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International Journal of Project Management 26 (2008) 286296

www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman

Rethinking project management education: Social twists

and knowledge co-production
Christian Berggren a, Jonas Soderlund a,b,*
a

Department of Management and Engineering, Linkoping University, Sweden

b
BI Norwegian School of Management, Norway
Received 17 January 2008; accepted 22 January 2008

Abstract
Projects play an important role in modern enterprises, not only as arenas for corporate renewal and capability integration, but also for
the development of leadership capacity. As a consequence, the area of project management is becoming increasingly important for universities and management educators. Previous research and reports, however, have given severe critique to much of the project management education for its lack of relevance and rigor but oered surprisingly little guidance as to what to do to deal with the problems. In
this paper, our aim is to contribute to the current debate about project management education for practicing managers. We draw on
more than ten years of experience from two senior-level education programs to show how educational practices can be developed to
stimulate knowledge co-production between practitioners and academia. We suggest a model based on a social twist of experiential
learning theory and discuss six learning modes of how to rejuvenate, stretch and improve project management education.
2008 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Project management; Education; Learning; Articulation; Social twist; Experiential learning theory; Knowledge theater

1. Project management education in a Mode 2 society

In an increasing number of industries, project-based
organizations are complementing or in some cases even
replacing traditional postwar divisional structures [25]. A
large survey study by Whittington et al. [26], for instance,
documented the widespread growth of project management
and its rising importance as a top management concern. As
a consequence, project management has become an important area of research and education. To meet the demand,
management educators launch new training programs, master programs and specialized courses, and today, at many
universities and business schools, project management is
an important part of the MBA and executive education syllabus. Project management courses are not only important
*
Corresponding author. Address: Department of Management and
Engineering, Linkoping University, Sweden. Tel.: +46 13281000; fax: +46
13281873.
E-mail address: jonas.soderlund@liu.se (J. Soderlund).

0263-7863/$34.00 2008 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.01.004

sources of revenues for universities and business schools,

but also critical investments for a range of companies in a
growing number of industries and sectors.
Despite this important development, some commentators have argued that much more could be done to develop
courses and programs on project management, in order to
improve the understanding and the knowledge of capability development and strategy implementation [18]. As it
seems, the improvement of courses on project management
at university-level and at customized company programs
could considerably improve the relevance of management
education and corporate practice. But what is the state of
project management education today? And what improvements are necessary to further improve the quality of management education in the project management area?
In an inuential initiative called Rethinking Project
Management a number of project management scholars
and practitioners gathered to set out a new agenda for
research and education within the area of project management. Many of their ndings and key lessons learned were

C. Berggren, J. Soderlund / International Journal of Project Management 26 (2008) 286296

published in articles in a Special issue of the International

Journal of Project Management. These articles oer a variety of refreshing and important advice for research,
research methodology and teaching. For instance, in the
introductory paper, Winter et al. [27] highlight the growing
critique of project management theory and state the case
for the need of a new research agenda in relation to the
developing practice of project management. The authors
claim that despite the developments in practice and the
growing number of members in professional associations,
the current conceptual base of project management continuous to attract criticism for its lack of relevance to
practice [27, p. 638]. Their main conclusions center on
the need to rethink project management research, the need
to illuminate the complexity and actuality of projects, and
that project management scholars must allow for greater
pluralism and broader conceptualizations of projects.
What is more important, particularly for this paper, is that
the authors also argue for the need to rethink education
and that educators must move away from the delivery of
standard package solutions and techniques-orientated pedagogy to learning and development which facilitates the
development of reective practitioners who can learn, operate and adapt eectively in complex project environments
. . . (2006: 642). In the same special issue, Crawford
et al. [4] further elaborate on this idea. They oer substantial criticism to mainstream project management teaching
and education. For instance, the authors claim:
Even in academic programs, education in project management is often pitched at the same level as the certicate and commercial training in project management,
covering largely the same material based on the project
management bodies of knowledge . . . [4, p. 724].
As a consequence, Crawford et al. argue that project
management practitioner development today may therefore be seen as both narrow and shallow (p. 624) and
that it falls short of the reality of . . . complex projects
(p. 624). In sum, the articles by Winter et al. and Crawford
et al. oer erce criticism to much research and education
within the area of project management for its lack of
rigor and relevance. We generally appreciate their work
and acknowledge the importance of rethinking project
management research and education. However, we would
argue, the authors do not oer much advice as to what educators should do besides the general recommendation that
they should move away from the bodies of knowledge and
simplied textbook theories of projects to improve both
rigor and relevance of project management education.
Much of the above criticism also holds true for management education in general. The focus of our paper, however, is on advanced project management training
programs for practicing managers. We address both the
issue of relevance, drawing on some of the ideas presented
by Pfeer and Fong [17] and Ghoshal [6], and the issue of
scientic rigor. Drawing on the challenges of the Mode 2
society, we believe that these two challenges are intimately

