Looking for Complication: the Case of Management Education

• Autor(a) principal: Pina e Cunha, Miguel
• Data de Publicação: 2000
• Outros Autores: Vieira da Cunha, João, Cabral-Cardoso, Carlos
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/83631

This paper argues that in face of the changes occurring in the organizational world, management education should consider the need to rethink some of its premises and adapt to the new times. The need to “complicate” management learning due to increased complication in competitive landscapes, is analyzed. Four possibilities of addressing organizational topics in a complicated way are contrasted: the vertical, horizontal, hypertextual, and dialectical approaches. The promises of the dialectical approach are particularly stressed as a more demanding and potentially enriching path for the creation of knowledge about organizations. The test of the four approaches in a group of undergraduate students provides some preliminary data for analyzing the strenghts and weaknesses of our proposal.