Results for Certified Evaluation and Accreditation forProfessional Graduate Business School

Otaru University of Commerce, Graduate School of Commerce,
Major in Entrepreneurship

Basic Information of the Institution
Ownership: National

Location: Hokkaido, Japan

Accreditation Status
Year of the Review: 2023
Accreditation Status: accredited （Accreditation Period: April 1, 2024 – March 31, 2029）

Major in Entrepreneurship, Graduate School of Commerce,
Otaru University of Commerce

Certified Evaluation and Accreditation Results
for the Major in Entrepreneurship, Graduate School of Commerce,
Otaru University of Commerce (Otaru Business School)The unique purpose of the Major in Entrepreneurship, Graduate School of Commerce,
Otaru University of Commerce (Otaru Business School, or OBS), is “to train business
innovators who can design and deliver innovative business models, as well as businessleaders with strong corporate management skills, capable of conceiving new business
opportunities.” The Business School has approached its activities in a strategic manner tomeet this purpose, from the formulation of a medium- and long-term vision, curriculum
design to faculty staffing and school management, and its efforts have produced positiveresults. Especially notable is the 2022 revised version of the OBS Vision, Strategy, andAction Plan which outlines various initiatives for the school’s four strategic targets of“raising the social awareness of OBS and cultivating new demand for OBS and its MBA
program,” “improving the educational program,” “creating an alumni network,” and“expanding recurrent education.” On the basis of the core competence of “an education
program that enhances practical skills,”defined in the medium- and long-term vision, theOBS Vision, Strategy, and Action Plan has enabled the Business School to contribute tosociety by producing outstanding business professionals.
OBS’s education program offers a curriculum consisting of basic, core, elective,practical, and business workshops as five subject groups. The courses are organizedaccording to year level and designed to progressively build up business management
knowledge and practical skills required of today’s business leaders and business
innovators. The courses offered and their contents are reviewed flexibly to adapt tochanging local needs and times in collaboration with universities of other disciplines andrelated industries. Since AY2022, for example, the Business School has worked with its
consortium partner, Hokkaido University, to launch an in-class project aimed at growing
start-up businesses. In this initiative, students devise a business plan to commercialize thetechnology seeds of Hokkaido University’s science professors. This remarkable featureof the curriculum has the potential to positively impact the training of business leaders.
As a result of this and other efforts to enrich the education program, the overallsatisfaction rate reflected in OBS student surveys has steadily risen over the years.
Furthermore, the post-graduation outcomes of OBS’s graduates are strong, with manysucceeding in their chosen pursuits.
OBS’s staffing plan promotes faculty diversity in terms of specialty, age, and1

Major in Entrepreneurship, Graduate School of Commerce,
Otaru University of Commerce

gender to meet varied student learning needs. The Business School supports andfacilitates the faculty’s scholarly activities by holding the “OBS Salon,” a regular gettogether designed for teachers to share and discuss research outcomes with theircolleagues, and by encouraging teachers to create case study teaching materials based on
their own research findings. The latter is an unprecedented undertaking and highly
commendable from the standpoint of connecting academic research and practicaleducation. As for its hiring and promotion practices, the Business School implements ahuman resource policy designed to broadly assess teachers’ skills and accomplishments
in bridging theory and practice using criteria established in five evaluation areas, namelyeducation, research, social contribution, and contribution to university management, andmiscellaneous factors. Furthermore, systematic efforts are being made to promote facultydevelopment activities, which have proven effective in improving teaching contents andmethods.
Steady steps have been taken to improve school management, including
curriculum design and the implementation of medium- to long-term action plans, inresponse to the recommendations from an advisory board established in 2019 thatincludes members from outside the school. OBS provides students with enriched learning
opportunities in cooperation with the outside community, for example, through theSpecial MBA Course offered jointly with Hokkaido University’s Graduate School ofAgriculture, Research Faculty of Agriculture, Graduate School of Health Sciences,Graduate School of Engineering, Faculty of Information Science and Technology,Graduate School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Graduate School of Life Science,and Graduate School of Medicine. This partnership agreement is a commendableundertaking.
As described above, OBS works hard to train business innovators and businessleaders and has produced admirable results. There are several areas of improvement thatOBS should address, however.
First, the 2018 version of the OBS Vision, Strategy, and Action Plan promotes
such practices as hiring graduates as practitioner lecturers or inviting them to participatein teaching material development. While these initiatives may provide some measure ofbenefit, it is desirable that controls be put in place to protect the quality of education whenallowing graduates with no proven qualifications in the relevant fields to partake ineducational activities. Second, despite the increasing relevance of data literacy, datarelated courses such as statistics are not mandatory, and the curriculum in general isoriented toward qualitative analysis-focused courses. In view of the Business School’s
unique goal of developing business innovators and business leaders, it is advised that the2

Major in Entrepreneurship, Graduate School of Commerce,
Otaru University of Commerce

curriculum be revamped to develop students’ quantitative analysis skills and to enhancedata literacy. Third, the faculty composition leaves room for improvement from theviewpoint of diversity, with no female or non-Japanese nationals currently represented infull-time teaching positions. OBS needs to fix the gender imbalance of its teaching staff
and further work to build a faculty capable of delivering entrepreneurship education witha global focus. This issue was pointed out in the AY2018 certified evaluation andaccreditation for professional graduate business schools, and is being raised for a second
time to draw attention to the fact that the problem has not been addressed adequately.
The commitment and integrity of OBS in carrying out its education, research,and social contribution activities stood out throughout the certified evaluation andaccreditation for professional graduate business schools. OBS has responded well to therecommendations of the previous assessment, and the Business School is expected tofurther improve the quality of its education and research, and develop its distinctive
strengths to achieve the aim of producing excellent business professionals by taking
actions on the recommendations detailed above.

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