Modeling “The Apprentice”: Pilot-Testing a Living Case Study Competition
Working Paper
Modeling “The Apprentice”: Pilot-Testing a Living Case Study Competition to Improve Undergraduates’ Information Literacy Skills
Armand Gilinsky, Jr. Ph.D.
Sonoma State University, School of Business and Economics
1801 East Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park, CA, 94928
(707) 664-2709/(707) 664-4009 (fax)
Richard Robison, M.L.S.
Sonoma State University, Schulz Information Center
1801 East Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park, CA, 94928.
(707) 664-4196/(707) 664-2876 (fax)
ABSTRACT
This study used both qualitative and quantitative measures to examine the effectiveness of using a competition format for a “living” business case study analysis to teach Information Literacy (IL) skills and business strategy. The results from a pre- and posttest on IL skills related to business showed a significant increase in students’ knowledge and skill level. Similarly, an analysis of students’ reflection papers and final bibliographies showed that IL instruction improved their research skills and the competition format motivated them to conduct more thorough research. This study also reports on a successful collaboration with local business leaders to enhance student learning.
Funding for this project was provided by a California State University (CSU) Information Competence Grant 2004-2005, Grant #31207
January 2005
INTRODUCTION
As Michael Porter (1980) noted, “the essence of strategy formulation is coping with competition.” Although he was referring to organizations, this interrelationship of strategy and competition permeates our society and is evident in such popular “reality” TV shows as “The Apprentice” or “Survivor.” Recognizing this interrelationship and the allure of competition in our popular culture, it was the goal of this pilot study to incorporate and assess the use of competition as an instructional and motivational device to teach business strategy and information literacy skills to fifty-two undergraduate seniors in two sections of a “capstone” business class on strategy and management.
This study examined the effectiveness of introducing a competition format for a “living” business case study analysis teach business strategy and improve undergraduates’ Information Literacy (IL) skills. Overall, students found that the IL instructional component along with the competition format helped motivate them to perform more and higher quality research and subsequently do better analysis. Other motivating factors reported were the participation of “real world” judges’ and traditional grades. The greatest negative reported towards a successful research and case study presentation was stated to be deleterious interpersonal group dynamics.
How individuals respond to competition, though, especially within a group dynamic, creates many variables for success or failure. Whether competition motives or enhances performance is the subject of a long-term debate. One school of thought believes that “competition promotes efficiency and innovation because it stimulates individuals to outperform each other by working faster,” whereas others argue “that intrateam competition is destructive” due to individuals placing their own goals and rewards above the organizational or team structure. The school of thought against competition encourages the use of “cooperative reward structures” instead (Beersma, Hollenbeck, Humphrey, Moon, Conlon, & Ilgen, 2003). This study utilized both structures, a “cooperative reward structure” within each team but a “competitive reward structure” between the teams.
In addition to analyzing the use of these structures, this business strategy class sought to create a practical, “real world” business scenario. According to Greiner, Bhambri, and Cummings (2003) the teaching of business strategy has come to rely primarily on theoretical and abstract approaches and moved away from practical and interdisciplinary approaches. By emphasizing IL skills to analyze a local case study this course aimed to counteract this trend by producing an innovative, practical and student-centered approach to teaching business strategy much in the same way as experiential learning projects have been developed to teach financial accounting (Dudley, Davis & McGrady, 2001), marketing skills (Anselmi & Frankel, 2004), and case study analysis (Theroux & Kilbane, 2004).
TEACHING BUSINESS STRATEGY
Nearly all business schools have an “exit” course for undergraduates, entitled “Strategic Management” or some variant thereof. Strategic management entails generating choices to be made among competing alternatives to produce a competitive advantage and earn above-average returns.
Why? Because most organizations have to find a way to bridge the increasing gap between reality and expectations. Rapid technological change, mergers and acquisitions, globalization, and changing expectations of that constitutes ethical and socially responsible business practices have heightened the urgency to ask the right questions about the future, such as:
- Which distinctive competencies should we be developing for our businesses?
- Where should we compete?
- How do we communicate our strategy to our stakeholders?
Learning objectives for this course included:
Awareness of the interrelationships among the functional areas of an enterprise;
Improving skills in decision-making and oral and written presentation;
Understanding how organizations analyze, formulate and implement strategies, especially the role of top management teams in performing these activities.
By the end of the course, students were expected to be able to research and analyze thoroughly a company, its industry and its competitors and to recommend a well-supported strategy to the Board of Directors.
INFORMATION LITERACY DEFINED
In addition to teaching students the various facets and importance of business strategy, a key component for students to compete in the business case competition was to teach them better information literacy skills so that they could better evaluate their company’s business environment and back-up their recommendations with reliable and relevant information. Information literacy (IL), broadly defined, is the ability “to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information” (ALA, 1989).
