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A common challenge many college instructors face is that students come to class unprepared, especially when it comes to assigned pre-reading. The first portion of this study used a pre-test / post-test methodology to determine whether or not using a "minute paper" on a random basis at the beginning of an Introduction to Business class produced higher concept retention. The second portion of this study used the same methodology to determine whether or not the use of interdisciplinary criteria within a class led to greater concept retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which examines the capstone course in economics at Pittsburg State University (PSU) in Pittsburg, Kansas using the undergraduate business research paper in the assessment of learning and writing outcomes in business students. It discusses the assessment processes at the university in line with the writing goal of the Association of Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) standards. It explains the holistic and pragmatic approach used in the capstone course for the development and evaluation of writing skills, basic research methods, and oral communication in students. It also explores the impact of using rubrics and the LiveText online assessment tool as a communication platform for undergraduate research studies.

Doctoral education in business schools is focused on a functional approach to research training. While this approach is necessary, it rarely encompasses reflexivity in qualitative research, despite its importance. This paper provides the groundwork for educators in business schools to reconsider the conventional approach to teaching qualitative methods. It draws on my personal and professional experience as a key resource to shape its examination of doctoral education in conducting qualitative research. The paper offers points of reflection on the struggle students may face in conducting rigorous qualitative research without appropriately understanding the influence of self with previous experience, preconceived ideas, feelings, and even appearance. By emphasizing reflexivity, this paper urges business schools to move away from functional training on research conventions to instead improve students' process of discovery by emphasizing interactive and transformational components of qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article outlines a technique to improve the teaching of qualitative skills, applying business world practices to business school pedagogy. The technique involves the student in a draft-feedback-redo process, by using the midterm paper as the first draft of the term final. According to the authors, this two-draft technique is superior to traditional single-shot systems, because it changes the focus of written assignments from testing to teaching, encourages and rewards improvement, emphasizes form as well as content, and teaches the student to be a better writer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to find an answer to the questions: To what extent is the implementation of responsible management education (RME) perceived to be adequate for developing responsible leadership skills among business school students? How should it be used effectively to guarantee such an outcome? Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 management educators working at three public business schools. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the collected data. Findings: The findings show that the implementation of RME alone is not adequate to ensure the development of responsible leadership skills among students in business schools. However, management educators do perceive it as a considerable step towards that outcome if accompanied with internship and training opportunities to exercise and observe how social roles and activities are practiced in business, not-for-profit and civil society organisations. Originality/value: This study is a pioneering attempt to address the relationship between RME and developing responsible leadership skills among students in non-Western business schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how integrating a research project into an undergraduate business school core accounting course provides opportunities to develop critical writing skills while reinforcing ethics as part of the business school curriculum. The paper discusses an end-to-end process from the overall goals and details of the assignment to assess student skills. After researching an ethical topic in business, students are challenged to complete a research paper examining the issue and stating and supporting their opinion and views of the issue. While writing courses or assignments are not unusual in business program, the unique approach described in this paper includes an intervention early in the student's academic career and a summary of the measurable learning outcomes and criteria for meeting performance expectations. The program addresses the both the instructional tools used for the assignment and assurance of learning for faculty interested in implementing a similar program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature review is a key part of a dissertation, academic or journal paper, yet it is also one that often proves challenging. The multidisciplinary nature of business and management studies adds to the demands of writing a critical review by deciding which theories, subject areas and texts to interrogate. There are a number of approaches that students and academics might take in writing a literature review that require differing emphasis, resources and timeframe. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature and develop an understanding of the complexities and challenges faced by students and new researchers in preparing journal papers. We share our experience as faculty with teaching and writing at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and identify a number of the problems typically faced. Recent trends with regard to the proliferation of open access journals are outlined, and the perspective of a journal Editor addresses common mistakes that lead to poor submissions and reviews. A popular business school text is amongst the views considered. Several examples of different types of literature review are included to illustrate the breadth of choice. Specialist types of software for analysis associated with the complexities of systematic literature reviews are outlined. We close with guidelines for success and conclusions for each of four objectives. More research is encouraged as students now have fewer opportunities to develop the skills required for critical writing; yet these are the very skills in demand for consultancy and similar professions following graduation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Skills development for business students is increasingly becoming more important in business education and the workplace. In this paper, students' research skills are examined. