University Business School Research Articles

Beyond Boundaries: A Reflection on the Implementation of Universal Design for Learning in Business School Pedagogy

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has the potential to enhance educational inclusivity by offering all learners equal opportunities to succeed. This reflection is based on the implementation of UDL principles in a University business school, culminating in a summary of the commonalities and differences between undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as well as presenting a range of other pertinent insights. Ultimately, this reflection calls for a global commitment to embedding UDL principles within business school pedagogy, ensuring inclusive and equitable education for an increasingly diverse student body and preparing students as tomorrows leaders to engage in positive global change, in line with United Nations SDGs.

An exploration of the impact of different peer learning activities utilised to develop student employability

ABSTRACT Assumptions about fostering human capital for national competitiveness underpin higher education policy drivers regarding employability. Departing from this focus on human capital development, research has highlighted the importance of relationality for employability, but there is a gap in scholarship about the role of peer relationships. Drawing on interview data about a curriculum-based intervention in an English university business school, we examine how students reflect upon and what they gain from peers in peer-focused employability learning experiences facilitated by external professionals. A ‘graduate capitals’ lens is used to illuminate student learning. Through group coaching, students’ identity capital grows by comparing themselves to peers and recognising mutual concerns; and through group activities in an assessment centre, students’ cultural capital expands through observation of peers and interaction with each other. We conclude by discussing the importance of reflexivity stimulated by peer interactions, and how to address student reluctance to engage with peer-based learning.

Opportunities and Challenges of Sustainable Innovation for Climate Change Mitigation in Companies: A Systematic Literature Review

ABSTRACTThe escalating environmental degradation and tightening regulations worldwide since the 1990s have heightened environmental concerns among organizations, necessitating innovative and sustainable responses to climate change. This article aims to explore opportunities and challenges of sustainable innovations for mitigating climate change within companies. A systematic literature review was conducted, encompassing 42 articles from 2005 to 2022. Most studies originate from European countries, particularly from institutions like Sapienza University of Rome, Jinan University, and Amsterdam Business School. Notable authors include Rosa Maria Dangelico, Ans Kolk, and Jonatan Pinkse. The most cited journals include Business Strategy and the Environment, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Sustainability (MDPI). Identified opportunities for companies embracing climate change mitigation through innovation include enhanced image and competitiveness. Challenges comprise high implementation costs, ambiguous sustainable development guidelines, partnership scarcity, technological risk uncertainties, consumer acceptance concerns, deficient tools for low‐carbon product development, and the sociotechnical system's influence. Moreover, companies face hurdles like reliance on supply chain complementary capabilities and regulatory uncertainties. Future research should prioritize less costly sustainability practices and examine the sociotechnical factor's impact on sustainable innovation adoption. Prohibitive investment costs hinder companies from embracing these practices, highlighting the need for cost‐effective alternatives. Understanding the sociotechnical dynamic's role in driving or obstructing sustainable innovation adoption is crucial for comprehensive analysis and effective strategy development.

The Impact of Mortgage Rates on Mortgage Refinancing

Mortgages loans are vital for the acquisition of housing property and mortgage lending rates play an important role in mortgage market trends, borrowers, and lenders’ decisions. Objective: the aim of this paper is to evaluate the combined effect of current and previous mortgage rates on mortgage refinancing. Prior work: the paper inclines on the ontology of a single reality of the interaction between mortgage rates and mortgage refinancing with attendant epistemology that their interaction is measurable. Method: the paper adopts the positivist paradigm and a quantitative technique. It used data on the U.S. Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) retrieved from the economic and financial database of Fusion Media. Data were analysed using the OLS technique. Novel Findings show that current-actual and previous mortgage rates have a significant positive effect on mortgage refinancing at p=0.05 and p=0.04 respectively. Significance: the findings have implication for mortgage lending and refinancing decisions for mortgage bankers (lenders), mortgage borrowers and policy makers. It also provides current academic study material for university business schools and for future researchers to apply the model used in this research for related expanded research. Value: The paper contributes a new model with two genres of mortgage rate (current mortgage rate and previous mortgage rate) and how these two types of mortgage rates influence mortgage refinancing.

