Manajemen | Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji 08832320109599656
Journal of Education for Business
ISSN: 0883-2323 (Print) 1940-3356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjeb20
Fast-Cycle Curriculum Development Strategies
for E-Business Programs: The Bentley College
Experience
Jane Fedorowicz & Janis L. Gogan
To cite this article: Jane Fedorowicz & Janis L. Gogan (2001) Fast-Cycle Curriculum
Development Strategies for E-Business Programs: The Bentley College Experience, Journal of
Education for Business, 76:6, 318-327, DOI: 10.1080/08832320109599656
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08832320109599656
Published online: 31 Mar 2010.
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Fast-Cycle CurricuIum
Development Strategies for
E-Business Programs:
The Bentley College Experience
JANE FEDOROWICZ
JANIS L. GOGAN
Bentley College
Waltham, Massachusetts
I
n the 1990s, organizations invested
heavily in new information technologies and large-scale IT initiatives
for improved transaction processing,
electronic commerce, process redesign,
and strategic relationships. These
investments were accompanied by significant business and technical challenges that have given rise to a pressing
need for new content in business school
curricula. To prepare their students to
address these challenges, business
schools need to introduce new concepts
and skills into the curriculum rapidly
and on a continuous basis, keeping pace
with business and technical developments. To accomplish this, individual
business school faculty members also
need to upgrade their own IT skills and
their understanding of emerging business models, on a continuous basis.
Meanwhile, faculty members are still
expected to produce high-quality
research publications. Not surprisingly,
some professors feel that accelerated
expectations for curriculum development and professional development
activities conflict with their research
agendas. Many academics cite lack of
time, resource limitations, and other
factors-such as inflexible bureaucratic
processes and poorly aligned reward
structures-as impediments in curriculum development and the infusion of
relevant interdisciplinary content.
ABSTRACT. Many academics find it
difficult to keep up with the rapid pace
of change in e-business, let alone to
introduce new course materials that
adequately explore these business and
technology challenges. This article
discusses two types of “fast-cycle”
cumculum development processesresearch-driven and stakeholder-driven initiatives-that have led to new
course modules, elective courses, and
graduate programs on e-business at
Bentley College during its transformation into the “B-School for the Information Age.” Suggestions are offered
for faculty, together with organizational mechanisms that can facilitate fastcycle curriculum development processes on emerging e-business issue.
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Background: Bentley College
Bentley College, a private school
located outside of Boston, Massachusetts, has a full-time faculty of 360 and
serves a student population of approximately 4,300 undergraduates, 1,400
graduate students (in MBA and several
master of science degree programs), and
2,300 professional and executive education students. Bentley currently does not
offer a doctoral program. Through most
of its history, Bentley has had a strong
regional reputation for its undergraduate
accounting and finance programs.
Teaching typically has been emphasized
over research; most tenured faculty
teach six courses per year (three courses
per semester). Most class sizes are
capped at 35 students, and faculty members are expected to make themselves
available to students outside of class for
tutoring and guidance, during both conventional office hours and “virtual offce
hours” through e-mail. A recent push to
increase faculty research and publication
productivity led to a policy begun in academic year 1998-1999 and giving most
untenured, tenure-track faculty fivecourse loads (a one-course reduction).
Many faculty members also are awarded
modest summer research support or
course-development stipends (approximately $5,000) based on competitive
proposals. Some faculty members are
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Our institution, Bentley College, has
experimented successfully with two
“fast-cycle’’ strategies for overcoming
these impediments. In this article, we
illustrate the two approaches, labeled
“research-driven” and “stakeholder-driven,” by describing several curriculum
development examples. In this article,
we discuss the successes achieved thus
far, the remaining challenges, and
lessons learned. We believe that the two
strategies are complementary, together
providing the long-term focus and broad
market view that business and academia
need to succeed (Slater & Narver,
1998). We conclude with suggestions to
help other business schools incorporate
these two strategies.
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TABLE 1. Examples of Research-DrivenFast-Cycle Curriculum
Development at Bentley College
Research-driven
fast-cycle
development
Research
description
Participants
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Studied how startups and established companies
adjusted their
strategies to capitalize on the rise
of the Web as a
medium for B2B
and B2C commerce.
1 core accounting
faculty member,
several coauthors
and instructors of
common courses
Managing Year
2000 Compliance
Projects
Studied technical,
organizational,and
project-management issues in year
2000 compliance
projects.
1 core accounting
faculty member,
several coauthors
Cyberlaw
Studied the evolu1 core faculty
tion of U.S. laws
member, several coand legal interpreta- authors from law,
tax, and CIS
tions to address
emerging Internet
commerce issues.
Electronic Commerce Emerges on
the Web
assigned graduate student assistants,
who work 6 to 15 hours per week. Graduate assistants are drawn from the master’s degree program population whose
GMAT scores and undergraduate grades
are in the top 20%.
The College has long promoted the
use of information technology throughout the curriculum. Beginning in 1985,
Bentley was one of the first colleges to
require that all undergraduate students
obtain a laptop computer. In 1997 a new
college president was appointed who
had a longstanding interest (and
research credentials) in the impact of
technology on corporate strategy. His
first significant move was to convince
the board of trustees that Bentley needed to adopt a new strategy. As reported
in a story about him in Fortune (Whitford, 1999 [reprint]), the president
“emerged from his first trustees’ meeting with backers lined up for (construc-
lum development initiative, in which
best-practice companies were called on
to help plan or validate ambitious new
curricular offerings. In both the researchdriven and stakeholder-driven approaches, new materials were rapidly incorporated into courses that address electronic
commerce, enterprise resource planning
(ERP), knowledge management, and
other timely topics.
Status
Several cases and
papers published,
used in IS and strategy courses, starting in 1995. Elective graduate
course, Electronic
Commerce on the
World Wide Web,
first offered in
1996.
Several cases and
papers published,
used in IS and
accounting courses.
Graduate elective
course, Y2K Project
Management,
offered in 1998 and
1999.
Research-DrivenCurriculum
Development
Field research on leading-edge topics
such as electronic commerce can benefit an institution through the rapid introduction of new teaching cases and exercises into the curriculum. In Table 1, we
summarize three “bottom-up,” researchdriven curriculum development efforts
(E-Commerce Emerges on the Web,
Managing Year 2000 Projects, and
Cyberlaw) that resulted from the initiative of one or more faculty members’
pursuing their own research agendas.
All three programs of research were
launched before our new president’s
arrival and the announcement of the
strategic repositioning.
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Book published,
used in pioneer
undergraduate elective course, Cyberlaw, in 1998; graduate course first
offered in 2000.
tion of) the ... Smith Academic Technology Center, plus a commitment to
fund three new professorships” at the
intersection of IT and business. These
steps marked the launch of an ambitious
initiative to reposition Bentley College
as the “Business School for the Information Age.” A critical element of that
repositioning was that new content,
courses, and degree programs needed to
be rapidly developed. In this article, we
discuss some of the fast-cycle curriculum development initiatives that took
place.
We begin with a description of “bottom-up,” research-driven curriculum
development that laid the groundwork
for a more comprehensive e-business
program. New course materials were
generated and introduced into the curriculum within the first 6 months of an
ongoing research effort. Then, we
describe the stakeholder-driven curricu-
Electronic Commerce Emerges on the
World Wide Web
The first program, Electronic Commerce Emerges on the Web, provided a
partial foundation for the subsequent
stakeholder-driven development of our
MBA concentration in e-business. In
mid- 1994, the World Wide Web was just
emerging as a powerful new medium for
electronic commerce. Several faculty
members independently began to
explore the impact of the Web in their
various disciplines, including law, marketing, CIS, and accounting. One faculty member conducted case studies on
dot-corn start-ups, motivated by two
complementary factors: the opportunity
to examine the diffusion and adoption
of Web-based capabilities and the need
for course materials that would introduce students to the challenge of doing
business on the Web. This field
research, done in collaboration with a
coauthor from another Boston-area
school, used a “grounded-theory”
approach (Straws & Corbin, 1998), in
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which an initial exploratory case study
is conducted (emphasizing theory discovery) and followed by additional
cases selected to enable deeper exploration of specialized topics (emphasizing theory refinement). An initial openended exploratory study was conducted
in 1994 at one start-up, Open Market.
One- to 2-hour semistructured interviews were conducted with 7 of the
firm’s 12 employees, including the 2
founders. Archival materials (business
plan, requests for funding, etc.), combined with recorded and transcribed
interviews, yielded extensive qualitative
data regarding challenges in formulating strategy and designing appropriate
organizational structures, control mechanisms, and human resources practices
to cope with industry turbulence in the
highly volatile emerging e-commerce
services industry. A teaching case, the
first product of this study (Gogan &
Applegate, 1995), was taught in an
MBA elective course in February 1995
and in several executive programs that
spring and summer.
As the program of research continued, the next few case studies compared
approaches to e-business issues at dotcom start-ups and traditional firms.
Again, the research and curriculum
development aims were complementary:
Web, into the MBA curriculum. This
course was based primarily on the fmdings of the previous studies and also
included materials that were by then
available thanks to course development
efforts at other schools.’ The course
addressed the intersection of strategic,
technical, and organizational challenges
in capitalizing on the power of the Internet for electronic commerce.
