Cultivating Systemic Thinking in the Next Generation of Business Leaders

Authors

J. B. Atwater
Vijay R. Kannan, Utah State UniversityFollow
Alan A. Stephens, Utah State UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title

Academy of Management Journal of Learning and Education

Volume

7

Issue

1

Publisher

Academy of Management Learning & Education

First Page

9

Last Page

25

Publication Date

3-1-2008

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Abstract

In response to criticism that they do not train students to be effective decision makers, many business schools have attempted to modify their graduate management programs. We suggest that a primary ingredient missing from these attempts is a comprehensive treatment of systemic thinking. While most business functions teach about the systems housed within them, we suggest that few teach their students to think systemically. We propose a 3-part description of systemic thinking and provide results of a survey that investigates the claim that students are not being taught to think systemically.

Comments

(Finalist, 2008 ‘Best Paper’ Award, Academy of Management Journal of Learning and Education)

Recommended Citation

J.B. Atwater, V.R. Kannan, A.A. Stephens, ‘Cultivating Systemic Thinking in the Next Generation of Business Leaders’, Academy of Management Journal of Learning and Education, 7 (1), 2008