroom exercise, or relationships being affected by classroom-simulated behaviours especially if one student has power over another. Embarrassment can occur during role-plays or exposing privilege/oppression in public form, or over-disclosing personal information in group discussions. Criticism can be felt when students adopt a leadership role in group work and take the fall for poor outcomes.
These examples are borne from experiential teaching methods designed to manipulate interpersonal and power dynamics, and can generate worry, anger, shame, guilt, embarrassment, or loss of self-confidence. While we appreciate that lectures can also arouse negative emotions, the EL classroom requires students to make decisions and behave while in that emotional state. Unlike a traditional lecture, where the student can usually take the time to process emotional reactions to the material, EL engagement with in-class experiences means that students need to process, engage and respond simultaneously, often in the heat of highly activated emotions. Failing to appreciate the need to manage such high-arousal contexts could lead to adverse outcomes such as psychological harm to students and disciplinary action for the educator.
The potential for negative outcomes from mismanaged classroom experiences may not be recognised by all educators. This could be because the ‘emotional aspects of learning within and about management and organization are not so obvious and ever-present that they are already integral to business and management school thinking and practice’ (Vince, 2016: 2). Educator competence therefore seems to be the critical element that can enhance or derail learning about important managerial competencies. For example, an experienced MBA educator required students to self-assess their ‘dark-triad’ personality traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) to engage students developmentally in understanding their own behavioural orientations. Debrief involved openly discussing the students’ assessment of their traits with other members of the class. Many students were upset, confused and defensive about their personality ‘results’. Apart from a very brief class discussion, there were no other avenues offered to explore the interpretation of the assessment results. Because of student acrimony, the educator prematurely abandoned the conversation, leaving students feeling bewildered and uncertain. The ethical issues present in this example include failing to plan for negative student reactions to their assessment ‘labels’, not debriefing participants responsibly, and not adequately processing psychological assessments.
Management educators cannot always foresee the various ways students might react to their chosen teaching methods. A learning experience that is distressing may not represent an ethical dilemma for all students, particularly if students are adequately debriefed and able to process the meaning of the activity. As such, not all EL practices are ‘harmful’ and require deeper ethical consideration. However, for some students their participation in the experience may exceed their ability to cope. Lack of educator awareness about the possibility of student distress and the absence of a process to facilitate learning from the emotion can create an environment for ethical issues to surface (Vince, 2016). Because it is not the norm to include a list of possible adverse consequences in the dissemination of experiential methods, educators may expect all students to approach classroom experiences positively and have the necessary psychological resources to cope with and learn from these ambiguous situations.
Broad competencies, such as relational skills, group facilitation skills, self-awareness and reflective practices (Cunliffe, 2016), the ability to carefully scaffold (Druckman and Ebner, 2018) and deliberately intensifying learning activities over time, are necessary to achieve both the learning outcomes desired and create psychological safety in the process. There are inherent risks associated with the broad advocacy and promotion of EL; at the forefront of these risks is the level of faculty competence to facilitate classroom experiences and necessary professional standards to guide such competence. As we will explore, there is little structured guidance for enacting or vetting in-class EL practices. The absence of literature on this topic and of practice-based guidelines is an ethical issue that requires attention from management educators.
Educational standards in other professions
For any professional body, there are a number of assumptions embedded in ethical practice standards intended to help guide and regulate member behaviour, embed norms of practice, and enforce sanctions for breaches of conduct. While debate continues as to whether organisational management constitutes a ‘profession’ (Colby et al., 2011; Khurana et al., 2005; Mintzberg, 2005; Sutton, 2007), we regard management as a professional engagement, with a set of responsibilities, norms, and standards that educators should maintain and nurture in their students. Indeed, authors who argue that management is not a profession (Khurana et al., 2005; Sutton, 2007) say so because management lacks an ethics code that supports (and regulates) strongly held behavioural norms.
