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This conceptual article describes the capstone experience. It argues that this final-year undergraduate study, particularly when centered on in-depth research and writing a dissertation, provides significant value for institutions, students, and future employers. It is argued that the criteria for capstone experience success neatly align with the skills and competencies most source by organizational employers.

This is a short reflection on the present author’s engagement with capstones and business undergraduates. It is limited in scope, reviews the author’s extensive experience and practice, but may have limited generalizability. Nevertheless, it will likely be of value to business educators and to organizational members seeking to hire high-potential business graduates.

Properly designed and executed, capstones can develop the skills and competencies currently considered the most desirable in organizations. Those who have successfully completed their capstones (in this case, in-depth research and an undergraduate dissertation) have a demonstrated advantage in the hiring process. Students are encouraged to see the capstone as a bridging activity between college and the workplace. This fosters student engagement with targeted organizations and the creation of contacts and networks that provide mutual advantage on graduation.

The article provides novel insights that are personal but informed and considered. It offers original perspectives on the value of the capstone experience for students, educational institutions, and hiring organizations.

The purpose of this conceptual study is to reflect on “career” and consider the ways in which its meaning and structure have changed and will continue to change during the era of Industry 4.0. It contends that career advice to students and soon-to-be graduates is an integral part of the educational process and that an understanding of the challenges and opportunities presented by career should be initiated within academia.

The study is a critical reflection on the literature and the present author’s experience and practice in student career advisement, particularly in the management and business sectors. The methodology used is essentially phenomenological, and the central approach is to make sense of the changing construct of career and the ways in which those changes impact relevant stakeholders. The work is not empirically based and may well have limited generalizability. Nevertheless, it is hoped that it will be of particular interest, value and relevancy to students, graduates and those engaged in career-related issues.

This study contends that the ongoing evolution of career is best understood as a shift from a progressive sequences of “doing” towards a more expansive and meaningful narrative of “being” and becoming. Recognition of this shift, especially for those studying business-centered subjects, will provide graduates with a better map and direction as they embark on their career trajectories.

Graduation success is critically important for individuals, educational institutions and society at large. A fundamental aspect of perceived success, particularly for business school graduates, is the ability to develop a rewarding career trajectory. This study offers original perspectives on career and presents suggestions that may be of value to those who are about to graduate, to their educational institutions and to those who will deal with them in their work and professional futures.

This paper reflects on and seeks to reconcile and to consolidate two bodies of literature. The first deals with course design in higher education, particularly with efforts to create significant learning experiences. The second body of literature, which is considerably less well-known, considers the implied student – the intended or preconceived student for whom these learning experiences are created. Significant learning experiences are created by instructors for students, not for themselves. Thus, a critical condition for success in course design is to examine and interrogate the implied student that instructors had in mind and to reconcile those preconceived notions with the actual students who populate the learning space.

The paper is a critical reflection on the literature and the author’s experience in designing college level business and economics courses and in attempting to create significant learning experiences in those courses. The study reflects on practice, reviews the relevant literature, and is speculative in nature. It is not empirically based and may well have limited generalizability. However, it is hoped that this paper will promote further exploration of the implied student construct and will lead to further research into the misalignment of expectations and outcomes between implied students and actual students.

The paper contends that there is inevitably a gap – for both the instructor and the learner – between the expectations and outcomes that are anticipated for implied students and realized by actual students. It suggests that recognition of this gap is a critical element in designing significant learning experiences for actual learners. The paper further suggests that success in creating these experiences is improved through reconsidering the implied student stereotype, engaging with actual students and instructor-led communication of the implicit goals and outcomes of the course.

Students are best served if they engage in learning spaces thoughtfully centered on significant learning experiences. However, learning environments are often constructed around envisaged students who are defined by the learning expectations, pedagogic philosophies and ideological biases of the instructor. This paper provides value by encouraging instructors to explore their preconceptions of the implied student and creating and facilitating learning environments that recognize, appreciate and respond to the actual students who will populate them. Further, the paper highlights “the implied student,” which has gained considerable traction in Nordic countries but only limited attention in the USA and UK.

