Evaluating Business School Undergraduates’ Situation Analytical Ability

Abstract

This research attempts to ascertain the feasibility of quantitatively measuring business school undergraduates’general ability in analyzing business situations effectively. As a first step toward establishing an international test model that business schools worldwide can emulate, the researchers designed a new educational test instrument— Case Reasoning in Management (CRiM)—and administered it to 120 business under-graduates (evenly distributed across four levels of study). Results show that under-graduates at a higher level of study and those who have achieved better academic results in the business curriculum tend to perform better on CRiM. The researchers also measured undergraduates’tolerance for ambiguity, creative thinking, stress resilience, and the Big Five personality of intellect and found that these personal factors are positively related to the test scores. As expected, English language score, gender, age, family income, and high school results are not related to performance on the test. However, because a convenience sample with students from only one university and similar ethnic background was used, this research can at best be a pilot study. Future research should rigorously examine the generalizability and predictive validity of CRiM on a global basis.

Assessing Business Student Thinking Skills

“…Managers undertake all these mental activities and more. This plenitude is apparent in scholarly accounts of business student thinking skills (e.g., Colby, Ehrlich, Sullivan, & Dolle, 2011) and assessment activities: Assessors have addressed business students’ situation analytic ability (Lim, 2002), creativity (Aniello, 2005), metacognitive skills (Tempelaar, 2006), and ability to solve unstructured problems (Bigelow, 2004).…”