The professional bodies affiliated with management education (e.g. various academies of management, Society for Human Resource Management, American Management Association) have ethics statements on codes of conduct, but do not include specific training standards for educators or classroom management guidelines within their codes. Also, while the majority of academic posts in management education require a doctoral degree to demonstrate minimum research competence, the degree signals little in the way of teaching competence. Most doctoral programmes do not include training on passive learning practices much less train for the unique skills necessary for EL (Marx et al., 2016).
Thus, we turned to other professions, in which power dynamics and the potential for harm in practice exist, to determine if ethical practice codes are embedded in educator training and to provide a context in which to consider management education’s EL practice going forward. In many instances, the profession’s identity is strongly tied to a set of ethical norms for practitioners and instilled via entry qualifications and ongoing professional development requirements as well as expectations for those who teach in these fields. We also looked at ethics statements from institutions outside the walls of academia who employ experiential methods as part of their training. For example, the National Training Laboratory (NTL) in the United States provides interpersonal skills training to organisations and individuals (usually involving the T-group method; Bradford, 1964) and has tailored an ethics code to cover principles of power relations between trainer and participant, informed consent, withdrawing from the learning session, and confidentiality of disclosures (Jones and Brazzel, 2012). While many of NTL’s ethical tenets resonate with the ethical issues we raise in this article, we note a fundamental aspect of choice in participation that differs markedly between a training centre and a degree-granting higher education institution. In Table 2, we outline relevant professional educational requirements and practices in the United Kingdom and United States. We draw on Table 2 later to consider the applicability of these requirements for experiential management education.
Relevant professional teaching requirements and practices in the United Kingdom and United States.
Any discussion about using experiential activities in the classroom must include the thorny issue of a student’s right to choose whether to be involved, a particular aspect of the power differential inherent in the instructor–student relationship (Morris, 2007; Reznik, 2018). Unlike established practices for ethics in behavioural research, whereby subjects in a study may suspend participation at any time and with the freedom to do so without repercussion, students in university classrooms generally have no such choices. Many engaged practices take place in required courses without established policy or expectations for ‘prior notification of risk’. In most cases, a student who refuses to participate in a classroom activity does so at their own peril, with grade penalties likely. In addition, unlike research projects whose outcome is of benefit to the researcher but only occasionally intended to inform the life of the subject, engaged learning activities are designed specifically to assist students in learning elements of course objectives. Hence, there are different choices and power dynamics between training institutions such as NTL, research participation, and higher education classrooms.
In most university classrooms, all or some power sources are operant: reward power in the form of grades; coercive power in terms of sanctions for late submission of work or absence from class; legitimate power in the determination of course design and practices; expert power in the educator as subject-matter expert for course curriculum; and referent power as mentor or professional exemplar. It is unreasonable to think, therefore, that facilitating EL activities falls outside of the power structures among roles and course design features. Thus, while educator–student power dynamics are a well-researched area (e.g. Morris, 2007; Payne and Cangemi, 1998), power dynamics problematising the ethical boundaries in advocating for, utilising, and explaining the rationale for EL practices in higher education need attention.
Ethically, the nature of a student’s right of choice and their actual ability to opt-out are important elements of educator power in our classrooms. As a summative statement drawn from Table 2, other professions that (1) rely on EL methods in their professional training and (2) involve learning outcomes that can be emotional, complex, ambiguous, and other-focused, have addressed ethical concerns such as power relations, choice, and transparency in their learning environments, and have created standards or guidance relating to the boundaries of EL education. Common expectations include the following:
Educators are experientially trained and competent in their specific field;
Educators are regularly assessed as such, using accreditation standards or codes of practice, self- and peer review processes;
Educators require certain hours of continuing education and/or professional development and have organisations that provide such education and mentoring;
Codes and standards include specific elements of choice, confidentiality, conflicts of interests, diversity/marginalisation, and power;
Codes and standards may consider teacher and learner as partners, for better or for worse, for example, social work field educators being held jointly liable for negligence.
