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%.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aasi, P., Rusu, L. (2017). ‘Facing the digitalisation challenge: Why organisational culture matters and how IT influences IT governance performance’. In Paspallis, N., Raspopoulos, Barry, M., Lang, M., linger, H. and C. Schneider (eds), Information systems development: Advances in methods, tools and management, Larnaca, Cyprus, ISBN: 978-9963-2288-3-6.
Babaheidari, S. M. and Svensson, L. (2014). ‘Managing the digitalisation of schools: An exploratory study of school principals’ and IT managers’ perceptions about ICT adoption and usefulness’, E-Learn: World Conference on e-learning in corporate, government, healthcare and higher education. New Orleans, 27–30 October, Association for the Advancement of computing in education, pp. 106–113.
Baum, S., Kurose, C., & McPherson, M. (2013). An overview of American higher education. The Future of Children, 23(1), 17–39.
Beetham, H., & Sharpe, R. (Eds.). (2013). Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age: Designing for 21st-century learning. New York: Routledge.
Blau, I., & Shamir-Inbal, T. (2017). Digital competences and long-term ICT integration in school culture: The perspective of elementary school leaders. Education and Information Technologies, 22(3), 769–787.
Bowen, W. G. (2012). The ‘cost disease’ in higher education: Is technology the answer? Stanford: The Tanner Lectures.
Bullmore, E. T., Horwitz, B., Honey, G. D., Brammer, M. J., Williams, S. C. R., & Sharma, T. (2000). How good is good enough in path analysis of fMRI data? NeuroImage, 11, 289–301.
Bulman, G., & Fairlie, R. W. (2016). Technology and education: Computers, software and the internet. In E. A. Hanushek, S. J. Machin, & L. Woessmann (Eds.), Handbook of the Economics of Education Vol. 5 (pp. 239–280). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Burgess, S. M., & Steenkamp, J. B. E. (2006). Marketing renaissance: How research in emerging markets advances marketing science and practice. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 23(4), 337–356.
Business Council of Australia. (2016) Being work-ready: A guide to what employers want [Online]. Available at https://www.bca.com.au/being_work_ready_a_guide_to_what_employers_want. Accessed 18 December 2017.
Cattaneo, M., Horta, H., Malighetti, P., Meoli, M., & Paleari, S. (2019). The relationship between competition and programmatic diversification. Studies in Higher Education, 44(7), 1222–1240.
Chua, J. H., Chrisman, J. J., & De Massis, A. (2015). A closer look at socioemotional wealth: Its flows, stocks, and prospects for moving forward. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 39(2), 173–182.
Chulkov, D. V. (2017). On the role of switching costs and decision reversibility in information technology adoption and investment. Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management, 14(3), 309–321.
Cronbach, L. J. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 16(3), 297–334.
Davies, R. S., & West, R. E. (2014). Technology integration in schools. In J. M. Spector, M. D. Merrill, J. Elen, & M. J. Bishop (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (pp. 841–853). New York: Springer.
del Pozo, M. M., & González, M. C. (2017). Study on the personal indicators that influence the development of digital competence in primary education students. In J. Mena, A. García-Valcárcel, F. J. Peñalvo, & M. Martín (Eds.), Search and research: Teacher education for contemporary contexts (pp. 1071–1080). Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.
Deming, D. J., Hastings, J. S., Kane, T. J., & Staiger, D. O. (2014). School choice, school quality, and postsecondary attainment. American Economic Review, 104(3), 991–1013.
Deming, D. J., Goldin, C., Katz, L. F., & Yuchtman, N. (2015). Can online learning bend the higher education cost curve? American Economic Review, 105(5), 496–501.
Dijkstra, T. K., & Henseler, J. (2015). Consistent and asymptotically normal PLS estimators for linear structural equation. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, 81, 10–23.
Dimitriadis, Y., Prieto, L. P., & Asensio-Pérez, J. I. (2013). The role of design and enactment patterns in orchestration: Helping to integrate technology in blended classroom ecosystems. Computers & Education, 69, 496–499.
