PRODUCTION/OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

KEONG LEONG, Feature Editor, Fisher College of Business,
The Ohio State University

The "Quality" Content of Operations Management Courses in Australasian MBA Programs

by André M. Everett and Lynn McAlevey, University of Otago

From proponents of a range of quality philosophies, we recognize that quality is the responsibility of management, that knowledge of statistics is essential to understanding quality, and that educating and training managers in statistics is necessary. In a previous study [1], we compared the teaching of quality in business statistics courses in a number of countries, at both undergraduate and graduate levels. While conducting a longitudinal repeat of the original survey [2] late last year and early this year, comments from respondents alerted us to a broadening of the base for our research.

It is now apparent that quality is no longer considered solely a "statistics" topic, and that even statistical quality control topics are not confined to the statistics course in a business student's curriculum. Based on our previous work, which showed that MBA programs are "ahead" of undergraduate programs in terms of incorporation of recently popularized topics, we conducted a pilot study examining the quality content of operations management courses in MBA programs in Australasia (Australia and New Zealand).

In November 1996, we faxed all identified MBA programs in Australasia, excluding distance education, correspondence, and similar courses without a fixed home base at a recognized university. Despite requiring only 40 fax numbers for Australian and 6 for New Zealand MBA programs, the time committed to compiling the list rapidly multiplied beyond expectations, possibly due to the tumultuous changes taking place in Australia's tertiary education system.

Efforts to follow up non-respondents on three occasions in early 1997 brought awareness of a slew of telephone number changes, reorganizations, and changes to programs and faculty. Thus, our first caution: Although our findings are confined to a window of a few months, they cannot be regarded as a snapshot for any one given moment, as change was (and remains) pervasive in the Australasian MBA scene.

Our second caveat: The requested respondent was the MBA operations management lecturer; however, actual respondents included academic faculty teaching courses on OM, quality, statistics, strategy, and operations research, as well as administrative faculty including program coordinators, directors, and department chairs. Approximately one-third of the administrative faculty and one-fourth of the academic faculty described themselves as "acting" (e.g., "acting director"), confirming the transitory nature of the present situation.

In total, 24 usable responses were received. This 52% response rate compares favorably to the experimental results obtained by Dickson and MacLachlan [3], who intentionally tested fax against mail sending modes, obtaining a 17% greater response from deans by using fax (50.2% fax vs. 42.9% mail). However, our fax response rate was highly disappointing when contrasted with our own (much lengthier) mailed questionnaire's response rates of 84% seven years ago [2] and 85% at the end of last year [4].

One of the first surprises for us was the decline in the proportion of MBA programs requiring or offering an operations management (OM) course. While OM was a staple in this region in the previous decade, of our 24 respondents, nine did not offer a traditional OM course. Of these, several described alternative courses with names such as Quality Management, Managing Quality & Productivity, and TQM. Two schools did not have an OM lecturer and anticipated holding the course under a potential visiting lecturer. Based on written comments, it appears that there is a shift within Australasian MBA programs from "Operations Management" to "Quality Management," and from quantitatively-oriented to qualitatively-oriented OM courses.

Our first question read, "Do you teach any statistics of quality in your MBA operations management course?" Three schools indicated "no-taught in other course." No respondents indicated that there was either insufficient time or that the material was not appropriate for any course on their MBA program. One lecturer replied that he would "rather teach them to think" instead.

Of the remaining sample, 13 schools provided the number of hours that statistics of quality (SOQ) was taught within the OM course (shown in Figure 1). Given the choice as to whether these hours were spent building on SOQ material taught in other courses, repeating SOQ material from other courses, or starting fresh, three of the 3-hour and one of the 4-hour respondents chose "building on" while all others indicated they were "starting fresh." Two schools that did not report the number of hours were "building on" previously taught material. It is thus apparent that there is no agreement in terms of which course is believed best suited to introduce statistics of quality material to MBA students in Australasia, nor the number of hours to be devoted to this topic.

