From Design to Delivery: Teaching Supply Chain Management to IB Majors

ABSTRACT Curricular development is critical for preparing students in a coordinated fashion for life after graduation – especially when their roles will involve cross-border business decisions. The design of specific courses in any curriculum must be purposeful in terms of what is taught, how it is taught, and how all the course components fit together. For a supply chain management course targeted at international business (IB) students, one key purpose is to understand how competitiveness is developed across the extended enterprise, rather than within the confines of individual companies. This “winning together” view helps foster capabilities for connectedness and cooperation in IB environments typically characterized by geographic dispersion and cultural dissimilarities. The objective of this article is to examine how integrating fundamental pedagogical theories (student-centeredness, diversity, reflection, self-direction, experiential learning) in course design can influence the outcomes of a semester-long practice-oriented international supply chain course. The course espouses the winning together view while probing in-depth core supply chain themes, with the aim of producing cohorts of undergraduates that have developed the intuition, aptitude, and methods for co-creating value across business boundaries in cross-border situations. This article’s contribution is in demonstrating the innovativeness of blending multiple pedagogical tools and experiences in a single semester, rather than an entire program of study. The observed positive student learning outcomes are consistent with the integrated course design model. Replicating such course design over a program of study, will multiply the resulting positive outcomes for students, hence preparing them better as prospective global managers.