Journal of Marketing Education

Procrastination can be a crucial factor inhibiting faculty success. Many important tasks, especially publications for promotion or tenure, are typically associated with deadlines that are far in the future. As a result, time management skills can make or break the success of new faculty. This study examines task characteristics of procrastination in faculty work. It extends work by Paden and Stell and Ackerman and Gross to the context of procrastination by faculty members. An online survey asked respondents to recall important projects they had recently completed. The results suggest that task characteristics influencing procrastination in starting and in completing tasks and projects are quite different. A wider variety of factors affected faculty member procrastination in completing tasks and projects than in starting them. These included departmental norms, competing deadline pressures, perceived difficulty of the task or project in question, and clarity about how to proceed.

This article presents one educator's philosophic answer to the question “Why am I teaching?” During the course of this article, principles of servant teachership are presented. In addition, some teaching approaches used by the author are presented.

The article provides insights on how the design of discussion activities can be used to facilitate alternative learning objectives in the marketing curriculum. A review of the literature provides insight for making choices with regards to two aspects of discussion design: (a) the choice between face-to-face and online (i.e., threaded bulletin boards) delivery modes and (b) the choice between structured and unstructured discussion. Exploratory research is explicated that lends support to recommendations made relevant to matching desired learning outcomes and discussion activity design.

Structured case analysis is a hybrid pedagogy that flexibly combines diverse instructional methods with comprehensive case analysis as a mechanism to develop critical thinking skills. An incremental learning framework is proposed that allows instructors to develop and monitor content-specific theory and the corresponding critical thinking skills. Structured exercises are used initially to examine theory and augment critical thinking skills. The degree of structure decreases progressively as students develop these skills and master theory. The process culminates in traditional (unstructured) case analysis. This discussion explores the characteristics and benefits of structured case analysis and describes how the method can be implemented in a marketing case course. The incremental learning framework fosters metacognition and task generalization. Structured case analysis can be adapted to courses that seek to develop critical thinking and marketing decision making.

A structural model of the drivers of online education is proposed and tested. The findings help to identify the interrelated nature of the lectures delivered via technology outside of the traditional classroom, the importance of mentoring, the need to develop course structure, the changing roles for instructors and students, and the importance of designing and delivering course content on the enhancement of the online learning experience. The results support an integrated, building-block approach for developing successful online programs and courses.

This article assesses the level of moral reasoning ability (MRA) of undergraduate marketing students and compares the results with the MRA of students in a range of other business disciplines. The aim was to determine if marketing attracts individuals who have a greater predisposition to unethical behaviors given that marketing is often reported as the most unethical of all business activities. The Defining Issues Test (DIT) was used to measure MRA. Although frequently used to measure the MRA of undergraduate students, the DIT has not been used within the marketing domain. The findings indicate that marketing students do not exhibit a lower level of MRA than other business disciplines. Marketing students are no less ethical in their thinking than those pursuing other business careers. The perception of unethical behavior is more likely to be a product of the visible nature of marketing activities to consumers.

As university curriculums inevitably change, their evolution typically occurs through a series of minor incremental adjustments to individual courses that cause the curriculum to lose strategic consistency and focus. This article demonstrates a zero-based approach to marketing curriculum innovation. The authors describe forces of change that led them to completely redesign their marketing curriculum, and they chronicle a replicable process that can be used to develop and launch an extensive transformation of an existing program that is focused yet adaptive. The process includes faculty commitment, consensus, collaboration, and compromise; stake-holder input; points of distinction; unifying themes; intended learning outcomes; instructional design; approval; a transition plan; launch; and evaluation and continuous improvement. The authors believe that departments of any size can implement a similar redesign process to develop a curriculum that is strategically consistent with the department's core competencies and focused on learning outcomes that are fundamental to any marketing career.

This article reports on the use of group and individual diaries to control social loafing on the group project. Although both forms of the diary were designed to prevent social loafing, neither appeared to do so. An unexpected result of the individual diaries is that they appeared to make the majority of the class, namely the “nonloafers,” more aware of and less tolerant of their loafing partners. Consequently, firings of group members were most likely to occur when individual diaries were used. This article shows how the diary method affects peer evaluations and group behavior, investigates the convergent validity of the individual diary, and summarizes students' attitudes toward the diary method.