287

associated. In several ways, the idea of the Mode 2 society,

as presented by Gibbons et al. [7], criticizes the conventional model of science as linear and argues in favor of
knowledge co-production and of closer integration between
research and practice. The idea of the Mode 2 society also
highlights the need of doing research in the context of
knowledge application. We believe that the writings of
Gibbons et al. [7] have important implications for project
management research and education. In this paper we
focus on the implications for education for practicing managers, although some of our ideas also have implications
for the ways we do research. We concentrate on the following questions: How can project management education be
designed to respond to the challenges of the Mode 2 society? How is the idea of knowledge co-production brought
into project management training and education programs? In several ways, we believe that the ideas presented
in this paper are well in line with the pleas of the Mode 2
society and with the criticism presented by Winter et al.
and Crawford et al. However, in this paper we will oer
more concrete examples, advice and suggestions for how
to improve project management education in a Mode 2
society and use our own practice to reect on management
education in the area of project-based organization and
business.
2. Purpose and outline
As stated earlier, this paper analyzes the question of
how to respond to the management education challenges
of the emerging Mode 2 society. The paper draws upon
ideas presented in a previous paper in which we presented
a set of challenges for management education in the light of
a Mode 2 society [2]. However, the focus in the present
paper is on advanced project management education and
our starting point is the recent critique against project management education oered by a number of scholars that
participated in the Rethinking Project Management Network. Inspired by the writings on the Mode 2 society, we
address the ideas around the co-production of knowledge
and how the critique of the linear mode of scientic knowledge production can be used to revitalize education programs for practicing project managers, align personal and
organizational learning, and reinforce the programs action
components. Of importance here is our own practice and
our own attempts to improve management education.
The empirical foundation for the article is more than ten
years of experience in executive project management programs developed in close collaboration between industrial
partners and academia. Our intention is to contribute both
to the debate about the future of management education by
providing detailed examples of learning practices, and to a
renewed discussion of experiential learning, where articulation, enaction and diusion, but above all reection and
action play key roles in integrating personal and social
learning. We submit that the Mode 2 society has a number
of implications for experiential learning and that it pro-

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C. Berggren, J. Soderlund / International Journal of Project Management 26 (2008) 286296

vides an overarching idea of how experiential learning can

be used in management education.
In this paper, we present a framework that extends traditional experiential learning theory. This framework zeroes in on the importance of articulation and reection on
the one hand, and social validation and organizational
action on the other hand. We believe this framework to
be particularly relevant for project management education
and that, in many ways, the framework oers an adequate
response to the challenges brought about by the Mode 2
society a society that, in our opinion, forces educators
to turn educational programs into sites for knowledge coproduction and combined theory and practice development. Our ambition is also to demonstrate this model by
the use of six illustrations from our own collaboration with
leading Swedish-based multinationals.
The paper is structured as follows. We start with a discussion of the possibilities of making projects schools for
leaders and the recent discussions of the projectication
of society and industries. After that follows a section on
the reasons and arguments for a social twist of the experiential learning model. We also describe six modes of learning that are particularly important in a Mode 2 society and
analyze the six illustrations presented in further detail.
These six illustrations are presented in a separate section
of the paper. The paper ends with a set of conclusions
about the merits of the social twist of the experiential learning theory and the value of knowledge co-production in
project management education.
3. Building on management experience
Project-based companies can, if managed skillfully, be
excellent and powerful sites for highly varied and compressed real-life management training and then be places
where new management talent can be built. Drawing on
this observation, in a Harvard Business Review article
Bowen et al. [3] stated the case for making projects the
school for leaders because, they argued, Leading projects
will become the way one develops as a general manager.
Over time, the ranks of the senior executives will be lled
by people capable of integrative leadership with a rich
background of getting things done through projects [3,
140].
Studies of Swedish managers have indicated the importance of project management experience for top executives
in large Swedish rms [5]. The importance of project-based
organizations among Swedish corporations thus makes
Sweden an interesting test-ground for developing education in advanced project management as a way to revitalize
general management education. In many parts of Swedish
industry, project management even represents a core and
distinct capability [20]. Most senior project managers in
Sweden who work in the automotive, telecom and power
transmission industries have an engineering background,
often a master degree from one of the leading universities
or engineering schools. Here it is important to keep in mind

that the university system in Sweden is quite similar to the

German system. For instance, MBA degrees are rare
among executives; much more common are masters
degrees in engineering with additional training programs
in business and management for the ones considering a
management career. The employer usually oers further
professional training and pays the tuition fee.
This paper builds on the experience from two Swedishbased educational programs, the PMEX program (Project
Management Executive Master Program) and the APM
program (Advanced Project Management), both launched
in the mid 1990s at Linkoping University. Both programs
are partnership programs. The PMEX program is a partnership with companies and organizations such as ABB
(heavy electro-technical equipment), Ericsson (telecom network systems), FMV (Swedish Defense Materiel Administration), Saab (aerospace), Tetra Pak (packaging
machinery), and Volvo Aero (aircraft engine components).
The APM is a partnership program primarily with Scania
Heavy Trucks.
All participants are employed by one of the partner
rms and most of the participants have more than ten years
of management experience. By international comparisons,
the programs are small-scale, with normally between 12
and 22 participants. PMEX is a specialized master program
in project management/organization for senior managers
(e.g. the average age is around 45). The program runs
part-time for 18 months and is divided into seven residential ve-day modules. The modules address traditional topics, for instance Foundations of Project Management,
Innovation and Product Development, Finance and Management Control, and Strategic Management and Projects.
In addition, the nal six months of the program are
devoted to thesis writing, which is a compulsory part of
the program. On average 18 participants participate in each
program. In the period between 1995 and 2006 more than
120 managers graduated from the PMEX program. Most,
but not all, are Swedish, and many work at locations outside Sweden.
The APM program is focused on educating project managers at Scania Heavy Trucks, one of the leading heavy
trucks companies in the world. The program is also open
for participants from other companies. Each program runs
for about nine months with two residential two- and three
days sessions and a series of one-day sessions every third or
fourth week. Since the start of the program in 1998, more
than 120 managers have graduated from the program. An
important part is the thesis work where course participants
work with assignments sponsored by higher-level managers. The ndings from the thesis work are presented at
the program grande nale, the so-called Day of Projects. At this one-day event top managers and thesis sponsors and several hundred participants from the company
participate to listen to and discuss the implications of the
work done by the participants in the program.
Both the PMEX and the APM programs are specialized
in project management, as a set of integrative skills in

