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Business schools are tasked with matching curriculum to techniques that industry practitioners rely on for profitability. Forecasting is a significant part of what many firms use to try to predict budgets and to provide guidance as to the direction the business is headed. This chapter focuses on forecasting and how well business schools match the requirements of industry professionals. Considering its importance to achieving successful business outcomes, forecasting is increasingly becoming a more complex endeavor. Firms must be able to forecast accurately to gain an understanding of the direction the business is taking and to prevent potential setbacks before they occur. Our results suggest that, although techniques vary, in large part business schools are introducing students to the forecasting tools that graduates will need to be successful in an industry setting. The balance of our chapter explores the forecasting tools used by business schools and firms, and the challenge of aligning the software learning curve between business school curriculum and industry expectations.

The purpose of this paper is the further development of an Excel-based integrated management system for the tool and cutlery industry regarding sustainability. The tool’s actual status allows integrating and implementing requirements considering work safety, environmental and quality management and a self-assessment for checking the level of requirements’ fulfilment. However, the topic of sustainability and requirements and risks going along with it are of great importance for the mostly small and medium companies of this industry. Therefore, the Excel-tool is being enhanced by integrating the requirements of risk, energy and sustainability management. The paper presents the advanced Excel-tool.

The base for advancing the Excel-tool has been analysing the status quo of sustainability management in the companies. Moreover, a matrix for comparing the requirements has been enlarged regarding the standards for sustainability, risk and energy management and builds the base for further developing of the Excel-tool.

This analysis has shown the need for action, regarding the topic of sustainability. Hence, the Excel-tool has been enlarged regarding the assessment of fulfilling the requirements of different management systems. It allows small- and medium-sized enterprises a detection of need for action to comply with the requirements of different management systems with minimal afford. By this, an easily evaluation and improvement of the companies’ management systems is enabled.

The tool enables companies to easily evaluate the state of their integrated management system by themselves and assists when implementing additional management systems.

This study aims to describe the fundamentals of teaching risk management in a classroom setting, with an emphasis on the learning interface between higher education and the workplace environment for business management students.

The study reviews literature that uses spreadsheets to visualize and model risk and uncertainty. Using six distinct case-based activities (CBAs), the study illustrates the practical applications of software like Palisade @RISK in risk management education. It helps to close the gap between theory and practice. The software assists in estimating the likelihood of a risk event and the impact or repercussions it will have if it occurs. This technique of risk analysis makes it possible to identify the risks that need the most active control.

@RISK can be used to create models that produce results to demonstrate every potential scenario outcome. When faced with a choice or analysis that involves uncertainty, @RISK can be utilized to enhance the perspective of what the future might contain.

The insights from this study can be used to develop critical thinking, independent thinking, problem-solving and other important skills in learners. Further, educators can apply Bloom’s taxonomy and the problem-solving taxonomy to help students make informed decisions in risky situations.

Prior research (Harrast, Olsen, & Sun, 2023) analyzes the eight emerging topics to be included in future CPA exams and discusses their importance to career success and appropriate teaching locus in light of survey evidence. They find that the general topic of data analytics is the most important of the eight emerging topics. To further understand the topics most important to career success, this study analyzes subtopics underlying the eight emerging topics. The results show that advanced Excel analysis tools, data visualization, and data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) are the most important data analytics subskills for career success according to professionals and that these topics should be both introduced and emphasized in the accounting curriculum. The results provide useful information to educators to prioritize general emerging topics and specific subtopics in the accounting curriculum by taking into account the most pressing needs of the profession.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the technology confidence, skills, and post-skills-test emotions in traditional (younger than 24 years old) and non-traditional (24 and older) first-year college students at three undergraduate campuses in the Northeastern USA.

Totally, 39 college freshmen from three college campuses were recruited for the study. An online test environment and screen recording software were used to measure student proficiency in using PDFs, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel, Gmail, and Windows. Data were collected in September 2013.

The majority of the students struggled with at least one facet of academic software. Traditional students were more confident than non-traditional students in their technology skills, but they did not score any higher on the skills test. Students who placed at the high end and low end of the test results curve most accurately assessed their technology skills, and their post-test feelings were the most appropriate in light of their test results. A large percentage of the traditional aged students were overconfident about their skills and self-identified as “happy” or “wonderful” even after performing poorly on the test.

Having concrete data about student technology skills, rather than anecdotal data from Reference Desk interactions, can help librarians design improved instruction and tutorials that target areas of student technology weakness. In addition, there have been no studies that examine student immediate emotional response to test performance in this type of testing environment.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a rich and textured narrative that utilises scholarly evidence, empirical research, and practitioner knowledge to shape, inform, and extend understanding of the leadership practice of “excelling at work” as it is enacted for zeitgeist organisational challenges.

In order to achieve this, it traverses a temporal timeline from circa 350 BC to the present millennium, to examine extant theories and concepts and emerging wisdom at the intersection of domains as seemingly diverse as neuroscience, cognitive and social psychology, contemplative practice, positive psychology, and organisational behaviour and leadership.

Complex environments require individual and collective agency for efficacious and adaptive responses. Extant theories and new insights on effectance, meaningful work, signature strengths, purposeful attention, self-control, deliberate practice, grit, explanatory styles, and mindsets amongst others, interconnect and at times intersect to form an empirically validated narrative on the augmented leadership practice of excelling at work in challenging times.

Overcoming zeitgeist challenges adaptively, requires organisations and their people to excel at work. Innovative combinations and connections of key constructs and concepts, underpinned by empirical evidence from a variety of disciplines, explicate the nature and enactments of this vital leadership practice of excelling at work.

Undertakes a comparative study of the statistical capability of three spreadsheets which are commonly used in the business sector. The spreadsheets considered are Lotus 1‐2‐3, Microsoft Excel and Quattro Pro. Considers five areas of statistical analysis regularly used by business decision makers (rather than specialist personnel). In order to obtain an objective measure of the statistical provision of each spreadsheet, comparison has also been made with dedicated statistical software regularly used by business decision makers, namely MINITAB. By making this comparison, argues that the spreadsheet is not only a tool for analysis, but also for presentation. Moreover, considers that two spreadsheets in particular, namely Excel and Quattro Pro, offer a user‐friendly statistical provision which should be sufficient for most business decision makers.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the role of the theory of constraints (TOC) to complement, reinforce, and help integrate conventional operations management (OM) concepts by using an Excel‐based version of the dice game discussed in The Goal by Goldratt.

The paper discusses the motivation for and the development and evaluation of an Excel‐based dice game model of a production system for novice managers to experiment with. A set of experiments related to OM concepts (e.g. inventory, capacity, and variability) is designed and counterintuitive results are discussed. The paper concludes by demonstrating how TOC provides an integrative OM framework.

The novel The Goal by Goldratt serves as a comprehensive case study in OM. The computerized dice game provides a mechanism for understanding relationships among various OM concepts. The proposed set of experiments strengthens the linkages between OM and TOC concepts. Managers can conduct additional experiments and predict/interpret the results without spending time in the logistics of setting up the manual dice game repeatedly.

The proposed dice game simulates a fairly simple serial production system so the generalization of results obtained might not be intuitively convincing for more complex production systems. More advanced OM concepts such as push (MRP) and pull (JIT) systems can easily be investigated using the underling logic of the dice game proposed here.

The model provides an innovative way to integrate TOC concepts with mainstream OM concepts and thereby, renews interest in OM.

Several versions of dice games, both manual and spreadsheet based, have appeared in the literature, however, none attempt to address as wide a variety of operations issues as the game proposed here.