Is technology strategic or simply required? Mission–curriculum alignment in AACSB business school

As digital skills become fundamental to business education, an important question is whether business schools treat technology as a strategic priority or simply as a curricular requirement. This study examines the alignment between institutional mission statements and the integration of technology in the business core curricula of AACSB-accredited schools in the United States. Using a random sample of 200 institutions, we analyze mission statements and curriculum requirements through qualitative content analysis supported by natural language processing techniques, including lemmatization and latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling. The results reveal a clear misalignment. While a majority of schools require at least one technology-related course, more than half make no explicit reference to technology in their mission statements. This suggests that technology is widely embedded in curricula but not consistently framed as a strategic priority. These findings highlight a gap between institutional messaging and practice, raising important implications for how business schools position digital competencies in response to AACSB’s growing emphasis on digital transformation.