Developing an Analytical Framework to Compare Students’ Experiences of Online Learning with Indicators of Good Online Learning Site Design

Improving the student educational experience is the purpose of many scholarly studies of learning and teaching. While these studies have great value, there is still a need to further explore, beyond the conceptual, the relationship between what is pedagogically considered as ‘good’ elements of online learning design and what is experienced as ‘good’ learning. This paper presents a study that contributes to this gap by combining an inductive evaluation of online course design with a deductive analysis of students’ level of satisfaction with their learning experiences. This comparison aimed to determine whether students’ experiences align with educators’ and learning designers’ definitions of 'good’ online learning. The paper provides a discussion of the study’s design, which compared findings from students’ feedback on their online subject units and the quality of the sites hosting these units determined using a validated design checklist. It provides an example of the framework’s application and the results in the context of an Australian metropolitan university business school.

Cognitive Economy and Product Categorization

In mediated markets, the categorization of products by mediators is critical to efficient interaction between producers and consumers. As organizational research tends to focus on the consequences of categorization rather than its antecedents, however, we know relatively little about why mediators assign one category label or another to a product. In this study, we argue that two informational properties of labels, specificity and distinctiveness, determine the outcomes of mediators’ categorization decisions. Our analysis of product categorization decisions made by members of an online music community, 2000–2020, supports this argument. We find that a label’s odds of being assigned to a product increase (a) if this label encodes information that is neither too similar nor too different from that which is encoded by a superordinate label, that is, it has moderate specificity; and (b) if it encodes information that differs as much as possible from that which is encoded by horizontally related labels, that is, it has maximal distinctiveness. These findings persist after controlling for other possible determinants of mediators’ categorization decisions, including producers’ claims to labels, products’ typicality, and mediators’ expertise. Funding: M. Piazzai received funding from the Community of Madrid [EPUC3M12, VPRICIT] and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [RYC2021-032325-I]. M. Liu received funding from Durham University Business School. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.15751 .

Manifesting the academic psychological contract

The level of research undertaken on the academic psychological contract, and its influence on academic’s behaviour is limited. This paper seeks to consider the academic psychological contract, by reviewing its manifestation within the role of and the influence on their undertaking of the role. Particularly important is academics’ interpretation of the role and what they consider important. Within this, the paper considers in-role and extra-role activities and what may be the grey areas in which time is spent. The research adopts the combined usage of phenomenology with interpretivist processes to investigate the insights of eighteen academics at nine UK University Business Schools. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect to consider the constructs’ manifestation. Key aspects of behaviour were identified as discretionary effort and autonomy and managerialism with links to academic citizenship.

The achievement of digital leadership sustainability and business performance through the implementation of business intelligence, artificial intelligence, and quality learning in private universities in Jordan

The objective of research is to explore the impact of business intelligence systems, artificial intelligence, and digital leadership sustainability on the quality of learning and business performance at business schools of private universities in Jordan. Upon gathering and scrutinizing the research materials, a grand total of 281 samples were judged suitable for analysis using PLS software. The findings of this study suggest that the implementation of business intelligence systems, artificial intelligence, and digital leadership sustainability positively contribute to improving both the quality of learning and the performance of enterprises. The results demonstrate that the implementation of a business intelligence system, and Competitive Intelligence, directly and positively impacts the enhancement of learning quality and company performance. Furthermore, Artificial intelligence has a positive influence on the quality of learning and the performance of businesses, namely through the utilization of Deep learning, Digital Data, Graphical Processing Unit (GPU), and Data Safety and Security. Furthermore, digital leadership sustainability exerts a direct and favorable impact on the caliber of education and organizational achievement, encompassing Digital Competence, Flexibility and Agility, Interconnected Thinking, and Employee Orientation. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the level of education, encompassing Summative Assessment, Formative Assessment, Quizzes, and Presentations, is positively associated with enhancing firm productivity. Curiously, the present results contradict previous studies suggesting that the variables being examined had an influence on achieving digital leadership sustainability and business performance. Generally, the main research outcomes recommend that corporations should start adopting strategies related to enhancing learning effectiveness and improving business performance. This research focuses on the major aspects of business cleverness systems, artificial intelligence, and digital leadership sustainability to enhance the quality of learning and business performance in the business capabilities of private institutions of higher education in Jordan.

