The scientist-practitioner journey : embracing evidence in management learning amongst business students

Abstract

The principles underlying Evidence-based management have sought to explore the means of making management education more accessible and applicable to real-world organizational issues. A number of authors have highlighted that this requires a critical shift in thinking from a knowledge-and teacher-centred approach to understanding and questioning the reliability of evidence from various sources. This study, part of a larger European-funded project, sought to explore the perceptions of 690 students reading for management and business degrees from three different countries namely Poland, Czech Republic, and Croatia. The results are mixed and generally indicate that while students generally view much of their content to be evidence-driven, their level of engagement with the subject or understanding of the practicality in the real world is relatively low even if the evidence-element were increased. Implications about the results are drawn from the existing literature and suggest that more in-depth research is needed to understand the way the student construes the learning subject in view of both the reliability of the content and the ability to apply content to practice.