Systems Thinking Evidence From Colleges Of Business And Their Universities

Abstract

This study investigated instances of the term systems thinking among the websites of the Top 25 business schools as ranked by U. S. News and World Report in 2010. Since a greater number of instances of the term and its variants in a universitys web documents may indicate an increased interest of the institution in the concept of systems thinking, the universities in this study were rated according to their decreasing instances, counts, or website hits. Results indicated that while many schools had little to no mention of the term in any form, some schools used it prolifically on their websites, even when searching and hit counting was adjusted to remove duplicates and isolate inaccurate results. Nevertheless, appearance and discussion of the term was limited in official university information displayed by most schools. The authors assert that an increasing importance should be placed on teaching systems thinking at the graduate level and on providing evidence of this work to prospective business students and their prospective employers through university and business school websites.