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Undergraduate management education: Its place, purpose and efforts to bridge the skills gap

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Denise Jackson
Denise Jackson*
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Education, University of Western Australia, Crawley WA, Australia
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Abstract

Australian business graduates are deemed by industry as not being ‘job ready’ (BCA 2006; BIHECC 2007), lacking the skills required to successfully apply disciplinary knowledge and add value to our globalised, knowledge economy. There exists a lack of empirical evidence and professional input for business schools on profiling the attributes valued by industry. This is especially true for those majoring in management who are consistently overshadowed by their more commercially attractive postgraduate counterparts. In a bid to satisfy industry demands, the most common response among Australian business schools are the development of employability skills and enhanced involvement of industry professionals in curricula content and design, both subject to potential failings and criticism. This review of business school efforts to bridge the skills gap also examines the role, function and impact of undergraduate management education, a research area significantly overlooked in recent years.

Keywords

Australiaemployabilitygeneric attributesmanagement competenciestransferundergraduate
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Management & Organization , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , May 2009 , pp. 206 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2009

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