Is Chinese business education ready for services management? A survey into services management course development in Chinese business schools

Abstract

As the focus of the Chinese economy changes from manufacturing to services, Chinese business education and research need to be refocused. In this paper, a questionnaire survey with 246 faculty members from 50 Chinese business schools was conducted to explore two aspects regarding services management (SM) course development: the status quo and the potential of SM course development. The survey shows that SM has been developing into a legitimate course in 48% of our sample business schools of Chinese key universities since 1990s; nevertheless, there are still quite a few constraints in SM course development. Based on the data results, some suggestions are made on SM course development. The implications of this report, its limitation and future research directions are also discussed.