Abstract

Organizations are increasingly facing challenges of technology disruption and globalization. These challenges are introducing many opportunities for business advancement and expansion. The organizations must overcome these challenges to be effective, and therefore gain and sustain competitive advantage. Business school curriculums that include information systems (IS) concepts have been developed to overcome these challenges. These curriculums that include IS concepts are often taught to students later in business programs, at a junior or senior level. The IS content delivered is to help students understand how businesses use information technology to support managerial decisions, streamline processes, making and create competitive advantage. Such content is designed to help non-IS students understand the IS function of business and to communicate and have a better working relationship with IS colleagues. The content is often delivered in one standard classroom (or online) course that is required for all business majors. Anecdotal evidence from instructors of such courses indicates that non-IS students do not value these courses. Instructors report that some students who are focused on their own program of study (e.g., accounting, management) do not value what they view as an excursus into IS. Instructors also report that older students seem to understand the value of these courses more than their younger counterparts. The purpose of this research is to examine the understanding and value of IS concepts in business school curriculum for non-IS majors. We conducted a preliminary survey of undergraduate and graduate business students on their perceptions and factors determining the value of IS concepts. This survey was designed to test the relationships identified by the anecdotal evidence given above. Our analysis of the data suggests that appreciation of IS concepts and value is likely to be correlated to maturity and business experience. Thus, we plan on collecting more data and refining our survey instrument to better understand this phenomenon. We will sample students before and after completing the required IS course. We will perform different analyses to detect any changes in subjects’ perceptions of IS after taking the course. Upon completion of this research, we hope to provide guidance to business schools that require such IS courses. Our guidance may consist of recommendations on how to better instruct younger students or to inform instructors on the causes of students’ perception changes.

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