Is Supply Chain Management Replacing Operations Management in the Business Core Curriculum?

Abstract

This study reviews the core requirements in 447 business departments accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) in order to understand the current status and changes of Operations Management and Supply Chain Management offerings in the business core. The field of SCM continues to grow in the 21st century in terms of both industry demand and academic offerings. After the 2000s, many institutes of higher education realized the importance of SCM and the demand for trained individuals in the area. SCM became a common elective course for many business schools. This study is interested in exploring the next stage of implementing SCM into business education curriculum. This study seeks to determine if SCM is becoming a core business class for the majority of the business schools, or, more dramatically, if SCM is on the path of replacing OM. We report our survey results in order to understand the motivation for the changes related to SCM in the business core curriculum, the student and faculty reaction to these changes, and its effect on student enrollment, internships and employment.

Teaching Supply Chain Management: A Qualitative and Quantitative Approach to Developing a Supply Chain Management Education Framework

“…However, although commercial industry continues to gain an understanding of the synergies and interrelationships between the common business functions, it appears that some universities may have simply taken the old operations management classes and rebranded them as supply chain management classes to take advantage of the industry focus on supply chain management as suggested by Akalin, Huang and Willems (2016). Many university job announcements still mention the operations management professional forum INFORMS as a forum for hiring new faculty.…”

“…This would add more credence that schools are hiring operations management faculty to teach supply chain management classes. This may be related to the suggestions of Akalin, et al (2016), that some schools have simply changed the title of courses from operations management to supply chain management without changing the curriculum.…”

“…However, he also points out as did Akalin, Huang, and Willems (2016) that many of these curriculum changes were in name only and simply a change from operations management to supply chain management without changing the curriculum itself. Akalin, et al (2016) and production planning that are traditional operations management topics as an indicator that some universities simply changed names of courses without changing the course content.…”

“…For this analysis the following industry accepted definitions from the APICS Dictionary and Body of Knowledge (2013) were used to distinguish between operations management and supply chain management. This is necessary as a result of some of the literature review making the claim that some operations management classes were simply retitled to supply chain management without any substantive changes to the curriculum (Akalin, Huang, & Willems;Lawrence & Rosenblatt, 2016).…”

Teaching the Mechanism of Horizontal and Vertical Supply Chain Coordination

“…The improved operations performance is essential for a supply chain, which can be achieved by supply chain management. Supply chain management is an important topic in operations management course, and even becomes an independent required course for students majored in operations management in many colleges (Anderson and Morrice, 2000;Akalin et al, 2016).…”