Dougherty, K. (2015). Factors that influence college faculty to adopt digital technologies in their practice (pp. 307–318). Dublin: Higher Education in Transformation Conference.
Efron, B. (1987). Better bootstrap confidence intervals. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 82(397), 171–185.
European Commission. (2013). Modernisation of higher education. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Ferris, J. M., and Riveros, G. E. (2019). US patent application no. 10/181,990.
Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50.
Frey, C. B., & Osborne, M. A. (2017). The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 114, 254–280.
From, J. (2017). Pedagogical digital competence: Between values, knowledge and skills. Higher Education Studies, 7(2), 43–50.
Gašević, D., Kovanović, V., Joksimović, S., & Siemens, G. (2014). Where is research on massive open online courses headed? A data analysis of the MOOC research initiative. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 15(5), 134–176.
Gil-Flores, J., Rodríguez-Santero, J., & Torres-Gordillo, J. J. (2017). Factors that explain the use of ICT in secondary-education classrooms: The role of teacher characteristics and school infrastructure. Computers in Human Behavior, 68, 441–449.
Griesbaum, J. (2017). Trends in e-learning: Impacts of social mobile technologies on information behaviour, formal learning and the educational market. International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 7(2), 123.
Gudmundsdottir, G. B., & Hatlevik, O. E. (2018). Newly qualified teachers’ professional digital competence: Implications for teacher education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 41(2), 214–231.
Gürfidan, H., & Koç, M. (2016). The impact of school culture, technology leadership, and support services on teachers’ technology integration: A structural equation modelling. Education and Science, 41(188), 99–116.
Hair, J. F., Ringle, C. M., & Sarstedt, M. (2011). PLS-SEM: Indeed a silver bullet. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 19(2), 139–152.
Hatlevik, O. E., Guðmundsdóttir, G. B., & Loi, M. (2015). Digital diversity among upper secondary students: A multilevel analysis of the relationship between cultural capital, self-efficacy, strategic use of information and digital competence. Computers & Education, 81, 345–353.
Henderson, M., Selwyn, N., & Aston, R. (2017). What works and why? Student perceptions of ‘useful’ digital technology in university teaching and learning. Studies in Higher Education, 42(8), 1567–1579.
Henriksen, D., Mishra, P., & Fisser, P. (2016). Infusing creativity and technology in 21st-century education: A systemic view for change. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 19(3), 27–37.
Henseler, J., & Fassott, G. (2010). Testing moderating effects in PLS path models: An illustration of available procedures. In V. Esposito Vinzi, W. W. Chin, J. Henseler, & H. Wang (Eds.), Handbook of partial least squares (pp. 713–735). Berlin: Springer.
Hwang, G. J., Lai, C. L., & Wang, S. Y. (2015). Seamless flipped learning: A mobile technology-enhanced flipped classroom with effective learning strategies. Journal of Computers in Education, 2(4), 449–473.
IGI Global. (2019). What is ICT policy? [Online]. Available at https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/gender-ict-policy-development-empowerment/13656. Accessed 12 August 2019.
Jöreskog, K. G., & Sörbom, D. (2006). LISREL 8.80. Chicago: Scientific Software International.
Kashada, A., Li, H., & Koshadah, O. (2018). Analysis approach to identify factors influencing digital learning technology adoption and utilisation in developing countries. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 13(2), 48–59.
Losh, E. (2014). The war on learning. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Macher, J., Miller, N. H. and Osborne, M. (2017) An Empirical Study of Competition and Technology Adoption. pp. 5.
McKnight, K., O’Malley, K., Ruzic, R., Horsley, M. K., Franey, J. J., & Bassett, K. (2016). Teaching in a digital age: How educators use technology to improve student learning. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 48(3), 194–211.
Miranda, H. P., & Russell, M. (2012). Understanding factors associated with teacher-directed student use of technology in elementary classrooms: A structural equation modelling approach. British Journal of Educational Technology, 43(4), 652–666.
