Top Business Schools Research Articles

Classrooms vs screens: Learning outcomes from a business school

This paper examines the impact of substituting regular classroom programmes with online classes on students’ academic performance. We compared the change in the delivery mechanism of preparatory courses for two consecutive Master of Business Administration (MBA) batches in one of the top business schools in India. While the first batch studied in a face-to-face classroom setting, the second batch was taught two subjects in an online format, while the third subject continued to be offered in the face-to-face classroom setting. Using a difference-in-difference estimation, we found that the students' performance declined in both the subjects offered online, with the average performance declining by 4.95% and 8.4% in Economics and Accounting, respectively. However, no decline in performance was noted in the third subject of Quantitative Methods, offered in a face-to-face classroom setting. Further, we found a larger drop in scores for students with the lowest academic ability. Our results indicate that a shift to online courses should be accompanied by well-designed pedagogical and curriculum changes to ensure substantive learning, especially for academically weaker students.

Does Employer Branding Shake Application Intentions of Potential Employees?

Companies are actively engaged in the pursuit of acquiring highly skilled candidates, referred to as the ‘war for talent’ leveraging their reputations to attract such individuals ( Schaarschmidt et al., 2021 ). However, the extent to which these efforts have yielded positive outcomes remains a matter of inquiry. This study aims to determine the degree to which applicants’ intentions to apply for job positions within an organization are affected by their perception of the employer brand. Specifically, the objective is to identify the most significant component that affects candidates’ Intention to Apply. This study empirically assesses employer branding and Application Intentions among potential employees. Data were collected from a sample of 210 MBA students who graduated from one of India’s top business schools. The collected data were analysed using PLS-SEM software. The findings reveal that an organization’s employer brand significantly influences potential employees’ Intention to Apply. Furthermore, the components of the employer brand, namely, Job Role (tasks), Compensation and Benefits, Organizational Culture, and Job Security, International Assignments emerged as the influential factors driving candidates’ Intention to Apply. It is worth noting that studies of this nature among MBA graduates from business schools are scarce. The insights gained from this study can assist managers in formulating action plans to enhance an organization’s image as a desirable employer.

Integrating Environmental Involvement and Media Exposure on the Theory of Planned Behavior in Explaining Green Purchase Behavior

Green purchase behavior has become a main agenda in most countries, especially after the introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals. Green purchase behavior is considered an act of protecting the environment for a better living. Green purchase behavior goes beyond self-benefits, it’s a commitment to the benefits of others and the environment. Hence, understanding what influences consumer green purchase behavior is considered of utmost importance and relevant in today’s sustainable development. This study aims to integrate environmental involvement and media exposure of environmental messages into the theory of planned behavior. The quantitative study among 346 young respondents from one of the top business schools in Malaysia revealed that attitude toward green products, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, environmental involvement, and media exposure has a significant positive relationship with green purchase behavior. The findings contribute to extending the literature on green purchase behavior specifically in the context of young consumers in Malaysia. Besides, the findings suggest a few practical implications which are discussed at the end of the article.

Aligning strategy, curriculum, and research for societal impact: Designing an actionable framework for business schools globally

ABSTRACT During the pivotal year 2020, a groundbreaking shift occurred: the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) released new accreditation standards requiring business schools globally to serve as catalysts for societal good to retain their accreditation. This systemic shift has ripple effect implications for business education by mobilizing over 4 million students at 90+ top business schools in over 50 countries to become agents for positive change. However, with this monumental change, one question looms: “How”? How can business schools coordinate and focus their societal impact efforts to maximize positive societal impact across research, teaching, and service? This case study provides academic leaders in business schools a blueprint for how one AACSB-accredited business school harnessed the globally respected framework, Sustainable Development Goals, to align societal impact efforts across research, teaching, and service. The study also provides policy makers some insight into sustainable entrepreneurship education’s role in promoting positive societal impact through economic growth and social entrepreneurship.

