The Internet in Undergraduate Management Education: A Concern for Neophytes Among Metaphors

Abstract

This paper presents an alternative perspective of the pedagogical and other merits of the Internet in undergraduate management education. It highlights the importance of sensitising management students to the ideological character of the Internet and to the Internet's capacity for altering relationships, power structures and ways of ‘managing’ organisations. The need for there to be a critical appreciation of the effects of metonymy and metaphor when the Internet is being considered for use in undergraduate management education is emphasised. The notion that the Internet is an unparalleled conduit of pedagogically-related excellence is challenged and implications are analysed. Metaphors about the Internet and metaphors transported by the Internet are discussed in order to develop a better appreciation of the Internet's limitations as a technology ‘whose full advantage is [purportedly] to be realized’.