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the issues and challenges students face in developing research skills and how these can be addressed. Design/methodology/approach: The study combines external marker evaluation and content analysis to evaluate one hundred 2,000-word essays and identify issues and challenges associated with students' development of research skills. Findings: Results show that the essays rate well in collecting and using sources and summarising key topics but miss on integrating sources in writing and inconsistency in citations and referencing. Research limitations/implications: One of the paper's limitations is using a sample from a single course in a business school in Australia. Nonetheless, the sampled essays represent similar writing tasks elsewhere that require students to display research skills. Practical implications: Some implications for business and higher education are offered, including suggestions to address the issues and challenges raised in business education. For example, academics are encouraged to communicate clear expectations for writing tasks, provide support and show exemplars of business writing that incorporates practical research skills. Social implications: Business students who develop effective research skills contribute to society by developing skills in effectively searching and evaluating information. This ensures business graduates in industry workplaces reach considered conclusions before making recommendations that could impact people's lives. Originality/value: The study is original in its approach to investigating the nuances of research skills deficiencies by using external expert examination combined with content analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The journal is pleased to publish the abstracts of the six finalists of the 2016 Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society's student paper competition. The 2016 prize committee was chaired by Sameer Hasija (INSEAD), Nicos Savva (London Business School), and Tolga Tezcan (London Business School). The other committee members were: Philipp Afeche, Vishal Agrawal, Aydin Alptekinoglu, Dimitrios Antritsos, Nilay Argon, Mazhar Arikan, Alessandro Arlotto, Arash Asadpour, Atalay Atasu, Nitin Bakshi, Gah-Yi Ban, Opher Baron, Robert Batt, Elena Belavina, Omar Besbes, Kostas Bimpikis, Robert Bray, Carri Chan, Xin Chen, Ying-Ju Chen, Soo-Haeng Cho, So Yeon Chun, Florin Ciocan, Sarang Deo, Lingxiu Dong, Santiago Gallino, Srinagesh Gavirneni, Manu Goyal, Shuangchi He, Jonathan Helm, Ming Hu, Dan Iancu, Foad Iravani, Srikanth Jagabathula, Nitish Jain, Yash Kanoria, Fikri Karaesmen, Diwas KC, Saravanan Kesavan, Bora Keskin, Sang Kim, Song-Hee Kim, Pascale Krama, Mirko Kremer, Harish Krishnan, Mumin Kurtulus, Guoming Lai, Cuihong Li, Jun Li, Lauren Lu, James Luedtke, Victor Martinez de Albinez, Mili Mehrotra, Alex Mills, Toni Moreno, Nektarios Oraiopoulos, Anton Ovchinnikov, Yiangos Papanastasiou, Chris Parker, Rodney Parker, Ali Parlakturk, Alfonso Pedraza Martinez, Ramandeep Randhawa, Paat Rusmevichientong, Chris Ryan, Soroush Saghafian, Ozge Sahin, Burhaneddin Sandikci, Nicola Secomandi, Stephen Shechter, Pengyi Shi, Amitabh Sinha, Milind Sohoni, Brad Staats, Alireza Tahbaz-Salehi, Nicos Trichakis, Owen Wu, Wenqiang Xiao, Nan Yang, Fuqiang Zhang, Jiawei Zhang, Yao Zhao, Karen Zheng, Yong-Pin Zhou, and Leon Zhu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovative digital technologies, together with new sustainable practices, push for new business models and skillsets, pressuring companies to adapt to external change in order to gain competitive advantage. Higher education institutions could offer support. More than 20% of university graduates in the European Union study "business, administration or law", with some of them being future top-level managers and entrepreneurs. This paper aims to provide an understanding of the factors shaping business students' perspectives and decisions in the modern business landscape. It reunites their career preferences, personality characteristics and knowledge regarding technology's utility for business and compares them between two cohorts (i.e., first year bachelor students and second year master students). The results of an online survey with a sample of 154 respondents show that business students' entrepreneurial intention is influenced by their entrepreneurial confidence, their boldness when considering risks, as well as by being further along their educational journey. While almost 80% of business students are daring, oriented toward results and confident in their entrepreneurial abilities, and around 50% would feel most comfortable having their own business, approximately half of first year bachelor students and 14% of second year master students tend to be "not sure" regarding how eight out of ten modern technologies mentioned in this paper (i.e., robotic process automation, big data, artificial intelligence, computer vision, industrial robots, internet of things, virtual reality, enterprise resource planning) could improve a company's innovation and performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microsoft Excel skills are imperative in today's competitive market and the skill is highly demanded by businesses. The MOS Excel Expert Certification (MO-201) validates the competency that one should build to meet employers' expectations. The paper addresses the statistical mean rank difference in four skill groups of the certification test. Results of the four groups of the test were compared, using the Kruskal-Wallis's test. The null hypothesis of the equality of the means for different groups was rejected at the 5% level of significance. Because the null hypothesis was rejected, the Conover post hoc test was applied for multiple pairwise comparisons, to discern which of the sample pair combinations were significantly different. The paper examines some of the concepts of groups 2 and 3 questions where students struggled the most and rendered insights to overcome those hurdles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ongoing seismic events in global society have increased demands on organizations to change their focus on profit maximization alone to becoming a social enterprise that follows humanistic management (serving the common good) principles. Coincidentally, business schools are under pressure to teach humanistic management