The case studies and publications in
the first two phases of this research had
examined companies’ business-to-business and consumer e-commerce efforts
along multiple dimensions (strategy,
technology, human resources, structure), leading first to the development of
an e-commerce module in an existing
course and subsequently the development of the interdisciplinary elective
course. Beginning in late 1996, another
series of case studies, conducted with
new coauthors, probed further into specific e-commerce technologies, applications, and issues, reflecting emerging
concerns as managers gained experience with Web-based business processes. The next two teaching cases, produced in 1997 and 1998, focused on
more specialized issues: the development and diffusion of new payment
mechanisms (Gelinas & Gogan, 1997)
and telemedicine applications (Gogan
& Guinan, 1998, 1999). These cases
were subsequently used in the Accounting Information Systems and IT in the
Business Environment courses, respectively.
This program of field-based research
on electronic commerce, conducted
from 1995 through 1998, illustrates the
personal and institutional benefits of
research-driven curriculum development. The faculty member was able to
achieve an efficient alignment of
research and curricular activities. Partnerships with fellow researchers in
other disciplines led to the development
of interdisciplinary course materials.
Publication productivity was not sacrificed; qualitative analysis of the entire
data set (transcribed interviews and
archival materials) led to additional
research publications (Applegate &
Gogan, 1995; 1996; Fedorowicz &
Gogan, 1997; Gogan, 1996; 1996/1997;
1997), some of which were assigned as
readings in graduate courses. Thus, in
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this program of research the faculty
member made significant progress on
both curriculum development and publication activities.
Stakeholder-Driven Curriculum
Process
A stakeholder-driven curriculum
development effort, consistent with the
market-oriented perspective for business school strategy-setting espoused by
Bailey and Dangerfield (2000), starts
with an analysis of stakeholder needs
and preferences. Business school stakeholders include students, alumni, current and potential employers, and benefactors. As described above, our new
president’s first step was to analyze
Bentley’s competitive position and core
competencies, leading to the strategic
repositioning (captured in the phrase
“B-School for the Information Age”).
The identification of stakeholders’
needs at the intersection of IT and business was recognized as a crucial ongoing activity that would help the school
prioritize programs and resource
requirements. Since 1998 all new initiatives at Bentley-including new facilities, research programs, and curricular
change-have been evaluated in light of
the strategic focus. In line with this
sharper focus, curriculum review
processes have been streamlined, leading to the approval of new programs in
a matter of months rather than years.
Recent stakeholder-driven curriculum development processes occurred in
two waves at our institution. In the first
wave, a set of initiatives enhanced faculty members’ awareness by having key
stakeholders provide knowledge about
best practices in several IT-intensive
business activities. In the second wave,
the stakeholders helped to define and
inform the development of several new
graduate programs.
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To compare start-ups and traditional
firms, to reveal varied responses to
technical and competitive turbulence.
To produce teaching cases that
expose students to varied electronic
commerce settings, tools, practices,
and issues.
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Through fall 1995, interviews were
conducted with 43 managers and professionals working on electronic commerce initiatives in seven companies.
Two more teaching cases were produced (Gogan & Applegate, 1996,
1997) and taught in MBA IS and strategy classes.
In fall 1995, an electronic commerce
module, based primarily on the research
described above, was introduced into a
graduate Accounting Information Systems course. In spring 1996, the lead
researcher introduced a new interdisciplinary graduate elective course, Electronic Commerce on the World Wide
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First Wave of Stakeholder-Driven
Curriculum Development
Our new president’s initial extensive
review of the institution revealed that
some faculty members were already
doing tightly coupled research and curriculum development in topical areas
that aligned well with the B-School for
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TABLE 2. Stakeholder-Driven Curriculum Development, Wave I:
Fact-Finding Initiatives
Stakeholder-driven
fact-finding
initiatives
Strategy and New
Product Development in the Internet
Economy
Description
Membership
Status
Assessed new
product development issues for
dot-com and
bricks-and-mortar
industries.
Interdisciplinary
group appointed by
college president;
10 core members
Initial study group
examined high-tech
product development theories and
best practices, then
sponsored an industry guest-speaker
series open to all
faculty. Members
prepared several
research cases and
papers. Led to new
graduate course, EBusiness Strategy,
and to new MBA
E-Business Concentration.
Business Processes
and Enterprise Systems
Interdisciplinary
research, faculty
development, and
curriculum design
re ERP systems,
business process
redesign, and management control
Interdisciplinary
group; membership
invited by graduate
dean: 8 core members.
Faculty received
extensive training
in SAP; several
studies spawned.
Led to two new
graduate courses,
Business Processes
and IT for Competitive Advantage.
Led to the “cleansheet” design of a
new full-time Information Age MBA
program, which
was launched in fall
1998.
Knowledge Management
Interdisciplinary
research, faculty
development, and
curriculum design
re: human resource
and IT issues in
knowledge management.
Interdisciplinary
group; membership
invited by graduate
dean; 8 core members.
Ongoing. Several
studies spawned.
Led to graduate
Knowledge Management course.
the Information-Age strategy. The program of interdisciplinary research on ecommerce on the Web represented one
such cluster of research and curricular
work. Another was the interdisciplinary
research on emerging legal issues,
which was conducted by several faculty
members and which ultimately led to
the writing of a landmark textbook on
cyberlaw (Ferrera, Lichtenstein, Reder,
offerings. To inculcate a stronger focus
on timely and relevant interdisciplinary
research and curriculum development at
the intersection of IT and business disciplines, we took three steps:
1. In new faculty recruiting, priority
was given to candidates demonstrating
strength at the intersection of IT and
business processes, especially electronic commerce.
2. Funding was obtained for four
interdisciplinary chaired professors,
hired in 1999 and 2000, who helped to
lead some research and curriculum
development activities.
3. Several fact-finding initiatives
were launched, in which appropriate
stakeholders would help existing faculty
to identify fruitful avenues for research
and curriculum development.
Three stakeholder-driven “best-practices” initiatives in this wave of cumcular activities are summarized in Table 2.
Two of them-Business
Processes/
Enterprise Systems and Knowledge
Management-were launched at the
behest of the graduate dean. Strategy and
New Product Development in the Internet Economy was initiated by the president, who was himself an active participant in the work of this group. By
gathering together individuals from different departments and representing different research and teaching profiles, the
dean and president encouraged collaboration across disciplines on several timely topics. In each fact-finding initiative,
the aim was to quickly learn from alumni and current and potential employers
about best practices in these key activities and their implications for our graduate MBA and MS programs curricula.
Each initiative was expected to provide a
foundation for developing new teaching
materials, new courses, and new graduate and executive programs. Membership
was voluntary; there was no compensation for participation. We next briefly
describe the Strategy and New Product
Development in the Internet Economy
initiative, which ultimately provided a
foundation for our new MBA Concentration in E-Business.
The president’s interaction with
benefactors, recruiters, alumni, and
other institutional stakeholders prompted him to assemble this group and to
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August, & Schiano, 2001) and to the
undergraduate and graduate Cyberlaw
courses. Most of the other faculty members were engaged in traditional specialized research that had little direct
impact on the curriculum.* Yet, key
stakeholders (including influential
benefactors) expressed an interest in
seeing a tighter coupling between leading-edge research and Bentley’s course
JulylAugust 2001
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TABLE 3. E-Business Concentration
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REQUIRED COURSE: After they complete their core MBA courses, e-business concentrators take either Electronic Commerce in the Global Economy (ofered by the
CIS department) or E-Business Strategy (offered by the management department), and
9 credit-hoursfrom the following electives:
Area
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Elective course title
Accounting
Business communication
Business Process and Systems Assessment
Assurance, Attestation and Auditing
Frameworks
Electronic Commerce Assurance Services
Managing Corporate Communication on the
Computer information systems
Computer information systems
Management
Human factors in information design
Human factors in information design
Law
Marketing
Communication Networks I
Electronic Commerce in the Global Economy”
E-Business Strategy”
Introduction to Human Factors
Testing and Assessment Programs
Cyberlaw
Marketing and Information Technology
Accounting
Accounting
www
“Elective if not taken as the required course.
become an active participant in its
work. This Strategy and New Product
Development in the Internet Economy
group met approximately once a month
during the 1998-1999 academic year.
The group’s purpose was to explore
product development issues from multiple perspectives. Its membership
included junior and senior faculty from
the accountancy, CIS, finance, marketing, and management departments. Initially, the group’s work was similar to
that of a doctoral seminar; they read a
series of papers together, brainstormed
research ideas, and discussed implications for the graduate curriculum. After
seven such meetings, the group decided
to initiate a guest-speaker series. Wellplaced practitioners at companies that
were viewed as key stakeholders
(because they were market leaders,
were firms that recruit Bentley graduates, or both) were invited to visit campus and informally discuss the challenges they faced in designing
Internet-based products or services.
This popular luncheon series, which
was opened up to the larger faculty
community, helped bring faculty members up to date on rapidly evolving
stakeholder issues and practices. Several
new
research-and-curriculum
streams were initiated by faculty mem322
noted seminar series, as well as
recruiters who visited the school, had
clearly indicated that graduates with ecommerce knowledge would be highly
valued in the marketplace and that academic institutions were being unresponsive to this need. The graduate dean
asked the proposing faculty member to
perform an analysis of stakeholder
needs and preferences, e-commerce
programs offered by local and national
competitors, and resource requirements.
