‘In the real world….’ listening to ‘practitioner‐lecturer’ perspectives of the relevance in the business school curriculum

Abstract

This paper is concerned with eliciting the perspectives of ‘practitioner‐lecturers’ on the delivery of the employability curriculum within a Business School. The term ‘practitioner‐lecturer’ is taken to mean those who have entered academia following an earlier career in industry, the public services or a commercial environment. Given their past experiences and organisational socialisation, it may be that these academics hold different views on the nature of the employability debate. Hitherto, much of the discourse on employability has revolved around an instrumentalist debate concerning how to implement an idealised skill‐set that is meant to encapsulate the learning of students enrolled on a course. In this sense, students are re‐defined in terms of the set of skills they accrue and develop. This reductionist approach has led to calls for a more holistic conception of employability education‐ a viewpoint that may echo with practitioner‐lecturers with their wider experience of work beyond the ivory tower. This paper sought to address central research question: How do practitioner‐lecturers view the relevance of the Business School curriculum, given their professional insights? The findings suggest that the views of practitioner‐lecturers could be incorporated into the design of the future curriculum.