Business & Economics Collected Works - Research Publications
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ItemAssessing critical thinking in business education: Key issues and practical solutions(Elsevier BV, 2021-11)Developing critical thinking is an important goal in higher education and, more importantly, in business education. Yet, it is uncertain to what extent assessment influences students' critical thinking development and enhancement. This paper presents data from a study that applied a framework we developed to identify evidence of students’ ability to think critically and whether students face challenges at applying critical thinking. A sample of 100, 2000-word group reports from a masters business analysis subject were evaluated using a critical thinking assessment rubric. We followed this with a content analysis of 49 reports using our developed framework to identify the demonstration of critical thinking dispositions and abilities. The findings from both analyses indicate a difference between student reports on how critical thinking is demonstrated. Most importantly, our developed framework provides a novel way to analyse student reports that inform whether they demonstrate the specific components of critical thinking dispositions and abilities. The evaluation using our established framework enables us to offer practical suggestions that university instructors can use to address the issues and challenges raised that hinder critical thinking acquisition via assessment practice in business education.
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ItemThe student as customer and quality in higher education(Emerald, 2020-05-12)This paper explores some management concepts and how applying these concepts from business to higher education can be problematic, let alone incompatible, particularly in relation to measuring quality in higher education. A number of compelling reasons for this are explored. It discusses that the current bases for perceiving quality such as meeting customer expectations, satisfying the customer, ensuring quality control, meeting standards and assessing the costs associated with poor quality are in disagreement with the principal aims and measures of quality in higher education. Some considerations for understanding quality in higher education are proposed such as when thinking about quality of teaching, quality of programs and quality of the student experience. These considerations aim to refocus education to centre on the student as a learner and an active participant in the learning process.
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ItemCritical thinking in business education: current outlook and future prospects(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2021-11-02)This study investigates all available literature related to critical thinking in business education in a survey of publications in the field produced from 1990–2019. It conducts a thematic analysis of 787 articles found in Web of Science and Google Scholar, including a specific focus on 55 highly-cited articles. The aim is to investigate the importance of critical thinking in business education, how it is conceptualised in business education research, the business contexts in which critical thinking is situated, and the key and more marginal themes related to critical thinking outlined in the business and business education literature. The paper outlines six key areas and topics associated with those areas. It suggests future directions for further scholarly work in the area of critical thinking in business education.
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ItemMapping international business and international business policy research: Intellectual structure and research trends(Elsevier, 2020-06-01)This paper analyzes the core international business (IB) areas covered by ten IB-focused journals to date using 13,937 documents reflecting more than 300 years of combined publication history. Using bibliometric and citation analysis, it provides a systematic understanding of the current IB landscape, explicates the relevance of the future of IB research and depicts trends in this research field with emerging prevalent themes identified. The strongest themes across IB journals are performance, perspective and emerging economies/MNEs, shared strongly across UK/Europe, US and Asia-based journals. Our findings report on the prevalent research field, economy and geography, the latter analyzing the impact of author numbers and distribution, and thus, scale effects. Within this context, sole authorships are largely replaced by co-authorships, yet often on national level. We further limited the study to IB policy and found the focus centers on key themes of foreign business attraction, transnational governance and IB promotion.
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ItemAssessing and assuring learning: university teachers’ reflections on effectively addressing skills deficits in business studies(Routledge, 2021)Using data from a business school in a large research-intensive university in Australia, this study analyzes proposed teaching and learning changes with a focus on ‘closing the loop.’ Aspects of teaching and learning submitted by academic staff following assurance of learning (i.e. curriculum improvements) were analyzed using content analysis, spanning 382 program learning outcomes, 25 different degree programs, 117 subjects and 5828 pieces of individual student assessment (2009–2017). Analysis revealed six learning outcome themes, with ‘use, application and evaluation of relevant theories, methods concepts, ideas or models’ as most prominent. Suggested actions on each of the themes relate to various curricula changes, particularly (1) the move from teaching students ‘what to think’ to ‘how to think,’ (2) from developing fundamental to complex skills, and (3) providing more opportunities for feedback. Broader implications for teaching practice are discussed.