Working with the graduate dean and
CIS department chair, the professor
conducted this analysis and prepared a
proposal in 1 month. Several stakeholders, including recruiters and alumni,
were consulted about the viability of an
interdisciplinary e-business concentration. At this stage, their views were
explored in informal interviews and
phone conversations. Their unanimous
enthusiasm provided leverage for the
proposal’s approval by our Graduate
Council in spring 1999; its first students
were accepted in fall 1999. The proposal for the new concentration (and graduate certificate) explained,
bers as a direct outgrowth of the seminar. For example, one member of this
fact-finding group, an assistant professor in the management department,
subsequently developed a popular new
course, E-Business Strategy. Another
effort, a follow-up study at Open Market, Inc., and led by Gogan (the lead
researcher on the first two case studies
at this organization, op cit.), included
on the team an accountancy professor
who had previously neither conducted
case-based research nor studied topics
related to e-commerce. The resulting
teaching case (Gogan, Cash, Subramani, & Haselkorn, 2000) subsequently
was taught in two graduate courses.
Several other research and curriculum
projects arose out of this best-practices
initiative, including a new MBA EBusiness Concentration.
The primary target audience for these
offerings is individuals with some functional expertise, and an established career
track. Part-time MBA students with work
experience in engineering, computer
information systems, accounting, marketing, finance, and management, for
instance, will benefit from understanding
the impacts of e-commerce and e-business on their organizations. They need to
rethink the frameworks in which business
decisions are made. These issues and
challenges were not part of their graduate
or undergraduate experience. These individuals will, however, be competing with
young, technology-savvy business professionals as they seek to advance in their
organizations.
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Second Wave of Stakeholder-Driven
Curriculum Development
In spring 1999, the stakeholder perspective was a key motivation behind
one faculty member’s suggestion that
the graduate school create an MBA EBusiness Concentration to capitalize on
the various e-business-related courses
already being offered by several departments. Guest speakers in the above-
The designers used a broad definition
of e-business, as articulated by consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers:
An e-business is an enterprise designed
for success in the Information Economy.
E-business brings into play an organization’s resources and partners in new and
innovative ways to create clear strategic
advantage. The potential of e-business
goes far beyond new technologies-to
impact and engage all aspects of a business-strategy, process, organization and
systems.. .. Beyond marketing aspects of
a fm, e-business involves “optimizing
business processes, enhancing human
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capital, harnessing technology, and managing risk and compliance.” (Pricewaterhousecoopers, 1999)
The interdisciplinary E-Business
Concentration was designed for those of
our graduate students who already had
deep experience in a single functional
area. The competitive analysis had
revealed that, of the few schools at that
time that offered an MBA e-commerce
concentration, most had a marketing
focus. By then, Bentley already offered
an MS in Information Age marketing
and several departments other than marketing already offered courses addressing e-business topics. The E-Business
Concentration capitalized on these
efforts; the structure of the concentration is shown in Table 3.
Of the courses listed in Table 3, only
one, E-Business Strategy, needed to be
developed; the others were already in
place as MBA or MS program electives.
Nevertheless, it was recognized that
other courses would soon have to be
developed to enhance this concentration. So, in fall 1999 the E-Business
“Platform” Committee3 was formed at
the request of the graduate dean and
chaired by the e-business programs
coordinator. The purpose of this committee was to conduct a new competitive analysis of the e-business concentration in comparison with other
schools’ offerings (which were rapidly
emerging), and to conduct a new stakeholder analysis leading to recommendations for addressing specific topics in
the new concentration as well as the
core MBA curriculum and executive
education offerings. This group conducted its competitive and stakeholder
analyses as of spring 2000. The competitive analysis focused on 26 schools
identified by the AACSB as offering an
MBA concentration in e-commerce or a
related field, as well as on curricula
posted on the IS World Electronic Commerce Course Syllabi page (IS World,
2000). The competitive analysis identified e-business course categories
offered at other schols (see Table 4).
The stakeholder analysis included informal interviews with students, alumni,
and recruiters.
Following its competitive analysis,
the committee concluded that Bentley ’s
TABLE 4. E-Business Course Categories Offered at Other Schools
No. of
courses
96
72
66
67
68
69
70
6
E-business course area or domain
Computer science (networking and telecom., Web site design, systems,
data mining/warehousing)
E-commerce overview (introduction/principles/special
topics/security/risks)
Marketing on the Internet
Management of online business (strategy, operations-e.g., supply
chainflogistics)
Cyber-law and cyberethics
Internship/capstone course/practicum
Online finance (investments and trading)
Economics of the Internet
E-entrepreneurship
Accounting information systems/consultancy
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5
6
e-business curriculum offers a unique
set of courses in accounting information
systems, cyberlaw, and human factors
that is not replicated at any other school.
The stakeholder analysis revealed an
emerging demand for other courses
(some of which were already offered by
competitor^).^ The committee recommended that the graduate dean and
department chairs encourage faculty
members to propose new courses in
areas such as data warehousing and data
mining, Java programming, global standards-setting processes, and management of emerging e-commerce technologies. The committee concluded that
the rapid growth of competitors’ offerings would drive the School to further
differentiate its curriculum and that
stakeholders would need to be consulted
frequently to ensure the program’s
ongoing success.
As stakeholders needs evolve, so
must our e-business offerings. With the
stock market correction in 2000 and
2001, the dot-com boom is giving way
to industry consolidation. Fortunately
our institution defined e-business far
more broadly than B2C e-commerce, so
student demand for our e-business
courses continues to be strong. Our
most recent stakeholder analysis suggests that a deep understanding of ebusiness issues and techniques is necessary for all MBA students. Hence,
beginning in AY2000-2001, the
required core MBA courses are being
redesigned to more heavily emphasize
the e-business topics and skills that are
currently being taught in elective courses. Once the core MBA courses have
been revamped to reflect e-business best
practices and challenges, we anticipate
that there will no longer be a need for an
e-business concentration. It will remain
on the books only until about 2003,
when the terms “e-business” and “business” will become synonymous, again
reflecting stakeholder feedback.
The E-Business Concentration is one
of several Information Age programs
that were introduced between 1997 and
2000. These are summarized in Table 5 ;
space does not permit a detailed
description of each initiative. Each new
program was designed by an interdisciplinary faculty team, informed by stakeholder analysis.
Several related initiatives merit mention. The undergraduate core curriculum
was also revised extensively, to reflect
the same technical and business changes
that drove changes to the graduate curriculum. Several new undergraduate
courses on e-business topics have been
introduced, and a stakeholder assessment
is underway to determine course-development priorities in both the core and
elective undergraduate curricula. Significant investments also have been made in
several specialty IT labs (including the
Trading Room, the Marketing Technologies Showcase, and the Human Factors
Usability Lab), which provide a unique
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TABLE 5. Second Wave of Stakeholder-Driven Curriculum Development
at Bentley: New Programs
Stakeholder-driven
platform
Description
Membership
Status
MS in Accounting
Information Systems and BS in
Accounting Information Systems
Platform of graduate and undergraduate programs
designed with
input from industry. Faculty
research feeds
content of many
new courses in
platform.
Several accounting
faculty members in
cooperation with
CIS faculty.
Both programs
have been offered
and have produced
graduates. Ongoing reviews and
updates. Ongoing
research efforts.
Information Age
MBA
Full-time integrated
MBA curriculum
based on business
processes rather
than functional
areas. Heavy
reliance on advisory board for design
of and participation
in courses.
Program teaching
faculty who meet
regularly to design
and coordinate
course content and
student relationships.
First student cohort
arrived fall 1999.
In AY2000-2001,
second year courses
being offered for
the first time.
Ongoing meetings.
MS in Human Factors in Information
Design
Graduate and executive programs
studying software
design and usability. Heavy industry
influence.
Business communications faculty
working with CIS
faculty.
Successful executive program. Graduate courses
offered. Ongoing
research and consulting.
MS in Information
Age Marketing
Focus on Webbased and database
marketing initiatives. Strong industry links.
Marketing faculty
working with CIS
faculty.
Second year of
graduate program.
Executive program
underway. Extensive research at
intersection of marketing and IT.
Parallel graduate
curricular efforts
and faculty development to energize
a research program
across disciplinary
lines. Synergies
with other IT-based
programs.
Wide-ranging
interdisciplinary
faculty committee,
chaired by e-business programs
director.
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MBA E-Business
Concentration and
Graduate Certificate
Program
infrastructure to support undergraduate
and graduate programs.
Discussion
Independent rankings (by U.S. News
and World Report, Computerworld, and
other sources) provide early evidence
324
Though the rise in rankings is encouraging, challenges have arisen also. Several nonstrategic programs were eliminated because they did not align well
with the repositioned strategy; not surprisingly, some members of the faculty
did not endorse these steps immediately.
And many members of the faculty feel
that they are under more pressure than
ever. The rapid introduction of three
new master’s of science programs
together with the Information Age MBA
and the MBA E-Business Concentration
represents an unprecedented pace of
curricular change in our institution.s
Not every program is as yet financially
self-sufficient, and much work still
needs to be done to develop new courses and keep them up to date.
Our experiences lead us to suggest
that when research and curriculum
development on emerging topics are
tightly linked, significant efficiencies
can be achieved, allowing the faculty
member to strike a happier balance
between teaching and research responsibilities. A classic dilemma in higher
education is that of motivating faculty to
put time into rejuvenating the curriculum while they continue to conduct
high-quality research. The expectation
that a faculty member can participate
actively in radical curriculum reform
(required for the rapid evolution of ebusiness) while pursuing traditional
research is widely seen as a recipe for
faculty burnout. We believe that an
answer to this dilemma is found in conducting field case studies on emerging
e-business topics. Well-designed case
study research, using the grounded-theory methodology, can yield both teaching cases and credible refereed publications (based on rigorous qualitative
within-case or cross-case analysis).