C. Berggren, J. Soderlund / International Journal of Project Management 26 (2008) 286296

business, product development and management of innovation, although PMEX also addresses more strategic and
corporate issues. Most participants have an engineering
background and all of them are practicing managers, who
continue to work during the program. All participants are
selected and sponsored by their organizations. We believe
that the lessons learned which we present in this paper might
not work in all project management education programs,
but they may oer ideas and inspiration for how to improve
knowledge co-production and corporate practice by the use
of executive education in the world of projects.
4. A social twist of experiential learning
Since the publication of The New Production of
Knowledge [7], the theory and notion of the Mode 2 society has received a lot of interest. For instance, Hu [8] discussed the implications that the Mode 2 society has on
business schools in general, and Traneld and Starkey
[22] analyzed the framing of management research in the
Mode 2 knowledge production system. A key assumption
in the theory laid out by Gibbons et al., is that knowledge
is produced in the context of application. In other words
socially robust knowledge is superior to reliable, traditional science-based knowledge because of the intensive
testing and re-testing in the contexts of application [16].
This means that co-production of knowledge, between academics and other actors and practitioners, becomes
increasingly important. It also addresses the importance
of the articulation of context and new ways of validation
as critical components for the development of socially
robust knowledge.
The idea of social validation has important implications
for learning, in particular for experiential learning, which is
the primary focus of this paper. The most well-known
experiential learning theory is probably the one developed
by Kolb (see [10,11]). Of key importance in this theory is
the learning cycle, which consists of concrete experience,
reective observation, abstract conceptualization and
active experimentation, in combination with the dierent
learning styles. However, the theory has received a lot of
criticism, for instance because of the tendency to decontextualize the learning process and that the theory fails to
adequately account for the relationship between social
and personal learning [9, 143].
Kayes [9] suggests a linguistic twist grounded in Lacanian psychology to solve the problem of relating personal to
social learning in the experiential learning model. The programs discussed in this paper have instead developed in a
pragmatic and inductive way, which privileges an organizational and action-oriented approach a social twist of the
experiential learning theory. Of importance here is the link
between personal learning and organizational development/improvement, between in vitro and in vivo, between
reection, investigation and implementation. In other
words, the approach presented in this paper builds on a modied experiential learning model that takes many of the chal-

289

lenges posed by the Mode 2 society into account. In the

suggested modication of the experiential learning model,
we emphasize the need for integrating processes of articulation and reection to allow for the abstraction of knowledge.
These processes are, of course, important to stimulate reection and rethinking in general, but we primarily center on the
role they have for contributing to the suggested social twist
of experiential learning. In addition, we emphasize another
extension of the model, here referred to as investigation
and enaction. This extension highlights the ways participants own research within the company and the value of
presenting the research ndings to others. These processes
are signicant for contributing to the social character of
knowledge and the diusion of experience developed within
the educational programs. Below we discuss these aspects of
our experiential learning model further. We particularly
believe that articulation and reection on the one hand,
and investigation and diusion on the other play critical
roles. Although these processes relate to various aspects of
learning, in our framework they contribute to the proposed
social twist of experiential learning.
Articulation is a signicant part of the reection and
socialization process. Articulation prepares the mental
ground for abstract conceptualization but also, and perhaps more importantly, it is a means to make experience
inter-subjectively accessible. Thus articulation is essential
for the social aspects of learning, such as diusion and
action, and it thereby also provides a link to organizational
development. On the basis of our experience, we further
suggest that enaction, public representation and performance, may be powerful steps in the collective articulation
and diusion process. Various activities to promote articulation are essential to increase the value and communicative aspects of reections. Articulation, as discussed here,
centers on the individuals ability to express and communicate opinions and beliefs, including the use of metaphors
and analogies [15]. The articulation process is therefore a
vital component of grounded reection and diusion of
knowledge [1]. Articulation in management training is
essential for consolidating individual learning; for
enhanced group learning and knowledge sharing, and for
enabling a profound tutor-participant dialogue. Articulation as a critical component of management education is
therefore also a basis for diusing, evaluating and implementing results in the participants organizational context.
In our expanded learning model, reection and action
are important educational cornerstones. In our model,
articulation is the rst step in the reection process. In
Experience

Diffusion and
Implementation
Personal and
Social Action

Enaction

Investigation

Articulation

Reflection

Fig. 1. The expanded learning cycle.

