US Business Schools Research Articles

Comparative analysis of student evaluations: Exploring the effects of course modality and type in graduate business courses

This study compares student evaluations across face-to-face and online modalities, as well as qualitative versus quantitative courses, in a large sample of graduate-level courses from 2008 to 2023 at a US business school. The findings reveal significantly lower course and instructor evaluation ratings despite similar class performance in online modality. Quantitative courses received notably lower satisfaction ratings than qualitative courses. Importantly, when accounting for modality and course type, grades do not influence student evaluations. Maintaining fair comparisons by restricting evaluations solely to the same modality and course type is crucial for assessing college professors’ teaching quality through student evaluation ratings.

Does brand name matter in social media marketing? The interaction effect of brand name and ranking on behavior intention: a case of business school students in the US Midwest

ABSTRACT This study examines the interplay of university brand name and ranking on behavior intention in both social media (e.g. Facebook) and traditional media (e.g. Magazine) contexts. One pre-test and two experiments were performed to test the interaction effect of brand name and raking on behavior intention and the underlying mechanism of the effect with the sample of US business school students in the Midwest. The findings demonstrate that brand name does not matter very much in lower-ranking universities. But in higher-ranking universities, brand name adaptation leads to higher behavior intention. In addition, the mediation test demonstrates that processing fluency (pronunciation fluency and meaning fluency) is the underlying mechanism to determine the behavior intention. In traditional media (e.g. magazine) context, the processing fluency effect is more dominant in lower-ranking university brands. Several theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Structural drivers and barriers to the strategic integration of sustainability in US B-schools

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore structural drivers and barriers that distinguish US business school Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) signatories from nonsignatory peer institutions, and identify structural drivers of PRME institution strategic integration of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into their ongoing responsible management education reports.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a case–control method to compare the US PRME signatory sample to a size-matched random sample of US business management programs/schools. This study uses conditional inference tree and correlation analyses to highlight distinctive structural characteristics associated with US PRME signatories and with their strategies to highlight sustainability through the SDGs.FindingsThere are significant and practically meaningful structural differences between US-based PRME signatories and US programs/schools that have not adopted the PRME principles. Further, PRME schools differentially integrate SDGs in their information sharing based on structural characteristics.Practical implicationsUnderstanding school/program characteristics that align with PRME and different sustainability strategies affords a better comprehension of where targeted resources might be most effective in broadening the appeal and adoption of PRME and subsequent sustainability strategy integration.Originality/valueWhile previous work on PRME signatories has depended heavily on case studies of successful implementation and has examined the content of PRME activity by school, the present work compares the population of actual US signatories with a random sample of nonsignatories to determine leverage points for enacting broader PRME adoption. The study also examines the strategies that PRME schools use to integrate the UN SDGs and the structures that support such.

How Private Educational Institutions Focus on Public Appeal: A Case of Selected US Business Schools

How Private Educational Institutions Focus on Public Appeal: A Case of Selected US Business Schools

Leveraging stakeholder engagement to reconstitute a diverse business advisory council

This paper looks at how academic leadership in US business schools and university advancement can work collaboratively to (re)constitute a business advisory council (BAC) comprising a more broadly diverse group of alumni and corporate partners that benefit the school, the students and the philanthropic efforts of the school. Academic leadership receives much-needed ‘real world’ advice and counsel about curricular and strategic issues; council members have an important and meaningful way to contribute to their alma mater or an academic partner in their community. If this council membership is groomed properly, advancement builds an annual donation stream that can be counted on to offset some of the financial pressures and, perhaps, can begin to source and train future candidates for the Board of Trustees. Students not only benefit from better-informed curricula, they also begin to build important network connections with the organisational community that could benefit them when they enter the internship or post-graduation employment market. In short, taking the time and energy to reconstitute a more diverse BAC could be a win-win for all parties involved.

Experiential Learning: Interventions and Implications for Enabling Learning in Uncertain Environments

In the years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, surveys of top US business schools revealed an increasing trend in adoption and provision of experiential learning courses, particularly as part of MBA programs. Experiential learning within management education, refers to the application of business concepts, ideas, and theories in solving real-world problems, through the use of real-world learning projects. According to business school surveys conducted during 2020, COVID-19 brought with it a reversal of this trend, with a sudden lowering of reliance on experiential learning offerings and an increased emphasis on flipped classrooms. Schools that opted to continue with experiential programs did so amidst an environment of ongoing uncertainty. Program educators had to shift the paradigm in which they operated, revising and re-creating structure in the absence of predictability, and stimulating learning motivation in the absence of traditional learning spaces. This research draws attention to how management educators have grappled with supporting students and their learning under such uncertain conditions and considers the theoretical and practical implications for experiential learning theory. Findings from this empirical study, which includes graduate student and educator interviews, point to a greatly increased focus on planned and enhanced educator interventions. The results reveal that experiential learning during times of uncertainty fosters both resource-seeking and learning-opportunity seeking behaviors among students. Keywords: Experiential learning, Interventions, Resource-seeking, Learning- opportunity seeking