We are pleased to report that an
increasing number of faculty members
at our institution are now conducting
research on emerging topics related to ecommerce, but not all of those efforts are
as tightly linked with curriculum development as the research-driven example
described in this article. Further, some
members of our faculty have neither successfully incorporated research into their
activities nor updated their courses to
reflect current best practices. We hope
that this will be a temporary challenge in
Journal of Education for Business
Curricular recommendations and
plans completed,
first students admitted fall 1999. Executive programs
begun. Ongoing
research focuses
around an edited
volume on e-business perspectives
and launch of a dotcom incubator.
that our efforts have begun to bear fruit.
In September 1999, Computerworld
placed Bentley’s new Information Age
MBA program in the nation’s “Top 25
Techno-MBA Programs.” In April 2000,
U.S. News and World Report ranked
Bentley in the list of top electronic commerce programs.
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activities, other than summer support
provided through the usual channels.
The chaired professors did receive
reduced course loads, which freed up
their time to participate actively in
many of these activities; however, they
were only 4 professors in a full-time
faculty of 360.
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TABLE 6. QUICK: What Did We Learn About the Two Types of FastCycles?
QUICK checklist
Question: What’s happening? Are new skills needed?
Use flexible, field-based research and appropriate advisors.
Identify key trends, best practices, and pitfalls.
Collaborate with those who bring complementary skills and resources.
Know thyself Be true to your core competencies and strategic vision.
our ongoing transformation from a traditional “teaching school” to an institution
dedicated to bringing best practices in
the field rapidly into our Information
Age curricula.
Our experiences suggest that
research-driven and stakeholder-driven
curriculum development are complementary activities and that neither alone
is sufficient. Stakeholder-driven curricular initiatives help establish a mandate
for change, help us raise the necessary
financial resources to make changes,
help ensure that good jobs will be available to our graduates, and give us a
mechanism for building a long-term
relationship with our alumni. However,
when faculty members do not conduct
well-designed research on the topics
that our stakeholders point to, they are
less able to design meaningful classroom experiences for their students.
Research-driven curricular change helps
to ensure that our students are exposed
to a broader range of best practices,
leading-edge techniques, and deeper
consideration of emerging business and
technical challenges.
Our institution is business focused.
Although we are a large business
school, we are a small academic institution. Our faculty members do not have
to compete with schools of engineering,
medicine, liberals arts, and law for
scarce resources. Thus, some university-based business schools may experience an additional set of challenges
when they attempt to rapidly introduce
new courses and programs into their
curriculum.
Another element that may have influenced our ability to blend the stakeholder-driven and research-driven activities
successfully is our geographic location.
The greater Boston area has more academic institutions than any other city in the
QUICK: What Did We Learn?
world, so our faculty have many opportunities to do research with colleagues at
other schools (indeed, the reference list
includes cases and articles that Bentley
faculty coauthored with professors from
Babson College, Boston University, and
Harvard). Furthermore, because our
institution is within a few hours’ drive of
an impressive array of dot-com and traditional companies along the Northeast
Corridor, the costs of conducting fieldbased case research and of tapping stakeholder views and resources are not prohibitively high.
Finally, it is important to acknowledge that these research-driven and
stakeholder-driven curriculum development initiatives took place in the context of an organization that was in the
midst of a dramatic strategic repositioning, led by a president who was able to
clearly articulate the new strategy and
build broad-based support for it. He
ensured that critical resource allocation
processes were streamlined and aligned
with the new strategy. He was able to
obtain significant financial support
from key external stakeholders, leading
to the funding of four new chaired professorships; several state-of-the art specialized IT laboratories (such as the
Trading Room and the Center for Marketing Technologies); and a new Academic Technology Center, which houses
some of our faculty and many high-tech
classrooms. Though the money he
raised certainly helped to maintain the
faculty’s focus and enthusiasm, we
believe that the president’s ability to
elicit a high level of commitment from
the faculty and key stakeholders was a
far more important element in our rapid
curricular change. Recall that the faculty groups listed in Tables 1,2, and 5 did
not receive extra compensation for their
research-driven and stakeholder-driven
The research-driven and stakeholderdriven curriculum development processes shared several common elements,
which are summarized in the acronym
QUICK (see Table 6).
Question: What’s happening? Are new
skills needed? Both the research-driven
and stakeholder-driven initiatives arose
as a result of questions asked by one or
more members of our faculty and
administration and aimed at understanding the implications of the Internet
economy on business strategy and practice. As participants in this process, we
observed that both research and curriculum development efforts necessarily
involved continuously asking probing
questions, because the pace of technical
and business change has been unrelenting. To cope with this pace of change, it
is necessary to frequently re-examine
the assumptions underlying curricular
offerings. For example, our E-Business
Concentration was launched in fall
1999, yet 1 year later, we were already
planning for its dissolution.
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Useflexible,field-based research strategies. The grounded-theory, case-study
approach works well as a means of
quickly generating new teaching materials and subsequently authoring credible
refereed publications. Note that this
research approach depends heavily on
the generosity of the business leaders
who permit academics to write cases
about their organizations-including
cases in which management made mistakes or faced seemingly irresolvable
dilemmas. Furthermore, it may require
the researcher to undergo new training
in case research design, semistructured
interview techniques, and qualitative
analysis.
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Identifjl key trends, best practices, and
pitfalls. Management education needs to
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reflect current best practices in business
strategy, structure, and operations. This
requires the ability to learn from successful and unsuccessful initiatives. A way to
achieve this understanding (in addition to
the use of a case-study research strategy)
is to use a stakeholder-driven approach,
tapping into the expertise and insights of
alumni, recruiters, and benefactors. The
business professionals who serve on our
formal graduate school advisory board,
as well as the many stakeholders who are
available to us on an informal basis, provide invaluable guidance as we continue
to plan for new and revised program
offerings. These linkages between academics and practitioners are an absolute
necessity in keeping up with today’s
business practices.
evolving technologies and business
practices in order to meet the job market’s demand for new skills. To note just
one of many possible examples, over
the next several years wireless computing technologies will give rise to significant new mobile commerce appiications and challenges, which will create
demand for graduates who can effectively contribute to “m-commerce” initiatives.
The emerging e-business environment is
turbulent, information-intensive, and
complex. Successful firms have found
that old organizational structures and
practices cannot keep up with the pace
of e-business change. Thus, neither can
business schools’ old structures and
practices. To address the evolving needs
of the stakeholders that we serve, 21stcentury business schools also need to
develop a new focus and new organizational mechanisms. Both research-driven and stakeholder-driven curriculum
development initiatives can give rise to
a need for new or redirected resources
and reconsideration of existing policies
and practices. For example, mechanisms for funding faculty development,
research, and curriculum may need to
be revised to reinforce interdisciplinary
work and to reduce artificial barriers
between “research” and “curriculum.”
As has been the case at Bentley College, when an institution’s leader articulates a clear vision and aligns organizational structures and incentives with that
vision, then tightly linked research-driven and stakeholder-driven initiatives
can yield effective and timely curricular
change. To offer content and experiences that will engage students’ interest
and prepare them for today’s turbulent
e-business environment, business
school professors are working harder
than ever on new course development
and traditional research efforts. The
complementary activities of researchdriven and stakeholder-driven may offer
some hope of working smarter and
faster, with relevant results that our students will appreciate.
Rochester, ‘and Texas (Austin); and University
College, Dublin.
2. We do not wish to imply that research is
only valuable if it directly affects the businessschool curriculum; however at this stage of our
school’s strategic repositioning, it was felt that an
efficient linkage between faculty members’
research and curriculum activities would be beneficial both to the institution and to the timepressed faculty members.
3. A Bentley platform committee is charged
with achieving synergy across multiple curricular
programs. For example, the accounting information systmes (AIS) platform simultaneously
addressed undergraduate, MBA, and MS offerings, and the e-business platform simultaneously
addressed MBA, MS, and executive education
offerings.
4. These courses are listed in Appendix A.
5. Nor is this the entire story of curricular
change at our institution. The finance faculty
recently redesigned their graduate programs, leading to new MS in corporate finance and MS in
global financial analysis programs. And the CIS
department is replacing its MS-CIS program with
a new MS-IT program, which will entail the
design of 12 new courses during the 2000-2001
academic year.
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Collaborate with those who bring complementary skills and resources. The ecommerce research stream that was
described above involved one faculty
member who initiated the study and
along the way recruited eight coauthors
representing multiple disciplines
(accounting, MIS, strategy) and institutions (Bentley College, Babson College, Boston University, and Harvard).
The other research-driven initiatives
that are described in Table 1 also
involved a mix of academic disciplines.
Similarly, each of the stakeholder-driven efforts that are summarized in
Tables 2 and 5 used an interdisciplinary
mix of academics, and all made effective use of business advisors.
Know thyseg Be true to both your core
competencies and your strategic vision.
Our president played a pivotal role in
identifying a set of competencies that
were already in place at our institution
and that would serve as a foundation for
further curricular change. Once he
clearly articulated a strategic vision for
the school’s future, many individual faculty members were inspired to upgrade
their skills and knowledge and to focus
on those research and curriculum-development activities that would help us
achieve the vision.
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It is trite, yet truer than ever to say that
business schools need to stay abreast of
326
Applegate, L. M., & Gogan, J. L. (1995).Paving
the information superhighway: Introduction to
the Internet (pp. 195-202). Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Business School.
Applegate, L. M., & Gogan, J. L. (1996).Electronic commerce: Trends and opportunities (pp.
196-206). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business
School.