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C. Berggren, J. Soderlund / International Journal of Project Management 26 (2008) 286296

management education, reection does not just happen,

but must be arranged for and organized in a rather sophisticated and varied manner. The importance of reection in
professional and management development programs has
also been analyzed and emphasized by several inuential
theorists (e.g. [19,12]). In their view reection focuses on
self-discovery and questioning leading managers to develop
a comprehensive view of managerial practice. Reection
also plays a critical role for encouraging course participants to critically examine their previous assumptions
assumptions that may hinder the emancipation of perspective-limiting assumptions [9, p. 138].
Experiential learning theory emphasizes the role of
action and experimentation. This pragmatic approach to
education draws particularly on the ideas of John Dewey.
From our experience, action plays a critical role in turning
reection and articulated knowledge into heedful management practice. Action and reection are closely nested and
dialectically associated, action provides the testing ground
for reection, articulated reection opens the way for new
perspectives and fosters the generation of new knowledge.
By arranging for action and using experience from previous
action, management educators can escape the risk of second-handedness of the learned world criticized already by
Whitehead [24]. As a consequence, education programs
must therefore entail activities to stimulate the articulation
of experience and arranging for individual and collective
reection. This cycle not only lays the foundation for individual learning; it should also trigger the social cycle and
organizational development to allow for knowledge coproduction and the implementation of lessons learned on
a wider scale.
Our suggested expansion of the model could thus be
described as resting on two pillars, both of which have
the aim of stimulating the social dimensions of experiential
learning. Fig. 1 presents the extensions of the model with
its focus on reection/articulation and enaction.
5. The loci of learning: individuals, groups and organizations
In line with previous research, the model presented
here acknowledges the importance of the social setting
for fostering learning processes and knowledge co-production (see e.g. [16]). Recently, a number of studies on learning, such as the research on knowledge creation within
rms by Nonaka and Konno [14], have emphasized the
situated character of learning. This line of research also
highlights the criticality of various places and modes of
learning. The expanded learning cycle suggested in a
response to the Mode 2 society rests upon the belief that
eective management knowledge is co-produced and
developed in a combination of reection and action. To
be socially robust, however, the knowledge produced
needs to be operationalized in both individual and collective settings within the relevant organization. Drawing on
these ideas and on the importance of knowledge co-production in the context of application, we suggest that

three primary loci, or learning spaces, play signicant

roles for management educators:
(1) The individual, the course participant, is the critical
starting locus, and the most important carrier of
new knowledge and lessons learned. Experienced
and highly motivated individuals are always the most
important success factor, both for the course and the
sponsoring organization.
(2) The next learning locus is the group level. By sharing
experiences, working on joint projects and various
types of case assignments individuals develop new
knowledge, beyond the reection of each participant;
in advanced training situations also beyond the
knowledge of the academic faculty. In particular,
and as emphasized by Mintzberg [12], the sharing
of experience among course participants is probably
one of the most valuable aspects for people taking
executive education classes.
(3) The third learning locus is the company/sponsoring
organization. Management education, including executive training programs, has been criticized for only
providing individuals with new knowledge. The programs discussed here, especially the APM program
at Scania Heavy Trucks is characterized by a spirit
of turning lessons learned from the course into organizational and corporate practice development.
In our extension of the experiential learning theory, the
three learning loci come together to create personal learning and behavior changes as well as organizational learning
and changes. New knowledge developed and acquired during the course of a program needs to be articulated in such
a way that important results, for example application-specic project management models, can be diused within the
sponsoring organization. In addition, education programs
could draw from a wide array of corporate experience, such
as senior managers taking part as teachers or that participants carry out assignments on behalf of corporate sponsors. In Fig. 2, we present the dierent loci of learning
and the dierent linkages to the reection/action dichotomy discussed earlier. In each cell we have also given a
brief explanatory description of the mode of learning and

Individual

Reflection

Individual
reflection, writing
and reading,
articulation of
experience.
Example: Reflection
report.

Action

Individual action,
formulation of action
plans, presentation
of measures for
improvements.
Example: Learning
contract.

Group
Experience
sharing, class
discussion, literature
reviews.
Example: Roundtable examination.

Teamwork, joint
problem-solving,
case assignments,
project work.
Example: Live case.

Organization
Organizational
dialogue, public
presentation,
articulation of lessons
learned and
implications.
Example: Knowledge
theater.

Organizational
action, sponsored
projects, top
management
assignments.
Example: Thesis
work.

Fig. 2. Modes of learning in management education.

C. Berggren, J. Soderlund / International Journal of Project Management 26 (2008) 286296

an example. The examples will be further discussed and

analyzed in coming sections.
In the following sections, we present the six illustrations
mentioned in Fig. 2. We will discuss how reection and
action within the three learning loci act as enablers to
enhance the quality and relevance of management education. By so doing, we focus on a stretched use of experience, how articulation improves management education
and how company settings not only are places for diusion
but also sites for the generation and development of new
knowledge. This means that even if a particular mode of
learning is placed inside a specic box, the idea here is to
show how each mode can be stretched and expanded
according to the model depicted in Fig. 1.
6. Six learning modes: stretching learning practices
Below six dierent practical means and concepts will be
presented. The dierent practical means represent various
combinations of the learning modes addressed above and
serve the purpose of illustrating how project management
education can respond to the challenges of the Mode 2
society. The illustrations are also concrete examples of
how project management training can be improved. We
focus on the following six practical means:
1. Reection reports. A means to elaborate and summarize
individual lessons learned and articulate implications, at
the personal as well as organizational level. This also
aims at turning experience into knowledge by focusing
on articulation and reection.
2. Learning contracts. A format for establishing learning
targets and the individual objectives of the program.
The contract forms the basis for the close participant
tutor discussions of actual behavioral changes and new
opportunities for improvement.
3. Roundtable examinations. A way to test literature knowledge and share experience on the basis of new knowledge. The aim is to stimulate the sharing of experience
from course literature, and reections among course
participants.
4. Live cases. A means to expand personal experience is by
program-mediated group-level quasi-experience. The
aim is to be involved in a co-production of knowledge
where both theory and group discussions play important
roles.
5. Thesis work. An investigation where participants
become in-house consultants, and take on important
problems either identied by themselves and/or
their organizational sponsors and suggest in vivo
implementation.
6. Knowledge theatres. An annual performative event at
the sponsoring organization to articulate and enact
key lessons learned and implications from the program
and the thesis work. The aim is to stimulate the social
cycle of learning and foster the implementation of
lessons learned in the sponsoring rm.

