Business Administration Curriculum Research Articles

Future Leaders' Ethical Behavior Development Using Boricua College's Affective Development Model

Business students have witnessed a decline in moral and ethical leadership in organizations, as reported by the media. Even though there has been increased awareness, unethical leadership continues to rise, requiring the need to slow the progression of future business leaders' tendency to be unethical by training them to develop ethical value systems as undergraduates. Although there is much debate about whether business students should receive ethical training, the main issue is its teaching. The researcher in this study explores developing students' affective domain using the Boricua Colleges' Business Administration Differentiation of Personal and Professional Values course. The course focuses on students developing their mental and emotional states by deconstructing the constructs of ethics to develop ethical value systems. The researcher explored this course as a possible link to address what is missing from the Business Administration curriculum to support developing ethical business students in their behaviors and decision-making.

Editorial: business education in profound disruption

PurposeThis editorial aims to discuss 11 trends that are driving changes in business education, especially for Master of Business Administration (MBA) curriculum programming.Design/methodology/approachThe editorial provides introspection, personal reflections and conceptualization using current literature.FindingsThe authors discuss 11 drivers that are influencing graduate business education. These drivers include the demographic cliff, the K-shaped recovery, MBA degrees losing their allure, emergence of two pricing structures, the rise of online universities, certificates and micro-credentials, the massive open online course (MOOC) MBA programs, MOOCs and certification, Grow with Google, Outsourcing MBA instruction and business education relevancy.Research limitations/implicationsTraditional university and college graduate business education providers must realize that the educational industry is experiencing a revolutionary disruption and that many universities will fail to meet learners’ expectations for relevant skills and organizational demands for employees who have specific skills for employability.Practical implicationsLearners will no longer rely on traditional four-year universities to obtain business skills.Originality/valueThis work synthesizes a disparate set of drivers that are affecting all graduate business educational providers.

Book Review (Descriptive): Bernard D., Andrew L., Peter A. Ioannis S. (2018). Food and Beverage Management; Fourth Edition

Book Review (Descriptive): Bernard D., Andrew L., Peter A. Ioannis S. (2018). Food and Beverage Management; Fourth Edition

AN INSIGHT INTO BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION GRADUATES’ ENGLISH ORAL COMMUNICATION COMPETENCIES FROM WORKPLACE PERSPECTIVES

The issue of discrepancies between university English business administration curriculum and English oral communication competence requirements in the workplace has been increasingly alarming since Vietnam accessed into more and more international business organizations especially ASEAN Economic Community. In the present study, qualitative data were collected in semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in real workplace, consisting of 15 employers at executive and managerial level and 8 business administration graduates from four universities to explore this mismatch. The results showed that most of the employers and graduates were slightly dissatisfied or dissatisfied with business administration graduates’ English oral communication competencies in workplace right after their graduation. Specifically, most of the business administration graduates lacked good pronunciation, skills and appropriate attitudes rather than knowledge in dealing with English oral communication tasks. Importantly, much of the dissatisfaction of both employers and graduates came from the discrepancies between the university preparation and workplace requirements. Thus, creating long-term collaborative partnerships among and between academic institutes and potential employers and designing a competency-based course are essential in preparing business administration undergraduates efficiently for the increasingly demanding workplace regarding English oral communication competencies.

A temática sustentabilidade na formação em administração: a influência de elementos contextuais, organizacionais e curriculares

Este artigo traz a educação superior como elemento chave para promover ação e mudanças. O enfoque é a formação de gestores partindo-se do pressuposto que as organizações e seus atores são essenciais para promover impactos positivos na sociedade. Neste contexto, este artigo se propõe a responder ao seguinte questionamento: De que maneira elementos contextuais, organizacionais e curriculares podem colaborar para a presença da temática Sustentabilidade na formação superior em Administração? Assim, o objetivo geral envolveu analisar em que medida elementos contextuais, organizacionais e curriculares colaboram para a formação superior em Administração sob a perspectiva da Sustentabilidade. Para tanto, foi realizado um estudo de caso de cunho qualitativo em uma Universidade privada do Rio Grande do Sul. A coleta de dados foi dividida em quatro etapas considerando: análise detalhada dos Planos de Ensino das disciplinas, realização de entrevistas junto a atores chave na gestão da instituição, grupo focal com estudantes, aplicação de questionário junto a estudantes dos últimos semestres do curso, e dados secundários presentes no site institucional e em documentos internos da instituição. Os principais resultados mostram que existe um movimento institucional que emerge principalmente da característica comunitária da Universidade e das avaliações externas. Existem práticas socioambientais, mas a IES é percebida mais sob a perspectiva da inovação e não da Sustentabilidade. O currículo da Administração sofreu mudanças que incluem a inserção de disciplinas específicas das áreas, o que vai ao encontro da demanda manifestada pelos estudantes.