Bailey, J. J., & Dangerfield, B. (2000).Applying
the distinction between market-oriented and
customer-led strategic perspectives to business
school strategy. Journal of Education f
ISSN: 0883-2323 (Print) 1940-3356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjeb20
Fast-Cycle Curriculum Development Strategies
for E-Business Programs: The Bentley College
Experience
Jane Fedorowicz & Janis L. Gogan
To cite this article: Jane Fedorowicz & Janis L. Gogan (2001) Fast-Cycle Curriculum
Development Strategies for E-Business Programs: The Bentley College Experience, Journal of
Education for Business, 76:6, 318-327, DOI: 10.1080/08832320109599656
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08832320109599656
Published online: 31 Mar 2010.
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Fast-Cycle CurricuIum
Development Strategies for
E-Business Programs:
The Bentley College Experience
JANE FEDOROWICZ
JANIS L. GOGAN
Bentley College
Waltham, Massachusetts
I
n the 1990s, organizations invested
heavily in new information technologies and large-scale IT initiatives
for improved transaction processing,
electronic commerce, process redesign,
and strategic relationships. These
investments were accompanied by significant business and technical challenges that have given rise to a pressing
need for new content in business school
curricula. To prepare their students to
address these challenges, business
schools need to introduce new concepts
and skills into the curriculum rapidly
and on a continuous basis, keeping pace
with business and technical developments. To accomplish this, individual
business school faculty members also
need to upgrade their own IT skills and
their understanding of emerging business models, on a continuous basis.
Meanwhile, faculty members are still
expected to produce high-quality
research publications. Not surprisingly,
some professors feel that accelerated
expectations for curriculum development and professional development
activities conflict with their research
agendas. Many academics cite lack of
time, resource limitations, and other
factors-such as inflexible bureaucratic
processes and poorly aligned reward
structures-as impediments in curriculum development and the infusion of
relevant interdisciplinary content.
ABSTRACT. Many academics find it
difficult to keep up with the rapid pace
of change in e-business, let alone to
introduce new course materials that
adequately explore these business and
technology challenges. This article
discusses two types of “fast-cycle”
cumculum development processesresearch-driven and stakeholder-driven initiatives-that have led to new
course modules, elective courses, and
graduate programs on e-business at
Bentley College during its transformation into the “B-School for the Information Age.” Suggestions are offered
for faculty, together with organizational mechanisms that can facilitate fastcycle curriculum development processes on emerging e-business issue.
z
Background: Bentley College
Bentley College, a private school
located outside of Boston, Massachusetts, has a full-time faculty of 360 and
serves a student population of approximately 4,300 undergraduates, 1,400
graduate students (in MBA and several
master of science degree programs), and
2,300 professional and executive education students. Bentley currently does not
offer a doctoral program. Through most
of its history, Bentley has had a strong
regional reputation for its undergraduate
accounting and finance programs.
Teaching typically has been emphasized
over research; most tenured faculty
teach six courses per year (three courses
per semester). Most class sizes are
capped at 35 students, and faculty members are expected to make themselves
available to students outside of class for
tutoring and guidance, during both conventional office hours and “virtual offce
hours” through e-mail. A recent push to
increase faculty research and publication
productivity led to a policy begun in academic year 1998-1999 and giving most
untenured, tenure-track faculty fivecourse loads (a one-course reduction).
Many faculty members also are awarded
modest summer research support or
course-development stipends (approximately $5,000) based on competitive
proposals. Some faculty members are
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318
Our institution, Bentley College, has
experimented successfully with two
“fast-cycle’’ strategies for overcoming
these impediments. In this article, we
illustrate the two approaches, labeled
“research-driven” and “stakeholder-driven,” by describing several curriculum
development examples. In this article,
we discuss the successes achieved thus
far, the remaining challenges, and
lessons learned. We believe that the two
strategies are complementary, together
providing the long-term focus and broad
market view that business and academia
need to succeed (Slater & Narver,
1998). We conclude with suggestions to
help other business schools incorporate
these two strategies.
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Journal of Education for Business
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TABLE 1. Examples of Research-DrivenFast-Cycle Curriculum
Development at Bentley College
Research-driven
fast-cycle
development
Research
description
Participants
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Studied how startups and established companies
adjusted their
strategies to capitalize on the rise
of the Web as a
medium for B2B
and B2C commerce.
1 core accounting
faculty member,
several coauthors
and instructors of
common courses
Managing Year
2000 Compliance
Projects
Studied technical,
organizational,and
project-management issues in year
2000 compliance
projects.
1 core accounting
faculty member,
several coauthors
Cyberlaw
Studied the evolu1 core faculty
tion of U.S. laws
member, several coand legal interpreta- authors from law,
tax, and CIS
tions to address
emerging Internet
commerce issues.
Electronic Commerce Emerges on
the Web
assigned graduate student assistants,
who work 6 to 15 hours per week. Graduate assistants are drawn from the master’s degree program population whose
GMAT scores and undergraduate grades
are in the top 20%.
The College has long promoted the
use of information technology throughout the curriculum. Beginning in 1985,
Bentley was one of the first colleges to
require that all undergraduate students
obtain a laptop computer. In 1997 a new
college president was appointed who
had a longstanding interest (and
research credentials) in the impact of
technology on corporate strategy. His
first significant move was to convince
the board of trustees that Bentley needed to adopt a new strategy. As reported
in a story about him in Fortune (Whitford, 1999 [reprint]), the president
“emerged from his first trustees’ meeting with backers lined up for (construc-
lum development initiative, in which
best-practice companies were called on
to help plan or validate ambitious new
curricular offerings. In both the researchdriven and stakeholder-driven approaches, new materials were rapidly incorporated into courses that address electronic
commerce, enterprise resource planning
(ERP), knowledge management, and
other timely topics.
Status
Several cases and
papers published,
used in IS and strategy courses, starting in 1995. Elective graduate
course, Electronic
Commerce on the
World Wide Web,
first offered in
1996.
Several cases and
papers published,
used in IS and
accounting courses.
Graduate elective
course, Y2K Project
Management,
offered in 1998 and
1999.
Research-DrivenCurriculum
Development
Field research on leading-edge topics
such as electronic commerce can benefit an institution through the rapid introduction of new teaching cases and exercises into the curriculum. In Table 1, we
summarize three “bottom-up,” researchdriven curriculum development efforts
(E-Commerce Emerges on the Web,
Managing Year 2000 Projects, and
Cyberlaw) that resulted from the initiative of one or more faculty members’
pursuing their own research agendas.
All three programs of research were
launched before our new president’s
arrival and the announcement of the
strategic repositioning.
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Book published,
used in pioneer
undergraduate elective course, Cyberlaw, in 1998; graduate course first
offered in 2000.
tion of) the ... Smith Academic Technology Center, plus a commitment to
fund three new professorships” at the
intersection of IT and business. These
steps marked the launch of an ambitious
initiative to reposition Bentley College
as the “Business School for the Information Age.” A critical element of that
repositioning was that new content,
courses, and degree programs needed to
be rapidly developed. In this article, we
discuss some of the fast-cycle curriculum development initiatives that took
place.
We begin with a description of “bottom-up,” research-driven curriculum
development that laid the groundwork
for a more comprehensive e-business
program. New course materials were
generated and introduced into the curriculum within the first 6 months of an
ongoing research effort. Then, we
describe the stakeholder-driven curricu-
Electronic Commerce Emerges on the
World Wide Web
The first program, Electronic Commerce Emerges on the Web, provided a
partial foundation for the subsequent
stakeholder-driven development of our
MBA concentration in e-business. In
mid- 1994, the World Wide Web was just
emerging as a powerful new medium for
electronic commerce. Several faculty
members independently began to
explore the impact of the Web in their
various disciplines, including law, marketing, CIS, and accounting. One faculty member conducted case studies on
dot-corn start-ups, motivated by two
complementary factors: the opportunity
to examine the diffusion and adoption
of Web-based capabilities and the need
for course materials that would introduce students to the challenge of doing
business on the Web. This field
research, done in collaboration with a
coauthor from another Boston-area
school, used a “grounded-theory”
approach (Straws & Corbin, 1998), in
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which an initial exploratory case study
is conducted (emphasizing theory discovery) and followed by additional
cases selected to enable deeper exploration of specialized topics (emphasizing theory refinement). An initial openended exploratory study was conducted
in 1994 at one start-up, Open Market.
One- to 2-hour semistructured interviews were conducted with 7 of the
firm’s 12 employees, including the 2
founders. Archival materials (business
plan, requests for funding, etc.), combined with recorded and transcribed
interviews, yielded extensive qualitative
data regarding challenges in formulating strategy and designing appropriate
organizational structures, control mechanisms, and human resources practices
to cope with industry turbulence in the
highly volatile emerging e-commerce
services industry. A teaching case, the
first product of this study (Gogan &
Applegate, 1995), was taught in an
MBA elective course in February 1995
and in several executive programs that
spring and summer.
As the program of research continued, the next few case studies compared
approaches to e-business issues at dotcom start-ups and traditional firms.
Again, the research and curriculum
development aims were complementary:
Web, into the MBA curriculum. This
course was based primarily on the fmdings of the previous studies and also
included materials that were by then
available thanks to course development
efforts at other schools.’ The course
addressed the intersection of strategic,
technical, and organizational challenges
in capitalizing on the power of the Internet for electronic commerce.