principles in their curriculum to enable the future work force to become agents of world benefit. Data analytics offers a means to introduce these principles to undergraduate business students. The analytics module described in this paper introduces undergraduates in an introductory Information Systems course to humanistic management. It discusses the use of humanistic management analytics (HMA), and describes an assignment to design, develop and use a HMA dashboard. Through video, lecture, case study and assignments, students learn the value of incorporating humanistic management principles to analytics and human resource functions that embody concepts of data analytics for social good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AI-enabled assessment of student papers has the potential to provide both summative and formative feedback and reduce the time spent on grading. Using auto-ethnography, this study compares AI-enabled and human assessment of business student examination papers in a law module based on previously established rubrics. Examination papers were corrected by the professor and then subjected to a series of tests by Gen-AI tools. While we were impressed with the personalised feedback of Gen-AI tools, the accuracy of grading and the learning capacity of AI tools, we found that Gen-AI tools used are not fully satisfactory to enable fully autonomous correction due to erroneous grading, the hallucination phenomenon and verbose feedback that is not always personalised. The 8C model of challenges of AI-enabled correction is outlined. This paper has implications for professors, HEIs and instructional designers and all those who correct student papers in a third-level institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The objective of the paper is to assess the role of influencer marketing in effectively building and increasing brand competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach: The paper was written on the basis of an analysis of the literature of the subject and it presents the case of Baltic Natur Park based in Niechorze, which employed the tools of influencer marketing to build the company’s image and develop its brand on the market of tourist services in the coastal region, and which simultaneously managed to increase the competitiveness of its operations. Findings: The implementation of influencer marketing in Baltic Natur Park has significantly affected brand development by increasing the quality and quantity of the orders the brand fulfilled. The results achieved by Baltic Natur Park demonstrate explicitly a positive assessment of influencer marketing in brand promotion. Research limitations/implications: The analysis conducted further provides evidence that influencer marketing may constitute promotion not only of a brand itself, but also, when used in a broader scope, it may improve a region’s competitiveness. Practical implications: The study results are also a signal for all institutions and individuals, including managers, individuals managing a brand and a region, that the use of contemporary marketing tools for brand promotion, such as, inter alia influencer marketing, is an option worth considering. Originality/value: The article presents a case study and can be an example and inspiration for other companies when taking innovative actions to build a competitive brand on the market. In addition, it can be used by scientists, business practitioners and students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to theoretically answer the question: why might business schools in Egypt fail to develop responsible leaders? Design/methodology/approach: The author starts by discussing modernization theory (Lipset, 1959) – which highlights the idea that the more educated people there are in a given society/nation, the more calls for democracy, social citizenship and social justice will be launched – to address the strong association between the quality of business learning and the development of responsible leadership norms. Moving forward by focusing on the theory of education (Dewey, 1916) and institutional theory (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983), the author finds the main conditions needed to develop responsible leadership norms among business school students. Findings: The author identified the following three necessary conditions: implementing responsible management education, sustaining management learning and ensuring that a purposive hidden curriculum is well-planned in business schools. The author sees these as the main priorities for developing responsible leadership skills among business school students in Egypt and similar post revolution countries. Originality/value: This paper contributes by filling a gap in responsible leadership, public administration and higher education literature, in which conceptual studies on the role of business schools in post-revolution periods and conflict zones has been limited until now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about the benefits of mentoring for both the mentors and the mentees, as well as the organizations involved. There are a variety of mentoring relationships available to undergraduate business students – peer to peer, faculty to student, graduate student to undergraduate student, and alumni to student. This paper provides a synopsis of alumni to undergraduate student peer mentoring programs at the majority of the top-ranked business schools. Four key points of distinction among the programs are documented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide clear and appropriate evidence of factors that trigger student engagement of flipped classroom (FC) learning in higher education (HE), based on an example of a fully flipped business undergraduate degree program in Australia. Qualitative data from the Student Evaluation of Teaching and Units (SETU) of 142 first-year business students over seven consecutive trimesters (2017–2019) were gathered and analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings provide a nuanced understanding on triggers of student engagement in relation to self-efficacy, emotion, well-being and belonging. The findings may guide educators in full adoption of FC in other undergraduate courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of a career management program embedded within a business module, with a specific focus on enhancing the employability of students. Design/methodology/approach: The study involved five one-hour workshops based on the DOTS model, covering aspects like resume writing and professional communication. Surveys, using a structured questionnaire and a Likert scale, measured participants' perceived employability. The pre-survey