Thus, other professions’ advocacy concerning the use of EL methods is combined with ways of assessing faculty competence, accountability for attaining those competencies, and providing support for ongoing competence. Furthermore, ethical issues and codes of practice are aligned with unique student considerations in EL. In light of our findings, we believe principles and guidelines for management education are needed, not simply because other professions have them, but to protect students from potential harm and to protect educators and institutions from the potential fallout from mismanagement of the experiential classroom.
Business school guidance – what’s there and what’s not
We agree with Hunt (1991) that creating a ‘universal’ set of ethical obligations for considering students’ wellbeing during in-class activities should be our responsibility as practitioners in our profession; we are responsible for enacting behavioural norms as part of our professional identity as educators (Trede et al., 2012). We turned to an accrediting body to see whether and/or the extent to which responsible EL practice standards were laid out. Further, to ascertain whether institutions had taken on this responsibility in a more localised way, we examined accredited business schools’ teaching policies specifically with respect to in-class EL practices.
Methodology
We created a database of 613 1 institutions accredited by the AACSB. AACSB International is an accreditation body of business schools, originally started in the United States but now international, whose mission is to foster engagement in business education with ethics stated as one of its core values. We chose to focus on AACSB institutions given the prescription of experiential methods in business school curriculum, the standardised external review of each institution’s faculty qualifications and curricula, and the categorisation of schools with respect to teaching, scholarly, and service orientations. 2 The latter consists of seven categories: BPA-1 to BPA-7. 3 Of most interest to us are BPA-1 and BPA-3 institutions, those with a primary focus on teaching with research and service as the second focus, respectively. We chose also to look at accredited institutions in light of research on the anxiety created in accredited educational contexts where often external emphasis is placed upon assessment of knowledge acquisition but juxtaposed with the requirement for ongoing experience-based learning that is meant to provide the foundation for that knowing (Gilmore and Anderson, 2011).
We used this database to search for policies or guidelines on ethical teaching practices, particularly in relation to EL or classroom teaching. We examined all BPA-1 (total N = 218) and BPA-3 (N = 2) institutions given their higher teaching orientation relative to research and service, and every third BPA-2 (N = 84), BPA-4 (N = 1), BPA-5 (N = 230), BPA-6 (N = 43), and BPA-7 (N = 35) institution with lower emphasis on teaching compared to research and service. The final sample included 355 institutions: 218 BPA-1 institutions and two BPA-3 institutions (100% of the sample in these categories), and 135 BPA-2, 4, 5, 6 and 7 institutions (representing 34% of the total sample of these categories). The majority (79%) of institutions sampled were located in North America, 6 percent in Asia, 5 percent in Europe, 3 percent in the United Kingdom, 3 percent in South & Central America, 2 percent in Australia & New Zealand, and 2 percent in the Middle East. 4
We visited the website of each institution to search for policies, faculty handbooks, codes of conduct and/or regulations related to ethical educational practices within their business programme or the university more broadly. If these documents were not available via the main webpage or through links to faculty/staff pages, we used the institution’s search function to find ‘Faculty Handbook’, ‘Academic Policies’, and ‘Code of Ethics’. We then searched through these documents for any information related to ethical teaching practices and experiential/active teaching/learning. After completing our database with information drawn from each institution, we then performed randomised spot checks, consistent with (Creswell, 2003; Krippendorff, 1980; Patton, 2002) for analysing text data.
Results: ethical guidelines for experiential teaching practices
Our search among AACSB accredited schools revealed no specific mentions of ethical practices, norms, or expectations for the use of in-classroom experiential engagements, and in no institution’s documents did we find requirements/recommendations that EL activities be vetted for potential student harm. We could find no specific information on these topics in the schools of business/management, their teaching and learning centre, or wider university policies. Further, we found no policies relative to requirements for educator competence to facilitate in-class experiential exercises.
