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Dear All,

Greetings from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Costa Rica</st1:place></st1:country-region>! Attached to this email is our article:

Business responses to environmental and social protection policies: toward a framework for analysis. Just published in Policy Sciences.

We have been working on it for a couple of year and hope that you find the ideas interesting.

Greetings Len,

Thank you for your prompt and extremely relevant message.  I have had a similar experience with "consultancies" that I do with in my undergraduate strategy class.  I could not support many of your comments, caveats and warnings more strongly.  The bottom line for me is twofold; first they provide FAR better learning opportunities than a traditional on-campus offering.  Second, these types of "real world" projects, consultancies, and audits are FAR more labor intensive and risky for the instructor than a traditional on-campus exercise.  One reason is that instructors have to agree to lose significant control of the learning process.  An instructor has far more control by assembling a presentation, case or in-class simulation than an off-campus exercise.  To provide effective off-campus exercises, instructors need to market, coordinate and supervise with a type of independent contractor (your off-campus sponsor).  The sponsor's top priority is not to provide learning opportunities for our students.  This relationship provides many opportunities for conflicts of interests.   

Also I did not receive 100% support from my management.  It seemed my management never adequately valued the benefit of these types of learning opportunities.  My management did provide lip support to the ideas of experiential exercises (possibly partially due to recent AACSB philosophical approaches).  However several times my management complained about the results obtained and methodologies that I used to conduct the consultancies.  Many academic managers are risk averse.  It seems one partial failure is more important than nine successes.  I caution any non-tenured faculty about undertaking these off-campus adventures.

You identified and highlighted several of the important aspects of these exercises.  Let me respond and add to several of your recommendations directly.

 "Len's comment #1:  **If most of your students are local, they might be able to find businesses themselves, otherwise the burden is on you.  The Chamber of Commerce could be helpful here, especially if you can offer a free workshop for local businesses on sustainability issues."

Extremely few (perhaps 1 to 5%) of my students are local and thus I had to identify and recruit the sponsors myself.  Whenever I go out to eat, do dry-cleaning, have a beer, take my bike to be repaired, buy camping or sporting equipment; I am always on the lookout for potential sponsors.  It drives my wife and kids crazy.

"Len's comment #2:  **Whoever finds the business, you have to have some kind of interaction with the owner or manager before the students begin their work.  Essentially there needs to be an agreement about what the students will do and the privacy of information about the business – both what the students find on their own and what the business gives the students to use.  After a few years I developed a one-page introduction to the class project written for the owner/manager and this helped to clarify things."

I end up having to buy at least two overpriced cups of coffees or lunches to meet with my sponsors and make arrangements for the consultancies.  I have a "letter of engagement" that I have my students and sponsors sign to specify the work at hand.  You will need to negotiate the wording with your management and general counsel.  I would be glad to send the instrument to anyone interested as Charles (Charles, you continually impress me with your support for the division) and our listserver do not allow attachments (for very important and valid reasons).

"Len's comment #3:  **Although every business is unique, even with a standardized ecological audit process, the students need to be given a standard plan or set of instructions to follow – from how to conduct the audit to how to present the results to the owner, the professor, and the class.  You need to be available between classes to help with dumb questions and unique issues"

Again, this preaches to the choir.  I could not agree with these statements more strongly.  I have a several pages of instructions that I include in my syllabus on the consultancy process.  It includes several stages throughout the semester to provide mid-course corrections.  Bundled with the letter of engagement, the students prepare a 2-5 page proposal describing the planned consultancy.  The students also supply 1 to 2 page bi-weekly reports updated their progress.  Half-way through the semester, the students deliver a mid-term report and do a brief presentation in class.  The final paper (typically 30 pages) is presented in class and to the sponsor.  Again, think: tons of instructor work.

"Len's comment #4:  **It is not through the audit itself, but through sharing the process issues and results across student groups within the class that I found much of the learning.  Through sharing in the class, the value of each student's personal experience is multiplied – they can relate to the others' experiences and make more generalizations."

I have found the in-class presentations of the proposals, mid-term and final reports to be an extremely strong learning experience.  The students end up learning from each other – quite the reward for the instructor.

"Len's comment #5:  **It's a great way for students to learn."

In addition to this consultancy I do the Business Strategy Game (BSG), in-class day long simulations, a few cases, and the requisite lectures from the text book in the first days of the course to provide the theories, buzz words and tools.  Needless to say, after reading my syllabus, no student looking for a 'gut' signs up for my sections.  At the end of the course I have students compare the learning experiences of the BSG, cases, lectures, in-class simulations and consultancies.  Invariably, students feel they learn the most from the consultancies.

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In conclusion, I feel passionately that students learn FAR more doing these off-campus activities than they do in the classroom.  While they entail significantly more work than the traditional in-class approaches, the rewards dwarf the additional work.  I was amazed at the number of interesting, insightful postings on this topic (Tom Bryant, Dayna Simpson and Paul Shrivasta).  I intend to bother each of you with my additional 2 ½ cents on your comments.  Perhaps someone wants to take the initiative to turn this issue into a paper, a symposium or a Professional Development Workshop.  Let me know if I can help in any way.  Our field needs to support, nurture and facilitate these types of learning opportunities.

Best regards,

Bruce 

--
Bruce Clemens
Management Department
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Business</st1:placename></st1:place>
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bclemens@wnec.edu
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