PROGRAMME DEVELOPMENT
M any business schools possess a programmes, admission criteria ensure substantial managerial experience. Participants arrive with responsibility for people, strategy and organisational change. They are not preparing for management; they are already practising it. Yet in many institutions, this potential remains largely untapped. MBA education certainly builds on participant experience and managerial content is often approached not merely as abstract knowledge but through applied assignments, cases and projects. Still, even executive programmes are rarely treated as cumulative sources of insight. The experiences that participants bring, reflect on and develop during their studies are typically seen as pedagogical material rather than as data. This represents a significant missed opportunity for business schools committed to relevance and research excellence. When schools look more closely at what experienced participants reveal, not only in classroom discussions but also in their written reflections, developmental assignments and project works, they can gain access to a remarkably rich empirical environment. Executive education generates insight year after unique strategic asset that remains surprisingly underutilised: the lived experiences of their MBA and EMBA participants. In AMBA‑accredited
year, cohort after cohort, without the access barriers that usually constrain management research. The material is already there; the question is whether we choose to see it as such. Executive education as a source of insight Experienced, practising managers do not enter MBA or EMBA programmes as blank slates. They arrive embedded in ongoing organisational realities. They are leading transformation projects, navigating strategic uncertainty and managing the demands of leadership. Their learning is not hypothetical; it is intertwined with their work. This is precisely why executive education offers such a powerful vantage point into managerial life. Participants articulate what they struggle with, what they aspire to and how they make sense of their roles. Their reflections capture leadership as it is lived. From a research perspective, this is rare access. In most organisational studies, gaining such insight requires negotiation of access, careful navigation of organisational politics and so on. In executive education, the same level of experience is expressed naturally as part of the learning process. Participants are already invited to reflect, analyse and articulate their development. Treating this material systematically does not disrupt education – it enriches it. Studying what leaders actually want to learn I have repeatedly drawn on the experiences of EMBA participants as an empirical setting for my research. Over the years, this work has resulted in six distinct datasets generated within EMBA education, examining themes such as managers’ financial thinking, strategic decision-making, innovation and executive learning. One recent example is our article in the journal, Management Learning , entitled Putting the ‘executive’ back in the EMBA: Designing paradox-savvy learning goals for holistic professional development . This study examined how experienced leaders themselves frame their professional development and learning goals. At the start of the programme, we invited 57 EMBA participants to describe what they hoped to learn and develop during their studies. The aim was to capture their own perspective on learning at this stage of their careers, rather than starting from a faculty standpoint or predefined curriculum. The data was collected as written qualitative reflections, written at a moment when expectations, ambitions and uncertainties were still very much alive. A holistic view on executive learning One of the clearest findings of the study was how executives describe their development needs in ways that cut across traditional academic categories. When asked to articulate what
Ambition • ISSUE 3 • 2026 25
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