Preparing College of Business Students for a Global World (2009)

Educators must work to ensure every student who graduates and enters the workplace is ready for an increasingly global world. Suggestions for accomplishing this goal include building an international vocabulary, choosing textbooks that have a global emphasis regardless of the discipline, choosing in-class projects that include at least one international student and planning field trips that tour foreign-run companies, including presentations by international members of the business community. Other ideas involve planning programs with the International Students Association, traveling abroad for credit in well-planned programs, including an international component in Career Days, and encouraging faculty to travel abroad. Knowledge of the international environment has been deemed so important that the College of Business at Southern Arkansas University has implemented a plan to insure all business classes - from the entry to senior lev- els - place emphasis on international business issues. This implementation occurred because faculty members are convinced that almost all of our students will be involved in international arenas, in some way or other, over the course of their future careers. Such involvement may be as minor as the company they are employed with purchasing or selling to another company in an- other country, as significant as a joint venture with a company in another country, or even go as far as working for a multi-national corporation. It is also likely that many students will be members of virtual teams whose membership is comprised of people from other countries. Need for Emphasis on the International In one recent study, senior international human resource managers in eight large companies stated that identifying and developing talent for a global environment is a critical issue being faced by business students (Dessler, 2009). Interestingly, employers are finding that even employees who never leave the home office need to be internationalized. One recent article revealed cultural diversity isn't just for expatriates or frequent flying executives. Cube dwellers increasingly need to work, often virtually, across borders with people whose first language is not English and who don't have the same cultural touch points as US employees do. (Frase, 2007, 100) Therefore, the global component is being addressed in many innovative ways in business classes and through extra-curricula activities supported through the College of Business at Southern Arkansas University. Sharing these initiatives is the focus of this paper. Ways to Internationalize the Curriculum There are numerous ways to internationalize a business curriculum to promote internationalization; some involve direct changes to the curriculum and some involve extra-curricula activities that can enrich learning for international contexts. The remainder of this article highlights strategies used at Southern Arkansas University to build success and prepare our students for a global world. First, an international vocabulary is built in the first-year Introduction to Business class. Examples include comparative and absolute advantage, cultural differences (Hofstede's (in Griffin & Morehead, 2007) terminology is introduced here), trade agreements and political alignments such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the European Union (EU) are introduced, and trade policy agreements such as the GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) are discussed. This strategy contributes to building an international business vocabulary that beginning students continue to use in subsequent classes throughout their program. Second, all textbooks chosen have an international component. The textbook chosen for the core management class has an international management chapter as well as a global component in each chapter. For example, chapters that deal with motivation indicate that theories such as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (Griffin & Morehead, 2007) will not necessarily transfer from one country to another, and that workplace benefits that motivate people in one country will not always motivate employees in another. …