![](bg3.png)
commerce. This initial list of skills was divided into
three groups, namely: soft skills, management skills,
and information systems skills. Table 1 presents the
list of skills initially defined.
With the aim of designing a course that
corresponded as much as possible to the needs of the
labour market and incorporating the expectations and
concerns of potential employers and future students,
the authors carried out 1) an inquiry, doing interviews
to potential employers, and 2) a survey, applying a
questionnaire to ISCAP final year students of some
after working hours degrees, and to graduate students
who are already in the labour market.
3.1 Interviews
An interview or an interview survey is a data
collection process that can be structured, semi-
structured or unstructured. In fact, the interview is the
most common form of data collection in qualitative
research (Myers, 2013). A semi-structured interview
combines open and closed questions as a commitment
between an organized script, and the freedom of the
interviewee to express opinions or report practices
that were not originally considered by the interviewer
and that can enrich the interview. Aligned with this
view, the script used on the interviews
4
, in addition to
having closed questions, also had open-ended
questions to emphasize the issue of freedom in
responses. The objective of the interviews was to
validate the list of skills initially defined (see Table
1). The interviews were recorded and later
transcribed. The script of the semi-structured
interview was applied to two companies.
Interviewees were numbered as Interviewee 1 (I1)
and Interviewee 2 (I2). On the first company (I1), it
was applied to the CEO and on the second (I2) to the
person in charge of the digital business channels and
digital marketing. Both companies are Portuguese.
The first one, where I1 was applied, operates in the
area of luxury tourism, with activities related to wine
and the wine culture, providing its customers with
experiences in the vineyards. This company has seen
an annual growth of over 20%/year in turnover for the
last four years. This company does not have any
physical shop, only operates on-line (B2C - e-tailor).
The interviewee was the founder and CEO of the
company. The second company, where I2 was
applied, started in 1982 as a traditional photography
business that later, with the advent of digital
businesses, changed its business model to digital,
4
The script is available at:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2817576
being today a multinational reference. This company
holds a national leadership position in the digital
printing and distribution of photographic material, an
activity that still is its core business today, despite the
diversification of its business to areas such as
distribution and retail. This company operates now on
several cities in Portugal, Spain and Brazil. Today it
employs professionals in the field of digital
marketing, electronic business, computer science
among other areas of information and communication
technologies. The interviewee has a background of
digital marketing and the person in charge of the
digital business channels and digital marketing.
The authors used content analysis techniques
following two steps: 1) in order to capture the general
meaning of the speeches a careful reading of all the
interviews was performed; 2) the answers were
grouped by each identified dimensions of analysis. In
the analysis of the qualitative data collected with the
interviews, two dimensions of analysis were
identified, namely: i) Dimension 1: Pertinency of the
master’s degree in e-business; ii) Dimension 2: Skills
considered as relevant for the master’s degree in e-
business.
3.2 Questionnaire
The next step on the process was the development of
a questionnaire
5
to be applied to the students
attending the last year of undergraduate after working
hours programs that were considered as potentially
interested in this new master program. These students
have already professional experience in related fields,
so they can provide relevant feedback about the skills
necessary for a master’s degree in e-business.
Questionnaires that are completed by respondents
themselves are one of the main instruments for
gathering data using a social survey design (Bryman,
2012)
Likert scales were defined for each of the skills
presented in Table 1, also considering the three
different groups. Students were asked to express the
level of importance they attribute to each of the skills
presented from “1 = not at all important” to “5- very
much important”. Students’ characterization was
achieved through three questions, namely, working
student (y/n), undergraduate (y/n), and age (20-30;
31-40; 41-50, more than 50). Students were also
asked to optionally present some additional
comments.
5
The questionnaire is available at:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2816903
ICE-B 2019 - 16th International Conference on e-Business
224