Title: Designing a Business Process course that addresses the needs of today's managers

Authors: Catherine A. Usoff, Mark M. Davis

Addresses: Information and Process Management Department, Bentley College, 175 Forest Street, Waltham, MA 02452, USA. ' Management Department, Bentley College, 175 Forest Street, Waltham, MA 02452, USA

Abstract: Today|s managers are adopting a more comprehensive approach to business through designing and implementing Business Processes (BP) that cut across functional boundaries. Unfortunately, most business school curricula emulate the older, traditional organisational structure consisting of functional silos. Consequently, a significant gap exists between the skills that today|s graduates need to succeed and their business education. We present an innovative, transdisciplinary approach to teaching BPs which includes a |practicum| where students apply their classroom learning to analysis of a BP in an actual company. This approach has received very positive feedback from both students and the participating companies.

Keywords: business processes; BP; MBA curriculum; pedagogy; integration; project-based courses; process management; benchmarking.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPMB.2007.013314

International Journal of Process Management and Benchmarking, 2007 Vol.2 No.1, pp.1 - 9

Published online: 20 Apr 2007 *

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