Closing the 21st

The 21st century is seeing dramatic shifts in the business environment. In order for organizations to adapt to these shifts, they must be more flexible and learning oriented. To thrive in this environment, organizational leaders must facilitate and build the capacity for learning throughout the organization. Organizational leadership is looking for employees to bring more than technical competencies or subject-matter expertise to their work; they are requiring specific learning-oriented competencies such as critical thinking, problem-solving, agility, adaptability, initiative, communication, and collaboration among others. To that end, business education is under heavy criticism for failure to produce the workforce needed to meet the demands of the 21st century. We set out to develop a conceptual teaching and learning model anchored in transformative and constructivist perspectives of learning that engages the whole learner in learning, reflective practice, and interactions with learning facilitators, other learning agents, and actors in a learning context