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Discussion & Conclusions
The Business Higher Education Forum (1995) found that business graduates lack the ability to work well in teams. Hofstede (1984, 1991, 1993) and Hall (1969, 1973, 1976, 1983) suggest that in low-context (cultures where written and spoken communications are heavily relied upon), individualistic cultures like that of the U.S., people are more concerned with the self than the group, and teamwork may be viewed as less important than the individual's skills in oral and written communications. However, the high ranking of teamwork by employers suggests that teamwork is important to career success in the current global business environment. The present findings support the increased emphasis on teamwork in business schools. One suggestion to faculty who use group activities in their classes is that they work with student groups to prevent social loafing (Kravitz & Martin, 1986; Shepperd, 1993) and other problems that commonly occur in groups.
In addition to the sampling issues discussed above, there are a number of further limitations to the present study. The questionnaires used here did not ask either alumni or employers to identify competencies that may be of importance to them other than those listed; therefore, there may be competencies of equal or greater importance to business school education that remain unidentified by the present research. Future studies need to determine whether more competencies need to be added to the seven identified in the present research. This study combined undergraduate and graduate data. Future research might want to keep these two groups separate in order to determine whether different competencies are more or less relevant to each group.
The present project was intended as a first step in the process of collecting data of this nature. Comparative data for future years is needed to see whether these competencies remain important. While these results do offer a number of suggestions for curriculum development and improvement, they also show that the CSU Fullerton business school is rated higher on teaching effectiveness by the 1985 alumni over the 1975 alumni and higher still by the 1995 alumni for six of the seven competencies. These differences are significant at the .0001 and may be attributed to the greater attention paid to incorporating these six core competencies into the business school curriculum.
The present study looks at one CSU campus. In light of AACSB recommendations that apply to business schools systemwide, it is likely that the present results have implications for business schools in general. To confirm this hypothesis, it would be most constructive for future research to provide comparable data from other CSU campuses. It is the author's hope that research of this nature can be shared amongst campuses so that interested faculty and administrators can continue improving our curricula and further serve the needs of our community.
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