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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 reasons. To help undergraduate and graduate students develop greater academic literacy, we developed an exercise where students work first independently and then collaboratively to extract information from a journal article and translate findings into understandable, evidence-based practice that can be applied in organizations. We provide resources for instructors who wish to use this method in face-to-face or online classes.

Experiential learning exercises have the potential to elicit emotional responses in students and instructors alike. This article takes an auto-ethnographic approach in detailing the author’s experience facilitating a role-playing activity that triggered an unanticipated emotional reaction in a session participant. In the narrative, the author connects her experience and response to the event to the shadow side of role-playing where the potential for harm to students and instructors may be present. The article explores how to create a learning environment capable of supporting students’ emotions as well as strategies that instructors can deploy to manage and learn from their emotional reactions. It concludes with a discussion of the steps one might take to re-engage with role-playing after a negative experience.

Using data from participants at a single organization, we employed a three-perspective meta-theory to move toward a more comprehensive description of organizational culture and examined how differing theoretical perspectives yield convergent, complementary, or contrary findings. Survey data (n = 124) combined with the results from 19 structured interviews indicated that employees shared consensus around some cultural values, but also suggested the existence of subcultures and general ambiguity around other cultural elements. That is, from an integrative perspective, there was clarity surrounding one set of values; from a differentiation perspective, subcultures existed; and from a fragmentation perspective, there was evidence of ambiguity and conflict regarding the meaning of some cultural manifestations. This study contributes to the literature on organizational culture enacting calls to conceptualize and examine culture from multiple perspectives and discussing the consequences. Furthermore, the...

Undergraduate business students in North America are often unfamiliar with the labor organizing process and frequently fail to identify with the reasons why workers join unions. This article suggests a discussion exercise based on the 1979 film, Norma Rae, by 20th Century Fox, as an effective tool for familiarizing students with fundamental topics in labor relations such as the union organizing process, union avoidance strategies, and unfair labor practices. In addition, the film and the discussion-based exercise can be used to help students further explore the sources of individual attitudes toward unions, union instrumentality perceptions, union voting intentions, and contemporary issues in private sector labor relations. Collected data show positive responses from students who viewed the movie and participated in the discussion-based exercise. Suggestions are offered for using the film and the discussion-based exercise in the classroom to engage students in the study of labor relations.