included demographic details, while the post-survey evaluated the effectiveness of the Career development learning workshop. Incentives and QR codes were employed to boost participation, and data were collected at the semester's start and end, with responses linked through students' phone numbers. Findings: The results confirmed a positive connection between the perceived effectiveness of skill programs and students' employability. Integration of career management into the curriculum cultivates a heightened professional mindset and boosts employability. Validation through a paired-samples t-test demonstrates a substantial increase in perceived employability after program participation, affirming the program's role in fostering psychosocial empowerment and elevating students' confidence in job seeking. Originality/value: This pioneering research integrates a career management program into a business module, addressing employability challenges in Industry 4.0. It provides empirical evidence of the program's positive impact on students' perceived employability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on causes for drop-out from business study programs at case university over seven years. Causes of drop-outs were collected and the database consists of 1,154 drop-out. Students indicated their reasons and preferences of their causes leading to leave studies. The aim of this paper is to identify factors affecting of drop-outs in business higher education and its evolvement in past years to define main areas of negative causes. The article presents students perception on study conditions and identifies the most important personal reasons to quit. The outputs of this paper are based on survey data from the whole sample of dropping students in the case business school. Statistical analysis, including correlation and factor analysis were employed to analyse students' perception of the educational processes impacting retention. The analyses revealed clusters of variables with proven co-appearance and defining students' main causes to drop-out. Orientation of students is primarily on expectations and personal reasons. The results lead to improvements in institutional processes to address students' requirements and expectations to improve retention at universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to develop the "ethical student scale" to understand the underlying factors that lead to the decisions of cheating and plagiarism and where business students are developmentally from a moral perspective and to help academic institutions assess how best to develop ethical education throughout the curriculum. This three-dimensional nine-item scale based on Kohlberg's moral development model is proposed to serve as a valuable tool for educators who are struggling with identifying the best approach to help their students make ethical choices both within and outside of the walls of their educational institutions and once they join the workforce. Four survey design studies were conducted to determine what factors had previously been identified to both negatively and positively impact the propensity of a university student to engage in cheating and/or plagiarizing (Study 1, N = 179), to preliminarily validate the three dimension nine item scale that emerged from Study 1 (Study 2, N = 87); to test the construct validity of the three-dimensional nine-item scale (Study 3, N = 235); and to test the nine-item scale for convergent, divergent and predictive validity (Study 4, N = 201). The four surveys were administered to undergraduate students at two universities in the Northeast in the USA. To shed light on the underlying factors that lead to the decisions of cheating and plagiarism, the authors propose three factors that are engaged when students make these types of ethical decisions: rules and enforcement as an external control, personal morality as an internal control and social influences as a social control (Kohlberg, 1976). Through four studies, this paper presents a three-dimensional nine-item scale based on Kohlberg's moral development model to determine the factors that influence the propensity of a university student to engage in cheating and/or plagiarizing. The proposed scale showed strong reliability across the three dimensions. The limitations of the scale are that this research was restricted to an academic setting. The relationship between the academic environment, the resulting behaviors of students and the subsequent behavior of these students as managers also needs investigation to determine if business ethics education does have an impact on increasing ethical decision-making. The ethical student scale attempts to measure the development stage of students in a university setting and has the potential utility to help higher education institutions better understand the moral development of their students and what drives their decisions to engage in an ethical manner. Being a short yet reliable tool, ethical student scale may help business schools develop programs beyond a single business ethics course to instill ethical decision-making in students. One of the goals as business educators is to produce ethical managers. The ethical student scale can help us develop a more integrated approach to business ethics education. As the students become managers and leaders in organizations, the social implications for more ethical decision-makers and organizations are widespread and vital to the community and the economy. Ethical student scale is an attempt to quantify what types of controls (external, social, or personal) help develop ethical students and ethical managers. Based on Kohlberg's moral development model, this three-dimensional nine-item scale which shows strong reliability will serve as a valuable tool for educators who are struggling with identifying the best approach to the issue of unethical decisions and behaviors as they try to create strategies to help their students make ethical choices both within and outside of the walls of their educational institutions and once they join the workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on small businesses, significantly influencing entrepreneurial aspirations and presenting numerous challenges. This calls for additional research into perceptions, intentions, and the challenges faced in this context. This study aims to explore the comprehension of key entrepreneurial concepts among business students in the post-pandemic era. The paper presents an empirical study which employs qualitative in-depth interviews with 34 undergraduate business students from one public university in the Midwest of the United States. The findings reveal a complex view of entrepreneurship that extends