Teaching the Practice of Management

Dr Freddie Acosta (right) with Dr Willis Emmons of Harvard Business School

Dr Freddie Acosta, the Director of Strathmore University's School of Graduate Studies was among a select number of faculty in the Teaching the Practice of Management (TPM 3) workshop held at South Africa's Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) from 20th to 26th May 2007. Other faculty for the workshop were Professors Tom Piper and Willis Emmons of Harvard Business School, Professor Nick Binedell and Mr Jonathan Cook of GIBS, Professor Mike Ward of University of Pretoria and Ms Enase Okonedo of Lagos Business School.

The workshop was an initiative of the International Finance Corporation - Global Business School Network (IFC-GBSN) and Association of African Business Schools (ASBN). Its aim is to improve the level of participant-centered teaching in business schools in Africa.

Another aim of TPM 3 is to train mentor-teachers in the use of participant-centered learning and teaching. The workshop was attended by 72 participants from various parts of the continent including Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda.

SU contingent was headed by another mentor-teacher Dr Ruth Kiraka. Other participants from SU were Dr James McFie, Ms Roseline Lubulellah, Ms Josephine Kibe, Mr Felix Mogesa and Mrs Stella Nyongesa.

Dr Acosta attended a previous TPM workshop with Dr Kiraka in 2005. Since then, he has written many cases including the LawAfrica case which he used in his TPM 3 teaching session. The case is framed to teach concepts for an Entrepreneurship course.

Fascinated with the richness of the case, the teaching team unanimously agreed to use the same case for the teaching practicum of the participants. This meant the case was also framed teach concepts for various courses including Operations Management, Marketing Management, Strategic Management and even Financial Management.