An integrated approach to the teaching of operations management in a business school

The authors discuss a curriculum integration effort that a school of business piloted recently. This effort was aimed at integrating the core functions (finance, marketing, management, and operations) so that undergraduate students would better appreciate the full impact of functional decisions on each other and in achieving the corporation's business objectives. The authors deployed a webbed integration model in which a business case was used to highlight the impact of a functional decision on the other three functions. The focus of the article is on how this model was implemented in the context of a required introductory course in operations management. The authors also discuss the results of this effort, lessons learned, and the path forward.