291

7. Illustration 1: Reection reports

The reection report is an instance where reection and
articulation are combined to support action. Instead of
merely distributing an assignment where participants
should reect on a topic or a part of the curricula, reection reports could be crafted into expandable arenas
involving faculty, other course participants and senior
managers at the host organization. By requesting participants to spell out individual and corporate implications,
reections result in action lists and vice versa experience
and proposed action are potentially intertwined in the
reection report writing. This means that the reection
report moves beyond individual reection, and embraces
other modes of learning, including individual and corporate action. At the end of the course, the reports are bound
as a book for each participant, as his/her personal textcum-reection book.
After each residential week in the PMEX program, participants are to write a weekly report. The standard residential week commences with a roundtable examination
(described below) and contains a series of lectures and seminars, shorter case sessions and a more extensive live case
session (normally one full day). After the residential week,
the participant writes a report summarizing the main content of each topic dealt with during the week and the main
lessons learned from each knowledge theme and seminar
session. The reection report also discusses what the individual participant thinks can be implemented in his or
her organization, for instance, improving the way of cooperating in management teams, or changing a specic routine. In addition, the participant reects upon wider
corporate issues, considering what the organization can
learn from the topic dealt with during the residential
week-lessons learned that might be important in a longterm perspective.
The reports are discussed with a faculty member, normally a professor acting as the participants tutor during
the entire program. The reection report must be written,
and lessons learned, expectations and content of the program should be articulated in such a way that they are possible for an outside reader to understand. In addition,
participants normally distribute their reports to a few managers at their sponsoring organization. Some participants
arrange reection meetings with senior managers to present
lessons learned, and discuss practical implications for the
organization. In that way the reection report is not only
an instrument to consolidate individual learning, but also
to facilitate individual action and corporate dialogues.
The point here is that reection reports are used not only
for individual reection, which is common in many other
management programs, but also for stimulating the social
cycle of experiential learning, to involve faculty members
in the reection process, to elaborate on improvement measures in the sponsoring organization, and to involve senior
managers in the sponsoring organization in the reection
and implementation process.

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C. Berggren, J. Soderlund / International Journal of Project Management 26 (2008) 286296

The value of reection reports for practicing managers

has been eloquently explained by Mintzberg and Gosling
[13, p. 71]: They revisit the material of each module . . .
and link what seems relevant to their context. So what they
learned, which has been pushed aside for several weeks by
the pressures of a busy job can spring back to life and key
connections be made. The format of the reports in the
programs discussed here seems to be similar to the reection papers described by Mintzberg and Gosling. We have
similar experience of busy managers running complex projects in streamlined organizations, surprising faculty members by detailed reports exceeding 20 pages or more. A
dierence, however, seems to be the insistence in our programs on articulation of personal learning goals (see next
section) and organizational action items, and our explicit
attempts to turn reection reports into action documents
involving both faculty members and senior managers.
In subsequent reection papers participants develop
explicit organizational action and implementation lists,
which may be structured in three sections:
 Actions implemented since the preceding course module
 Lessons learned and experiences shared during last
module
 Actions to be implemented, sometimes neatly organized
in tables and to-do-lists with short action item description, status, implementation period, and comments
Thus the reection reports establish a closer link
between the host organization and the management educator than is normally the case. In that way, the reection
report functions as a method for diusing actionable
knowledge to the company context.
8. Illustration 2: Learning contracts
The articulation of personal learning goals is an important assignment in the rst part of the PMEX program,
and these goals should be articulated already in the rst
reection paper. Our experience is that personal learning
goals are critical for establishing a good relationship with
faculty members and for the continuous follow-up of the
reection process during the entire program. The learning
goals are related to a number of fairly simple questions,
such as What do I want to learn? How will I learn this?
Who can give support? When can I start? How will I know
that I have learned? How will others realize that I have
learned?
The last question is centrally related to the pragmatist
assumption of the learning model in use, according to
which personal learning unnoticed by others is of no use
and is important for linking personal and organizational
development. At the rst meeting with the academic tutor,
learning goals are discussed to nd out how the learning
contract between participant and tutor should look.
The use of a personal learning contract is closely related
to the quality of the reection reports and in establishing a