In terms of general ethical practice for educators in teaching-focused institutions, 17 of the 218 institutions used language from the American Council on Education’s (ACE) Statement on Academic Rights and Responsibilities to articulate the institution’s academic policies. This statement focuses on academic freedom and intellectual pluralism. Also represented among the sample of institutions is the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) ‘Statement on Professional Ethics’, with 11 BPA-1 institutions using AAUP language. In relation to teaching, the statement covers academic freedom, honest academic conduct, confidentiality, and avoiding exploitation, harassment or discrimination of students,; but the language is sufficiently vague to encapsulate a great many circumstances and does not specifically mention the ethical use of in-class experiential teaching practices.
As we further considered ethics statements for any guidance with respect to in-class learning activities, we found many institutions that proscribed harassment, embarrassment or kinds of behaviours designed to demean students. Examples include, ‘Faculty shall refrain from subjecting students to embarrassment or disparagement’ (Murray State University, United States (BPA-1) while intended apparently to prevent a student from being a target of ridicule, harassment, or discrimination by the educator, specific application to classroom teaching practices is absent. Statements such as ‘treating others as they wish to be treated’ (South Carolina Aiken, United States (BPA-1) and ‘our actions show respect for our own health and well-being’ (Bucknell University, United States (BPA-1) highlight that blanket ethical statements cannot guide educators in the ethical use of experiential classroom practices.
Finally, for schools that are values-based, primarily religiously affiliated schools, there was mention of living by the creed of that school’s mission and values. Many of these statements had to do with living as honest, responsible citizens and treating one another with respect, for example, ‘We consciously create an environment of mutual respect, hospitality and warmth .’. (University of Notre Dame, United States (BPA-5) ‘Members of our community act with integrity and honesty’. (University of Oregon, United States (BPA-5) Similarly, at institutions whose core values include trust (University of Oregon) or where all stakeholders are required to be truthful (University of South Carolina), one could argue that experiential engagements such as the Taras and Steel (2007) collective bargaining simulation could not be conducted. That simulation, which requires a direct manipulation of those values to arrive at the learning outcomes, seems incongruent with what the institution upholds as important. Yet, like all other institutions we examined, there is no discussion of the balance that an educator must enact with respect to learning outcomes desired, teaching activities designed to achieve them, or potential risks to student welfare.
It is certainly possible that policies, guidelines and codes of practice were not available to us through the online channels where we searched for them; teaching and ethics policies may only be available in hardcopy format at some institutions, and unwritten norms/standards were not available to us in any kind of searchable way. However, all institutions in our dataset have policy statements or handbooks available electronically, so we believe our dataset is reasonably complete. The evidence we found indicates that educators are left essentially to their own self-evaluations of competence and skill, and own sense of responsibility in determining whether they can or should lead students through EL activities. Among BPA-1 institutions, common assertions indicate that, ‘Teaching methods are the responsibility of the individual instructor’ (Southern Indiana University, United States) and that through ‘rigorous self-criticism’ educators fulfil and enact the values of a learning community (Valparaiso University, United States). The institutions that adopt the AAUP statement of ethical practice stipulate that faculty members ‘seek to be effective teachers’. However, improving teaching competence is most often self-driven, with teaching qualifications and training rarely forming a major part of the selection and promotion criteria for an academic role (Marsh and Hattie, 2002).
We find it remarkable that in an experientially oriented classroom in an accredited higher education setting, reliance falls on the educator to determine their competence in managing experiential situations, and to make sure they gain the professional development training needed to responsibly use EL practices. We also find it untenable that few guidelines or practice standards exist, either within educational institutes or professional bodies to help management educators understand ethical requirements for facilitating, managing, and debriefing in-class exercises. We do not see this same absence of practice standards or reliance or presumed competence in other professional education environments where there are ethical boundaries in dyadic or multi-person relationships. Moreover, in all of those types of relationships there are requirements for professional development, access, or clearance. Yet, from our data, we must conclude that in management education no structure exists by which to verify that an educator has the necessary facilitation and debriefing skills, there are no shared professional norms surrounding EL practices, and no professional body within which such norms and ethical standards are created and enforced.