Critical Realist Action Research and Humanistic Management Education

In line with its institutional commitments and in order to strengthen the relevance of its business education program in addressing the persistent social challenges facing the Philippines, Mission University (not its real name) revised its Master of Business Administration (MBA) curriculum in 2012. A core change in the curriculum was the incorporation of action research training and the requirement for graduation of implementing and defending an action research project. The introduction of action research, which is based on critical realist philosophy of science, was intended to enable the university’s MBA graduates to become reflexive and humanistic agents of change in their work contexts through the application of observation, critical reflection, collaborative analysis and action and scholarly skills. The implementation of the action research requirement is beginning to yield positive results based on the types of projects implemented by the students and their resulting sense of efficacy in the workplace. Challenges in implementation include the need to further hone student skills in pursuing more emancipatory projects and the need to further orient faculty in the critical realist philosophy underlying action research, as distinct from traditional positivism.

The Effect of the Accounting and Business Curriculums on Creativity

This study employs the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking to investigate the effects of accounting and businesscurriculums on students' verbal and figurative creativity via the Solomon four-group design. The subjects areaccounting and business administration students in Taiwan, where these two curriculums are similar to theircounterparts in the U.S.A. The test scores were analyzed with MANOVA and meta-analysis. The results show thatthe accounting curriculum has not been as effective as the business administration curriculum with respect to bothverbal and figurative creativity. These results indicate that in today’s dynamic and competitive businessenvironment, the accounting curriculum needs to be redesigned in a variety of aspects regarding creative thinkingand problem solving to meet the challenge.

Competencies Learned and Relevance of the Business Administration Curriculum to the Graduates’ Job

The necessity for higher education is considered as an essential vehicle to alleviate a person’s productivity and employability. Many graduates find difficulty looking for suitable jobs nowadays. Any job opportunity even if not in line with the educational training is grabbed. This study gathered inputs on the competencies that the graduates of Bachelor of Science in Business Administration learned and the relevance of the program to their job. Furthermore, the result of the study aimed to improve the school’s quality education through the formulation of an intervention scheme that primarily focused on the transformation of the course syllabi to outcomes-based system. The study made use of descriptive-survey research design, adopting the standardized tool Graduate Tracer Study by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED). Utilizing purposive sampling, 52 graduates served as respondents. Findings showed that graduates were employable across various lines of businesses. The skills and competencies learned in college were relevant in their current jobs. However, relevant skills and competencies like communication skill and practical knowledge need to be enhanced so that future graduates of this program will have a competitive advantage in the labor market both locally and internationally. This issue can be addressed by improving the curriculum and the teaching-learning activities in the classroom that must be reflected in the course syllabi.

Sustainability in the Business and Public Administration Curriculum

Sustainability in the Business and Public Administration Curriculum

INTEGRATING SAP INTO A BUSINESS SCHOOL CURRICULUM: STUDENTS� PERSPECTIVE ON ERP�S USEFULNESS, EASE OF USE AND TRAINING

ABSTRACT One of the goals of our business school is to provide a culminating/integrative experience to our students. We believe that we can achieve that goal by using SAP software in our curriculum in the same manner it is used in the industry. Using SAP software, students can see the impact of an action or a decision within one business function as it affects other functions. In 2013, our school applied for and was accepted into the SAP University Alliance program, hosted by the SAP University Competence Center (UCC) of California State University, Chico. We began deploying the software and training materials soon after. This study was conducted in the fall semester of 2013 in four undergraduate sections of the Management Information System (MIS) course taught by three different faculty members. This resulted in 115 valid paired cases for analysis. We conducted a pre- and post-treatment survey to compare students’ perception on the value of the SAP ERP software before and after they received training and used the software. Findings indicate that participants have positive perceptions on the usefulness, ease of use, and intention to use the software. Also, the findings indicate that overall the training material and exercises they used helped them appreciate the functionality of the system, its usefulness, and its ease of use. Participants seemed to have a positive perception on their likelihood of using the system as part of the activities they would perform in their professional job. This represents an important finding given the widespread use of ERP systems in the business world and the need of employers to recruit newly graduates with the necessary skills to fulfil current and future needs. Keywords Technology Acceptance; SAP ERP; Business Administration Curriculum; Assessment of Learning

