Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:403714 [] For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether managers can acquire strategic skills using management education methods in lieu of experience. It demonstrates that experienced-based pedagogical methods can be effective in developing traditional skills or "hard" skills and "soft" skills such as interpersonal communication, which then facilitate the acquisition of strategic skills. Design/methodology/approach -The paper uses data from questionnaires and achievement scores from capstone classes to determine whether exposure to an experiential technique called large-scale simulation can lead students to acquire traditional, soft and strategic managerial skill sets. Findings -The results show that soft and traditional skills are complementary and together lead to better acquisition of strategic skills and also imply that mastering soft skills may enhance the mastery of traditional skills. Research limitations/implications -A limitation of the research stems from the use of students as research subjects. While this limits generalizability, it is important to remember that many such students go on to be successful managers in large and small organizations, partly due to their educational background. Replicating these findings with graduate and executive students is required. Practical implications -A key practical implication is that organizations may be able to effectively supplement their own experienced-based developmental efforts for their managerial personnel with course-based learning. Originality/value -The paper's findings support an option for many firms, although this has not received much direct empirical support. Additionally, the results support the increasing emphasis placed on soft skills, suggesting that development of strategic skills may help managers grasp the bigger-picture implications.

This study draws on cognitive elaboration theory to examine when and why people evaluate computer-based information more favorably than information from a less automated source. Half of participants received information from a computer, while half received the identical information from a less automated source. Moreover, participants were induced to be more vs. less involved in the informationacquisition process. As predicted, participants in the low-involvement condition evaluated the information more favorably when it came from a computer than from a less automated source. This difference was eliminated in the high-involvement condition. Further supporting our reasoning, the interaction effect between information source and level of involvement was more pronounced for participants low, rather than high, in need for cognition.Computers are becoming perhaps the most important source of information all over the world. People spend hours each day in front of their computer screens, acquiring information generated by programs or made possible through their connection to the Internet. Given the pervasiveness of people's acquisition of computer-based information, it is both theoretically and practically important to determine whether people's evaluations of computer-based information differ from their evaluations of information acquired from other sources (e.g., people, printed media). A question of central importance, for example, is whether people are predisposed more positively toward (i.e., assign greater credibility to) computer-based information. The more credibility they assign to computer-based information, the more likely such information is to influence their attitudes and behaviors. 1 The authors thank Michael Morris, Batia Wiesenfeld, and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

No abstract