Digital Skills and Business School Curriculum

Digital skills are a critical part of any national digital strategy to promote economic and social development and are profoundly changing educational requirements and modes of delivery in many countries around the world. Yet many nations have developed strategies which focus on promoting the development of technological infrastructure without considering the skills needed to use, build and manage it. Even when countries do reference digital skills, the definitions are seldom consistent and the ways in which they are assessed differ significantly. This review of international literature in English and French on digital skills explores the role of digital skills in national strategies, the definitions of digital skills, the assessment of digital skills and strategies to advance them. Using textual analysis tools and well-established approaches to meta-analysis, we used a set of standardized search terms in both academic and general search engines to identify 19,528 unique academic articles and grey literature related to digital skills in both English and French. These results were then systematically reviewed and reduced, based on recency and relevancy, to 3,017 results. Our results indicate that a hybrid set of business and technology skills is becoming increasingly sought after by organizations due to the benefits ascribed to this skill set, including increases in levels of innovation and productivity, competitive advantage, as well as, growth and profitability. Furthermore, we reviewed a number of metrics to assess digital skills in the business environment and observed that, in a knowledge-based economy, every employee must have the skills to generate, critically analyse, and disseminate knowledge. We conclude that, in order to continue to develop business-ready graduates, general business management programs must begin to integrate the development of this hybrid skill set into their current curriculum.