The Status of University Business Schools Regarding Industry 4.0: From the Turkish Perspective

Industry 4.0, whose effects have been more and more noticeable in recent years, and the digital change it brings call for a new educational model that aligns university instructional processes and curricula with the demands of business. This approach, known as University 4.0, intends to promote more technology-based applications, the power of innovation, the training of skilled specialists to satisfy industrial needs, and the development of competences that can achieve multidisciplinary projects. It is of utmost importance to adapt late-industrializing nations’ educational systems, such as Turkey’s, to this change process. The aim of this research, which takes the Turkish context as a reference, is to reveal how the curricula and educational processes of business schools should be shaped with a perspective that takes into account the human resources requirements of industry 4.0. A decision-making technique that integrates QFD, Delphi, and DEMATEL methods was employed in the study. The results clearly show that the most important expectation for social stakeholders is to provide university-industry cooperation. However, some of the most pressing problems include applied learning through collaborative educational experiences, teamwork skills, changing roles and competencies of academics. The findings point out that the educational activities of business schools must be linked with industry expectations through technology-based training activities and teamwork.

Visualization of employees’ competencies using knowledge maps

Goal: to develop and test an approach to visualize the expert profile of a department of a modern university and its employees. This approach can be extended to the educational organization with additional levels of generalization if necessary. Metodology: the analysis of the literature on knowledge maps was carried out to determine the logic of knowledge mapping in a modern university through the prism of stakeholders. The empirical study was conducted in the form of a self-assessment questionnaire among employees of a university business school. Findings: the paper proposes an approach to identify basic ontologies to describe the activities of teachers and researchers in modern educational organizations in general and as part of the empirical study in particular. Originality and contribution of the authors: the presented approach to identify basic ontologies for the development of visual models allows to systematically represent the professional and practical knowledge and levels of teachers and researchers’ expertise as well as to rise to a higher level of conceptual generalization of large and ultra-large volumes of data, and ease communication gaps between different groups of stakeholders.

Critical Thinking in Curriculum Practice: The Case of Higher Institutions of Learning in Uganda

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of critical thinking in curriculum practice in higher institutions of learning in Uganda. The study is based on Makerere University Business School, as a case study of institutions of higher learning in Uganda.
 Methodology: The methodology used is textual analysis of curriculum documents, non participatory overt classroom observation and focused interviews of the lecturers who teach the observed classes, to determine whether in practice, critical thinking is actually taught to learners.
 Findings: It is the finding of this research that the curriculum practice in Uganda generally uses methods that do not strongly support the development of critical thinking skills in learners. The over-dependence on the lecture method causes the learners to fall short of the key Taxonomic words that build critical thinking skills in learners.
 Unique contributor to theory, policy and practice: This study is a unique contribution to theory and practice as it shows the implementation of critical thinking in the classroom in Uganda in relation to Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Inventory Management at Makerere University Business School and Its Impact on the Revenue Performance of Small and Medium Enterprises

Numerous studies have explored the effectiveness of implementing operations management techniques in inventory management and its impact on revenue performance. This study aims to ascertain the significance of inventory management, its various approaches, and the correlation between managing inventory effectively and revenue performance. Employing a secondary data collection method, the researcher reviewed and analyzed pertinent documents from various authors. The research findings reveal that a majority of small and medium-sized enterprises struggle to adopt new inventory management methods, thereby adversely affecting their revenue performance. When inventory management isn't integrated seamlessly, treating it as a separate entity, these enterprises struggle to ensure optimal resource utilization. However, the study also notes the presence of both positive and negative relationships between inventory management strategies and sales performance. In conclusion, the study recommends that SMEs enhance their inventory management techniques to positively impact business revenue. This improvement is crucial for streamlining operations and maximizing financial outcomes. Keywords: Inventory management, Business revenue, Applying operations, Management techniques, Sales performance.

Undergraduate Students’ Post-Covid-19 Experiences with E-learning Platforms at Selected Public Universities in the Ashanti Region, Ghana

The study investigated students’ post-Covid-19 experiences with e-learning platforms among undergraduate students of public universities selected in the Ashanti region of Ghana. The study respectively drew 289 respondents from two public universities, i.e., Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Business School, and the Kumasi Technical University (KsTU) Business School in Ghana. Given that the population from the two public universities was fairly high, sampling had to be done. The overall population of the study was 480 students, randomly sampled from the two public universities, using the sampling ratio given by Alreck and Settle (2004). The population constituted 360 students from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Business School, and 120 from the Kumasi Technical University Business School (KsTU). The study employed questionnaires as a data collection tool. The data gathered were 289 responses out of 480 questionnaires administered; therefore, the response rate was 60.2%. The data were analysed using pie charts, bar charts, percentages, and line graphs. Findings revealed that the e-learning platforms were still useful. However, the students used them on a weekly basis in the post-Covid-19 era, unlike during the Covid-19 era, when they were used daily. All other academic activities, with the exception of examinations, are still undertaken on the e-learning platforms; however, they are being underutilised in the post-Covid-19 experience. The study recommends that universities should invest in infrastructure development to enable all academic activities, most especially examinations, to be undertaken by using e-learning platforms to curtail future challenges.

