| Summary: | MBA type programmes have grown apace in the U.K. since the 1960s. As demand for full-time MBA courses begins to level off, part-time executive masters courses are the fastest growing form of masters programme in business schools. The participants on such courses are in both worlds of academia and business and might be thought to bridge the gap between both these worlds, which are often said to be too far apart. The purpose of this thesis is to report the experience of part-time management education at masters level from the manager-learners' point of view. Longitudinal field research was carried out over a two year period with a group of part-time MBA students. While they were concerned to learn accountancy, marketing, finance, strategy, organisational behaviour, statistics and more, the researcher was concerned to learn how they socially constructed this learning experience. The perspectives of symbolic interactionism end ethnomethodology inform the analysis which examines member's interactional practices for managing to survive the course. Part I outlines the history of management education and development in the U.K. focussing upon the debate Over the MBA qualification. It also reviews some of the work in the fields of educational research, evaluation research and the sociology of education, which indicates the need for basic ethnographic research in the field of management education. Part II discusses the methodology and perspective of the field research including the researcher's autobiographical reasons for adopting the approach used. Part III contains the substantive chapters which describe and analyses the part-timers' experience of the programme. The first two chapters in this section broadly set the scene, aspects of which are examined in closer detail in subsequent chapters. Throughout, the perspectives of symbolic interactionism and athnomethodology are drawn upon for the purpose of enriching the insights into and analysis of the manager-learners' experience. Part IV concludes by discussing some of the methodological issues arising from the field research - from the practical to the perspectival - and some of the substantive issues concerning the members' social constitution of everyday life on the course. It is contended that educational research in the area of management education and' development has not been sufficiently concerned with understanding the experience and point of view of management-learners undergoing management education. The present thesis advocates ethnography as a suitable method for elucidating manager-learners' experience of, in this case, part-time masters level management education. See'
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