The case studies and publications in
the first two phases of this research had
examined companies’ business-to-business and consumer e-commerce efforts
along multiple dimensions (strategy,
technology, human resources, structure), leading first to the development of
an e-commerce module in an existing
course and subsequently the development of the interdisciplinary elective
course. Beginning in late 1996, another
series of case studies, conducted with
new coauthors, probed further into specific e-commerce technologies, applications, and issues, reflecting emerging
concerns as managers gained experience with Web-based business processes. The next two teaching cases, produced in 1997 and 1998, focused on
more specialized issues: the development and diffusion of new payment
mechanisms (Gelinas & Gogan, 1997)
and telemedicine applications (Gogan
& Guinan, 1998, 1999). These cases
were subsequently used in the Accounting Information Systems and IT in the
Business Environment courses, respectively.
This program of field-based research
on electronic commerce, conducted
from 1995 through 1998, illustrates the
personal and institutional benefits of
research-driven curriculum development. The faculty member was able to
achieve an efficient alignment of
research and curricular activities. Partnerships with fellow researchers in
other disciplines led to the development
of interdisciplinary course materials.
Publication productivity was not sacrificed; qualitative analysis of the entire
data set (transcribed interviews and
archival materials) led to additional
research publications (Applegate &
Gogan, 1995; 1996; Fedorowicz &
Gogan, 1997; Gogan, 1996; 1996/1997;
1997), some of which were assigned as
readings in graduate courses. Thus, in
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this program of research the faculty
member made significant progress on
both curriculum development and publication activities.
Stakeholder-Driven Curriculum
Process
A stakeholder-driven curriculum
development effort, consistent with the
market-oriented perspective for business school strategy-setting espoused by
Bailey and Dangerfield (2000), starts
with an analysis of stakeholder needs
and preferences. Business school stakeholders include students, alumni, current and potential employers, and benefactors. As described above, our new
president’s first step was to analyze
Bentley’s competitive position and core
competencies, leading to the strategic
repositioning (captured in the phrase
“B-School for the Information Age”).
The identification of stakeholders’
needs at the intersection of IT and business was recognized as a crucial ongoing activity that would help the school
prioritize programs and resource
requirements. Since 1998 all new initiatives at Bentley-including new facilities, research programs, and curricular
change-have been evaluated in light of
the strategic focus. In line with this
sharper focus, curriculum review
processes have been streamlined, leading to the approval of new programs in
a matter of months rather than years.
Recent stakeholder-driven curriculum development processes occurred in
two waves at our institution. In the first
wave, a set of initiatives enhanced faculty members’ awareness by having key
stakeholders provide knowledge about
best practices in several IT-intensive
business activities. In the second wave,
the stakeholders helped to define and
inform the development of several new
graduate programs.
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To compare start-ups and traditional
firms, to reveal varied responses to
technical and competitive turbulence.
To produce teaching cases that
expose students to varied electronic
commerce settings, tools, practices,
and issues.
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Through fall 1995, interviews were
conducted with 43 managers and professionals working on electronic commerce initiatives in seven companies.
Two more teaching cases were produced (Gogan & Applegate, 1996,
1997) and taught in MBA IS and strategy classes.
In fall 1995, an electronic commerce
module, based primarily on the research
described above, was introduced into a
graduate Accounting Information Systems course. In spring 1996, the lead
researcher introduced a new interdisciplinary graduate elective course, Electronic Commerce on the World Wide
320
Journal of Education for Business
First Wave of Stakeholder-Driven
Curriculum Development
Our new president’s initial extensive
review of the institution revealed that
some faculty members were already
doing tightly coupled research and curriculum development in topical areas
that aligned well with the B-School for
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TABLE 2. Stakeholder-Driven Curriculum Development, Wave I:
Fact-Finding Initiatives
Stakeholder-driven
fact-finding
initiatives
Strategy and New
Product Development in the Internet
Economy
Description
Membership
Status
Assessed new
product development issues for
dot-com and
bricks-and-mortar
industries.
Interdisciplinary
group appointed by
college president;
10 core members
Initial study group
examined high-tech
product development theories and
best practices, then
sponsored an industry guest-speaker
series open to all
faculty. Members
prepared several
research cases and
papers. Led to new
graduate course, EBusiness Strategy,
and to new MBA
E-Business Concentration.
Business Processes
and Enterprise Systems
Interdisciplinary
research, faculty
development, and
curriculum design
re ERP systems,
business process
redesign, and management control
Interdisciplinary
group; membership
invited by graduate
dean: 8 core members.
Faculty received
extensive training
in SAP; several
studies spawned.
Led to two new
graduate courses,
Business Processes
and IT for Competitive Advantage.
Led to the “cleansheet” design of a
new full-time Information Age MBA
program, which
was launched in fall
1998.
Knowledge Management
Interdisciplinary
research, faculty
development, and
curriculum design
re: human resource
and IT issues in
knowledge management.
Interdisciplinary
group; membership
invited by graduate
dean; 8 core members.
Ongoing. Several
studies spawned.
Led to graduate
Knowledge Management course.
the Information-Age strategy. The program of interdisciplinary research on ecommerce on the Web represented one
such cluster of research and curricular
work. Another was the interdisciplinary
research on emerging legal issues,
which was conducted by several faculty
members and which ultimately led to
the writing of a landmark textbook on
cyberlaw (Ferrera, Lichtenstein, Reder,
offerings. To inculcate a stronger focus
on timely and relevant interdisciplinary
research and curriculum development at
the intersection of IT and business disciplines, we took three steps:
1. In new faculty recruiting, priority
was given to candidates demonstrating
strength at the intersection of IT and
business processes, especially electronic commerce.
2. Funding was obtained for four
interdisciplinary chaired professors,
hired in 1999 and 2000, who helped to
lead some research and curriculum
development activities.
3. Several fact-finding initiatives
were launched, in which appropriate
stakeholders would help existing faculty
to identify fruitful avenues for research
and curriculum development.
Three stakeholder-driven “best-practices” initiatives in this wave of cumcular activities are summarized in Table 2.
Two of them-Business
Processes/
Enterprise Systems and Knowledge
Management-were launched at the
behest of the graduate dean. Strategy and
New Product Development in the Internet Economy was initiated by the president, who was himself an active participant in the work of this group. By
gathering together individuals from different departments and representing different research and teaching profiles, the
dean and president encouraged collaboration across disciplines on several timely topics. In each fact-finding initiative,
the aim was to quickly learn from alumni and current and potential employers
about best practices in these key activities and their implications for our graduate MBA and MS programs curricula.
Each initiative was expected to provide a
foundation for developing new teaching
materials, new courses, and new graduate and executive programs. Membership
was voluntary; there was no compensation for participation. We next briefly
describe the Strategy and New Product
Development in the Internet Economy
initiative, which ultimately provided a
foundation for our new MBA Concentration in E-Business.
The president’s interaction with
benefactors, recruiters, alumni, and
other institutional stakeholders prompted him to assemble this group and to
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August, & Schiano, 2001) and to the
undergraduate and graduate Cyberlaw
courses. Most of the other faculty members were engaged in traditional specialized research that had little direct
impact on the curriculum.* Yet, key
stakeholders (including influential
benefactors) expressed an interest in
seeing a tighter coupling between leading-edge research and Bentley’s course
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TABLE 3. E-Business Concentration
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REQUIRED COURSE: After they complete their core MBA courses, e-business concentrators take either Electronic Commerce in the Global Economy (ofered by the
CIS department) or E-Business Strategy (offered by the management department), and
9 credit-hoursfrom the following electives:
Area
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Elective course title
Accounting
Business communication
Business Process and Systems Assessment
Assurance, Attestation and Auditing
Frameworks
Electronic Commerce Assurance Services
Managing Corporate Communication on the
Computer information systems
Computer information systems
Management
Human factors in information design
Human factors in information design
Law
Marketing
Communication Networks I
Electronic Commerce in the Global Economy”
E-Business Strategy”
Introduction to Human Factors
Testing and Assessment Programs
Cyberlaw
Marketing and Information Technology
Accounting
Accounting
www
“Elective if not taken as the required course.
become an active participant in its
work. This Strategy and New Product
Development in the Internet Economy
group met approximately once a month
during the 1998-1999 academic year.
The group’s purpose was to explore
product development issues from multiple perspectives. Its membership
included junior and senior faculty from
the accountancy, CIS, finance, marketing, and management departments. Initially, the group’s work was similar to
that of a doctoral seminar; they read a
series of papers together, brainstormed
research ideas, and discussed implications for the graduate curriculum. After
seven such meetings, the group decided
to initiate a guest-speaker series. Wellplaced practitioners at companies that
were viewed as key stakeholders
(because they were market leaders,
were firms that recruit Bentley graduates, or both) were invited to visit campus and informally discuss the challenges they faced in designing
Internet-based products or services.
This popular luncheon series, which
was opened up to the larger faculty
community, helped bring faculty members up to date on rapidly evolving
stakeholder issues and practices. Several
new
research-and-curriculum
streams were initiated by faculty mem322
noted seminar series, as well as
recruiters who visited the school, had
clearly indicated that graduates with ecommerce knowledge would be highly
valued in the marketplace and that academic institutions were being unresponsive to this need. The graduate dean
asked the proposing faculty member to
perform an analysis of stakeholder
needs and preferences, e-commerce
programs offered by local and national
competitors, and resource requirements.
