A framework for an e-business curriculum

The global economy has been undergoing rapid structural changes in the last few years due to the growth of the Internet. In order to gain the first-mover advantage, companies are keen to add new 'e-elements' to their businesses. To cope with new challenges, managers must be cross-trained with broad knowledge. This has aroused general interest in acquiring the related knowledge. Educational institutions have responded swiftly to offer new related programmes. New dedicated e-commerce postgraduate streams have been established to meet the knowledge requirements of the new economy. Since the teaching and learning in this area are so new and the knowledge to be covered is broad, it is difficult to design a well-balanced programme to meet the needs of students. In this paper, we propose an e-business knowledge framework for supporting e-business teaching. This framework has been developed based on Porter's value chain theory. It can be used to help design and evaluate e-business programmes. We have applied the framework to evaluate dedicated postgraduate e-business programmes in Hong Kong.