Many business schools face increased pressure to articulate and perform a distinctive mission. Despite many schools’ historical emphasis on research, a new mission might in addition require increased faculty efforts in teaching (including new technologies), institutional service, and community outreach. We briefly review arguments for faculty performance standards which derive from the school’s mission, and which thus align individual incentives with organizational priorities. The paper then surveys three developmental tasks involved in the creation of standards, and provides selected examples from a school whose mission emphasizes teaching and regional economic development.

The increase in enrollments of students with diverse backgrounds affects a business school’s ability to recruit, admit, and retain students. Such students might have different levels of satisfaction and different perceptions of class and teacher dimensions. These differences might affect their performance and retention. Few studies address the relation of student nationality group to student satisfaction, performance, and/or perceptions of class and teacher dimensions, and the results are mixed. The current study analyzes the relation of student nationality to student satisfaction in introductory accounting courses and to their perceptions of six class and teacher

This study revolved around college students cooperatively working in groups to make large integrated business decisions using Threshold, a simulation software package. We found that group composition characteristics such as year in school and gender did not affect the team’s simulation performance. However, we did find that teams comprised of finance and accounting students and those students who did better on course exams, tended to generate higher levels of simulation performance. These results serve as a warning with respect to group formation, especially with the practice of allowing students to select their own teams.

The free-rider phenomenon is a perennial difficulty for students and faculty where group projects are a factor in the overall course grade. This study uses a game theory argument to examine the shortcomings of "non-zero-sum" peer evaluation schemes for resolving the free-rider problem. The combination of a "pure-zero-sum" grading scheme, together with a formal team charter is presented as an effective approach for managing shirking behavior. Major benefits include the ability to accurately identify free-rider behavior, incentives for working members to reveal the true worker/shirker relationship, and establishment of the expectation that free-riders will be held accountable.

This article presents and empirically examines a model for improving the written communication skills of business graduates. Working with the researchers, a group of business leaders identified attributes they consider essential for effective written communication. Based on these attributes, an intensive, highly structured writing program was developed. Using a pre- and post-test design, researchers measured the writing skills of 34 business students at a small, private, nationally ranked liberal arts college. Students assigned to the experimental group participated in the accelerated program, while students in the control group received no additional writing instruction. Results of this study support the hypothesis that students’ writing skills can be improved significantly by intensive, highly structured writing instruction.

Undergraduate business students were surveyed to study the association between using certain leadership behaviors by post-secondary business educators and student affective outcomes. The study indicates transformational type leadership behaviors engaged in by instructors are positively associated with desirable student affective outcomes, as are contingent reward leadership behaviors. Laissez faire and management by exception leadership behaviors are negatively associated with those same outcomes. Transformational and contingent reward leadership behaviors exhibited both cumulative and interactive effects on outcomes. The findings suggest that embracing or refraining from specific behaviors can significantly impact student perceptions of effectiveness, satisfaction and willingness to expend extra effort.

Faculty of the schools of management and engineering developed and pilot-tested an innovative new product development experience that utilized instructors from eleven different disciplines. MBA students generate ideas for products during the first of a two-semester course. Teams select the best of ten ideas to be designed by expanded teams that include the appropriate number and disciplinary mix of upper-level engineering undergraduates. Give-and-take between business considerations and technical limitations culminates in product prototypes that validate design goals and marketing claims, as well as fully costed production and market launch plans. Lessons learned from this student-acclaimed success are reported.

This paper explores the use of e-mail as a learning tool rather than a mode of casual conversation between students. Students in Introductory Marketing courses from two different universities were paired to complete four assignments using e-mail as their mode of communication. Students were required to establish professional relationships with unmet peers from the other institution to complete the required work. Students’ evaluations indicate they not only felt the assignments worthwhile but that they also realized the role technology plays in the completion of business tasks.