beyond traditional business creation, encompassing elements of social innovation and personal fulfillment. Students displayed a generally positive attitude towards entrepreneurship, influenced strongly by their involvement in practical entrepreneurship-related activities and their familial backgrounds. However, they also identified significant barriers, including financial constraints, fear of failure, and a lack of practical experience, which hinder their intentions to pursue entrepreneurial ventures. The study underscores the importance of entrepreneurship education programs incorporating more comprehensive practical experiences, enhancing financial literacy, and providing psychological support to overcome these challenges. These insights contribute to the ongoing discussion on how to effectively support and prepare aspiring entrepreneurs in a changing educational landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some researchers interested in assessing moral reasoning among business practitioners or students have developed their own vignettes or scenarios set in business contexts, based on assumptions that the situations presented in the often-used Defining Issues Test (DIT) will somehow be inappropriate for these specific types of respondents. This paper is the first to examine in depth both the actual details contained in these business-oriented scenarios and empirical findings emerging from them. Among this paper's conclusions are: (1) assumptions underpinning the presumed superiority of business-oriented vignettes have yet to be tested; (2) the DIT possesses considerable advantages unavailable in alternative measures; (3) many business-oriented scenarios have underlying Dilemma themes that seem inherently ambiguous and thus of questionable relevance for assessing moral reasoning; (4) these scenarios have no obvious equivalent in the DIT and thus cannot definitively be placed under the umbrella of the latter's demonstrated construct validity; and (5) meaningful empirical findings have not clearly emerged from investigations using business-oriented vignettes. In light of these conclusions, we recommend that investigators interested in moral reasoning advance knowledge in a coherent and unified way by using the DIT that seems entirely appropriate for use among respondents with business experience or training. Although alternative measures may have value for assessing ethical judgments, evidence of their validity as a measure of moral reasoning is lacking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the perceived hardships of undergraduate students during severe snowstorms based on ethnicity and first-generation students. Using approximately 380 observations, we find that there is a difference between ethnicity and generation of student during the interruption of student classes related to snowstorms in the spring of 2018. The paper uses survey data at an AACSB accredited business school. The authors find that using a univariate and a multivariate there is a difference in the results. The empirical results were robust under all the models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many business schools began offering a data analytics course or infusing data analytics topics into their existing courses. Python programming language is an essential skill pertaining to data analytics. Python can process real-time, large, unstructured data as efficiently as traditional data. However, instructors must overcome the most significant hurdle business students often have: a lack of programming background. This paper documents the use of a short MOOC course to introduce students to Python for data analytics. A survey after course completion shows that students were more ready and motivated to learn more about Python language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss software programs used for teaching business courses and used in business research. The software programs used are MATLAB, R Studio, Microsoft Excel, SPSS, SAS and Python. This paper goes into details about the functions of each software program and how each program is proficient and programmed for different areas of research. Using tables and figures, we discuss the ease of use per program, the difficulty based on a scale for beginner uses, the storage capacity of each programming language, the availability to business students and researchers and how applicable each program is with a basic knowledge of how to use it. The cost of each statically programming package is also covered. The detailed functions of the various programs are covered in figures and tables in this paper. It is a well-known fact that MATLAB, R, Python, Excel, SPSS and SAS are the most important five languages to be learned for data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the role of formative feedback in teaching academic writing for a large class of first-year business students. The paper contributes to our knowledge on how to design an effective formative feedback process for a class in excess of 300 students. Based on survey data from 2018 the paper addresses how the students respond to being taught academic writing in two different feedback modalities: face-to-face interaction and electronic annotations. Our findings indicate that there are no significant differences between the two modalities and that the students are relatively satisfied with the feedback they received. The majority of the students report that feedback has helped them accomplish their learning goals, they pay attention to feedback, and feedback motivates them in their studies. Even with these positive responses from the students, we question whether our approach is sustainable in the long run. Unless smarter and more efficient ways of providing personalised feedback are developed for large student groups, the transition to the new paradigm for feedback, where the emphasis is placed on dialogic interaction, will not be practicable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, the analysis of rhetorical moves is extensively applied to business genre conventions. This paper adopts a corpus-assisted genre approach to compare three major rhetorical moves in corpora of students' and professionals' project proposal abstracts to elicit evidence-based recommendations for the pedagogy of business communication. The findings indicate that, while overall features in the proposal abstracts written by actual business professionals and those by students of business vary quantitatively but not qualitatively, students focus more on the aim of the project, and professionals tend to evenly highlight all sides of the project and position it within the context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]