What “International” Sub-Topics Are Crucial to Business Education?
A Survey of Management School Professors
______________________________________________________________
Farok J. Contractor
Rutgers University
School of Management
81 New Street
Newark, NJ 07102
(973) 353-5348
Forthcoming:
Journal of International Management
(Special Issue on the Pedagogy and Domain of International Management)
Volume 6, March 2000
Acknowledgment: I am grateful to Jim Woodley, Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers for computer assistance, and to Jean Boddewyn for guidance and suggestions on this topic of deep interest to him over 40 years. Indeed, Prof. Boddewyn was the initiator and co-leader of the seminars on International Business Pedagogy from which the data in this paper were obtained. Support from the Rutgers CIBER is also acknowledged.
What “International” Sub-Topics Are Crucial to Business Education?
A Survey of Management School Professors
_________________________________________________________________
ABSTRACT
The question addressed by this survey is “What ‘international’ topics are crucial to the practice of management?” The objective of the study was to identify “international” curricular sub-topics, tools and concepts which faculty respondents deemed absolutely crucial to business pedagogy and to the practice of management, and would therefore require in every business program. This survey is one of the few that addresses the international pedagogy issue from the micro, or sub-topic end of the spectrum. A list of the topics identified should be of considerable value to curriculum committees in charge of business school programs. The selections ranged not only over the six major departments found in most business schools, but beyond. Respondents as a whole were willing to step outside their narrow departmental boundaries when thinking about the question of internationalization of pedagogy. The results also seem to confirm that the bulk of the burden of the internationalization of the curriculum will continue to rest, principally but by no means exclusively, on two departments, Management and Marketing.
Key Words: International Management Pedagogy
Curriculum Survey
What “International” Sub-Topics Are Crucial to Business Education?
A Survey of Management School Professors
Farok J. Contractor
Introduction
Even though the Academy of International Business was formed in 1959 and the International Management Division of the Academy of Management organized in the 1970s, calls to “internationalize” the management curriculum were heard insistently in the US only from early 1980s (AACSB, 1980; National Advisory Board, 1983). Since then, a number of studies have surveyed management curricula in the US (e.g. Cavusgil, Schechter, and Yaprak, 1992; Kuhne, 1990; Nehrt, 1987; Douglas, 1989) and abroad (e.g. Luostarinen, 1991 for Europe; Rugman and Stanbury, 1992 for Canada). These surveys have used, as a unit of analysis, institutions, or programs. The more comprehensive of them have broken down their analysis by department, faculty background and training programs outside the main curriculum (Arpan, Folks, and Kwok, 1993). Contractor (1997) describes the pros and cons, and vested interests in various approaches to internationalizing the curriculum, ranging from incentives given to traditional functional academic departments, to matrix affiliation of an International Management Center with existing departments, to forming a separate International Business Department.
Very few surveys however have approached the question in the most disaggregated way, by “international “ sub-topic. In an approaching era of more modularized business education, aided in some cases by electronic self-study, it may be appropriate for curriculum design committees to ask “What ‘international’ sub-topics must every graduate know?” That is to say, what knowledge components, relating to international management or international aspects of other functional fields, should be considered absolutely essential to the tool kit of the twenty-first century manager?
Suppose a curriculum committee was given a “blank slate” to design a management curriculum, unencumbered by the parochial interests of already-formed academic departments. Of course such an opportunity is infrequent, except in the newly formed schools. But the approach is to first identify critical knowledge components or competencies needed by the manager, without initial regard for how the knowledge may be sequenced or delivered to the student. That would be a later step.
This survey is perhaps the only one that addresses the international pedagogy issue from the micro, or sub-topic end of the spectrum. (Wright and Ricks (1994) and Fatemi (1995) list several sub-topics, but these are not rated or ranked in an empirical survey). It was in this spirit, approaching the internationalization question from the micro or knowledge module end of the analytical spectrum, that the survey described in this paper was conducted.