Strong IL skills are at the heart of all successful student-centered, inquiry-based learning. In order to better delineate what is meant by IL competencies, the Association of College and Research Libraries (2000) published Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. These standards established five primary IL standards and twenty-two performance indicators each with associated student learning outcomes. The five primary standards require an “information literate student” to be able to 1) determine the nature and extent of the information needed, 2) access needed information effectively and efficiently, 3) evaluate information and its sources critically, 4) individually or as a member of a group, use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose, and 5) understand many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and access and use information ethically and legally.
In addition to addressing ACRL’s Information Literacy Standards, a narrower framework was used in this project to address the information needs of business managers based on ideas expressed by Paul Drucker (1995). Drucker’s categories of information business managers need to know served to focus our IL instruction and the corresponding activities and assessments. (See Table 1.)
<Insert Table 1 about here>
By integrating the teaching of IL skills with strategic formulation this class focused on emphasizing what Seijts, Latham, Tasa & Latham (2004) describe as “learning goals” rather than strict “performance targets.” Success in this approach requires leaders (or in this case, students) to confront a situation and make “sense of a problem,” connect “with others to bring multiple experiences to bear on the problem,” and navigate “the way to correct solutions.” The value of this “making sense of a problem” approach is echoed by Information Scientist Carol Kuhlthau (1993) who stresses that due to the availability of vast amounts of information the teaching of IL skills needs to facilitate the “seeking of meaning” rather than just an “identification of sources.”
By teaching students to ask appropriate questions, analyze situations and make recommendations based on appropriate information found through the research process, this course aimed to create a more holistic learning experience for the students and to produce students who were competent “knowledge workers,” the type of worker that Friga, Bettis and Sullivan (2003) see an increasing demand for in the business world and therefore admonish business schools to focus their curricula on developing.
Skills and Student Motivation
In his work, Models of Man, the economist Herbert Simon (1957) introduced the term “satisficing” to describe behavior that attempts to achieve a certain level of minimum accomplishment without attempting to achieve maximum results. In attempting to instill stronger research skills, this behavior for achieving “just good enough” results is a major obstacle. This is because beyond the teaching of information resources and research strategies many research skills and processes are heuristically-driven and learned via a “trial-and-error” process. In our information-laden world, it is easy for a student to engage in “satisficing” behavior thereby eliminating the opportunity to learn about better information resources or use creative research techniques. To counter this possibility a strategy needed to be employed that might obviate this type of behavior.
In their work, The Attention Economy, Davenport and Beck (1995) assert that attention is the new “currency” of business and that understanding and managing attention is “the single most important determinant of business success.” Likewise, if attention is the key to a businesses success, one readily can see that engaging students’ attention has also become the key to the success of higher education. Finding ways to better engage and manipulate students’ attention is the only way to achieve stronger learning outcomes and this was the major goal in designing this case competition.
Davenport and Beck continue by explaining that two of the primary forces shaping attention are the “Survival Principle” and the “It’s-All-About-Me Principle.” The “Survival Principle” plays to our most primitive needs for safety and security, which shows up in the students reported “fear of embarrassment,” whereas the “It’s-All-About-Me Principle,” noted as an increasingly modern behavior, is focused on the fulfillment of individual needs, desires and sense of accomplishment, such as in the desire for high grades. We see these two principles dramatically played out in our popular culture through “hit” TV shows such as “The Apprentice” and “Survivor” wherein individuals must focus their attention on succeeding as individuals but within the context and confines of their groups.
Recognizing these important attention managing principles and the models used by such popular “reality” TV shows, the case competition idea was developed. At the core was the belief that harnessing these two major motivators would better focus the students’ attention and that by using a local case and local judges the project would increase the relevancy for the students. It was felt that due to the popularity and familiarity with such “reality” TV shows, students would recognize and respond well to this model of evaluation.
PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION
A goal of this project, in addition to the learning outcomes, was to show that when the two issues of relevancy and attention are addressed properly, students will move beyond mere “satisficing” behavior into more motivated and effectual learning. The following discussion highlights the nature of the participants, the case study project information competency component, the judges roles, and the case competition itself.
Profile of the Students in the Senior Seminar “Capstone Course”
At our university, business students in majors such as Accounting, Financial Management, Finance, Management, Marketing, and Wine Business are required to take an integrative Senior Seminar in Management Policy and Strategy upon completion of the core course requirements of their major. This “capstone course” serves approximately 125 students each semester and is typically taught in sections of 25-30 students. Typical learning tools include lectures, readings on strategic management, business case studies, group discussions, team presentations, and computer simulations. For two sections of this course, 52 students in all, the students’ final project was a team-based competition; students were required to analyze a business case study and defend their strategy and recommendations.