Moore, R. L., & Fodrey, B. P. (2018). Distance education and technology infrastructure: Strategies and opportunities. In A. A. Piña, V. L. Lowell, & B. R. Harris (Eds.), Leading and managing e-learning: What the e-learning leader needs to know (pp. 87–100). Cham: Springer.
Navimipour, N. J., & Soltani, Z. (2016). ‘The impact of cost, technology acceptance and employees’ satisfaction on the effectiveness of the electronic customer relationship management systems’. Computers in Human Behavior, 55, 1052–1066.
Nguyen, L., Barton, S. M., & Nguyen, L. T. (2015). iPads in higher education - hype and hope. British Journal of Educational Technology, 46(1), 190–203.
Nicoli, N. and Komodromos, M. (2019 ‘CSR communication in the digital age: A case study of the Bank of Cyprus’. In Alexandros, A. and Evi, D. (eds), Cases on Corporate Social Responsibility and Contemporary Issues in Organisations, Pennsylvania, IGI Global, pp. 71–89.
Palacios-Marqués, D., Soto-Acosta, P., & Merigó, J. M. (2015). Analyzing the effects of technological, organisational and competition factors on web knowledge exchange in SMEs. Telematics and Informatics, 32(1), 23–32.
Petko, D., Prasse, D., & Cantieni, A. (2018). The interplay of school readiness and teacher readiness for educational technology integration: A structural equation model. Computers in the Schools, 35(1), 1–18.
Piper, B., Zuilkowski, S. S., Kwayumba, D., & Strigel, C. (2016). Does technology improve reading outcomes? Comparing the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of ICT interventions for early grade reading in Kenya. International Journal of Educational Development, 49, 204–214.
Pucciarelli, F., & Kaplan, A. (2016). Competition and strategy in higher education: Managing complexity and uncertainty. Business Horizons, 59(3), 311–320.
Rabah, J. (2015). Benefits and challenges of information and communication technologies (ICT) integration in Québec English schools. Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology-TOJET, 14(2), 24–31.
Reitz, T. (2017). Academic hierarchies in neo-feudal capitalism: How status competition processes trust and facilitates the appropriation of knowledge. Higher Education, 73(6), 871–886.
Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). New York: Free Press.
Scherer, R., Tondeur, J., Siddiq, F., & Baran, E. (2018). ‘The importance of attitudes toward technology for pre-service teachers’ technological, pedagogical and content knowledge: Comparing structural equation modelling approaches’. Computers in Human Behavior, 80, 67–80.
Selwyn, N. (2016). Digital downsides: Exploring university students’ negative engagements with digital technology. Teaching in Higher Education, 21(8), 1006–1021.
Sosa, E., Salinas, J., & De Benito, B. (2019). Emerging technologies (ETs) in education: A systematic review of the literature published between 2006 and 2016. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 12(5), 128–149.
Souder, D., Zaheer, A., Sapienza, H., & Ranucci, R. (2017). How family influence, socioemotional wealth and competitive conditions shape new technology adoption. Strategic Management Journal, 38(9), 1774–1790.
Thomas, M., & Thomas, H. (2012). Using new social media and web 2.0 technologies in business school teaching and learning. Journal of Management Development, 31(4), 358–367.
Tuisk, T., Nekrassova, N., & Miller, L. (2015). Digitization and student communication patterns in higher education. Australian & New Zealand Journal of European Studies, 7(2), 87–100.
Uerz, D., Volman, M., & Kral, M. (2018). Teacher educators’ competences in fostering student teachers’ proficiency in teaching and learning with technology: An overview of relevant research literature. Teaching and Teacher Education, 70, 12–23.
van de Oudeweetering, K., & Voogt, J. (2018). Teachers’ conceptualisation and enactment of twenty-first-century competences: Exploring dimensions for new curricula. The Curriculum Journal, 29(1), 116–133.
Wright, S. (1934). The method of path coefficients. Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 5(3), 161–215.
Zhu, C., & Engels, N. (2014). Organisational culture and instructional innovations in higher education: Perceptions and reactions of teachers and students. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 42(1), 136–158.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
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
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10246-9