supportive relationship with the academic tutor, where

progress is monitored and revealed learning discussed.
The point here is that learning contracts should be designed
in such a way that they contribute to the experiential learning model suggested with the emphasis on articulation and
reection and implementation measures for both the individual and the sponsoring organization. This is yet another
way of turning individual learning into collective learning,
and lessons learned into concrete improvement activities at
the sponsoring organization.
9. Illustration 3: Roundtable examination
Organizing exams in management education is a challenging task, and one which often ends up with simple
answers on textbook readings, or as Ghoshal [6] argued,
on the parts of management theory that are easily transferable to practicing managers. In an attempt to try out new
forms of examination, the so-called roundtable exam
has been developed in the programs discussed here. The
roundtable exam is not only a test of course participants
prociency and eorts in reading and summarizing complex theories and literature, but also a means to articulate
new knowledge, relate to experience and share this knowledge and ideas with other participants.
Normally, each written exam on our programs evaluates
two books and approximately ten journal articles from
popular and scholarly journals. Participants are requested
to submit four essay-type questions written for the other
course participants before the residential week. Classes
are then divided into smaller teams selected on the basis
of the type of questions submitted and the experience of
each participant. After the exam sessions, participants
should reect on the roundtable exam in the reection
report. The reections are thereafter discussed with the
academic tutor and a list of implications for practice is
formulated.
In the roundtable exam, peer pressure is used to get participants to work thoroughly with the literature. Articulation of personal knowledge is required in order to
prepare challenging questions that test knowledge and that
furthers the experience sharing within the team. Reading of
another persons questions and answers is an additional
way of moving from individual learning to actually taking
part in other persons learning process. The roundtable
exam is an example of a learning practice that triggers both
individual learning and group-level reection. It forces
course participants to articulate knowledge when constructing questions for others and when answering questions that others have formulated. The nal presentation
sessions makes use of the entire group by providing a performative context and a public setting to which knowledge
must be articulated. The roundtable exam is another example of how individual learning processes can be turned into
collective learning processes and how reection reports can
be used to identify key lessons learned for the sponsoring
organization.

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10. Illustration 4: Live cases

A live case diers from a standard teaching case in three
important respects. First, faculty members who participate
as educators in the program write the live cases, often in
close cooperation with the people that managed the project. Second, the live case is based on a study of a project
challenge within one of the participating companies. Both
aspects are important to make it interesting, relevant and
valid for course participants. The challenge has no easy
solution and several alternatives are possible. The third difference compared to traditional case sessions is that key
actors from the actual project are invited to oer more
background and discuss course participants suggestions,
and possibly new ideas.
A live case is part of the standard PMEX residential
week. Each case focuses on a specic theme, for instance,
managing relationships with highly demanding customers,
or managing radical innovation. In the course of the
PMEX program more than ten such live cases have been
developed (the live case concept is further analyzed in a
separate paper, see [21]). The following example is taken
from a live case based on a project within the ABB Group
a live case that has also been used in internal training programs for project managers at this company. The introductory part (a fteen pages background to the project) is
handed out several weeks prior to the case session. Each
participant analyzes the case material and prepares answers
to a few overall questions, including what problems they
see, which the overall risks are with the project, and based
on their experience how would they act in a situation like
this, etc. On the day of the case session, additional information is handed out and participants are grouped in teams to
complement each other in the case solutions and discussions. The ABB case follows the following overall structure; each section also includes presentation to class:
1. Risks and strategic context: background to project,
strategic situation, client description, and the rst negotiation. Teamwork on risk analyses, strategic situation
and own experience.
2. Building relationships: Information about start of the
project is handed out. A critical incident is described and
the participants are asked about the background to the
incident and how they would solve it. Presentations to
class follow. ABB managers participate and ask additional questions about the suggestions launched by
learning teams.
3. Negotiation with the client: How to solve a common
problem with the clients project manager. Teams are
asked to prepare the analysis for the ABB project manager. More information about the progress of the project is handed out. Contract documents are distributed
and excerpts with interviews with stakeholders are
appended. Teams prepare answers to questions on
how to act in such a situation and personal experience

293

is shared within learning teams. ABB project managers

participate to respond to solutions and comments.
4. Completion of the project: Additional information is
presented; lessons learned from the project are discussed. ABB project manager presents the major lessons
learned from the project, how they changed organizational routines after the completion of the project and
what he learned from the case session. Learning teams
compile a reection report on the process of the live case
and on the experience of project management in similar
settings.
The general idea of the live case concept is similar to
other case-based pedagogies, including the training of analytical skills, argumentation skills, use of theory and the
sharing of experience. The live case is however an educational practice that can be developed into a wider knowledge arena, where managers from a host organization
take part in the problem identication and discussions
about various solutions, and where participants use group
learning to come up with novel solutions to problems in
real-life industrial projects. Live cases not only provide
opportunities for individual reection and group
problem-solving, they also may work as a way to try out
new lessons learned in a specic, social context of advanced
management. In our experiential learning model, the live
case plays a critical role for articulating experience from
industry and academia and for engaging in a discussion
about how to improve corporate practice. The team-based
way of working with both analytical assignments and
hands-on performance also stimulates the social twist of
experiential learning.
11. Illustration 5: Thesis work
As mentioned, thesis work is an integral and compulsory
part of both programs. It is, however, at times a dicult
task to secure a sucient level of academic rigor corresponding to the masters level in the PMEX program and
somewhat less for the APM program. The challenge could
be described as meeting both rigor and relevance criteria.
Rigor refers to the best in the academic tradition, the
requirements to clearly articulate the purpose and research
questions, to search and build on previous academic work,
to design and carry out a transparent empirical investigation and to be aware of the limitations of the study. It is
also important that each participant argues for her case
and limit conclusions and recommendations to aspects supported by the empirical investigation. This may sound trivial but runs against the grain of many experienced
managers outside R& D, who often prefer to invent their
own wheel instead of searching scientic databases, jump
to conclusions instead of building a detailed argument,
and conduct interviews selectively and purposively to gain
support for their own preconceptions. The key in management education programs, however, is to integrate aca-