The purpose of this reflection on practice is to consider and attempt made by the present author to re-imagine online distance learning (ODL) environments to provide a greater opportunity for learner engagement.

ODL environments were augmented by video-conferencing to increase dialogue, instructor presence and a sense of instructor care, concern and guidance. The video-conference component was limited time-wise (40 min per weekly module) and aimed at explaining and integrating learning content and activities. The resulting courses were thus augmented and enhanced and not transformed into blended learning courses.

Preliminary feedback from video-conference discussions and learner reflective journals indicates that the innovation was well received by students and contributed significantly to their appreciation, satisfaction and overall engagement.

The augmentation is simple and effective. It may be an approach that is particularly relevant in designing and facilitating ODL environments in an era of uncertainty, disruption and far-reaching educational changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The author argues that the introduction of an active learning component has significant implications for learner performance, satisfaction and persistence with distance learning programs.

Attempts to increase social presence and engagement are not uncommon in ODL. This particular approach is simple, easily enacted and has a perceived element of originality and innovation that appeals to learners. It is argued that it contributes significant value to the quality and outcomes of the distance learning experience.

This study aims to reflect on the dominance of a narrowly focused analytical approach within business schools, which provides an artificially fractured and disjointed understanding of the contextual complexities and interconnectedness that students will encounter in the future. This approach unnecessarily constrains sensemaking and inhibits creative response to future social and organizational complexity. As business schools and their graduates come under sustained scrutiny and criticism, it perhaps appropriate to reexamine and reframe their analytical bias.

The central direction taken in this study is that of critical reflection on the present author’s practice and experience in teaching undergraduate economics and accounting. Although the analysis may have limited generalizability, it is hoped that it may prove of interest and value to business school educators.

The preferential business school reliance on analytical perspectives suggest that they fail to appreciate the nature of business, its embeddedness in broader society and the competencies required by undergraduates and graduates. This study argues that an emphasis on holistic systems, synthetic fusion and an appreciation of complexity – rather than a reductive analytical agenda – might benefit business schools, their graduates and society at large.

This study provides an original, albeit personal, insight into a significant problem in business education. It offers original perspectives on the problem and presents faculty-centered suggestions on how business students might be encouraged and empowered to see quality as well as quantitative perspectives in their first-year courses.

This article, which is conceptual and exploratory in nature, aims to examine the use of sustained liminality in the initiation phase of the mentoring relationship. Liminality is the non‐structured transitional phase in transformative cultural and social change: a place betwixt‐and‐between, where previous and future norms are suspended. The article argues that providing an explicit liminal phase in mentoring relationships allows mentor and mentees to consider the nature of the relationship and the eventual process through which its goals might be accomplished.

The article reflects on experiences gained in using a liminal approach to the mentoring process with distance transnational mentees. It presents the case for the use of what is termed threshold work in addressing the transition from non‐mentored to mentored status. It understands mentoring as a ritual enactment that requires a reassessment of cultural assumptions for participants with differing national identities.

The article is conceptual in nature and presents only anecdotal outcomes derived from informal discussion with mentees. It argues that, based on these initial experiences, more evidence‐based research might be usefully conducted to examine the effect of a liminal approach on the mentoring process, at both relational and outcomes levels, particularly when mentor and mentee are distanced spatially and by national culture.

This article presents a novel perspective for approaching the initiation phase of the mentoring process. Although used in other contexts, liminality is infrequently employed in mentoring. The utilization of liminality may be particularly valuable in approaching novice mentees who have different national cultural backgrounds and prior educational experiences. As such, the article provides useful insights for practitioners, especially in academic environments.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the decline of two central metaphors of macroeconomics, economics and markets, and suggests ways in which metaphoric vigor can be initiated to promote economic reflection, inter-disciplinary collaboration, and more productive engagement with the broader society. Economics and markets can be described as dead metaphors which have ceased to provide any metaphoric advantage or potential but which nevertheless remain central to economic discourse. At a time when economics is coming under societal scrutiny and being asked to explain its assumptions, predictive ability and social impact, the perceived distance and sterility of economic language presents a significant problem.

