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The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of the shift to a knowledge society, where information and communication technology (ICT) and the widening spread of internationally distributed information are creating a “skill revolution”, as O'Hara suggests, there is a widening culture mismatch between what members of the knowledge society need to succeed and what current systems of higher education are geared to offer and to adequately prepare people and communities to thrive in the global knowledge society.

For universities, as the scope and complexity of the actual business environment grows, the changing landscape of business education needs to come to terms with a developing global environment that has impacted on business, demographics and culture which demands a change in managerial skills to lead sustainable enterprise.

Students need to master higher‐order cognitive, affective, and social skills not central to mature industrial societies, but vital in a knowledge based economy that include “thriving on chaos” (making rapid decisions based on incomplete information to resolve novel situations); the ability to collaborate with a diverse team – face‐to‐face or across distance – to accomplish a task; creating, sharing, and mastering knowledge through filtering a sea of quasi‐accurate information.

These skills, according to Galerneau and Zibit, are “the skills for the twenty‐first century”, as they are “the skills that are necessary to succeed in an ever changing global society where communications is ubiquitous and instantaneous, and where software tools allow for a range of creative and collaborative options that yield new patterns and results that we are only beginning to see”.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the rapid development of the massive open online courses (MOOCs) and the implications for business education, to critically examine the educational and business models of the MOOCs, to assess their present scale and scalability, and to explore the responses of the universities to this challenge.

The paper provides an analysis of the origins, structure and orientation of the MOOCs, assesses their future trajectory and compares this development with earlier waves of e‐learning.

The massive open online courses have considerable potential for growth with high quality products supported by leading universities. However they still need to resolve issues other e‐learning organisations have faced including assessment, high drop out rates, and how to maintain viability.

The MOOCs remain at a developmental stage, and it is not yet apparent whether their growth trajectories will be as ambitious as anticipated. However they are a definite advance over earlier online learning systems, and are worthy of further research regarding their performance.

The recent origin of the MOOCs involves an idealistic phase that is inspiring, but the question is will it last? Have the MOOCs the resilience to continue to develop as the universities have done over many decades? Further research will be required on this.

The MOOCs have immense social implications for access to higher education in both the advanced and developing worlds.

This is one of the first studies of the MOOCs to emerge which compares them with earlier initiatives in e‐learning, and considers the adaptive responses of the universities.

Highlights the emergence of the knowledge‐based economies reliant on their effectiveness in developing and utilising knowledge. Knowledge embodied in new products and services has become the primary source of wealth creation. Digital networks provide access to vast amounts of data and information, but knowledge management is required to translate data and information in a meaningful way. Knowledge management initiatives are unlikely to be successful unless they are integrated with business strategy, and related to the development of the core capabilities of the organisation. Sharing the discovery and synthesis of intellectual activity involves the creation of knowledge communities of practice.

Knowledge is a social construct and cannot be managed as physical assets. The distinction between data, information and knowledge is made. The transformation of raw data and information into useful knowledge requires a sense of trust and reciprocity on the part of people. Knowledge flows involve the translation of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge in a process of codification. Knowledge produced by individuals reaches its full potential to create economic value when it becomes embedded in organisational routines. It is important to focus upon flows of knowledge, and not simply measure stocks of knowledge. Examples are given of successful corporate initiatives in knowledge management.

The transformation of the Chinese economy is underway, and the process of reform has facilitated a sustained increase in economic growth. However, the state‐owned enterprise sector is being left behind by the dynamism of the other sectors of the economy. To sustain growth it is likely that further changes are necessary in the Chinese economy and society. The lessons of the Asian financial crisis are that economic progress can be halted without a commitment to the creation of independent institutions, and the individual freedoms necessary to promote entrepreneurship and innovation. The conservative social values of China, often promoted through the educational and training system, could act as a brake on the economic progress of the country.

The combination of the demand for access to continuous, flexible education and training, and the arrival of the increased bandwidth of more powerful information and communication technologies is stimulating extensive corporate developments in the e‐learning industry. Strategic alliances of leading universities, e‐learning and technology companies are forming to provide online delivery of sophisticated, media rich, interactive education and training on a global basis. Hundreds of e‐learning companies are competing in this new marketspace with content, technology and services. Major companies are establishing their own corporate universities. The question is whether the potential for interactive online knowledge communities is achieved, or if this new technology is primarily employed in relatively routine skills training.

Research indicates a long historical connection between racism and nationalist ideologies. This connection has been highlighted in the resurgence of exclusionary nationalism in recent years, across many multicultural societies. This chapter discusses the notions of race, ethnicity and nation, and critically examines how racism shapes contemporary manifestations of nationalist discourse across the world. It explores the historical role of settler-colonialism, imperial expansions and the capitalist development in shaping the racial/ethnic aspect of nationalist development. Moreover, it provides an analysis of the interconnections between the racialisation of minorities, exclusionary ideologies and the consolidation of ethno-nationalist tropes. This chapter further considers the impact of demographic changes in reinforcing anti-migrant exclusionary sentiments. This is examined in connection with emerging nativist discourse, exploring how xenophobic racism has shaped and is shaped by nostalgic nationalism based on the sanitisation of the legacies of Empire and colonialism.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of identifying market segments in multistage markets and assessing whether their alignment could provide a useful managerial approach to find competitive advantage and better understand market opportunities.

Using data from a pilot project, need-based market segments from different market stages were identified and their potential alignment evaluated. The data were not designed to test hypotheses, nor were they originally intended to be used to align segments. Nevertheless, they provided a unique opportunity to explore multistage segmentation and segment alignment in a business-to-business (B2B) setting.

Overall, the findings of this exploratory study should encourage both academics and practitioners to continue to explore the possibility of studying and aligning multistage market segments. The possibility of aligning segments was demonstrated using visual alignment based on managerial judgment of data and alignment based on a combined cluster analysis of customers across the multistage markets.

First, the market research was not specifically designed to formulate and test hypotheses about the feasibility of aligning segments in multistage markets – it is an exploratory study. The research was based on a pilot project, and the survey-derived databases were conveniently available for analysis. While sample sizes were small, they are typical of many B2B markets. Second, to more effectively study complex relationships in multistage markets, it would have been desirable to include a more comprehensive set of needs. Each market stage has not only a set of their own perceived needs but also a set of perceptions of the needs of other stages. Third, as in many B2B studies, the data used in this pilot project were based on single informants.

A common complaint among firms is that B2B market segmentation does not really work that well for them. An unexplored reason for this may be that true market segmentation does not stop with one’s direct customer, but should also include the customer’s customer and so on, in a multistage market segmentation structure. One implication of the research presented here suggests that better understanding the segmentation structure in a multistage market can enlighten the opportunities and risks of implementing such a strategy. Multistage market segmentation alignment may lead to innovative positioning and message levers for the sales force to use as an argument to gain advantage according to common and unique aligned segment needs.

The process may be applied to social institutions in addition to commercial organizations.

While it is obvious that market segmentation can be applied to any single market of customers, the question of applying it to complex multistage markets needs additional exploration. The original idea in this paper is that the potential for strategically aligning multistage markets and segments can have both conceptual and managerial implications for establishing competitive advantage and more efficient and effective resource allocation. The paper shows that that such alignment is possible; however, research and research methods in this area are nascent and will require continued step-by-step learning about these complex market structures to build up to a more definitive understanding of the processes involved to guide future research and managerial thinking.