A Fit-Gap analysis of E-Business Curricula vs Industry Needs SID DAVIS. KENG SIAU AND KUMAR DHENUVAKONDA Despite the dot-com bust, e-business continues to expand, as many large, traditional Research has estimated that e-business is expected to grow to $6. 8 rgies[8] .Forrester businesses embrace it as a key component of their competitive strate illion worldwide by the year 2004, with its impact felt in almost every segment of the global economy E-business is the conduct of business with the assistance of telecommunications and telecommunications-based tools" [4]. This definition covers a broad range of activities, from business-to-business(B2B), to business-to-customer(B2C), to intra-organiza tional commerce [9]. The plethora of opportunities opened in this cyber-frontier has taken the spirit of entrepreneurship to dizzying heights in the last decade [1]. How- ever, the Achilles heel in this new economy is the lack of If professionals with the ight skill setsa constant complaint from recruiters [3, 7]. Clearly, the e-business ig-bang caught most academic institutions by surprise, finding them unable to respond with the requisite programs or courses. However, over the last several years, we have seen a discernible upsurge in e-business programs to overcome this la ably cially in top US business schools. The nature of this res sponse varies conside among schools. Some have rejected outright the need for a separate e-business pro- gram, whereas others have embraced and staked their reputations on their new e-busi ness programs. Are these programs producing the right kinds of graduates fo industry? What are the core and optional courses in e-business programs? This study investigates the alignment of e-business academic programs with the e-business job market. A fit-gap analysis was performed to identify where e-business pro ograms are on target and the gaps that need to be filled by new e-business courses. SID DAVIS(davis@mail. unomaha edu) is assistant professor of Management Information Systems(MIS)in the College of Information Science and Technology at the University of Nebraska-Omaha(UNO) KENG SIAU (ksiau@unL.edu) is associate professor of Management Information Systems(MIS)at the University of ka, Lincoln(UNL). He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Database Management: KUMARDHENUVAKONDA(Kumar314@yahoo.com)isaprojectanalystintheIntegratedBusinessSolution Center of Sprint. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee 02003ACM COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM December 2003/oL. 46. No. 12ve 67A Fit-Gap Analysis of E-Business Curricula vs. Industry Needs Sid Davis, Keng Siau, and Kumar Dhenuvakonda Despite the dot-com bust, e-business continues to expand, as many large, traditional businesses embrace it as a key component of their competitive strategies [8]. Forrester Research has estimated that e-business is expected to grow to $6.8 trillion worldwide by the year 2004, with its impact felt in almost every segment of the global economy [6]. E-business is “the conduct of business with the assistance of telecommunications and telecommunications-based tools” [4]. This definition covers a broad range of activities, from business-to-business (B2B), to business-to-customer (B2C), to intra-organiza￾tional commerce [9]. The plethora of opportunities opened in this cyber-frontier has taken the spirit of entrepreneurship to dizzying heights in the last decade [1]. How￾ever, the Achilles’ heel in this new economy is the lack of IT professionals with the right skill sets—a constant complaint from recruiters [3, 7]. Clearly, the e-business big-bang caught most academic institutions by surprise, finding them unable to respond with the requisite programs or courses. However, over the last several years, we have seen a discernible upsurge in e-business programs to overcome this lag, espe￾cially in top US business schools. The nature of this response varies considerably among schools. Some have rejected outright the need for a separate e-business pro￾gram, whereas others have embraced and staked their reputations on their new e-busi￾ness programs. Are these programs producing the right kinds of graduates for industry? What are the core and optional courses in e-business programs? This study investigates the alignment of e-business academic programs with the e-business job market. A fit-gap analysis was performed to identify where e-business programs are on target and the gaps that need to be filled by new e-business courses. COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM December 2003/Vol. 46, No. 12ve 167 Sid Davis (davis@mail.unomaha.edu) is assistant professor of Management Information Systems (MIS) in the College of Information Science and Technology at the University of Nebraska–Omaha (UNO); www.isqa.unomaha. edu/faculty.htm Keng Siau (ksiau@unl.edu) is associate professor of Management Information Systems (MIS) at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln (UNL). He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Database Management; www.ait.unl.edu/siau/ Kumar Dhenuvakonda (Kumar314@yahoo.com) is a project analyst in the Integrated Business Solution Center of Sprint. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. © 2003 ACM