International Business Specializations of Accounting, Finance and Marketing Professors, 1994-2003 (2009)

INTRODUCTION This paper investigates the teaching and research interests of professors of accounting, finance and marketing at U.S. colleges and universities pertaining to their specializations in multinational business. The stimulus for this study stems from several interconnected factors. First and foremost, the business environment has exhibited strong trends toward globalization in almost every aspect in the last 25 years. The internationalization of financial markets and the resulting 24-hour marketplace for numerous financial assets just serves as one glaring example of business globalization. Even in some fields where one could not have imagined a global market place and therefore, an existence of global competition just 5 years ago, such a possibility has become a reality. The markets for medical care, surgeries as well as post-operative recovery have also now become worldwide. In a newly emerging field called Medical Tourism, patients from all of over the globe consider India and Thailand, among others, as viable alternatives to many highly developed and well established medical care locations. Second, according to Kedia, Harveston and Bhagat (2001), As businesses confront increasing international challenges, the need for developing managers who can understand and effectively meet the demands of the global marketplace becomes critical. While the responsibility of developing such international managers of tomorrow may lie in different sectors of the economy, we suggest that business schools have a special role in inculcating appropriate global mindset, knowledge base, and skills. Indeed, U.S. colleges and universities have accepted the challenge of training their students to enter and embrace the global market arena, and accordingly, more and more schools have created opportunities for students to choose international business as a major or a minor. By June 2005, of the 430 AACSB accredited U.S. schools, 81 were offering undergraduate degrees in international business (IB) and 48 were offering graduate degrees in IB. Third, presently 28 schools have been designated as Centers of Business Education and Research (CIBERs) (see Scherer, et al., 2003). Fourth, numerous business administration colleges have created centers or institutes or divisions of international/multinational/global business to form alliances with multinational business organizations, or state and local world trade centers, etc. Fifth, the text books used in most required or core courses in business schools began addressing the globalization of business issues in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Now, even the textbooks of the elective courses, such as risk and insurance for example, have started integrating International Perspectives in as many chapters as feasible (see Trieschmann, et al., 2005). Given the issues raised above, it is understandable that business and government entities expect U.S. educators to play a vital role in preparing students to function and flourish in a global business environment. If so, one could logically ask the following two questions: What percentage of business faculty in the U.S. are willing to teach courses in the international areas in their disciplines; and What percentage of business faculty in the U.S. are willing to conduct research in the international areas of their disciplines. This study attempts to answer these questions for three business disciplines, namely, accounting, finance, and marketing. We examine the data of three academic years, 1994-1995, 2000-2001, and 2002-2003 to meet the task at hand. To meet these objectives, we investigate the IB specializations within the teaching and research interests of two groups of business faculty. The first group consists of all the named or titled professors, including the endowed professors in each field, during each academic year as per the Hasselback faculty directories. Named professors' teaching and research interests are examined because they are generally the highest ranked academicians, and are considered to be the most renowned, most accomplished and elite educators in their fields. …