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Critical success factors influencing the adoption of digitalisation for teaching and learning by business schools

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Abstract

The world is transforming through digitalisation and business schools are predisposed to this transition. Some universities have slickly sailed through the digitalisation challenge, while others have been left behind. The purpose of this research paper is to identify and examine the variables that impact the successful adoption of digitalisation by business schools. Gaining an understanding of these variables will help business schools adopt digitalisation for long-term improvement. Analysing gaps in the literature (mostly using sources from 2013 to 2019) helped identify eight independent variables that can influence the adoption of digitalisation in business schools. A five-point Likert scale questionnaire containing 56 non-demographic questions was sent to the target population. The survey saw responses from 421 participants worldwide, including academics from flagship business schools and education technology experts. A conceptual model was developed using a structural equation model in ADANCO 2.0.1, which was used to postulate the hypotheses. Empirically, students’ competence has the strongest influence on the adoption of digitalisation by business schools, followed closely by teachers’ competence and technology diffusion, in that order. However, industry expectations do not significantly influence this adoption. This reflects a lapse from business schools in coping with the expectations of the corporate world, thus indicating that future researchers need to study this misalignment. The results from this study display a left shift in the bell-shaped curve of Rogers’ (2003) theory of diffusion of innovations, indicating an increase in the category of early adopters of technology from 50 to 90%.

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Gupta, R., Seetharaman, A. & Maddulety, K. Critical success factors influencing the adoption of digitalisation for teaching and learning by business schools. Educ Inf Technol 25, 3481–3502 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10246-9

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