The Survey
In a 1997 survey of 69 business school faculty drawn from various departments in seventeen schools of business[1], the respondents were asked to give their opinions on “international” topics that they considered crucial or absolutely essential to the practice of management. If they were on their school’s curriculum committee, which “international” management topics or concepts would they require students to learn?
Although this survey goes beyond the domain of International Management, and was administered to faculty from several functional areas, organizational and management topics comprise the single largest category of responses. Out of 57 usable responses, 15 were made by faculty affiliated with a management department. Moreover, the responses serve to place International Management in the overall context of the totality of the international component of the curriculum.
Before administering the questionnaire, respondents were verbally informed of the objectives and approach of the survey, and that they should take a school-wide or total curriculum approach, and avoid a parochial departmental bias.
Each respondent was initially given 25 “international” sub-topics or concepts, in random order, drawn from all the departments or functional areas typically present in a school of business, and spread over the entire business curriculum (Fatemi, 1995; Wright and Ricks, 1994). See Table 1, Topics 1 through 25. These are by no means a complete list, but were described to the respondents as being only examples of the micro level of sub-topics that they should define.
Respondents were then urged to write in their own additional required sub-topics which they considered absolutely essential for managers (since the supplied list of 25 topics was only intended to be a start). This resulted in an additional 47 topics that were written in, for a total of 72. Several of the written entries were subsequently seen to be duplicates. These were merged, resulting in a final list of 63 “international” concepts or topics, considered by faculty respondents to be crucial to business education. Please see Table 1.
Topics 26 through 63 in Table 1 comprise additional topics; many of these are not properly phrased or expressed, and reflect the way that they were “written-in.”
A perusal of the topics in Table 1 reveals a very wide range of subject areas covering every functional field traditionally represented in schools of business. They range from the expected topics such as cross-cultural management, to intellectual property management in a global setting, to international transfer pricing models, to technology transfer. No particular functional or departmental bias is immediately apparent in Table 1 (although a later classification in Table 5 reveals that management and organization topics are the since largest grouping). Clearly, the listing of a particular knowledge module or curriculum component does not imply equal weighting in terms of the time spent on the sub-topic in the classroom. Even though disaggregated, some of the listed topics are considerably broader than others. For instance, Purchasing Power Parity is a specific concept and tool in foreign exchange risk management and its basic concept, with illustrations, can be communicated to students in one to three hours. By contrast, Cultural Differences and the Practice of Management is a topic that could be introduced in a few classroom sessions – but could also entail an entire course, or two, where this sub-topic is further disaggregated into human resource management, management of diversity, conflict resolution, negotiations and so on. Thus the listing of a topic provides no indication of the length of its treatment in the curriculum, which will vary based on the school’s mission and student body. The issue, of the level of disaggregation, therefore does introduce a possible bias in the later results, but cannot be avoided, as there is no metric for “one standard knowledge unit” in the business curriculum, and the time devoted to each component would, in any case, vary depending on the emphasis given to each topic in different schools.
Respondents were then asked to pick, and rank, their top 10 selections (out of the supplied list and their own additions).
INSERT TABLE 1 HERE
Coding
After the responses were turned in, the topics were then coded, based on principal “functional” classification according to conventional departments typically found in business schools. This is shown in Table 2. The “management” area is further broken down into Strategy (ST), Organizational Behavior (OB) and Human Resources (HR) in order to give the management area special emphasis in the analysis of results (although not in the responses – no functional coding was done at the questionnaire stage in order to give respondents free rein on their listing and choice of sub-topics). Several sub-topics do not fall within conventional departmental classifications, and some concepts – from Political Science, Language Studies, and Economic Geography -- even fall outside the domain of business schools altogether. These are grouped in Table 2 under “Other.” The codes applied to each sub-topic is shown in Table 2.