Sixteen MBA programs responded to our question about seven selected statistics of quality topics relative to their OM course. (The topics were chosen based on our previous study findings and examinations of syllabi and textbooks; with some topics included in a subsequent question, all of the "seven basic quality tools" were represented.) The seven topics, and the response frequencies, are shown in Figure 2. Control charts are clearly the most popular of these seven topics, followed by Pareto diagrams and descriptive statistics (defined as including means and standard deviations). Two OM courses offered no SOQ topics other than control charts, while one offered solely experimental design; in all three of these cases, the respondents commented that all of the remaining topics were covered in some other course. "Other" topics nominated by respondents as SOQ topics taught within their OM course were process capability, quality aspects related to JIT, hypothesis testing, and Taguchi methods.

"Quality" as an academic course topic may have originated in the statistical quality control domain, but it is readily evident that it has strayed far from its quantitative roots. Anecdotal evidence from MBA programs worldwide has for several years indicated a shift from a quantitative to a qualitative, or strategic, orientation in many of the courses, a trend that has been noted in previous issues of Decision Line and OR/MS Today. Our longitudinal research [2] [4] into the content of business statistics courses on Australasian MBA programs confirms this trend, although to a lesser degree, as statistics is generally regarded as an inalienably quantitative subject.

To balance our question on statistics of quality topics, we inquired further about non-statistical quality tools and approaches as taught in the MBA OM course. This set of seven topics was less uniform in nature, ranging from single tools (e.g., fishbone diagrams) to entire philosophical orientations (e.g., the system of profound knowledge). The topics and responses are shown in Figure 3, in a format matching Figure 2 to facilitate comparison.

Of the 17 schools responding to this question, 15 included both fishbone (cause & effect/Ishikawa) diagrams and Deming's 14 points in their MBA OM course; flowcharts were next, with 14 affirmatives, followed by Juran's cost of quality with 13. Deming's system of profound knowledge, the umbrella for his very popular 14 points, proved by far the least popular of the designated topics, included in only 3 of the 17 courses.

Choice and options are becoming the buzzwords on MBA programs, as they have on undergraduate business courses. Although we did not specifically investigate this issue, comments by respondents to this questionnaire indicate a rise in the number and type of electives related to quality topics in Australasian MBA programs. The core MBA OM course is itself often being converted to elective status. Time pressures were noted by several faculty; at one school, the entire set of seven basic and seven advanced quality/planning tools is offered as a no-cost, extracurricular, day-long workshop to avoid consuming limited class time.

What would we rate the major finding of our mini-survey? Perhaps an increased awareness that the standard boxes into which MBA courses fit less than a decade ago are unsuitable as descriptors of what curricula MBA students are receiving today. Reform and transformation of MBA courses and programs is rife throughout Australasia, as it is in North America, Europe, and Asia. "Quantitative" quality is being replaced by, or supplemented by, "qualitative" quality at all of the responding universities. What was once required may now be a castoff; the "walking calculator" of past decades is being replaced with a strategically-oriented thinker (who may, incidentally, be inenumerate in most of the techniques underlying the quality philosophies he or she is espousing).

References

[1] McAlevey, L., Everett, A. M., and Sullivan, C. S., "The Changing Relevance of Quality in Business Statistics Courses: An International Comparison," Asia Pacific Journal of Quality Management, 1995, 4(3), 4-15.

[2] McAlevey, L., and Sullivan, C., "The Teaching of Statistics in Australasian Business Schools," The New Zealand Statistician, 1992, 27(1), 2-12.

[3] Dickson, J. P., and MacLachlan, D. L., "Fax Surveys: Return Patterns and Comparison With Mail Surveys," Journal of Marketing Research, 1996, 23(1), 108- 113.

[4] Preliminary results reported in: McAlevey, L., and Everett, A. M., "A Status Report On the Evolution of Business Statistics Education: Empirical Evidence Concerning the Recommendations of the MSMESB and ICOTS Conferences," Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Decision Sciences Institute, Orlando, Florida, 24-26 November 1996, 1097-1099.

Download pom_figs.zip for TIF versions of figures.