The Surprising Underperformance of East Asians in US Law and Business Schools: The Liability of Low Assertiveness and the Ameliorative Potential of Online Classrooms

The Surprising Underperformance of East Asians in US Law and Business Schools: The Liability of Low Assertiveness and the Ameliorative Potential of Online Classrooms

Underrepresentation of women in the economics profession more pronounced in the United States compared to heterogeneous Europe

Based on a dataset that we collected from the top research institutions in economics around the globe (including universities, business schools, and other organizations, such as central banks), we document the underrepresentation of women in economics. For the 238 universities and business schools in the sample, women hold 25% of senior-level positions (full professor or associate professor) and 37% of junior-level positions. In the 82 US universities and business schools, the figures are 20% on the senior level and 32% on the entry level, while in the 122 European institutions, the numbers are 27% and 38%, respectively, with some heterogeneity across countries. The numbers also show that the highest-ranking institutions (in terms of research output) have fewer women in senior positions. Moreover, in the United States, this effect is even present on the junior level. The “leaky pipeline” may hence begin earlier than oftentimes assumed and is even more of an issue in the highly integrated market of the United States. In Europe, an institution ranked 100 places higher has 3 percentage points fewer women in senior positions, but in the United States, it is almost 5 percentage points.

The surprising underperformance of East Asians in US law and business schools: The liability of low assertiveness and the ameliorative potential of online classrooms

SignificanceTo date, researchers and practitioners have focused on the academic challenges of underrepresented ethnic groups in the United States. In comparison, Asians have received limited attention, as they are commonly assumed to excel across all educational stages. Six large studies challenge this assumption by revealing that East Asians (but not South Asians) underperform in US law schools and business schools. This is not because East Asians are less academically motivated or less proficient in English but because their low verbal assertiveness is culturally incongruent with the assertiveness prized by US law and business schools. Online classes (via Zoom) mitigated East Asians' underperformance in courses emphasizing assertiveness and class participation. Educators should reexamine pedagogical practices to create a culturally inclusive classroom.

The Bamboo Ceiling: A Network Perspective on Why East Asians are Underrepresented in Leadership

In the United States, Asians appear disproportionately underrepresented in leadership roles, a puzzling phenomenon known as the “Bamboo Ceiling.” We advance a social network explanation for this phenomenon: ethnic homophily. We theorize that East Asians—but not South Asians—are less likely than Caucasians to attain leadership roles in multiethnic environments partly because of their tendency to socialize with their ethnic ingroup members (i.e., other East Asians). Across two studies, we examined the leadership attainment and the friendship networks of 11 ethnically diverse class sections of new MBA students in a US business school. East Asians were less likely than South Asians and Caucasians to be (a) nominated as leaders and (b) elected as leaders. Social network analysis revealed that while all ethnic groups exhibited ethnic homophily in friendship, East Asians exhibited the highest ethnic homophily, which consistently mediated their low leadership attainment. These results were robust after we controlled for variables such as assertiveness, availability of ethnic ingroup members, nationality, socioeconomic status, and personality. By applying social network analysis, this research identifies ethnic homophily as an important reason why East Asians but not South Asians face the Bamboo Ceiling. More broadly, by uncovering the negative link between ethnic homophily and leadership attainment in multiethnic environments, our research suggests that connecting with people from diverse ethnic backgrounds may facilitate individuals’ leadership attainment in multiethnic environments.

Learning Strategic Representations: Exploring the Effects of Taking a Strategy Course

Despite the popularity of strategy courses and the fact that managers make consequential decisions using ideas they learn in such courses, little is known about the effects of taking a course in strategy. This paper is the first large-sample study of the effects of taking a strategy course. We examine how 2,269 MBA students analyze real-world video cases before and after taking the MBA strategy core course at a large US business school. We document several changes in terms of students’ performance, mental representations, and self-perceptions. Among other findings, we show that taking a strategy course improves strategic decision-making performance, increases the depth of mental representations as well as the attention paid to broader industry and competitive concerns, and boosts students’ confidence while making them more aware of the uncertainty that pervades strategic decisions.

