Dr. Stefan Zagelmeyer, Reader in Comparative and International Business at Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS), has extensive experience in international higher education and research. He leads multiple programmes at AMBS and serves as the Teaching & Education representative on the executive board of the Academy of International Business UK and Ireland. He is member of the organizing team of the AIB UKI Sustainable International Business Global Poster Competition (https://www.aib-uki.org/poster-competition.html).

Making “learning by doing” visible in the classroom

As Alliance Manchester Business School marks its 60th anniversary in 2025, it is a useful moment to revisit a practical question that extends beyond any one institution: how should MBA teaching be designed so that students move from fluent use of strategy frameworks to defensible decision-making under uncertainty? In many classrooms, students can reproduce models and terminology but struggle to specify decision criteria, weigh trade-offs, justify choices with appropriate evidence, and explain what would change their mind.

One approach often used as shorthand for addressing this gap is the “Manchester Method”. Originating in Manchester in the 1960s, it is commonly summarised as learning by doing, organised through a cycle of planning, action, reflection, and learning. The underlying claim is not about branding; it is about teaching design. When students repeatedly practise structured decision-making in a feedback-rich setting, they tend to develop stronger judgement, a more disciplined use of evidence, and a clearer sense of how theory connects to managerial action.

In this post, I outline principles associated with a Manchester Method–style cycle and illustrate how they can be implemented in an MBA International Business Strategy (IBS) module. The module centres on a signature team project in which students develop an internationalisation strategy for a company expanding across borders. Each team is allocated one company and a region of six neighbouring countries. Teams recommend which country to enter first, the entry mode, and how to engage with local incumbents and global rivals. They must also integrate institutional and cultural differences with market and industry analysis systematically. Although this is a classroom-based module, it is designed to provide analytical foundations that can carry into subsequent applied or live client work.

The Manchester Method – What it is (and what it demands)

Across accounts of the Manchester Method, the concept is usually described in practical terms, with a stable set of defining characteristics:

• Practice-based learning: students learn through experience by working on practical problems, i.e. learning by doing.
• Theory-practice integration for decision-making: concepts are used as tools to diagnose situations, generate options, and justify choices using appropriate empirical evidence.
• Action learning in groups: students tackle problems collaboratively and learn through reflection on their own actions and group dynamics.
• A structured learning cycle: commonly framed as Plan – Action – Reflect – Learn, with an emphasis on disciplined, evidence-informed judgement under uncertainty.

Planning requires research discipline: students refine the decision question, identify gaps in knowledge, specify what evidence would change their view, decide on which analytical approaches and tools to use, and evaluate the credibility and limits of sources. The Action stage is equally demanding. In class it is simulated, but it still requires commitment to choices and trade-offs; in live client projects it becomes real work under time pressure and uncertainty. Reflection then turns experience into learning through structured feedback, including peer evaluation and peer learning.

Pedagogically, this aligns naturally with experiential learning, problem-based and constructivist approaches, reflective practice, and andragogy, an adult-learning orientation that treats relevance, experience, and self-direction as central to MBA teaching.

What the Manchester Method looks like in International Business Strategy

The International Business Strategy (IBS) module is explicitly case-focused and draws on strategic management and international business theory alongside institutional and cultural analysis. The unit takes an important epistemic stance: cases should be treated as “real”, solutions will be imperfect, and there is rarely a single right answer. Quality is judged by the structure of the analysis, the logic of the argument, and internal consistency.

The teaching design follows a blended template. Core readings and guided materials support self-directed study; online lectures, virtual office hours, and discussion spaces on the learning platform to sustain dialogue; and a multi-day workshop concentrates face-to-face time on applied analysis, teamwork, formative feedback and social learning.

This design embeds the Manchester Method-style cycle. Students move from description to disciplined diagnosis: they identify core issues, specify critical success factors as decision criteria, generate genuinely distinct strategic alternatives, and adapt theory and analytical frameworks to the case. The internationalisation project makes this concrete by requiring teams to justify their criteria for country choice, entry mode, and sequencing, and to be explicit about the tools and evidence they regard as credible.

The work then pushes them into commitment under constraint. Allocating a company and a region of six neighbouring countries enables comparison and makes context unavoidable, including institutions, cultural variation, competitive dynamics, and liability of foreignness. Peer learning acts as a quality filter through structured critique.

Why a Manchester Method-style design fits experienced MBA learners

A Manchester Method–style design is intended to achieve three things. First, it makes uncertainty explicit and manageable: students work with incomplete information, state bounded assumptions, and practise evidence-informed judgement rather than searching for a “right answer”. Second, it shifts attention from polished outputs to decision quality. The discipline of case work requires a clear problem definition, explicit success criteria, genuinely distinct strategic alternatives, and a transparent rationale for choosing among them. Third, it treats peer expertise as both a resource and a constraint. Structured challenge helps to surface blind spots, stress-test assumptions, and strengthen the robustness of judgement—capabilities that matter in roles where influence depends on credible argument and productive dissent.

A necessary caution follows. Peer learning is not automatically beneficial: dominant voices, premature consensus, and confidence without evidence can weaken both learning and outputs. The approach therefore depends on deliberate facilitation, clear standards for defensible argument, and high-quality supervision that shifts from directive guidance towards mentoring as learner autonomy grows.

The method is demanding, but the intensity is intentional. It creates repeated opportunities to practise disciplined judgement, collaborate under pressure, and translate concepts into decisions that can be defended in real organisational settings. Whether one uses the “Manchester Method” label or not, the underlying question is the same: are we designing strategy teaching that reliably produces better decision-makers, not merely more fluent users of frameworks?

Further Reading:

• Alliance Manchester Business School. (n.d.). The Manchester Method. Retrieved January 7, 2026, from https://www.alliancembs.manchester.ac.uk/study/mba/manchester-method/
• McPhail, K. (2025, ed.). Reimagining business schools for the 21st century: Alliance Manchester Business School. Manchester University Press.
• Rickards, T. (2015). The Manchester Method – A Leaders we Deserve Monograph. Booktango.

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