A Fit-Gap Analysis of E-Business Curricula and Job Markets in Taiwan and the U.S

The world economy has revived since the dot-com bubble burst and the crisis of the millennium. Many enterprises are re-directing their resources into critical business areas to keep up with extrinsic changes. They adopt supply chain management (SCM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) to ensure seamless integration with suppliers and customers, or enterprise application integration (EAI) to integrate stand-alone systems for quick responsiveness. This phenomenon indicates that electronic business (EB) application systems are playing an important role in the effectiveness of enterprise operations. However, the tide of EB curricula seems to be declining. Many researchers doubt whether current EB curricula really fit the needs of the job market. In our opinion, it is impossible to continue using traditional curricula in the digital economy. To gauge the rapid changes in EB education and profession, we collect EB curricula from top business schools and job announcements from career Web sites in both the U.S. and Taiwan. We compare the results between the two countries and derive practical suggestions for narrowing the gap between industry and academia.