Working with the graduate dean and
CIS department chair, the professor
conducted this analysis and prepared a
proposal in 1 month. Several stakeholders, including recruiters and alumni,
were consulted about the viability of an
interdisciplinary e-business concentration. At this stage, their views were
explored in informal interviews and
phone conversations. Their unanimous
enthusiasm provided leverage for the
proposal’s approval by our Graduate
Council in spring 1999; its first students
were accepted in fall 1999. The proposal for the new concentration (and graduate certificate) explained,
bers as a direct outgrowth of the seminar. For example, one member of this
fact-finding group, an assistant professor in the management department,
subsequently developed a popular new
course, E-Business Strategy. Another
effort, a follow-up study at Open Market, Inc., and led by Gogan (the lead
researcher on the first two case studies
at this organization, op cit.), included
on the team an accountancy professor
who had previously neither conducted
case-based research nor studied topics
related to e-commerce. The resulting
teaching case (Gogan, Cash, Subramani, & Haselkorn, 2000) subsequently
was taught in two graduate courses.
Several other research and curriculum
projects arose out of this best-practices
initiative, including a new MBA EBusiness Concentration.
The primary target audience for these
offerings is individuals with some functional expertise, and an established career
track. Part-time MBA students with work
experience in engineering, computer
information systems, accounting, marketing, finance, and management, for
instance, will benefit from understanding
the impacts of e-commerce and e-business on their organizations. They need to
rethink the frameworks in which business
decisions are made. These issues and
challenges were not part of their graduate
or undergraduate experience. These individuals will, however, be competing with
young, technology-savvy business professionals as they seek to advance in their
organizations.
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Second Wave of Stakeholder-Driven
Curriculum Development
In spring 1999, the stakeholder perspective was a key motivation behind
one faculty member’s suggestion that
the graduate school create an MBA EBusiness Concentration to capitalize on
the various e-business-related courses
already being offered by several departments. Guest speakers in the above-
The designers used a broad definition
of e-business, as articulated by consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers:
An e-business is an enterprise designed
for success in the Information Economy.
E-business brings into play an organization’s resources and partners in new and
innovative ways to create clear strategic
advantage. The potential of e-business
goes far beyond new technologies-to
impact and engage all aspects of a business-strategy, process, organization and
systems.. .. Beyond marketing aspects of
a fm, e-business involves “optimizing
business processes, enhancing human
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capital, harnessing technology, and managing risk and compliance.” (Pricewaterhousecoopers, 1999)
The interdisciplinary E-Business
Concentration was designed for those of
our graduate students who already had
deep experience in a single functional
area. The competitive analysis had
revealed that, of the few schools at that
time that offered an MBA e-commerce
concentration, most had a marketing
focus. By then, Bentley already offered
an MS in Information Age marketing
and several departments other than marketing already offered courses addressing e-business topics. The E-Business
Concentration capitalized on these
efforts; the structure of the concentration is shown in Table 3.
Of the courses listed in Table 3, only
one, E-Business Strategy, needed to be
developed; the others were already in
place as MBA or MS program electives.
Nevertheless, it was recognized that
other courses would soon have to be
developed to enhance this concentration. So, in fall 1999 the E-Business
“Platform” Committee3 was formed at
the request of the graduate dean and
chaired by the e-business programs
coordinator. The purpose of this committee was to conduct a new competitive analysis of the e-business concentration in comparison with other
schools’ offerings (which were rapidly
emerging), and to conduct a new stakeholder analysis leading to recommendations for addressing specific topics in
the new concentration as well as the
core MBA curriculum and executive
education offerings. This group conducted its competitive and stakeholder
analyses as of spring 2000. The competitive analysis focused on 26 schools
identified by the AACSB as offering an
MBA concentration in e-commerce or a
related field, as well as on curricula
posted on the IS World Electronic Commerce Course Syllabi page (IS World,
2000). The competitive analysis identified e-business course categories
offered at other schols (see Table 4).
The stakeholder analysis included informal interviews with students, alumni,
and recruiters.
Following its competitive analysis,
the committee concluded that Bentley ’s
TABLE 4. E-Business Course Categories Offered at Other Schools
No. of
courses
96
72
66
67
68
69
70
6
E-business course area or domain
Computer science (networking and telecom., Web site design, systems,
data mining/warehousing)
E-commerce overview (introduction/principles/special
topics/security/risks)
Marketing on the Internet
Management of online business (strategy, operations-e.g., supply
chainflogistics)
Cyber-law and cyberethics
Internship/capstone course/practicum
Online finance (investments and trading)
Economics of the Internet
E-entrepreneurship
Accounting information systems/consultancy
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5
6
e-business curriculum offers a unique
set of courses in accounting information
systems, cyberlaw, and human factors
that is not replicated at any other school.
The stakeholder analysis revealed an
emerging demand for other courses
(some of which were already offered by
competitor^).^ The committee recommended that the graduate dean and
department chairs encourage faculty
members to propose new courses in
areas such as data warehousing and data
mining, Java programming, global standards-setting processes, and management of emerging e-commerce technologies. The committee concluded that
the rapid growth of competitors’ offerings would drive the School to further
differentiate its curriculum and that
stakeholders would need to be consulted
frequently to ensure the program’s
ongoing success.
As stakeholders needs evolve, so
must our e-business offerings. With the
stock market correction in 2000 and
2001, the dot-com boom is giving way
to industry consolidation. Fortunately
our institution defined e-business far
more broadly than B2C e-commerce, so
student demand for our e-business
courses continues to be strong. Our
most recent stakeholder analysis suggests that a deep understanding of ebusiness issues and techniques is necessary for all MBA students. Hence,
beginning in AY2000-2001, the
required core MBA courses are being
redesigned to more heavily emphasize
the e-business topics and skills that are
currently being taught in elective courses. Once the core MBA courses have
been revamped to reflect e-business best
practices and challenges, we anticipate
that there will no longer be a need for an
e-business concentration. It will remain
on the books only until about 2003,
when the terms “e-business” and “business” will become synonymous, again
reflecting stakeholder feedback.
The E-Business Concentration is one
of several Information Age programs
that were introduced between 1997 and
2000. These are summarized in Table 5 ;
space does not permit a detailed
description of each initiative. Each new
program was designed by an interdisciplinary faculty team, informed by stakeholder analysis.
Several related initiatives merit mention. The undergraduate core curriculum
was also revised extensively, to reflect
the same technical and business changes
that drove changes to the graduate curriculum. Several new undergraduate
courses on e-business topics have been
introduced, and a stakeholder assessment
is underway to determine course-development priorities in both the core and
elective undergraduate curricula. Significant investments also have been made in
several specialty IT labs (including the
Trading Room, the Marketing Technologies Showcase, and the Human Factors
Usability Lab), which provide a unique
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TABLE 5. Second Wave of Stakeholder-Driven Curriculum Development
at Bentley: New Programs
Stakeholder-driven
platform
Description
Membership
Status
MS in Accounting
Information Systems and BS in
Accounting Information Systems
Platform of graduate and undergraduate programs
designed with
input from industry. Faculty
research feeds
content of many
new courses in
platform.
Several accounting
faculty members in
cooperation with
CIS faculty.
Both programs
have been offered
and have produced
graduates. Ongoing reviews and
updates. Ongoing
research efforts.
Information Age
MBA
Full-time integrated
MBA curriculum
based on business
processes rather
than functional
areas. Heavy
reliance on advisory board for design
of and participation
in courses.
Program teaching
faculty who meet
regularly to design
and coordinate
course content and
student relationships.
First student cohort
arrived fall 1999.
In AY2000-2001,
second year courses
being offered for
the first time.
Ongoing meetings.
MS in Human Factors in Information
Design
Graduate and executive programs
studying software
design and usability. Heavy industry
influence.
Business communications faculty
working with CIS
faculty.
Successful executive program. Graduate courses
offered. Ongoing
research and consulting.
MS in Information
Age Marketing
Focus on Webbased and database
marketing initiatives. Strong industry links.
Marketing faculty
working with CIS
faculty.
Second year of
graduate program.
Executive program
underway. Extensive research at
intersection of marketing and IT.
Parallel graduate
curricular efforts
and faculty development to energize
a research program
across disciplinary
lines. Synergies
with other IT-based
programs.
Wide-ranging
interdisciplinary
faculty committee,
chaired by e-business programs
director.
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MBA E-Business
Concentration and
Graduate Certificate
Program
infrastructure to support undergraduate
and graduate programs.
Discussion
Independent rankings (by U.S. News
and World Report, Computerworld, and
other sources) provide early evidence
324
Though the rise in rankings is encouraging, challenges have arisen also. Several nonstrategic programs were eliminated because they did not align well
with the repositioned strategy; not surprisingly, some members of the faculty
did not endorse these steps immediately.
And many members of the faculty feel
that they are under more pressure than
ever. The rapid introduction of three
new master’s of science programs
together with the Information Age MBA
and the MBA E-Business Concentration
represents an unprecedented pace of
curricular change in our institution.s
Not every program is as yet financially
self-sufficient, and much work still
needs to be done to develop new courses and keep them up to date.
Our experiences lead us to suggest
that when research and curriculum
development on emerging topics are
tightly linked, significant efficiencies
can be achieved, allowing the faculty
member to strike a happier balance
between teaching and research responsibilities. A classic dilemma in higher
education is that of motivating faculty to
put time into rejuvenating the curriculum while they continue to conduct
high-quality research. The expectation
that a faculty member can participate
actively in radical curriculum reform
(required for the rapid evolution of ebusiness) while pursuing traditional
research is widely seen as a recipe for
faculty burnout. We believe that an
answer to this dilemma is found in conducting field case studies on emerging
e-business topics. Well-designed case
study research, using the grounded-theory methodology, can yield both teaching cases and credible refereed publications (based on rigorous qualitative
within-case or cross-case analysis).