Furthermore, typical ethical standards do not fit experiential classroom engagements in management education. For example, adverse treatment that violates most codes of conduct (Academy of Management (AOM), AAUP, Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)) is intentionally embedded in some exercises such as ‘experiencing organizational work design’ (Fornaciari and Lund Dean, 2005) that allows students to feel the debilitating effects of the assembly line and supervisory control. Further examples abound: it is not possible for a human resources professor to adhere to the SHRM code of conduct to ‘treat people with dignity, respect and compassion to foster a trusting work environment free of harassment, intimidation’ when conducting the power simulation (Bolman and Deal, 1979), which can involve students acting out roles that may include harassing and/or intimidating others. These are the nuances that are missing from our professional identity as experiential management educators.
Considering standards and risks
As we consider the results of our study, it is important to note that ethical standards may not only or even principally derive from formalised statements from accreditors or professional bodies. The historic failure to address ethical and professional standards for EL, we believe, rests on a foundation of unarticulated, unexamined and yet powerful assumptions about responsibility for practice as vested primarily with the individual educator:
Assumption 1: Experiential management educators can be relied upon to assure the ethical conduct of the classroom environment (i.e. a virtue ethics model; ethics is embedded in the person, a high calibre of professional and ethical conduct is assured because experiential management educators place great emphasis on maintaining ethical standards).
Assumption 2: Classroom experiences do not need to be vetted because experiential management educators consistently exercise ‘common sense’ and an ethics of care towards students (i.e. it is obvious when an exercise should be abandoned due to student distress and EL educators always practice care-based ethics towards students during class time).
Assumption 3: Experiential management educators have been trained in ethical issues and ethical standards as part of their academic and professional training (i.e. doctoral or ongoing professional development activities demonstrably include ethical issues in experiential learning practices, and educators are taking advantage of those opportunities).
Assumption 4: Ethical dilemmas in the experiential classroom are individual student and/or isolated issues, rather than being an institutional issue, and are dealt with by the educator in-situ on a case-by-case basis (i.e. reinforcing assumptions 1 and 3).
Assumption 5: If an experiential educator encounters difficulty in facilitating a classroom exercise, they will seek assistance and help will be available. Relatedly, if institutional leaders such as department heads, heads of school, or deans do not hear about ethical issues in the experiential classroom/courses, there must not be any (i.e. reciprocal assumptions of both seeking help and proactively offering help reinforce an illusion that such issues do not exist).
As per Table 2, these five assumptions are certainly not implicit in other relationship-oriented professions, but rather explicitly addressed by regulatory bodies. Given the growing call for greater active learning pedagogies in business education (AACSB, 2013), expecting educators to simply ‘flip a switch’ and be competent with EL practices is inappropriate. An institution’s lack of engagement with the responsibilities that come with advocating for and practicing EL could be seen as an extended understanding of ‘educational malpractice’ – failure to provide educational experiences, services, or support that might be reasonably expected within an educational environment (for a seminal discussion, please see Harris and Carter, 1980). While ‘malpractice’ in any context is a fundamentally legalistic term and bounded by the country’s specific legal framework, we believe it is necessary to address ethical concerns before potential legal concerns of malpractice or negligence can surface.
The assumption that educators are equipped as part of their professional identity to ethically manage an experiential classroom is problematic. Technical skill and interpersonal skills alone cannot ensure the development of a professional identity. Rather, the components needed for a professional identity to endure include ethical awareness, judgement and reasoning, and critical self-evaluation in the performance of the role. As such, professional socialisation norms and standards of practice are part of this identity formation and should be embedded within a community of practice (Hunter et al., 2007). As seen in Table 2, practice standards are a defining feature of most professions, providing a ‘quality assured’ basis for ethics as critical practice (Anderson, 2017).