Commentary on \u201c2019 Academic Marketing Climate Survey: motivation, results and recommendations\u201d

This paper reflects on the conclusions of a survey by Galak and Kahn on the climate experienced by faculty of all genders and ethnicities in the marketing departments of US business schools.

International Double Degree Programs as Accelerators for Internationalization: Lessons from the Trans-Atlantic Business School Alliance

ABSTRACT The global nature of the modern business world has expanded the set of skills and attitudes necessary for success, even among new bachelor degree graduates. Although US business schools have primarily integrated international concepts through their curricula, students who stay at their home institutions for their entire degree programs do not live and experience the global business environment to the extent necessary for twenty-first-century careers. Short-term, semester- or year-abroad programs help to bridge this gap. However, carefully constructed undergraduate double degree programs can provide students with much richer experiences. This article provides a model for creating international undergraduate double degree programs in business, highlighting the main challenges and offering successful proven solutions employed by a group of American and European business schools that other institutions can adapt to accelerate internationalization and deepen students’ international experiences in American business schools.

Business School Leadership: An Examination of Personality and Preparation Effects on Dean Turnover

High turnover and short tenures of business school deans disrupt employees, students, performance, and institutional stability. However, we know little about the processes involved in attracting, recruiting, and retaining these influential academic leaders. Previous studies have explored deans’ demographics, their leadership behaviors, and roles as hybrid upper middle managers, but personality traits and job preparation have been largely overlooked. To address the research gap, this quantitative correlational study explored the personality temperament types and years of administrative preparation of 54 deans in accredited US business schools. Our findings showed that 72% of respondents were categorized into two Keirsey temperament groups: GuardiansTM (SJ) and RationalsTM (NT). This research contributes to our understanding of factors impacting the selection and retention of business school deans, with practical implications for hiring, appraisals, leadership and career development.

Building social capital and learning relationships through knowledge sharing: a social network approach of management students’ cases

PurposeThis study has adopted theoretical frameworks of social capital, social networks and the Community of Practice to study how different types of relationships influence the knowledge sharing relationship. This paper aims to suggest that building social capital, particularly structural capital, is part of expected key in knowledge sharing networks.Design/methodology/approachUsing social capital theory, through social network analysis of 111 management students in the US business school, identified key social capital dimension in knowledge sharing networks. To incorporate the interdependency among examined relationships, network logistic regression with the quadric assignment procedure was used.FindingsThe proposed research model showed that about 98% of the existence of knowledge sharing relationship could be correctly predicted. Among three dimensions of social capital, this study found a superior influence of the structural dimension (i.e. task interdependence) in predicting having a knowledge sharing relationship. The significant effect of trust and friendship network on knowledge sharing was also found. Implications for practice and suggestions for future research were also discussed.Originality/valueExisting literature as to how people learn through knowledge sharing is limited in at least two important ways. First, scholars of knowledge management acknowledge that organizational knowledge originates from dyadic relationships between or among individuals at work. However, prior research has heavily relied on survey responses from one’s perception of knowledge sharing experience, viewing as unidirectional. Second, substantial attention of prior research has been devoted to the factors of individual attributes. Emphasizing individual interactions as the fundamental building blocks of learning, this study focuses more on relational characteristics of knowledge sharing based on social capital theory.

“Creating Wealth” through Debt: The West's Finance-Capitalist Road

Volumes II and III of Marx's Capital describe how debt grows exponentially, burdening the economy with carrying charges. What policies are best suited for China to avoid this neo-rentier disease while raising living standards in a fair and efficient low-cost economy? The most pressing policy challenge is to keep down the cost of housing. Rising housing prices mean larger and larger debts extracting interest out of the economy. The strongest way to prevent this is to tax away the rise in land prices, collecting the rental value for the government instead of letting it be pledged to the banks as mortgage interest. The same logic applies to public collection of natural resource and monopoly rents. The US and European business schools are part of the problem, not part of the solution. They teach the tactics of asset stripping and how to replace industrial engineering with financial engineering, as if financialization creates wealth faster than the debt burden. Having rapidly pulled ahead over the past three decades, China must remain free of rentier ideology that imagines wealth to be created by debt-leveraged inflation of real-estate and financial asset prices.

