In organizational behavior, management, and leadership courses, the topic of power is often a focal point. However, as with many theories and concepts, students sometimes struggle to see the management and leadership applications until examples are used to highlight the theories and concepts in practice. In this article, we outline how a classic…

This in-class, 75-minute exercise creates a context for students to observe some of the challenges to cross-functional collaboration and offers insight into processes to achieve more successful outcomes. By demonstrating how a failure by compliance and business operations to work cross-functionally negatively impacts outcomes in the form of…

In this exercise, participants create a fictional business based on a set of randomly generated words. This challenge requires participants to exercise creativity, while reinforcing the business concepts learned in class. The exercise has four steps: (1) generating a prompt of three random words, (2) designing a fictional business based on this…

In this article, we outline an experiential exercise designed to teach students about cognitive schemas (what they are, how they are developed, and how they may influence us). Drawing on the literature related to implicit followership theories, the exercise encourages students to explore their perceptions related to the role of followers, thus…

Appraising firm performance is an important aspect of the strategic management process. Unfortunately, many students in strategic management courses do not have adequate financial analysis skills to do this task. This deficiency affects their ability to learn and perform the full scope of the strategic management process. This article presents an…

Six classroom interventions designed to continuously teach and acclimate our management students about their eventual realistic reward/punishment contingencies and managerial performance expectations can be established using the classroom's grading system and the class syllabus. Interventions include (1) using points rather than grades for student…

Using stories written for young children can be effective in the education of college students. Storytelling is a helpful instructional method that is relevant to many management topics. This activity uses picture books, which can be read to students in "story hour" fashion and then tied to management principles being taught. This…

The Arena activity is an in-class, experiential learning exercise that requires student teams to navigate and assist a blindfolded team member through a maze-like setting. The goal of the activity is to seek and find all of the team's assigned objects. However, only the blindfolded team member can collect these objects in The Arena. This activity…

Diversity courses cover a variety of relevant topics, but it is difficult to convey the dilemmas those with stigmatized, invisible social identities may encounter in the workplace. This exercise attempts to situate students in the perspective of both the person with the invisible identity and those who may unintentionally place that person in a…

Employee empowerment yields positive outcomes for employees, managers, and organizations. Yet, too many employees feel disempowered at work, and managers, while wanting to empower employees, often do not know how. Contributing to this state of affairs is the lack of published, high-fidelity exercises explicitly designed to instruct students on how…

Theoretical and empirical literature is often assigned in undergraduate and graduate management education. Even though the ability to read, interpret, and evaluate scholarly articles is an important skill for students and practitioners, comprehending and applying the information contained in scholarly articles can be challenging for a variety of…

Personnel selection is a key topic in Human Resource Management (HRM) courses. Many selection exercises focus on management situations that are unfamiliar to students who are taking introductory HRM courses. In contrast, this exercise introduces students to the pre-interview steps in the personnel selection process by asking them to determine the…

Using the premise of a fictional earbud company, "EarWorm," students in an introductory management course become EarWorm managers who problem-solve and make decisions about the best choices for their company. This article outlines this engaging and participatory exercise in detail. Students are able to directly connect course concepts to…

Storytelling is an important skill in management education for leaders. However, even though students learn about storytelling, they do not often practice it. When students do practice storytelling, they frequently prepare speeches that they deliver in front of a class. Interacting with theater students can help management students convey a…

Training programs enhance the skills of participants. Role-play, one method used for such skill development, is learning through performing a set of behaviors, in accordance with predetermined expectations of a job role in an organizational context. Some learners find role-play daunting, even traumatic. To counter this experience, this article…