To that end, we offer a taxonomy of EL practices and ethical considerations to initiate awareness and debate, and provide the foundation for generating practice principles and guidelines. As shown in Table 3 and discussed below, we describe EL practice examples and suggested standards or actions for both institutions and educators to mitigate or remove potential harms for students. These examples are designed to empower faculty and institutions, and stem from our literature search of experiential exercises and guidance for practice, ethical standards and guidelines from other professions, and the small body of knowledge of the ethical use of EL methods in management education settings (Caza et al., 2015; Kolb, 2002; Lund Dean and Forray, 2016; Tompkins and Ulus, 2016). In the next section, we discuss the roles and responsibilities of the individual, the institution, and professional/accreditation bodies required to promote responsible EL classroom practices in management education. We believe the development of responsible standards and practices should continue to revolve around moral agency in assuming the capability of being equipped to manage the experiential classroom, but only when sustained by institution and external body support mechanisms.
Suggested actions for dealing with ethical issues in some classroom-based experiential learning activities.
Discussion and recommendations: ‘limiting and enabling’ ethical behaviour in the EL management classroom
Aligning practices among disparate instructors is a complex task. For our discussion here, we turn to developments in practice theory to understand that changes need to happen at multiple levels: the micro (individual instructors), the meso (routines and structures in which practice occurs), and macro (institutions and professional bodies) (Miettinen et al., 2009). Where the impetus for change needs to occur is, of course, debatable. However, perhaps a helpful analogy here is with assurance of learning, 5 wherein accreditors have forced documentation of student learning outcomes on business schools. If we are not proactive in ‘solving’ our own issues, external bodies may do so for us. As a community of management educators, we have been poor stewards of these critically important conversations and have rebuffed calls from external stakeholders for more transparency and more engagement.
Notwithstanding our general distaste for change that is inflicted upon us, our data suggest that institutions do not feel compelled to create or implement ethical standards for EL teaching practices. Yet, with the adoption of assurance of learning standards, we have noticed a shift within institutions to align teaching and learning practices with accreditation standards, and therefore concede that imposing standards is often a powerful vehicle used to mandate changes at an institution level. Conversely, it is often easier and more relevant to create local changes as they are more applicable to the contextual needs of the institution and can be supported by a general framework from an accreditor or professional body (e.g. Grace et al., 2017: 24). To manage this tension, we view any proposed solution to the EL situation as necessarily holistic, and offer recommendations targeted towards individuals, institutional structures and accreditation bodies.
Contemporary practice theory asserts that being ‘ethical’ is not about compliance with rules, but rather is a braid of interconnected values and practices (Schatzki, 2006). Practice theory, as applied in organisational contexts, reveals the importance of ethics as critical practice in limiting and enabling behaviour (Weiskopf and Willmott, 2013). We use the terms ‘limiting and enabling’ to foster the development of standards that support educators’ autonomy to trial new ideas and innovate within the parameter of their educational role, rather than enforce punitive consequences for exploring such experimentation. However, establishing an equilibrium within professional standards that enable and limit presents a paradox: how do we imbue a sense of autonomy and creative experimentation of teaching practice (enabling behaviour) and enforce, restrict and control behaviour as per professional standards (limiting behaviour)? Pragmatically, values-based practice standards (Anderson, 2017) define the range of possibilities from which ethical choices are possible.
Create values-based standards of ethical practices
Practice standards can provide practical benchmarks to guide how the provision of EL is enacted in any given institution. Ethics ‘rules’ or prescriptions often assume that behaviour is static, and thus are vulnerable to distrust and challenge (Clegg et al., 2007a), and even disregard (Schatzki, 2006). We concede, as Derrida (1990) has argued, that regulation of behaviour is often necessary, as without the presence of rules and norms there can be arbitrary decisions based on a misconceived sense of autonomy (Derrida, 1990). However, our concern is with the competent performance of educators across a range of EL activities and the recognition of ethical considerations in any particular EL context. We believe that ethical practice standards should enable educators to be moral agents and to increase ethical competence, therefore allowing ongoing risk assessment, opening the lines of ‘ethical questioning’ (Rhodes et al., 2010: 536) and avoiding ethical prescriptions that are not fit-for-purpose.