Social sustainability reporting in European business schools

PurposeThis study aims to explore the social sustainability reporting (SR) of top European business schools to illustrate and discuss their practices and the associated challenges.Design/methodology/approachFor the top 20 European business schools, content and thematic analyses were used to investigate reports concerning social sustainability and data from semi-structured interviews. Reports from the past three years (typology, framework, channels of communication and frequency) were analysed, including content on social issues in the past period and the challenges faced by managers regarding social SR.FindingsSocial SR in the top 20 European business schools is heterogeneous and the main challenges are the lack of specific frameworks and resources, the amount of data that must be collected and the complexity of measuring social impact. Diversity and equality, society issues, ethical integrity and human rights with respect to students, partners and organizations are the most relevant social contents.Practical implicationsBusiness schools need to debate ways of promoting social sustainability and to adapt procedures and technology to communicate their social sustainability strategies and impacts. It offers an improved understanding to regulatory institutions that can allow them to establish standards and a foundation for future research that can refine or generalize the findings of this study.Social implicationsMeasuring and reporting social sustainability issues are relevant challenges for business schools that are working on social sustainability aspects.Originality/valueThe originality of this study lies in the discussion on current social SR practices at business schools, and their responsibilities regarding the development of a more sustainable society in a changing regulatory context.

A Bibliometric Analysis of Research Output from Indian Institutes of Management

Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are among the most prestigious business schools in India, mainly offering postgraduate, doctoral and executive education programmes in the fields of Management and Business Education. They also contribute significantly to research in the area. This article attempts to analyse the bibliometric patterns in research output of IIMs. The data for research publications indexed in Scopus during 2010-19 is downloaded and analysed to identify important patterns and trends of research output, citations, international collaboration, open access, gender distribution and social media visibility. The results are also compared with three top internationally renowned business schools (Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan School of Management and NUS Business School). Results indicate that the older IIMs like Ahmedabad and Bangalore are placed at the top in terms of publication counts and citations. Newer IIMs like Rohtak and Raipur are found to be doing well in publications as compared to other IIMs of their generation. IIM Udaipur has more than 40 % of its research output internationally collaborated and also highest citations per paper value amongst all the IIMs. However, when the IIMs are compared with three well-known international schools (two of which have mentored the initial two IIMs), there appears a large gap in several indicators, such as h-index. The paper, thus, indicates that IIMs need to improve their research output and quality to be at par with the top business schools of the world. Research themes like ‘sustainability’, ‘emerging markets’ and ‘supply chain management’ are the most prominent thematic areas observed in the research output from IIMs, which indicates that IIMs are working on research topics of contemporary relevance.

Exploring Learning for On-Campus Students Transitioning to Online Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Perceptions of Students in the Higher Education

Due to the emergence of COVID-19, the education sector has embraced online learning as the main delivery method to engage and impact knowledge and skills acquisition of their students. However, learning is not just about knowledge and skills acquisition but is an activity contributing to change and enrichment of the learner. This paper draws upon the results of a qualitative interview conducted amongst postgraduate students enrolled in an AMBA-accredited and top business school in the UK. The results revealed that students’ experience of the sudden transition to online learning is shaped by four distinct but interrelated areas: benefits of online learning, challenges of online learning, success factors in online learning and support in online learning. These findings will help higher education institutions and online learning tutors concentrate more on areas important to student learning when migrating from face-to-face to online modes of teaching.

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A Critical Study on Strategic Management Research in Top Business Schools in India during last 5 Years

A Critical Study on Strategic Management Research in Top Business Schools in India during last 5 Years

Beauty and Accounting Academic Career

We examine the impact of beauty on the academic career success of tenure-track accounting professors at top business schools in America and show that beauty plays a significant role. Specifically, after controlling for gender, ethnicity, publication history, work experience, and quality of alma mater, more attractive professors obtain better first school placements post-PhD and are granted tenure in a shorter period of time. These findings are broadly consistent with behavioral theory which predicts that facial attractiveness irrationally affects the perception of performance characteristics. Interestingly, there is no incremental benefit of attractiveness for the career progression from associate to full professor. This finding is consistent with the notion that the role played by beauty in promotion diminishes when the individual’s ability and competency become apparent over time.

Demystifying the Core Values of Top Global Business Schools

The purpose of this study is to examine the underpinning core values practiced at the top 100 business schools in the world. Financial Times ranking for Top 100 Business Schools for the year 2020 was selected for this study and the business schools’ core values were collected from their official websites. Content analysis was used as the major data analysis technique. This research provides many significant findings. One-third of listed business schools do not have core values. Most of the top business schools have identified 5 to 6 core values on average. The top seven most frequently used core values include: Excellence, Integrity, Collaboration, Diversity, Innovation, Respect, and Inclusiveness. Three major clusters of core values of business schools were identified within the dataset. The 7 most frequent values are universal by nature and there seems no specific relationship with any country or ranking of business schools. Implication, limitations, and future and research directions are provided in the end.

