Designing Management Curriculum for Workplace Readiness: Developing Students’ Soft Skills

Abstract

The increased complexity of today’s work environment has made the need for soft skills, such as teamwork, communication, leadership, and problem solving, more salient than ever. Employers hire for these skills because it is increasingly the human resources that give organizations a competitive advantage. Therefore, academia must respond to these external stakeholder needs by reexamining curriculum in light of how degree programs, particularly in management, are preparing students for the demands of the workplace. We describe a curriculum redesign that used a backward design process to focus on developing the soft skills that employers need, focusing in particular on developing teamwork-related skill sets.