The development of tailored values and ethical standards regarding EL practices sets the foundation for institutions and external bodies to guide expected behaviours, and are considered the pivotal aspects of being regarded as a profession. Such a statement should enhance individual agency and follow on from (Clegg et al., 2007b) suggesting that ethical practices should be conducted in the context of ethical pluralism. Our AASCB data illustrate that EL practices often can go up against conflicting institutional ethics codes. We therefore view ethical practices in the EL classroom as an ongoing process of consideration over moral choices and suggest that ‘bounded moral rationality’ (Donaldson and Dunfee, 1994) needs to be incorporated in the development of practice standards. That is, practice standards should establish the functional normative standards to facilitate guidance in EL teaching practices, rather than prescribe what educators must do to ‘tick-the-box’ and be ‘ethical’. Establishing values and principles that help guide ethical decisions and practices has been successfully introduced in the finance profession (Polacek et al., 2012), and as identified in Table 2, has already been established in other professions. Whereas rules-based, normative approaches provide the basis for compliance with established minimum threshold practices, principles-based approaches result in standards that are organised around pertinent values that provide a framework for guiding behaviour (Polacek et al., 2012).
To be clear, we are not advocating for ‘standardisation’ of EL in management education. Rather, we foresee values-based practice standards to include consideration of the following:
Competence of the educator to deliver, facilitate and debrief course design;
Accurate and transparent course descriptions (including the rationale for including EL activities);
Informed consent (especially when deception is required to achieve meaningful learning outcomes);
Opt-in/out choices (with a rationale if there is no choice and/or alternative assessment to the experiential activity if appropriate);
Confidentiality expectations stemming from the activity;
Processes in place to identify and respond to student distress.
Standards could also set out continuing educational requirements expected of experiential educators, such as attendance at training/educational conferences or appropriate training for the nature of the EL embedded in the course design.
Mandate (limit) and support (enable) ongoing teaching and learning practice development
Organisations such as The Teaching Professor (The Teaching Professor, 2017), the Management and Organisational Behaviour Teaching Society (The Management & Organisational Behaviour Teaching Society, 2017), and the NSEE (2017) hold annual conferences that attract a cross-disciplinary, international audience keen on honing best practices in experiential learning. To support practice standards, experiential educators should be required to search out discipline-specific organisations that support EL practices in a particular field, attend teaching and learning sessions at conferences important to the discipline, and be prepared to demonstrate ongoing professional development which is evaluated as part of their annual evaluation. In addition, organisations such as those named above sponsor apprenticeships of multiple types for doctoral students to work with experienced EL faculty where junior members of our profession may practice this craft with guidance and real-time feedback. Without institutional accountability measures, all of this professional activity is still self-driven and motivated by a desire for personal development. By holding ourselves accountable as a management education community and having our institutions mandate and provide support for our participation in these developmental engagements, we have the opportunity to craft our own standards. This would help reduce the pressure upon educators to engage in ‘active learning’ teaching behaviours they are not equipped to facilitate and that are thus ethically questionable.
Acknowledge student, faculty and institutional risks (limit) and craft shared standards (enable)
Given the acknowledged risk of EL outlined in this paper, we believe the level of such risk to students, educators and institutions is elevated when virtually no policies, guidelines, or training exists on the facilitation of EL classroom activities. To safeguard against risk accrediting bodies should establish, as part of the accreditation process, an expectation of peer faculty support to ensure that faculty have the training and skills necessary to deploy successfully high affect EL strategies in their classrooms. Sub-committees of such professional institutions could be responsible for creating shared statements of responsibilities, training, and assessment standards. If institutions are indeed encouraged to use and integrate EL methods into mission, vision, and learning outcomes, accreditors should consider practical competencies for doing so in the same way they consider subject matter expertise and vetting, and require related documentation. Institutions can help by bringing acknowledged experiential instructor experts to campus as well as deploying a campus ‘train-the-trainer’ approach to leverage EL leaders already on campus.
