Enhancing reflective practices within business management education: what kinds of e-learning scenarios can be designed?

Abstract

Contrary to the dominant appearance of the topic ‘digitalization,’ a majority of managers do not know what it means and how they can leverage the development of new technologies and disruptive innovations for their business. Furthermore, doing business is getting increasingly complex due to globalization and specialization. Thus, it looks like everybody is hyperactively looking for an external solution to their managerial challenges while, at the same time, managers seem to have lost their intuition for future direction and are unable to step back and think about intended and unintended consequences of the digital revolution. We, who provide business management education for future leaders, are concerned about this development and teach our students to appreciate the discomfort with the hard work of thinking and reflecting to learn from the insights about innovation, strategy and personal development to achieve improved leadership competence. In this paper, we will present our lessons learnt from asking students of a leadership class at an applied university to write a reflective journal for deep learning purpose.