Investigating Students’ Acceptance of Moodle E-Learning Platform for Teaching and Learning during COVID-19 Pandemic at Makerere University Business School

The aim of this study was to investigate online teaching and learning using Moodle for teaching Software Engineering in the second-year Business Computing undergraduate class at Makerere University Business School (MUBS). The study was done during the COVID-19 pandemic when most lectures were conducted online with few face-to-face sessions. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the theory of reasoned action (TRA) theoretical frameworks were used to direct the research. A questionnaire was designed and administered to a group of 145 students selected as a sample from a class 180 students. The data collected was analysed to determine correlations between latent variables and variances of dependable variables explained by independent variables. The correlation between the intention to use and the actual use of the system was high (r = 0.555). This implies that students’ acceptance of online teaching and learning was high. The results indicate that system accessibility and self-efficacy explain 27% of the variance in the perceived ease of use (adjusted R square = 0.27). The regression model was significant (sig. < 0.05). The results also indicate that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use explain 41.9% of the variance in intention to use (adjusted R square = 0.419). This regression model was significant (sig. < 0.05). MUBS successfully implemented e-learning platform (MUBSEP) for emergency teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The teaching staff and the students used online educational tools for live classes and end-of-semester assessments. The use blended learning approach post COVID-19 pandemic is recommended for higher education.

Exploring business students’ views of the use of generative AI in assignment writing

The rise of generative AI, particularly over the past few years, has raised notable issues about its use. This has been possibly most pronounced in academia, where there has been strong debate on the potential value of generative AI to augment learning outcomes versus the potential for academic dishonesty and devalued education. Whilst some papers have looked at students’ perspectives on the use of generative AI, there has been less focus exploring through what ethical perspectives or frames students see using generative AI in their tertiary education. We interviewed and conducted focus groups and interviews with students enrolled in an Australian university business school, to explore the ethical frames through which they saw the use of generative AI. Focussing on three specific perspectives: Deontological, Consequentialism and Virtue Ethics, it emerged that no single perspective dominated, with students having a complex mix and latticework of ethical perspectives on its use, even within the same individual. We explore some potential implications for practice that emerged from the data, one of which is the role of the academic as moral exemplar.

Ethical Practices in Information Service Provision at Makerere University Business school library, Uganda

Ethical practice in information service provision involves choice of material, access, equality of treatment, copyright, intellectual freedom, protecting user’s rights, confidentiality, and, avoiding concealment of information, misinforming clients and divulging private information. The rationale of this study was to find out whether MUBS librarians are aware of these ethical practices and apply

Design Thinking as Pedagogy in Practice

Design Thinking is gaining considerable attention across various domains including education; however its use in Executive Education has not been documented much in the literature to date. By integrating Design Thinking principles and methodologies into the curriculum for Executive learners, we highlight the benefits and outcomes of using Design Thinking as a pedagogical approach. This study explores the effective application of Design Thinking as pedagogy in two modules of an Executive MBA programme at Newcastle University Business School. Through a combination of blended learning materials and experiential, collaborative projects with client organizations, we set out how learners were immersed in a human-centred problem-solving process, developing creativity, empathy, and the ability to identify innovative solutions to complex business challenges. The study presents data gathered from client feedback and learners' reflective assessments, demonstrating the effectiveness and impact of Design Thinking as pedagogy. The integration of Design Thinking principles empowered learners to feel able to lead change initiatives within their organizations in their respective discipline areas effectively. This study contributes to the literature on effective educational approaches in Executive Education, emphasizing the potential of Design Thinking as pedagogy in practice to equip learners with the skills and mindsets necessary for driving organizational innovation and sustainability.

