Business School Undergraduate Information Management Competencies: A Study of Employer Expectations and Associated Curricular Recommendations

By focusing on those companies that currently partner with Northeastern University’s College of Business Administration, this article provides an exploratory empirical study that examines employer expectations of undergraduate business school co-op students and graduates. My particular concern in this research is what IT competencies are valued by employers when evaluating students for initial co-op engagements and subsequent full-time employment assignments. I then consider the bearing of these findings on MIS curricular design and the associated classroom experience. Drawing upon a detailed survey of 111 employers of Northeastern University undergraduate business school students and subsequently on focus groups with representative employers from the study population, I have identified a clear pattern of current and anticipated expectations that suggest the need to rethink the current approach to classroom MIS content and delivery—both within MIS courses and throughout the typical business school curriculum

Enabling Business Processes through Information Management and IT Systems: The FastFit and Winter Gear Distributors Case Studies

The FastFit Case Study and its companion, the Winter Gear Distributors Case Study provide undergraduate business students with a suitable and even familiar business context within which to initially consider the role of information management (IM) and to a lesser extent the role of information technology (IT) systems in enabling a business. FastFit is a small sports retail chain and Winter Gear Distributors is a key FastFit supplier. The day-to-day operations, control and management needs, and business innovation potential of these fictitious companies provide a rich but not overly complex starting point for the student’s consideration of enterprise IM requirements. Furthermore, the information technologies mentioned or implied in these cases fall within the compass of an undergraduate’s own experiences as a consumer and perhaps as an employee. These case studies call upon the student to analyze current operations, to assess the quality of corporate processes and information flows, and even to consider such subjects as the enterprise’s overall IT infrastructure, the uses of/need for business intelligence (i.e. data-driven decision making), customer relationship management, supply chain management, and the Web-enabled disintermediation of more traditional business practices. In use for over four years and in more than one hundred MIS classes, this set of intentionally brief cases is thoroughly field tested. The accompanying teaching note with its pedagogical and class discussion suggestions assists MIS faculty in integrating these two cases into an established curriculum

Frequent CEO Turnover and Firm Performance: The Resilience Effect of Workforce Diversity

© 2020, Springer Nature B.V. CEO turnover (or succession) is a critical event in an organization that influences organizational processes and performance. The objective of this study is to investigate whether workforce diversity (i.e., age, gender, and education-level diversity) might have a resilience effect on firm performance under the frequency of CEO turnover. Based on a sample of 409 Korean firms from 2010 to 2015, our results show that firms with more frequent CEO turnover have a lower firm performance. However, firms with more gender and education-level diversity could buffer the disruptive effect of frequent CEO turnover on firm performance to offer a benefit to the organization. Our theory and findings suggest that effectively managing diverse workforce can be a resilience factor in an uncertain organizational environment because diverse workforce has complementary skills and behaviors that can cope better with uncertainty and signals social inclusion of an organization, thus fostering a long-term exchange relationship. These findings contribute to the literature on CEO turnover (or succession) and diversity

CEO succession and the CEO’s commitment to the status quo

Chief executive officer (CEO) commitment to the status quo (CSQ) is expected to play an important role in any firm’s strategic adaptation. CSQ is used often as an explanation for strategic change occurring after CEO succession: new CEOs are expected to reveal a lower CSQ than established CEOs. Although widely accepted in the literature, this relationship remains imputed but unobserved. We address this research gap and analyze whether new CEOs reveal lower CSQ than established CEOs. By analyzing the letters to the shareholders of German HDAX firms, we find empirical support for our hypothesis of a lower CSQ of newly appointed CEOs compared to established CEOs. However, our detailed analyses provide a differentiated picture. We find support for a lower CSQ of successors after a forced CEO turnover compared to successors after a voluntary turnover, which indicates an influence of the mandate for change on the CEO’s CSQ. However, against the widespread assumption, we do not find support for a lower CSQ of outside successors compared to inside successors, which calls for deeper analyses of the insiderness of new CEOs. Further, our supplementary analyses propose a revised tenure effect: the widely assumed relationship of an increase in CSQ when CEO tenure increases might be driven mainly by the event of CEO succession and may not universally and continuously increase over time, pointing to a “window of opportunity” to initiate strategic change shortly after the succession event. By analyzing the relationship between CEO succession and CEO CSQ, our results contribute to the CSQ literature and provide fruitful impulses for the CEO succession literature

The Library as Information Center: A "Utility" Model for Information Resource Management and Support

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