INSERT TABLE 2 HERE
The practice of management, and therefore management pedagogy, is, by its very nature, eclectic and multi-disciplinary. Several topics straddle two “functional” domains (to say nothing about the broader strategic implications of narrow functional tools and techniques). Accordingly, Table 1 shows more than one functional label attached to some of the topics. Coding for Function 2 is, of course, subjective and requires an estimate of the actual cross-functional use of a particular knowledge component in teaching[2].
Some of the responses turned out to be unusable. The final number of usable responses was 57.
Discussion of Results
A perusal of the topics in Table 1 reveals an extremely broad range, covering every single functional area and every department found in business schools. That is to say, in terms of the collective sub-topic selection itself (as listed in Table 1) there is no apparent bias towards any department or functional affiliation[3]. It is well to note, at the outset however, that the respondent sample shown in Table 3 probably does over-represent Management and Marketing departments, in comparison with the size of these departments at most business schools. On the other hand, these are the same two departments which, in almost all schools of business, are expected to carry the burden of “internationalizing” the curriculum, and where faculty with the greatest international orientation are typically housed (Arpan, Folks and Kwok, 1993; Contractor, 1997). In that sense, the composition of the sample and its distribution across departments in Table 3 may be representative of the internationalizing mission.
INSERT TABLE 3 HERE
The most frequently selected topics are shown in Table 4. It is worth noting that all traditional business school departments are represented in the top ten rankings. This shows that respondents see the need for internationalization of pedagogy as embracing all areas of a business school. Moreover, one topic, from Political Science, whose home is outside schools of business, was included. This relates to the continuing role of governments in global operations.
INSERT TABLE 4 HERE
The preponderance of the most frequently selected topics came from Management areas (such as OB and Strategy) and Marketing. This is understandable given the fact that most faculty with an “international” interest are housed in these two departments and the internationalization mandate in most schools is given to these departments.
Understandably also, because they were written in individually, none of the write-in responses appeared in the top rankings. Among the written in items, some of the leading topics were Comparative Advantage (No. 34), International Law and Legal Issues (No. 28), Internet Resources for Global Managers (No. 30) and Trade Agreements (No. 42) in descending order of importance.
A much more comprehensive picture of overall patterns emerges in Table 5 which shows the topic selections grouped by functional label. Please see Table 1 for the functional labels (some have two) attached to each topic. Table 5 gives us an idea of the number of crucial international topics by Function1 (the principal label), Function 2 (secondary label), and by department.
INSERT TABLE 5 HERE
Out of a total of 589 entries, 155 are associated with Management topics. While Management and Marketing dominate, other areas are also sizable. In fact, if we were to combine Finance and Economics, which are often found in one department at many business schools, their combined count would be 146, second only to Management, with Marketing a distant third. Even international topics associated with MIS were recorded 19 times, and under OTHER, International Social Issues appeared 50 times, and Political Science 43 times.
Summary and Conclusions
The question addressed by this survey is “What ‘international’ topics are crucial to the practice of management?” and therefore “What ‘international sub-topics are crucial to business education?” This paper represents the results of a 1997 survey conducted on 69 business school faculty members from 17 universities in the eastern United States who attended seminars on Internationalization of the Business Curriculum. The objective of the study is to identify “international” curricular sub-topics which respondents deemed absolutely crucial to business pedagogy and to the practice of management, and would therefore require in every business program.
This survey is one of the few that addresses the international pedagogy issue from the micro, or sub-topic end of the spectrum. A total of 63 sub-topics were identified from 57 usable questionnaire responses. These, in turn, were grouped by functional and departmental affiliation. A list of the top ten selections, as well as the total list of 63, should be of considerable value to curriculum committees in charge of business school programs. This paper does not address the issue of how to introduce these topics into the business curriculum, in what sequence, and by which department. Nor does it suggest their weights, or how much time may be devoted to each sub-topic. This survey was only concerned with identifying crucial tools, concepts, and specific sub-areas of international management that may be considered absolutely crucial to the practice of global managers.