An Interview with AIB 2023 International Educator of the Year Salvador Carmona

Salvador Carmona, Rector of IE University and Professor and Dean at the IE University Business School in Madrid, Spain, was selected as the 2023 AIB International Educator of the Year by the Fellows of the Academy of International Business (AIB). In this interview, he discusses with Maria Tereza Fleury and William Newburry what led him to become a professor of accounting, his career path to his current position, and the keys to success for IE University. He also provides advice to both emerging scholars and IB program administrators regarding important success factors in the current academic environment.

(Invited) Is Commercialization of Intellectual Property in an Academic Environment Feasible?

A career in academics is in some ways at odds with commercialization. The priorities of an academic institution are publish or perish. Yet, the path to commercialization embeds either patents or trade secrets. Many in academics do not acknowledge patents as academic achievement. For a variety of reasons, university laboratories are not established to build the demonstrations needed to promote commercialization.Universities support patenting but are not equipped to facilitate commercialization of research, especially research based on sophisticated, fundamental ideas. Because of the constraints of the academic environment, ideas are driven to patents before devices are demonstrated. Yet the Bayh Dole Act provides that federally supported research be commercialized with any profits returned to the universities and inventors.These constraints create a barely navigable matrix for the academic inventor.When financial constraints reduce the University's support of patents, ownership is transferred to the inventor. This creates complexities in IP management with the University and increases cost to the inventor. However, it also creates opportunity.To commercialize the existing and evolving IP, a small business was formed with family. And now we maintain the patents, write grant applications restricted to the personally held IP, promote the IP, and try to bridge the chasm to commercialization.Startup success is elusive under the best conditions with experienced founders that understand both the technology and more importantly the business need. Founders typically have a working system and industry contacts before attempting to launch a new venture. Founders spend most of the time selling to investors and early prospects.New ventures started by academics have none of these advantages. They often have a great idea but no commercially viable prototype, no industry contacts and no connections to investors. They do not understand the amount of time spent on fundraising, and lack the skills and desire to raise funds. Commercialization of university research is more difficult than starting with nothing outside because university life is a full time job with many constraints. Investors are not interested in part-time CEOs. They want full time commitment and focused dedication. Investors are not interested in dealing with university administrations and procedures.Successful commercialization requires three roles: Business person that understands the market opportunitySubject matter expert that can defined a solution to the problemProduct manager that can translate between the other two and build a working system. A successful combination of these roles in coordination is required to build an investable business that can attract the capital required for commercialization.Academics can provide the subject matter expertise but engaging successful business people and product managers need to be found outside universities. Finding these connections is difficult but friends and family, industry organizations, and angel investment networks can provide some paths. University business schools and administrations should facilitate these connections with vetted business people.Universities should have an investment pitch competition put on by professors with patent portfolios each semester. Universities can invite investors to view the commercializable research that is being developed within the university. This is a non-trivial undertaking but can be done virtually to reach a wide range of investors across the country.Very few US universities have provided successful paths to commercialization. These most famous, well funded, private universities attract most of the investment interest. A few worked examples coming from other universities will encourage the appetite for future investment.

The Diversity Heuristic: How Team Demographic Composition Influences Judgments of Team Creativity

Despite mixed evidence for the relationship between demographic diversity and creativity, we propose that observers hold a lay belief that demographic diversity increases creativity and apply this lay belief in judgments about teams and their creative work. Across eight preregistered studies (n = 5,530), we find that observers judge teams diverse in terms of race and gender to be more creative than teams homogeneous in terms of race and gender, including in incentive-compatible predictions made about real teams competing in a creativity challenge. We also find that products attributed to demographically diverse teams are evaluated as more creative compared with identical products attributed to demographically homogenous teams. Mediation analyses provide evidence consistent with the notion that people perceive demographic diversity (i.e., social category differences) to be correlated with cognitive diversity (i.e., difference of perspectives), and this belief contributes to attributions of greater creativity to diverse teams and the ideas they generate. We can also turn off the perceived association between demographic diversity and creativity by directly manipulating people’s perceptions of team cognitive diversity. Furthermore, we find evidence of a curvilinear relationship between the proportion of racial minorities or women in a group and judgments of the group’s creativity. Together, our results suggest that the popular uptake of the belief that diversity boosts creativity may impact how creativity is identified in organizational contexts. This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: This research was supported by funds from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, and Harvard Business School, Harvard University, including a grant from the Cornell Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4862 .