Faculty, Money, Curriculum, Management, Facilities Space and Technology Are Recurring Issues for B-Schools

The Sixteenth Annual UCLA Survey of Business School Computer Usage is a continuation of a series of surveys whose purpose is to provide a comprehensive overview of the business school computing, communication and information technology environment. The 1999 survey, which was conducted in cooperation with AACSB, replicated one from 13 years ago, with deans from 215 business schools from eight countries identifying their three most critical general issues and their three most critical information technology issues. The sample is demographically very similar to samples from the last six surveys.

The Third Survey was conducted in 1986 and set within the context of the 1985-1986 academic year, whereas the Sixteenth was conducted in 1999 and set within the realities of the 1998-1999 academic year. Twelve full years passed between these two surveys. Fifty-seven business schools responded to both of these surveys; however, based on the traditional length of a business school deanship, it is highly unlikely that the same dean from those 57 schools responded to both questionnaires.

Findings
Comparisons between the deans’ responses to the Third Survey and the most recent Sixteenth Survey showed that the same "general" issues (not related to IT) were recurrent ¾ faculty, money, curriculum, management, facilities space and technology. Faculty recruitment, retention, salaries, research productivity and development, which were delineated in the Third Survey, remained a high priority, yet the Sixteenth Survey responses tended to point toward even more emphasis on faculty salaries in a competitive sense, not only between business schools but also with industry.

Faculty development remained an ongoing issue, but the Sixteenth Survey responses reflect more demand for depth and integration of technology. As pointed out in the Fifteenth Survey, computers now are ubiquitous, and the issue is not in their acquisition, but rather in the integration of the potential of information technologies into daily life. And, curriculum issues appear in both surveys, with concern shown for curriculum development and keeping the curriculum current. Yet, as for the faculty issues above, there appears to be an emphasis on the breadth of curriculum change needed, as well as its urgency.

Further, business school administration issues now seem to have taken on even more priority than before, but with an emphasis on a strategic orientation and an emphasis on leadership and response to competitive pressures, rather than being focused on management issues and maintaining the status quo. One of these sources of new competition, as well as opportunity, is distance learning. And, as common as the issue of internationalization has become, it hadn’t even surfaced as an issue in the Third Survey.

Terminology for the second set of issues has changed between the surveys and reflects the change from a focus on the hardware itself to broader utilization and applications. In the Third, "Computer-Related" was used, whereas in the Sixteenth, the term is now "Information Technology." As has been pointed out in the last several surveys, most business schools now have acquired the basic infrastructure, including the underlying network. Technology acquisition, a central issue of the Third Survey, although not ever a non-issue, has been replaced by concerns for keeping the technology maintained and upgraded, including the problems of finding adequate staff to handle the constant changes and improvements.

A more central issue involves the real integration of information technology into the business school curriculum and the problems of providing students with the requisite skills necessary to make an impact in a world that often seems to be moving ahead of the business schools in actual applications. The issue no longer is concerned with the development of an MIS major, but rather the development of an entire e-commerce MBA and getting faculty and students to be as information technology savvy as their corporate counterparts.

As with the general issues, the information technology issue responses seemed to project a sense of urgency, as well as a need for a real balance between the traditional business school curriculum and the education being demanded by the information technology market place.

Both the Third and Sixteenth Survey general issues and the information technology issues simultaneously seemed to be similar and different. The major categories were the same, but the realities within the categories have changed. These changes mirror the context within which business schools operate.

"It is hard to imagine, but the world is even more competitive, chaotic, rapidly changing, deeper and broader than it was in 1986," said Julia A. Britt, professor at the School of Management, California State University, Dominguez Hills, who co-authored the survey report, along with business professor Dorothy M. Fisher and professor Gary R. Levine, extended education, Cal State, Dominguez Hills.

"Business school deans have to address the same issues, such as recruiting and retaining high quality faculty, motivating faculty to continually embrace new developments, acquiring financial resources, making innovative and relevant curricular changes, and integrating information technology into both teaching and learning," said Britt. "Yet now there is a broader scope to the issues and additional competitive pressures, such as internationalization, world-wide connectivity, instant communication, technological advances that enable distance learning, and the blurring of boundaries between the traditional and the technologically possible. Evidenced by the richness and quality of the responses, business school deans seem to be making admirable progress, even though they have to repeatedly address many of the same issues while at the same time managing and leading within a much more difficult context," she said.

"Clearly, business school deans face a wide variety of issues and only some of these are directly related to information technology," said Jason L. Frand, assistant dean and director, computing and information services at the UCLA Anderson School. "Deans must achieve an awareness of the present and insight into the future of the constantly changing business environment in order to prepare their students for productive leadership responsibilities," he said. The schools also must meet competitive pressures, not only from other business schools but from the newly emerging in-house corporate universities and on-line education providers. Budget constraints are forcing many schools to seek external funding. Continual advances in information technology are dynamic and comprehensive, expanding to include a wide scope of hardware, software, network, communication and application alternatives. Additionally, due to experience and emergent technology options, faculty, student, administrative, and recruitment requirements and expectations continue to change, said Frand.

"All of these dynamics, developments and alternatives exacerbate planning and resource allocations. Policy and decision-makers continue to need information that enables a perspective beyond the boundary of the individual business school," he said.

The executive summaries of past surveys of Business School Computer Usage can be found at http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/jason.frand.  Copies of past surveys are available for $30 each (U.S.) from Computing Services, Anderson School at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-14481; fax 310-825-4835. Additional copies of the Sixteenth Survey are $50 each (U.S.). Interested researchers can access the data via anonymous FTP from anderson.ucla.edu in the directory/pub/surveys/ survey 1999.