NEW METHODOLOGIES TO ADAPT BUSINESS MANAGEMENT STUDIES TO THE BOLOGNA REQUIREMENTS

The Bologna process has triggered the redesigning of the curricula in order to adapt them to the Bologna directives. The new curricula are focused on the development of traverse and specific competences rather than a fixed body of knowledge. The students are not anymore a passive subjects but the main actors of their learning process. In this new approach it is considered a holistic view of the students competencies and skills. This needs new educational methodologies for the teaching-learning process. The aim of this paper is to analyze how the different learning methodologies can be used in business management subjects and how well they fit to obtain the Bologna objectives.
In business management, as well as in other fields as engineering, medicine or law, there is the necessity of confronting students with the complexity of real problems, where the combination of all the knowledge acquired during all the degree must be used. Business management is a difficult field for structured research and systematic knowledge improvements, and in consequence, a difficult field to learn and teach. Some of the characteristics that confer this difficulty are the unstructured and complex problems, the diversity of the object under study, the great influence of the environment (markets, competitors, economy, laws, technology, etc.), the importance of social factors, the ever changing and turbulent environment, the amount of variables involved, the ambiguous relationships among variables, the variables involved difficult to measure and the multiple theoretical approaches and paradigms.
Under these conditions, the case method, the problem based learning and the project based learning are considered the prevalent tools to be used in learning business management. The advantages and main drawbacks of each methodology are compared, and some possible solutions to the disadvantages found in the specific business management field proposed.