The case method evaluated in terms of higher education research: A pilot study

Case method teaching is used extensively in business schools around the world, and has become almost a hallmark of the top business schools. It is therefore surprising to find that there is so little empirical evidence to support its continued use. Successive literature reviews from 1987 to 2018 confirm this lack of evidence. Drawing on several decades of higher education research, this study used a proven survey instrument to evaluate the case method in terms of approaches to learning, an internationally accepted measure of course quality in higher education. The finding, that the case method is more effective than lectures in promoting understanding, although unsurprising to case method teachers, provides strong evidence of the efficacy of the case method in terms accepted by the higher education research community. This application of concepts and methods from the higher education research, to the research and practice of management education, presents opportunities for further research in management education and suggests new ways of improving and evaluating management education practice.

A Comparative Study of Developing Managerial Skills through Management Education Among Management Graduates from Selected Institutes

The relationship between management education and the industrial sector is evolving as the industrial sector becomes more globalized. In terms of vast facilities, a diverse staff, good placements, and industry assistance, India's top business schools have it all. Running business schools, on the other hand, is an adventure for the rest of the industry. It's difficult to turn students with less-than-stellar backgrounds into industry-savvy MBAs.There is still a gap between what industries anticipate and what academic institutes teach in these MBA programmes. This research study aims to learn about the current state of management education in terms of educational quality and the development of managerial abilities in students.

Walking Our Evidence-Based Talk: The Case of Leadership Development in Business Schools

Academics have lamented that practitioners do not always adopt scientific evidence in practice, yet while academics preach evidence-based management (EBM), they do not always practice it. This paper extends prior literature on difficulties to engage in EBM with insights from behavioral integrity (i.e., the study of what makes individuals and collectives walk their talk). We focus on leader development, widely used but often critiqued for lacking evidence. Analyzing 60 interviews with academic directors of leadership centers at top business schools, we find that the selection of programs does not always align with scientific recommendations nor do schools always engage in high-quality program evaluation. Respondents further indicated a wide variety of challenges that help explain the disconnect between business schools claiming A but practicing B. Behavioral Integrity theory would argue these difficulties are rooted in the lack of an individually owned and collectively endorsed identity, an identity of an evidence-based leader developer (EBLD). A closer inspection of our data confirmed that the lack of a clear and salient EBLD identity makes it difficult for academics to walk their evidence-based leader development talk. We discuss how these findings can help facilitate more evidence-based leader development in an academic context.

Are Pakistani Business Schools Fulfilling the Requirements of Pakistan’s Growing IT Industry?

Even with its expanding nature, IT industry in Pakistan has been neglected by the researchers and no research has been conducted to understand the needs of this industry with regards to the required employability skills in business school graduates. This is research conducted to understand the extent to which business schools are satisfying the needs of the IT industry for which 15 IT firm HR managers were interviewed. It can be concluded that the most important and sought after employability skills by IT firm HR managers are interpersonal communication skills and lifelong learning skills. It was surprising to note that even though IT firms realized the high standard of foreign universities they felt that graduates from high ranking Pakistani universities were a better option for them as they understood the dynamics of Pakistani market. Even though all firms were dissatisfied by low ranking business schools, there were still those that gave equal opportunity to all business school graduates and gauged them in isolation regardless of their business school. The paper at the end provides recommendations for Pakistani business schools that would help them to place themselves among world’s top ranking business schools.

Five Core Dimensions of Purposeful System Transformation

Launched in June 2013, the Journal of Management for Global Sustainability (JMGS) is an internationally peer-reviewed open access scholarly journal on management and global sustainability published semi-annually by the International Association of Jesuit Business Schools (IAJBS) and managed by the John Gokongwei School of Management of the Ateneo de Manila University. Printed copies are regularly distributed to more than 300 IAJBS member institutions and top business schools around the globe while the online version is available to all readers worldwide. JMGS is indexed in Cabells Journalytics, EBSCOHost, and EconBib.

BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF DEFINITIONS: Building an Effective, New and Multicriteria Impact Investing Assessment Tool

Launched in June 2013, the Journal of Management for Global Sustainability (JMGS) is an internationally peer-reviewed open access scholarly journal on management and global sustainability published semi-annually by the International Association of Jesuit Business Schools (IAJBS) and managed by the John Gokongwei School of Management of the Ateneo de Manila University. Printed copies are regularly distributed to more than 300 IAJBS member institutions and top business schools around the globe while the online version is available to all readers worldwide. JMGS is indexed in Cabells Journalytics, EBSCOHost, and EconBib.