Participants fell into the traditional undergraduate senior age range of 21-22 or, as one might describe them in generational terms, Millenials or Generation Y’s. One of the major differences of this generation to others is their comfort with technology, in particular, the Internet. The Millenials depend upon the Internet for research (in 2001 report, 94% of teenagers reported using the Internet for schoolwork and 71% as a major source for a school project) (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2002), yet this facility with using the Internet does not always translate well to using many of the proprietary databases found on college campuses. In general, students lack an awareness of these resources, tend to create simple one-word searches, have difficulty using Boolean operators, and have difficulty defining their information need (Seamans, 2002). Another difference in this generation is their preferred learning style. It has been noted that Millenials “tend toward teamwork, experiential activities, structure, and the use of technology” (Oblinger, 2003).
The “Living” Case Study: Copperfield’s Books
An added benefit of this project’s design was that it allowed an MBA student to research and write an extensive case study on a local business, Copperfield’s Books, as part of the requirement for the completion of his master’s thesis.
The following is a summary of the case:
Copperfield’s Books is a local chain of eight bookstores that has been in business since 1981. It has enjoyed a unique niche as a “local, intelligent, convenient bookseller.” The chain has sustained, on average, gross revenues of $10 million a year, with historical returns of 1-2% profits each year. The chain currently has about 120 employees. Its CEO has requested a strategic plan to improve the chain’s performance in future years, in light of increasing competition from “big-box” chain stores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble as well as from Internet-based retailers such as Amazon.com. In particular, the CEO wants answers to the following questions: “Do we meet customers’ expectations? Do we miss the boat? What do local consumers want in a bookstore? What does our "Brand" of book selling mean? How can we assure our survival as an independent bookseller? What’s at stake for our local community and our employees if we cannot?”
In the context of teaching information literacy skills, this case had added relevancy due to the changing nature of how people access and consume information. While students struggled with the importance of new technologies in the case study to booksellers, such as the shift of reading habits from print to Internet, eBooks and print-on-demand, students themselves experienced the varying formats of information available to them, whether proprietary or non-proprietary, in print or electronic formats, and through the University Library or the World Wide Web.
Selection and Profile of the Judges
Prior to the beginning of the semester, local business leaders were contacted regarding their interest in participating in this project as a judge. In addition to the case writer, who is also a manager of a successful grocery chain in Sonoma County, and the CEO of the business used in the case, Copperfield’s Books, judges were selected from a wide variety of local community business leaders. A profile of these judges may be seen in Table 2.
<Insert Table 2 about here>
Overview of Case Competition Project and Business Strategy
On the first day of class an overview of business strategy was given, the ground rules of the competition were outlined, groups were selected, a pre-test on information competency skills was given and the additional assessment requirements, included in the students’ “Research Portfolios,” the research logs, reflection papers and final bibliographies, were explained.
In selecting groups, we diverged from the common practice of letting students select their own groups instead matching groups of 4-5 students each based on their concentration of study (i.e. Finance, Marketing, etc.). It was felt that this project in strategy required reasoning on many levels and on various facets of a business and diverse groups with differing knowledge and focus would facilitate this process.
A multiple-choice, nine question pre-test was administered as a broad measure of the students’ information competency. The questions related to where to find financial data on public companies and what type of information is available on private companies, industry data, classification systems, types of government data, primary versus secondary types of information and an overall awareness of the university’s proprietary databases. See Appendix I.
Finally, the Research Portfolios were explained. These portfolios required the students to submit completed research logs, a 2-page reflection paper and a final bibliography. The research logs were designed to assist the students in organizing and conducting their research as well as allowing the authors to examine how the students conducted their research. See Table 3 for a layout of the Research Log.
<Insert Table 3 about here>
In the reflection papers, students were asked to write specifically about what they learned from the IL component, working in teams/groups, the interaction with and feedback from the case competition judges’, and thoughts about the case competition format as a learning device and motivator.
Information Literacy Component
In addition to meeting with the students the first day of class, students were required to spend an entire class session (approximately three hours) with the university’s Business Librarian. Topics addressed were an introduction to competitive intelligence, an overview of the University Library’s proprietary resources (such as ABI/Inform, Mergent Online, Factiva, etc.), information resources for industry and company analysis, research strategies (i.e. Boolean operators, using subject headings, etc.), advise on conducting research on the World Wide Web (WWW), emphasis on evaluating WWW information, and hints and tips for private company research. Students were also given a 10-page handout listing recommended information resources through the University Library as well as WWW resources, instructions for using these resources, a list of potential sources for public information on private companies and a checklist for evaluating WWW information.