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demic standards with organizational usefulness and what

might be called in vivo implementation, i.e. that lessons
learned also are relevant and that they contribute to corporate eciencies. In our programs, participants use the
course to analyze their own organization and their own
practice, to benchmark with other rms represented in
the course and develop real-life action and improvement
plans. Academic supervisors work in tandem with organizational sponsors to guide each thesis project all with
the ambition of dealing with the dual challenge of rigor
and relevance.
Our experience says that the successful integration of
rigor and relevance results in a real co-production of
knowledge. The emphasis on relevance and organizational
backing is inspired by the ambition of General Electrics
CEO Jack Welch to make participants in management programs rst-class in-house consultants [23]. In contrast to
General Electric, however, the model discussed here insists
on the combination of academic rigor with organizational
relevance. To emphasize this aspect, the thesis reports are
made public, although they are in some cases screened
for sensitive corporate information. This makes the ndings available to public scrutiny, which also supports the
diusion process.
Although all participants are practicing managers, relevance cannot be taken for granted. Some enroll in a program with a clear assignment from senior executives, for
instance to develop a new risk management model for the
company, or a new way of organizing pre-studies for capital investments. Others have to exert themselves to identify
relevant subjects and corporate sponsors who can guide
their work, allocate some working time and be committed
to implementation of the results. Each new round of the
programs is dependent on dedicated participants, insistent
faculty and committed organizational sponsors, who all
share an understanding of the function and purpose of
the program.
The thesis work then adds to our expanded model of
experiential learning. It is an important way to articulate
key ndings from individual and personal experience and
to conduct empirical investigations. It is, however, probably more important as a way of diusing and implementing
key ndings in the studied organization.
12. Illustration 6: Knowledge theaters
Often management educators face another dual challenge: to arrange for individual and group-level learning
processes and to design arenas where knowledge can be
further articulated, organizationally diused and shared
beyond class. This was also the critical argument in
our discussion about the dierent loci of learning in management education. For such arenas to work in management education, a trusting atmosphere must be
established where participants engage in open dialogues
on the basis of their studies and experience. Equally impor-

tant is the variety of places and physical arrangements

designed for knowledge- and dialogue-intensive meetings.
In our programs, we have elaborated on the theater metaphor to emphasize that management knowledge is social,
and that it needs to be justied in a wider context than that
provided by individual reection or group discussions. This
standpoint is also well in line with the arguments of the
Mode 2 society.
In this context several of the previous illustrations could
be labeled knowledge theatres. For the moment, however,
we will reserve this concept for a particularly intensive
course element, illustrated by The Day of Projects in
the APM program developed by Linkoping University
and Scania Heavy Trucks. Starting as a means for diusing
thesis and course results to a broader internal audience,
this knowledge theater has proved to be particularly well
suited to a customized management program supported
by a key corporate principal. This setting provides several
important requirements:
 A suciently large group of course participants (1220)
from the same company every year for a number of
years to establish a long-term and trusting relationship
between academics and managers at the company,
 A public and publicized support and involvement from
top management to attract the attention from key stakeholders within the rm and senior managers with important responsibilities for the project operations, and
 A potentially large corporate audience within a convenient vicinity to make it possible for a large group of
managers to attend the day of projects.
The knowledge theater is a vehicle for linking on the one
hand personal and organizational, with individual and
social action on the other hand. As the peak and public
event of the course, it carries a strong message: participants
are not taking part in the course mainly to develop themselves, they are learning in order to contribute to their
sponsoring organization. They are also given the message
that they should use their new skills to investigate, suggest,
and later implement improvements, and as a result of these
activities they will be provided with the chance to deepen
their own experience.
The metaphor of the theater emphasizes management
education as a process involving multiple stakeholders and
audiences, where corporate context is both a playing eld
and a space in which knowledge developed by participants
is to be diused, transformed and turned into action.
Returning to our social twist of the experiential learning
theory, the knowledge theater as elaborated upon here is
a critical component. It not only plays a signicant role
for stimulating and triggering the investigation as such
but also forces course participants to articulate key lessons
learned and formulate them in a way which will make them
accessible and understandable to other managers and other
key stakeholders within the rm.

