Experiential Learning: Bridging Management and Business Communication

Experiential learning in management education has had a long and productive history beginning with Harvard Business School's attempts in 1909 to bring realistic business situations into the classroom with the case method. Later, cases were supplemented with computer simulations and games (Chiesl 1990). Games and simulations, like cases, have been used in business education to provide learners with a broader picture of business forces, and to teach them how to maintain congruence between environmental constraints and organiza-tional needs (Elgood 1984,9). In 1993 it was estimated that 95 percent of busi-ness schools used business games in policy and marketing courses (Wolfe and Chanin 1993, 38). As an instructor of business communication at a university teaching busi-ness graduates and undergraduates, I was determined to bridge the gap between management and communications pedagogies. A literature search uncovered a substantial body of literature in my discipline documenting the pedagogical value of using cases and simulations to teach business communication (Cou