Caterpillar Inc. Taps the Chinese Bond Market

An MBA graduate prepares for a possible interview with Caterpillar Inc. by reading about the company's longtime presence in China manufacturing heavy equipment and its continued optimism about the heavy equipment market in that country. He also learns that the company financed part of its operations and growth in China by issuing bonds in Hong Kong and wonders whether the company would return to that bond market in Hong Kong. Excerpt UVA-C-2418 May 9, 2019 Caterpillar Inc. Taps the Chinese Bond Market It was spring 2019, and Mark Denoso eagerly anticipated the possibility of interviewing for a position in the office of the CFO at Caterpillar Inc. (Caterpillar). He had invested much time and energy getting his master's of business administration (MBA) from a top US business school and was eager to put his degree to work. Caterpillar would be the ideal place. Denoso fondly recalled his many hours spent in the open fields next to the house where he grew up, using his toy excavators, bulldozers, front loaders, and other equipment in the small construction sites he had created in and around the dirt and rocks in those fields. He had always dreamed of working construction, and, after obtaining his undergraduate degree in civil engineering, had landed the job as project engineer at a large construction firm; however after two years in that role, he was impatient to see his career progress, so he had returned to school to obtain his MBA. Now he was looking for a job opportunity that would combine his love of construction and his newly acquired business skills. In preparation for a possible interview, Denoso had read extensively about Caterpillar. He was intrigued with the company's longtime presence in China manufacturing heavy equipment and its continued optimism about the heavy equipment market in that country. He had also learned that the company had financed part of its operations and growth in China by issuing bonds in Hong Kong. He wondered whether the company would return to the bond market in Hong Kong again. . . .

Examining Student Perceptions of Business Majors in the US

Changes in the mix of business majors could result from perception shifts or from changes in the factors students consider when choosing majors. Two student surveys, distributed six years apart at a large US business school, were analysed to understand student choices. First- and second-year students were asked about their perceptions of all the business majors available and what major they were most likely to pursue. Models could explain some major choices (e.g., management) better than others (e.g., marketing). Over time, students appeared to place less emphasis on employment prospects and more emphasis on how exciting classes were and how interesting careers will be. Results may explain some changes in the mix of majors, help attract more students to some majors, and improve communications about majors.

How and Why Wharton Business School became World Topper – A Case Study on Organizational Quest for Excellence of First US Business School

After accepting quality higher education as service, many global business schools are competing to attract intelligent students to various innovative courses and by training them to become further smart, providing better challenging placements in the corporate sector with lucrative salaries. Such schools competing globally by differentiating their education model through top-level infrastructure, globally competitive faculty member, providing industry oriented and research-based curriculum, customized curriculum and teaching methods through providing a choice from an infinite number of electives, and competence based examination and evaluation system. Recent ranking results announced by the USA based Elsevier’s SSRN identified Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania, USA as Ranked ONE business school in the world in terms of its number of annual research paper publications. Wharton’s 235-plus professors are one of the largest, most published faculties at any business school. The standing and affiliated faculty members of WBS work within and collaborate across 10 academic departments. For 2019 outgoing MBA batch, the school admitted 863 students from 65 countries out of 6,692 applicants. In this paper, we have analysed the operational and business strategy of Wharton business school in its quest for excellence and courage to innovate decisions on academic performance and research performance and compared with its competitors in the same country like Booth School of Business, Harvard B-School, Stanford Graduate B-School, Stern B-School, Columbia B-School, and Sloan B-School.

How and Why Wharton Business School became World Topper – A Case Study on Organizational Quest for Excellence of First US Business School

After accepting quality higher education as service, many global business schools are competing to attract intelligent students to various innovative courses and by training them to become further smart, providing better challenging placements in the corporate sector with lucrative salaries. Such schools competing globally by differentiating their education model through top-level infrastructure, globally competitive faculty member, providing industry oriented and research-based curriculum, customized curriculum and teaching methods through providing a choice from an infinite number of electives, and competence based examination and evaluation system. Recent ranking results announced by the USA based Elsevier’s SSRN identified Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania, USA as Ranked ONE business school in the world in terms of its number of annual research paper publications. Wharton’s 235-plus professors are one of the largest, most published faculties at any business school. The standing and affiliated faculty members of WBS work within and collaborate across 10 academic departments. For 2019 outgoing MBA batch, the school admitted 863 students from 65 countries out of 6,692 applicants. In this paper, we have analysed the operational and business strategy of Wharton business school in its quest for excellence and courage to innovate decisions on academic performance and research performance and compared with its competitors in the same country like Booth School of Business, Harvard B-School, Stanford Graduate B-School, Stern B-School, Columbia B-School, and Sloan B-School.