Integrating Sustainability Across Entire Business Programs: Evaluating the Implementation of Integrating Sustainability & Responsibility Across the BSL Bachelor in Business Administration (BBA) Curriculum

Management educators carry an important responsibility in educating the kinds of leaders who are equipped to embrace current and emerging social, environmental and economic challenges both regionally and globally. The education and development of such globally responsible leaders represents a significant challenge for business schools that have traditionally focused on providing education in a somewhat segmented discipline-based manner. Sustainability, however, cannot be bolt on, but needs to be built in across the curriculum. At BSL, we have restructured our entire Bachelor in Business Administration degree program and have embedded sustainability and responsibility across the entire curriculum with each syllabus integrating sustainability into the expected learning outcomes. We are currently in the process of implementing this fundamental change and will evaluate the challenges and opportunities of this process by reviewing reports of the faculty who has already re-designed their course modules as well as feedback of students who have already experienced the new modules during their 1st year of studies. We will compare observations from the BBA program with lessons learned from a similar implementation we have conducted at our MBA program in 2009-10. As a result, we will draw initial conclusions of this intermediary review and draft potential recommendations for other management institutions interested in adopting such a strategy.

Student Loyalty Toward Masters Degree Business Administration Curriculum At Srinakharinwirot University

This research aims to study mixed factors of service marketing affecting student loyalty toward the business administration curriculum at the masters degree level at Srinakharinwirot University. It also examines the relationship between student satisfaction and loyalty in the MBA program. The results show that service marketing mixed factors have influenced student satisfaction in the MBA curriculum by approximately 39.4 percent. The product and service aspect is the most important factor in predicting student satisfaction. Furthermore, the service marketing mix has influenced student attitudinal loyalty toward the MBA curriculum by about 26.7 percent, while the service-marketing mix has influenced student behavioral loyalty by nearly 40.5 percent. Student satisfaction has rather a low positive relation to attitudinal loyalty at the 0.01 level of statistical significance. Student satisfaction has a moderately positive relation to behavioral loyalty at the statistical significance level of 0.01.

The Internationalization of the Business Administration Curricula in Arab Universities

This is a study of the extent of the internationalization of the business administration curricula in Arab universities. It is based on a survey of 110 Arab colleges of business that comprise more than half of the overall population, 35% of whom responded. The study found that Arab colleges of business appear to be only moderately internationalized in their curricula, that they do have future plans incorporating internationalization, and that offering specialized IB courses is the norm. As to impediments, the lack of adequate staff is the most frequently mentioned obstacle. The study points to its own limitations.

Impact of Personality on Academic Performance of MBA Students: Qualitative Versus Quantitative Courses*

ABSTRACTThe traditional core Masters in Business Administration (MBA) curriculum consists of a broad range of courses that can be considered as a whole, or divided into qualitative and quantitative courses. Regression models were developed with “QualGPA” and “QuantGPA” as response variables, and gender, pre‐MBA academic indicators, and personality factors (measured by the RightPath6® profile) as the explanatory variables. Results may provide pedagogical insight for faculty teaching increasingly diverse MBA classes. Additionally, there are recruitment implications for those hiring MBA graduates, as well as implications for MBA students in decisions regarding MBA concentrations and subsequent career choices. While gender alone was not a significant variable in any model, gender–personality interactions were significant. Across both course categories, performance tended to be higher for students who were more “Detached” than “Compassionate,” with the exception of females in quantitative courses. Additionally, “Extraversion” and “Reactiveness” significantly enhanced performance among males in qualitative courses, and “Conscientiousness” had a strong positive performance effect among females in quantitative courses.