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13. Doing the social twist in project management education

This paper has had one important overall aim: to contribute to the debate about the future of project management education by providing detailed examples of
learning practices, and to a renewed discussion of the use
of experiential learning in project management education.
We did this by focusing on the challenges of project management education in the light of the Mode 2 society, a
conception that spurs the idea of closer links and tighter
relationships between industry and academia, between
research and practice, and which highlights the need of
knowledge co-production. Such a conception highlights
the need for educators to actively take part in the creation
of socially robust knowledge, and that management education particularly for practicing managers can be excellent
sites for knowledge co-production. In the paper, by providing concrete examples, we also tried to show how project
management educators could respond to the challenges
of the recent calls to rethink project management education, and how learning practices could be elaborated and
improved to embrace the ideas of knowledge coproduction.
In the recent critique, project management education
has been accused of being based on over-simplied models
and bodies of knowledge produced by practitioner organizations. The image of project management education portrayed by the critics is a eld of knowledge divorced from
solid research. This, we argued, was particularly troublesome given the growth currently taking place within the
area of project management education from business
schools and universities to private companies. In sum, we
could therefore say that contemporary project management struggles with a set of important challenges:
 To improve the use of research ndings
 To improve the value for practice
 To combine individual learning and the creation of
socially robust knowledge
How then should project management educators
respond to these challenges? We suggested an overarching
model that relies on an action-oriented social twist of
Kolbs learning theory. This suggested social twist is in
contrast to the socio-psychological twist suggested by
Kayes. Kayes implications for practice are primarily about
language: the writing of life stories, storytelling, four parts
of speech, conversational learning, etc. (2002:147). Our
suggestions stay close to the pragmatist building block of
experiential learning in their preference for action: for
developing, articulating and enacting personal learning
goals and for investigating and initiating organizational
development. This kind of interpretation is also in line with
recent literature on the Mode 2 society and the idea of
knowledge co-production.
In the model suggested, we emphasized the roles of articulation and action, and the importance of taking three dif-

295

ferent loci of learning into account, the individual, the

group and the sponsoring company/organization. In the
following sections, we concentrate on two eects of our
social twist; (1) turning traditional teaching practices into
places for interaction between modes of learning, and (2)
using articulation and enaction to form the basis for
socially robust knowledge.
The paper presented a simple framework of three learning loci and how they can be combined with the requirements of reection and action. The framework illustrated
the need of management education to engage in six dierent, but related, modes of learning. The examples provided
showed that learning practices can be stretched and further
developed to embrace more than one mode of learning.
This, we argued, was critical for turning traditional teaching practices into places for interaction between modes of
learning. For instance, reection reports as a learning practice are not only a means for the individual participant to
reect on lessons learned, but, in our programs, they are
also useful for companies to seize new ideas on how to
improve practice. Individual reection might therefore trigger various types of corporate dialogues between managers
and course participants. In addition, reection reports also
constitute the foundation for improved practice. In that
sense individual reection creates the basis for individual
action. The two eects discussed here constitute cases of
how management educators can work to bridge modes of
learning. This, we believe, is an important point, not only
for the understanding of how management education contributes to individual learning but also how it may contribute to the cycle of organizational knowledge creation as
discussed by Nonaka and Konno [14].
The second point, i.e. how articulation and enaction can
contribute to making knowledge socially robust, was
described earlier in several of the six presented learning
practices. By combining these practices with the expansion
of the experiential learning model earlier presented, we
show how they contribute to make experience inter-subjectively available and how action contributes to the diusion
and implementation of organizational knowledge. In sum,
the practices illustrated contribute to expanding the loci of
learning, of turning individual learning into collective
learning processes and experience sharing. They also trigger the social twist of learning discussed in Fig. 1 in the following ways: (1) reection reports and learning contracts
contribute to the articulation of experience, (2) thesis work
aims at collecting important organizational experience and
suggest improvements of corporate practice, and (3) several
learning practices can be turned into knowledge theaters
(such as the presentation of thesis works and the live case
sessions).
14. Stretching project management education
Project management education is an important eld for
a growing body of universities and educators. In addition,
project managers play an important role in numerous

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C. Berggren, J. Soderlund / International Journal of Project Management 26 (2008) 286296

industrial and public sectors, and projects as sites of learning are often critical for creating general management talents where leaders are given the opportunity of leading
an organization, in many cases a hugely complex organization, from start to nish, from birth to death. As educators,
we have an important role to stay attuned with the latest
research ndings, and doing research and contributing to
the development of knowledge in project management.
This paper has emphasized the need for having researchers
who are active in the knowledge co-production process a
demanding process that requires the educator to combine
research and practice in a unique way. However, the payo
might be rewarding of generating both new knowledge
and improving practice.
In this paper, we have provided a few examples from
two small-scale programs in which we have elaborated a
knowledge co-production logic and developed a social
twist of the experiential learning theory. The underlying
idea for our suggested twist was a conviction that we can
do more with what we have already got that existing
learning practices can be stretched, and elaborated further
to meet the challenges of the Mode 2 society. We did this
by oering a framework with dierent loci of learning
and learning practices that can be designed to bridge loci
of learning and the endpoints of the reection/action
dichotomy. For example, individual learning can be turned
into collective learning, and individual learning can be further developed if articulated by writing reection reports.
Therefore the paper continued by discussing dierent practices of what learning practices might be used to stimulate
articulation and action, and in what way these processes
link to organizational improvements and corporate action.
Given the increasing and important role of projects in
society and the fact that projects are and should be schools
for leaders, project management educators must not be
content with only following the discussions of management
education they should be taking the lead in this
development!
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the help and support
from many of our colleagues in developing the ideas presented in the paper. In particular our current and former
colleagues at the PMEX and APM programs: Rune Ols man, Thomas De Ming, Helen
son, Ove Brandes, Per A
Anderson and Johan Holtstrom. We also appreciate the
support and comments from our collaborators within the
KITE Excellence Center, Kaye Remington, the participants at the Bournemouth Conference, and one anonymous reviewer. Financial support was received from
VINNOVA and the PMEX Foundation.
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