Dancing in the storm: finessing emergency remote teaching in the COVID-19 pandemic

Case overview The Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), a South African based business school and one of the top ranked business schools in Africa, was yet again facing a crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic. Having emerged out of an extraordinary year of strict lockdown regulations and having managed a rapid shift to emergency remote teaching. GIBS had managed to maintain its academic programmes, ensuring the completion of the curriculum within the academic year whilst maintaining the exceptionally high standards and quality learning experience it was known for. As 2020 drew to a close, the academic programmes team and the students looked forward to starting the new year in a more “normal” mode of operation. GIBS closed for Christmas holiday with the intent on returning, in early 2021, in some form of face-to-face teaching. However, on the 27th of December 2020, the President of South Africa announced a return to level-3 lockdown as the second wave of infections swept through the country. Strict measures were once again enforced, significantly impacting GIBS’ possible return to campus in January 2021. Reflecting on the lessons learnt over the past year, the Executive Director: Academic Programmes, Professor Louise Whittaker, yet again faced the challenge of deciding how best to proceed given the circumstances. The case illustrates the need for effective change management through the application of Kotter’s 8 steps to transformation, whilst demonstrating the complexity of change management during a crisis. A particular focus on the importance of communication during a change management process in a crisis is illustrated through this case. Expected learning outcomes The learning outcomes are as follows: students need to understand that in a crisis, change management will be emergent and requires flexibility and adaptability; students will determine what concrete actions may be required during a change management process in a crisis; students will need to discern that theoretical models do not necessarily fit real world contexts, particularly in a crisis situation; and students will identify aspects that might be missing or inadequately formulated in standard models of change management. Complexity academic level The case is positioned at a post-graduate level and would be ideal as a teaching case for business school students on a Master of Business Administration programme, a specialised business masters programme or selected executive education programmes for general managers or senior executives. The case can be taught in a course in the following fields, namely, change management, leadership or strategy. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 11: Strategy.

Evidence of Reversal of Ableism among High Performing Students with Disability in a Business School

Educational policies and school level interventions are often targeted at average students and inclusive policies meant for students with disability are no exception. How do gifted or high performing students with disability overcome their disability hurdles in the absence of targeted inclusive policies and academically perform on par or even better than their peers? We address this research question through in-depth interviews of eight multi-talented high performing students with disability from birth currently enrolled in a top ranked business school in India. These students had achieved a reversal of ableism in their context by showing remarkable agency to develop a positive identity among their business school peers. Common factors found salient across our interviews were: (a) key early incidents in life that showed the student as an exception to the habitus of disability, (b) active parental support that countered any negativity from others regarding the student’s disability, and (c) motivation from role models in the family and among tutors during critical phases of the student’s academic journey. Some students crafted innovative ways early in life to become self-dependent and had learnt new skills that were hard to learn due to their disability. Some students had developed a larger social circle and become a source of inspiration to their peers. We provide a positive narrative of an under-represented social group in the business school context and identify new factors relevant to the inclusion and encouragement of high performing students with disability to enable them to reach their true human potential.

Framing a model for green buying behavior of Indian consumers: From the lenses of the theory of planned behavior

The world faces continuous environmental degradation because of extreme industrialization, construction, and overexploitation of natural resources. This degradation has started to create consciousness and attitude towards pro-environmental buying and consumption. Green consumer behavior has gained significant research attention world-wide attributed to its ability to reduce environmental damage. Thus, this research explores the extended model based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the value-attitude-behavior hierarchy in Indian demography. Environmental and health awareness is used as a human value (internal indirect variable) in the extended TPB model. This study administered a cross-sectional survey on the corporate executive, executive MBA students, and regular MBA students of Indian top business schools and firms. Models are validated, and hypotheses tested using variance-based structured equation modeling on the 350+ clean collected sample. The studies’ outcome reflected the non-linear relationship between the independent variables and dependent variables (green buying behavior) of the modified theory of planned behavior (TPB) model. Perceived behavioral control is found as an important independent factor compelling Indian consumers towards green buying behavior. The modified TPB model also gave considerable outcomes in the Indian demography. Government organizations and corporate shall use the results to inculcate more buying behavior among Indian consumers.