We are pleased to report that an
increasing number of faculty members
at our institution are now conducting
research on emerging topics related to ecommerce, but not all of those efforts are
as tightly linked with curriculum development as the research-driven example
described in this article. Further, some
members of our faculty have neither successfully incorporated research into their
activities nor updated their courses to
reflect current best practices. We hope
that this will be a temporary challenge in
Journal of Education for Business
Curricular recommendations and
plans completed,
first students admitted fall 1999. Executive programs
begun. Ongoing
research focuses
around an edited
volume on e-business perspectives
and launch of a dotcom incubator.
that our efforts have begun to bear fruit.
In September 1999, Computerworld
placed Bentley’s new Information Age
MBA program in the nation’s “Top 25
Techno-MBA Programs.” In April 2000,
U.S. News and World Report ranked
Bentley in the list of top electronic commerce programs.
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activities, other than summer support
provided through the usual channels.
The chaired professors did receive
reduced course loads, which freed up
their time to participate actively in
many of these activities; however, they
were only 4 professors in a full-time
faculty of 360.
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TABLE 6. QUICK: What Did We Learn About the Two Types of FastCycles?
QUICK checklist
Question: What’s happening? Are new skills needed?
Use flexible, field-based research and appropriate advisors.
Identify key trends, best practices, and pitfalls.
Collaborate with those who bring complementary skills and resources.
Know thyself Be true to your core competencies and strategic vision.
our ongoing transformation from a traditional “teaching school” to an institution
dedicated to bringing best practices in
the field rapidly into our Information
Age curricula.
Our experiences suggest that
research-driven and stakeholder-driven
curriculum development are complementary activities and that neither alone
is sufficient. Stakeholder-driven curricular initiatives help establish a mandate
for change, help us raise the necessary
financial resources to make changes,
help ensure that good jobs will be available to our graduates, and give us a
mechanism for building a long-term
relationship with our alumni. However,
when faculty members do not conduct
well-designed research on the topics
that our stakeholders point to, they are
less able to design meaningful classroom experiences for their students.
Research-driven curricular change helps
to ensure that our students are exposed
to a broader range of best practices,
leading-edge techniques, and deeper
consideration of emerging business and
technical challenges.
Our institution is business focused.
Although we are a large business
school, we are a small academic institution. Our faculty members do not have
to compete with schools of engineering,
medicine, liberals arts, and law for
scarce resources. Thus, some university-based business schools may experience an additional set of challenges
when they attempt to rapidly introduce
new courses and programs into their
curriculum.
Another element that may have influenced our ability to blend the stakeholder-driven and research-driven activities
successfully is our geographic location.
The greater Boston area has more academic institutions than any other city in the
QUICK: What Did We Learn?
world, so our faculty have many opportunities to do research with colleagues at
other schools (indeed, the reference list
includes cases and articles that Bentley
faculty coauthored with professors from
Babson College, Boston University, and
Harvard). Furthermore, because our
institution is within a few hours’ drive of
an impressive array of dot-com and traditional companies along the Northeast
Corridor, the costs of conducting fieldbased case research and of tapping stakeholder views and resources are not prohibitively high.
Finally, it is important to acknowledge that these research-driven and
stakeholder-driven curriculum development initiatives took place in the context of an organization that was in the
midst of a dramatic strategic repositioning, led by a president who was able to
clearly articulate the new strategy and
build broad-based support for it. He
ensured that critical resource allocation
processes were streamlined and aligned
with the new strategy. He was able to
obtain significant financial support
from key external stakeholders, leading
to the funding of four new chaired professorships; several state-of-the art specialized IT laboratories (such as the
Trading Room and the Center for Marketing Technologies); and a new Academic Technology Center, which houses
some of our faculty and many high-tech
classrooms. Though the money he
raised certainly helped to maintain the
faculty’s focus and enthusiasm, we
believe that the president’s ability to
elicit a high level of commitment from
the faculty and key stakeholders was a
far more important element in our rapid
curricular change. Recall that the faculty groups listed in Tables 1,2, and 5 did
not receive extra compensation for their
research-driven and stakeholder-driven
The research-driven and stakeholderdriven curriculum development processes shared several common elements,
which are summarized in the acronym
QUICK (see Table 6).
Question: What’s happening? Are new
skills needed? Both the research-driven
and stakeholder-driven initiatives arose
as a result of questions asked by one or
more members of our faculty and
administration and aimed at understanding the implications of the Internet
economy on business strategy and practice. As participants in this process, we
observed that both research and curriculum development efforts necessarily
involved continuously asking probing
questions, because the pace of technical
and business change has been unrelenting. To cope with this pace of change, it
is necessary to frequently re-examine
the assumptions underlying curricular
offerings. For example, our E-Business
Concentration was launched in fall
1999, yet 1 year later, we were already
planning for its dissolution.
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Useflexible,field-based research strategies. The grounded-theory, case-study
approach works well as a means of
quickly generating new teaching materials and subsequently authoring credible
refereed publications. Note that this
research approach depends heavily on
the generosity of the business leaders
who permit academics to write cases
about their organizations-including
cases in which management made mistakes or faced seemingly irresolvable
dilemmas. Furthermore, it may require
the researcher to undergo new training
in case research design, semistructured
interview techniques, and qualitative
analysis.
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Identifjl key trends, best practices, and
pitfalls. Management education needs to
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reflect current best practices in business
strategy, structure, and operations. This
requires the ability to learn from successful and unsuccessful initiatives. A way to
achieve this understanding (in addition to
the use of a case-study research strategy)
is to use a stakeholder-driven approach,
tapping into the expertise and insights of
alumni, recruiters, and benefactors. The
business professionals who serve on our
formal graduate school advisory board,
as well as the many stakeholders who are
available to us on an informal basis, provide invaluable guidance as we continue
to plan for new and revised program
offerings. These linkages between academics and practitioners are an absolute
necessity in keeping up with today’s
business practices.
evolving technologies and business
practices in order to meet the job market’s demand for new skills. To note just
one of many possible examples, over
the next several years wireless computing technologies will give rise to significant new mobile commerce appiications and challenges, which will create
demand for graduates who can effectively contribute to “m-commerce” initiatives.
The emerging e-business environment is
turbulent, information-intensive, and
complex. Successful firms have found
that old organizational structures and
practices cannot keep up with the pace
of e-business change. Thus, neither can
business schools’ old structures and
practices. To address the evolving needs
of the stakeholders that we serve, 21stcentury business schools also need to
develop a new focus and new organizational mechanisms. Both research-driven and stakeholder-driven curriculum
development initiatives can give rise to
a need for new or redirected resources
and reconsideration of existing policies
and practices. For example, mechanisms for funding faculty development,
research, and curriculum may need to
be revised to reinforce interdisciplinary
work and to reduce artificial barriers
between “research” and “curriculum.”
As has been the case at Bentley College, when an institution’s leader articulates a clear vision and aligns organizational structures and incentives with that
vision, then tightly linked research-driven and stakeholder-driven initiatives
can yield effective and timely curricular
change. To offer content and experiences that will engage students’ interest
and prepare them for today’s turbulent
e-business environment, business
school professors are working harder
than ever on new course development
and traditional research efforts. The
complementary activities of researchdriven and stakeholder-driven may offer
some hope of working smarter and
faster, with relevant results that our students will appreciate.
Rochester, ‘and Texas (Austin); and University
College, Dublin.
2. We do not wish to imply that research is
only valuable if it directly affects the businessschool curriculum; however at this stage of our
school’s strategic repositioning, it was felt that an
efficient linkage between faculty members’
research and curriculum activities would be beneficial both to the institution and to the timepressed faculty members.
3. A Bentley platform committee is charged
with achieving synergy across multiple curricular
programs. For example, the accounting information systmes (AIS) platform simultaneously
addressed undergraduate, MBA, and MS offerings, and the e-business platform simultaneously
addressed MBA, MS, and executive education
offerings.
4. These courses are listed in Appendix A.
5. Nor is this the entire story of curricular
change at our institution. The finance faculty
recently redesigned their graduate programs, leading to new MS in corporate finance and MS in
global financial analysis programs. And the CIS
department is replacing its MS-CIS program with
a new MS-IT program, which will entail the
design of 12 new courses during the 2000-2001
academic year.
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Collaborate with those who bring complementary skills and resources. The ecommerce research stream that was
described above involved one faculty
member who initiated the study and
along the way recruited eight coauthors
representing multiple disciplines
(accounting, MIS, strategy) and institutions (Bentley College, Babson College, Boston University, and Harvard).
The other research-driven initiatives
that are described in Table 1 also
involved a mix of academic disciplines.
Similarly, each of the stakeholder-driven efforts that are summarized in
Tables 2 and 5 used an interdisciplinary
mix of academics, and all made effective use of business advisors.
Know thyseg Be true to both your core
competencies and your strategic vision.
Our president played a pivotal role in
identifying a set of competencies that
were already in place at our institution
and that would serve as a foundation for
further curricular change. Once he
clearly articulated a strategic vision for
the school’s future, many individual faculty members were inspired to upgrade
their skills and knowledge and to focus
on those research and curriculum-development activities that would help us
achieve the vision.
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It is trite, yet truer than ever to say that
business schools need to stay abreast of
326
Applegate, L. M., & Gogan, J. L. (1995).Paving
the information superhighway: Introduction to
the Internet (pp. 195-202). Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Business School.
Applegate, L. M., & Gogan, J. L. (1996).Electronic commerce: Trends and opportunities (pp.
196-206). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business
School.
Bailey, J. J., & Dangerfield, B. (2000).Applying
the distinction between market-oriented and
customer-led strategic perspectives to business
school strategy. Journal of Education f