The central approach is an analysis of the ways in which metaphor come into being, provide regenerative insights and communicate open and creative discourse. Metaphor theory is introduced, as are theoretical considerations on the decline of conceptual metaphor through over familiarization.

Metaphor in economics is underexplored and this article suggests that a more engaged and creative approach will provide benefit within the discipline and will be necessary to sustain the ongoing discourse with those outside the field.

This article provides new insight into the problems associated with the failure to recognize and to resuscitate metaphor in macroeconomics. It provides original perspectives on the problem, and presents novel suggestions for reducing the communication difficulties that metaphor failure has produced, particularly in communicating economic perspectives with the broader society.

This article, which is exploratory in nature, considers the experiences of migrant students enrolled in the transnational degree program of an accredited American college located in the Czech Republic. Migrant students have considerable experience in negotiating the different national cultures of their college and of the new country in which they live. Students, participating in a Cross-culture Management course, were asked to maintain reflective journals in which they recorded their experiences of national culture difference. The purpose was to encourage consideration, reflection, and the growing internalization of cross-cultural appreciation and negotiation.

Participants were asked to maintain reflective journals during the semester, in which they identified and considered critical incidents and defining issues in their cross-cultural experiences. Journals were analyzed from an inductive phenomenological perspective with no preconceived imposition of structure, although participants had been informed that the root-metaphor of the journal should be that of “journeys”. Ten emergent themes were identified and a number of these, which seemed to impact national culture adaptation, are discussed. In an attempt to retain the authentic voice of participants, verbatim quotations are reproduced in some detail.

The emergent themes identified give insight into the range of national cultural complexities that these migrant students confronted. Sharing these issues with those who have less national culture experience might increase their understanding of the adaption process. More importantly, the journal increased reflection, prompted deeper sensemaking, and allowed participants to articulate their experiences. Making explicit their own cultural adaption problems may also be beneficial for these participants.

Cross-culture education has often taken a didactic approach that emphasized teaching and learning. The reflective journal focuses on an experiential approach to making sense of cultural experience. From a learner perspective, the use of a reflective journal stimulates reflection and contributes to resolution. From an instructor perspective, journals provide valuable insight into issues significant in a developing awareness of a national culture. Journals also provide an unrecognized insight into the personal experiences of international and transnational students that may have implications in their general learning and broader education.

This paper aims to examine the context and nature of marketing used by nonprofit organizations in the Czech Republic.

A number of senior self‐designated marketing managers in a wide range of non‐profit organizations in Prague were interviewed to generate a descriptive narrative of what these key persons understood marketing to be and how they devised and implemented marketing within organizational strategy.

The findings paralleled that of other research (1995‐2005) on the understanding and role of marketing within the profit sector of the Czech Republic. While marketing was identified as an interesting and powerful concept, non‐profit policy makers generally had a limited understanding of a marketing theory or of the context in which exchange transactions occurred.

This project was designed as an initial survey. The limited number of representatives interviewed and their purposeful selection from a small number of high‐profile non‐profit organizations limit the reliability of the findings and reduce the extent to which they can be generalized.

This paper provides a useful entry point for those interested in the use of marketing in the Czech Republic, a very significant transformative economy in the centre of Europe. Since one of the authors is a native Czech speaker, the paper reviews relevant marketing and non‐profit literature in Czech as well as English.

While there has been some interest in the understanding and practice of marketing in the profit sector, it is believed that this is the first paper to address the non‐profit sector – a sector that plays a very significant role within transformative economies.

While the literature has emphasized the literal and the narrative within organizations, this article will consider the visual and the imaginal. Organizations are known and experienced through images, and these images must be considered if organizational culture is to be understood or changed. We look at the imaginal inventory provided by classical mythology, with special reference to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and explore the potency and persistence of myth in imaginal terms and introduce the concept of the “voice of the shuttle”, which imprints events within the metaphorical weave of the mythical narrative. This “voice”, always present in organizations, leaves significant and revealing images on the cultural fabric. We try to understand these images through the experiences of an organizational participant and of students trying to make sense of their college culture.