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ving received better prepared graduates, it can be argued that the business community no longer rate ethics as important as it rated in 2004 because they are more content now compared to six years ago.

Secondly, the prolonged economic downturn has caused the business community to put more weight on other skills/subject areas. Consequently, this shifted the importance on other areas such as leadership and financial competencies, which diminished the relative importance of ethics. Also, in the beginning years of the economic downturn, firms were under shock, and had to operate under strict financial conditions prompting them to avoid any unnecessary lawsuits which might cause them to be ultra protective. Thus, they were in need of better ethically prepared employees, which are reflected in the 2004 rankings.

Moving away from ethics, marketing related subject areas were also rated significantly less important in 2009 compared to 2004. Around 11% of the 2009 respondents were associated with Sales/Marketing compared to almost 9% in 2004. In this regard, it was expected that the ranking of marketing related subject areas would improve, but the results are contrasting indicating that the importance of marketing related subject have indeed gone down. According to IBISWorld industry reports, the overall lodging industry showed positive growth in revenue from 2004 to 2007. However, the report also showed huge decrease in revenue growth in 2008 and 2009. Especially in 2009, revenue decreased by as much as 9.4% for hotel and motel industry, consistent with the projections made in 2008 (IBISWorld, 2010a). This decrease in growth has caused the hospitality industry to be ultra-protective of their expenses. As a result, there has been a decrease in the importance of marketing oriented subject areas, which accounts for a good chunk of costs in hospitality industry. The same reason can be cited for the significant decrease in hospitality operations subject area. A better argument can be presented from the employment perspective. Because of the sudden economic downturn in the lodging industry, it can be argued that firms have reduced their hiring practices in areas that greatly add to the cost of the hotels such as marketing, operations, and innovations and product development. Same holds true for managerial level positions, which accounts for the decrease in the perceived importance of subject areas such as service management, strategic management, and management and organization. However, reflected in our analysis, it can be pointed out that firms are looking for leaders, who can think out of the box, and bail them out of the financial crisis, which accounts for the high perceived rating of leadership subject area. Especially, it can be argued that hospitality firms are looking for employees who can lead from the front and make their decisions, instead of relying on other people such as the managers. Thus, it can be argued that, hospitality firms are trying to cut down the costs of employing specialized managers by trying to promote leadership qualities on their regular employees.

The subject areas that showed significantly higher means in 2009 compared to 2004 include Revenue/Asset Management and Study Abroad, which were both highly significant (p < .001). Study abroad has shown an increase in its mean over the last five years, but it is rated the lowest among all the subject areas in this study, a本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。