Business Curricula: Coverage of Employability Skills in a Strategic Management Course

摘要

College textbook publishers such as Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Cengage increasingly are requiring authors to provide coverage of employability skills. This requirement is in response to various accrediting organizations such as AACSB and SACS, as well as managers and students alike requiring that business courses better prepare students to enter the working world. This publisher requirement is also in response to MBA applications falling 6.9 percent globally in 2019 according to MBA entrance test administrator, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). This decline follows four straight years of declines. This paper examines how Pearson's leading strategic management textbook responds to this requirement to be more practical, skills-oriented, and relevant. Specifically, this paper summarizes how that textbook meets and exceeds expectations for coverage of employability skills. Additionally, in order to determine which employability skills presented in the Pearson book are considered to be most important in business, this paper provides results of a survey of 104 individuals who currently or recently used that book, and who are (or plan to be) practicing managers. Our results reveal that the most important "broad" employability skill is "Critical Thinking" and the most important "specific" employability skill to gain from the capstone course is to learn how to "Develop a three year strategic plan for any for-profit or non-profit company or organization." The findings reported herein accent the importance of (and need for) "practicality" in strategic management pedagogy. Implications of this research can provide guidance for academicians globally who continuously make decisions regarding "broad" and "specific" employability skills to include in business curricula, textbooks, syllabi, and lectures.