Protect and nurture early career faculty and educators
Creating a mentor who serves in a cross-disciplinary capacity for supporting EL engagements would create a single point of accountability and contact for instructors using classroom EL in a variety of forms. Opportunities for newer educators to have an experienced group of experiential colleagues to run through and vet out a potential learning activity would allow risk and learning assessment on the front end, prior to deploying the activity in a class setting, and provide for modifications to the activity when needed. In addition, the growing use of contingent faculty on campuses makes it even more important to have a consistent resource and set of norms through which new classroom EL practice is considered. Such a resource has a protective element for students and educators, minimising potential harm to student wellbeing and reducing the personal and organisational consequences of educator incompetence.
Be transparent with students about pedagogical choices
With experiential learning activities, the nature of a student’s right to choice becomes embedded in instructor power. Most institutions have some way of adding information specific to a particular course, particularly if the nature of the course falls outside a ‘normal’ lecture-based teaching space. A relatively generic but helpful notation that a course involves EL practices and engaged learning requirements, prior to their involvement, might help students choose their courses more carefully. Students should be made aware of the likelihood that such activities will be a required part of the course curriculum, and the rationale for why instructors have chosen such activities. Such transparency has the added benefit of acknowledging power relationships in the classroom. We call upon the management education community to consider this power when advocating for, utilising, and explaining the rationale for EL practices in their course information and communication with students.
Concluding thoughts
While it may seem that the most efficient solution to a difficult problem is to avoid it, eschewing high-risk EL practices is not a sensible response. EL is an essential tool in the management learning and education toolbox, one that can be used to arrive at powerful and important outcomes. In canvassing the issues of ethics in classroom EL, we are not advocating for making its use cumbersome by the introduction of bureaucratic checklists, review boards, or professional certifications of skill prior to the use of such activities; these actions would simply transfer instructor power to others. Rather, as a professional body of management educators, we believe educators must take steps to resolve this issue.
Although our recommendations may seem to add new responsibilities to busy educators integrating teaching practices that already take considerable time, thought, and emotional engagement to pursue, we see benefits accruing to educators who seek training, uphold ethical standards, and provide peer support. Ensuring ethical facilitation practices adds confidence to instruction and increases the probability that learning outcomes will be met. Requiring engagement at experientially oriented professional meetings allows for a community of practice to flourish, providing a defence against the sometimes isolating individual academic work experience. In addition, attending to ethical standards of practice not only can lower risks to individual educators and institutions that negative student experiences will occur, but could also provide a true reputational advantage for student learning and care.
Throughout this article, we have argued that ethical issues involved in the delivery of EL have not been addressed at an accreditation, professional or institution level. Institutions and accreditation bodies seem unconcerned with the risk of advocating such teaching methods and the potential ramifications to student welfare and institutional reputation. We contend that while accreditation bodies can offer and enforce a general framework and process for in-class teaching standards, we believe change is best facilitated at the institution level, with policies and best practices relevant to the localised learning environment.
Future research in this arena could offer practical and operational details of what a peer-based, developmental, and supportive system of ascertaining and procuring educator skills for particular EL activities could look like. Setting forth, too, systems for increasing apprenticeship models and opportunities for educators at all experience and institutional levels could strongly benefit the management educator community. We acknowledge that there are additional types of experiential engagements that take place outside the classroom, and that these also are part of the EL toolbox. While we have focused this manuscript on classroom activities, we hope others will take up the themes discussed herein to consider the ethical utilisation of ‘outside the classroom’ EL practices as they relate to faculty development, institutional support, and expectations in management education and learning.
The issues addressed in this article are not meant to give a ‘feeling of finality that is generated when all the questions saliently posed by the narrative are answered’ (Carroll, 2007: 1). Rather, our work represents a starting point; one that allows individuals, institutions and professional bodies to consider and craft their own standards of practice. The responsibility for developing professional norms of EL practices is ours to address, one that presents an opportunity to solidify our professional and ethical obligations to our students and ourselves.