Using Poetry and the Visual Arts to Develop Emotional Intelligence

This article presents a series of experiential exercises designed to use visual arts and poetry in classroom settings to increase students’awareness and recognition of emotion—two key components of emotional intelligence. Drawing on the liberal arts in the manner described in the exercises provides the instructor with a context in which students can examine emotions and also helps business faculty blend the skills and competencies students acquire during their studies in the liberal arts with career preparation the students receive in the traditional business administration curriculum.

Teaching communication in an MBA operations research/management science course

This paper discusses the inclusion of a writing requirement within a first-year Operations Research/Management Science (OR) course of a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) curriculum. The inclusion of a writing requirement addresses the importance of communication in OR. It is the authors’ supposition that many of the recent criticisms of OR teaching have their roots in poor OR communication. Although OR faculty members can well argue relative values, we have failed to adequately prepare our students to communicate relevant insights from OR studies. The integration of a writing requirement, consisting of short executive summary-style reports and a major term project, within an MBA OR course can do much in promoting further OR study and OR work. This paper describes our experience in instituting a writing requirement within a first-year MBA course in OR.

Environmental engineering education in conjunction with or as Part of social sciences curricula

Traditionally in Germany environmental engineering education took place within the context of a civil engineering programme. There were reasons for this: the beginning of much of what we understand today to be environmental works fell within the parameters of city engineering. There were and are advantages mostly in view of the necessary planning, construction and operation of environmental infrastructure. There are also disadvantages which become more and more pronounced as the field of environmental protection expands: the civil engineer frequently lacks basic training in disciplines such as biology and chemistry and carries a large and sometimes burdensome knowledge of other less relevant subjects. Thus, educators begin to look for alternatives. This paper deals with an alternative that was developed some ten years ago and therefore has proven viable and successful: at the University of Karlsruhe students may choose to major in environmental engineering within the context or on the basis of an economics and business administration curriculum. The basic question here is as to what extent the student masters the field of environmental engineering if he or she has predominantly a solid background in social sciences and very little in natural sciences. The paper will describe the curriculum in structure and intensity and evaluate the accumulated knowledge and suitability of these students in terms of actual environmental problems. This will be done in terms of examination performance parallel and/or relative to traditionally trained civil environmental engineers as well as in terms of topics successfully treated in Masters' theses. In conclusion, it is argued that such combination of curricula should not be confined to economic sciences and environmental engineering but also be planned for legal sciences and environmental engineering.

Selection of Business Administration Curriculum for International Programs

ABSTRACTThe ‘perceived need’ for courses is accepted as central to assessing the effectiveness of transfer. It is shown that students from different countries assign different rankings to the importance of courses, group courses into different thematic groups, and prefer different instructional methods. This may have serious implications for curriculum development and the organisation of BA programs internationally.

Are General Managers Well Prepared to Manage It? the Role of it in General MBA Programmes in Australia

This paper reports on the results from a survey of the provision of information technology (IT) course units in general MBA programmes in Australia. The results establish a baseline for future studies. They show widespread penetration of IT courses in general MBAs, but the amount and type of content they provide is only sufficient to give students a partial preparation for the general management task with respect to IT. There is an internal expectation gap between what IT academics view as core and the time and space available in the Master of Business Administration (MBA) curriculum. There is an external expectation gap between the issues currently of concern to business and the topics taught. At present the gap is widest in respect of business managers’ concerns about information infrastructure and organizational learning. The evidence suggests that neither expectation gap will decline over the next 5 years and may increase. We conclude that there is a need for increased provision in the curriculum. Recommendations are made for two core courses, with more attention to be given to topics of current concern to business managers.

Are general managers well prepared to manage IT? The role of IT in general MBA programmes in Australia

This paper reports on the results from a survey of the provision of information technology (IT) course units in general MBA programmes in Australia. The results establish a baseline for future studies. They show widespread penetration of IT courses in general MBAs, but the amount and type of content they provide is only sufficient to give students a partial preparation for the general management task with respect to IT. There is an internal expectation gap between what IT academics view as core and the time and space available in the Master of Business Administration (MBA) curriculum. There is an external expectation gap between the issues currently of concern to business and the topics taught. At present the gap is widest in respect of business managers' concerns about information infrastructure and organizational learning. The evidence suggests that neither expectation gap will decline over the next 5 years and may increase. We conclude that there is a need for increased provision in the curriculum. Recommendations are made for two core courses, with more attention to be given to topics of current concern to business managers.