Work-based Learning in Service Management The growth of the service industry has placed higher education for business at a crossroads. This article deals with the starting points for the establishment of a new Bachelor of Business Administration Degree Programme at the Lahti University of Applied Sciences, in Southern Finland, to meet the challenge of the growing importance of service expertise. SIX DRIVERS
The key drivers of the new Lahtibased, BBA in Service Management can be summarised to five following elements: 1. New economic structure calls for a service logic and service expertise! 2. New pedagogies are needed in higher education! 3. Working life and the ways of working are changing! 4. Lahti University of Applied Sciences (LUAS) is a proactive regenerator! 5. New campus development changes the rules of the game! First, due to the growth of the service industry, the conventional approach needs to be replaced with a new business logic. This places value co-creation and service logic to the fore (see e.g. Vargo & Lusch 2011). 80
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Mika Kylänen
The second driver deals with pedagogical insights. Management education should adopt an approach that values ‘knowing’ as a critically reflected and passionate performance (see Dey & Steyaert 2007) to highlight improvisation, invention and creativity. Pedagogically speaking, the programme is based on work-based learning (WBL), which considers students as workers (Eraut 2009) and emphasises the role of the students as active learners and co-creators of knowledge. Third, as the key of the business logic is no longer a manufactured good, but a co-created service experience, new skills are also needed. Thus, sense-making, design mindset, social intelligence and crosscultural competence can be seen as increasingly critical future work skills (Davies, Fidler & Gorbis 2011).
The last two drivers underline the proactive approach of the Lahti UAS. In 2012, right after the government-driven structural development1 took place, the planning of the new programme began. The new line of service sector-oriented business studies offers a pilot for pedagogical insights, which are needed to benefit from the Niemi campus area with new facilities that are smaller in size but more flexible by nature. LEARNING OBJECTIVES AND STUDY MODULES
Curriculum development began in late spring, April-May, 2012. The commission came directly from the president of LUAS, and the support of the management has been strong right from the beginning. The curriculum development took place both in cross-disciplinary, multiactor meetings and in smaller teams of 2-3 people. The curriculum was published in April 2013. The brightest idea in the programme is the implementation. In practice, the work-based learning means that the students are placed in service sector-based work communities for four days per week, while they study at the campus
