Mentioning the Unmentioned: An Interactive Interview About the Informal Management Curriculum

Not everything that is important for success can be learned from a lecture or assessed on an exam. In fact, the informal elements of a learning environment may be just as important as the formal ones. In this article, we argue for recognizing the existence and influence of the informal management curriculum, which consists of those elements of the educational environment outside formal goals and assessments. The informal management curriculum is a potentially powerful factor in student learning, and our field's current lack of discussion about it suggests that we are not using its influence as well as we might. We offer a definition of the informal management curriculum, including a comparison to related constructs. Our definition provides the foundation for a conversation among three management education experts, Kenneth G. Brown, Rakesh Khurana, and Robert S. Rubin, who discuss the role of formal and informal elements in management education. Their discussion and our conclusions suggest future directions for the classroom, for research, and for administration.