How a business school works with industry

Management is a practical art, and like other practical arts, such as engineering, it can best be learned through a combination of systematic education and practical experience. This implies the need for partnership between business schools and industry. Such a partnership may result in the development of publicly available programmes, such as a postexperience M.B.A. It may also take the form of in-company management development projects, jointly designed and conducted. The paper describes three examples of such projects, all involving the Cranfield School of Management as one partner. In two of these, individual organisations constituted the other partner. In the third case a consortium of companies with similar needs was involved. This consortium concept combines the advantages of specificity with the opportunity for cross-fertiisation. The paper also emphasises the need for systematic monitoring and feedback of results, and discusses briefly the `re-entry¿¿ problem.