Class Times: Monday and Wednesday 1:00 p.m. - 2:20 p.m., January 9, 2012 to April 11, 2012, in SAB 3-26

Course Syllabus: http://www.business.ualberta.ca/rfield/Courses/SMO310/smo310b1syllabuswinter2012.htm

Grades: Check your grades online at https://ulearn.ualberta.ca  Sign in with your campus computing ID and password. If you have trouble you may need to go to the campus computing site and change your password.

Professor: Dr. Richard Field   

Professor's Home Page: http://www.business.ualberta.ca/rfield

Office: Faculty of Business Building, Room 4-30M    

Office Hours: I'm always available both before and after class. Other than that, call or e-mail for an appointment.

Telephone: Office 780.492.5921; Fax 780.492.3325

E-mail: Richard.Field@ualberta.ca

Textbook: Understanding Management, First Canadian Edition, by: Richard L. Daft, Vanderbilt University; Dorothy Marcic, Vanderbilt University; Ross Bradford, University of Alberta; and Heather Stevens, George Brown College. Published by Nelson Education Ltd. © 2009. ISBN: 0-17-610384-8.

See the student website for this text at: http://www.understandingmanagement.nelson.com/student/

The student website has a number of useful resources, including multiple-choice self-testing questions for the first five chapters.

There are a few typos in the text:

1. Page 72 attention to values runs from low on the left to high on the right.

2. Page 374 Exhibit 10.5. Does the person have a history of behaving this way at other times? Yes --> High consistency. Do other people behave in this way in similar situations? Yes --> High consensus --> External attribution. No --> Low consensus --> Internal attribution.

General Notes: 

There are eight sections of SMO 310. The course is coordinated so that each section uses the same textbook, has a multiple-choice midterm worth 35%, a non-cumulative multiple-choice final exam worth 35%, individual student work worth 10%, and group work worth 20%. Each section has its own final exam. Each instructor is asked to have a mean final grade for his/her section(s) of 3.00. Beyond these common guidelines each instructor is free to order the material as he/she sees fit and to cover the text but emphasize certain parts that make sense to him/her.

See the end of this online syllabus for a list of projects chosen by groups.

Notes from General Faculties Council: 

1. “Policy about course outlines can be found in Section 23.4(2) of the University Calendar.” Specifically, "At the beginning of each course, instructors are required by GFC to provide a course outline which must include the following: (1) a statement of the course objectives and general content; (2) a list of the required textbooks and other major course materials; (3) an indication of how and when students have access to the instructor; (4) the distribution of weight between term work and final examination; (5) identification of all course activities worth 10% or more of the overall course mark; (6) whether marks are given for class participation and other in-class activities as well as the weight of such participation; (7) dates of any examination and course assignments with a weight of 10% or more of the overall course mark; (8) the manner in which the official University grading system is to be implemented in that particular course or section, i.e., whether a particular distribution is to be used to determine grades, or whether there are absolute measures or marks which will determine them, or whether a combination of the two will be used. Instructors should refer to the University of Alberta Marking and Grading Guidelines.

2. From the University of Alberta Libraries website "Imagine that you were about to get surgery and just as you were going under, you discovered that your surgeon had cheated throughout his/her university career. Would you feel betrayed? What if it was your lawyer? Your accountant? Your child's teacher? All the above scenarios are reflective of a concept called academic integrity. As the above examples illustrate, academic integrity not only affects the climate at the university but it can also affect every other area of your life." http://www.library.ualberta.ca/guides/plagiarism/academic/index.cfm

The Centre for Academic Integrity at Duke University defines academic integrity "as a commitment, even in the face of adversity, to five fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility. From these values flow principles of behaviour that enable academic communities to translate ideals into action." (See http://www.academicintegrity.org/)

From General Faculties Council: “The University of Alberta is committed to the highest standards of academic integrity and honesty. Students are expected to be familiar with these standards regarding academic honesty and to uphold the policies of the University in this respect. Students are particularly urged to familiarize themselves with the provisions of the Code of Student Behaviour (online at http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/gfcpolicymanual/content.cfm?ID_page=37633) and avoid any behaviour which could potentially result in suspicions of cheating, plagiarism, misrepresentation of facts and/or participation in an offence. Academic dishonesty is a serious offence and can result in suspension or expulsion from the University.”

3. The University of Alberta Code of Student Behaviour (online at http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/gfcpolicymanual/content.cfm?ID_page=37633#38360) specifies in Section 30.3.4 Inappropriate Behaviour towards Members of the University Community, subsection 30.3.4(1) Disruption, paragraph 30.3.4(1)a that "No Student shall disrupt a Class in such a way that interferes with the normal process of the session or the learning of other Students." Under Section 30.4.3 Levels of Sanction, subsection 30.4.3(1) Minor Sanctions, paragraph 30.4.3(1)a "Instructors have the authority to dismiss a Student from Class for no more than 3 hours of Class time for Disruption of a Class. In cases where a single class meeting is longer than 3 hours the student may be excluded from that entire class."

4. Students may wish to view past blank copies of SCHEDULED FINAL EXAMS for this course by visiting the SU Exam Registry in person, at 0-26 Students Union Building (SUB), or online at http://www.su.ualberta.ca/services_and_businesses/services/infolink/exams. Also see previous exams online at Course Resources: http://www.business.ualberta.ca/rfield/Resources.htm.

University Policy on Recording: 

Recording is permitted only with the prior written consent of the professor or if recording is part of an approved accommodation plan.

From the University Calendar: SMO 310 - Introduction to Management - Introduces students to the behavioral, political and organizational dynamics of managerial practice. Topics include management theory, social responsibility, ethics, motivation, decision making, leadership, organizational structure, and strategy.

The purpose of this course is to help you attain greater personal effectiveness in organizations. It will help you to understand how organizations operate, how to motivate yourself and others toward the attainment of your own and organizational goals, how to work with others and how to make better decisions.

LEARNING GOALS

There are a number of learning goals for this course:

1. Business fundamentals -- the student will become more aware of and appreciative of the nature of organizations, different organizational types such as for profit, not-for-profit, governmental, and non-governmental.

2. Communication Skills - Written -- the student will have the opportunity to write reports and receive performance feedback, thereby becoming better at this important skill.

3. Computer Literacy and Technological Skill -- students unfamiliar with the use of computers for presentation purposes, and the use of display programs such as Microsoft's PowerPoint, will have the opportunity to develop that skill. Students will become more able make effective presentations.

4. Critical Thinking -- Students will be exposed to issues and ideas from the business press and this will help to develop their ability to analyze problems, situations and issues in a clear-minded, rigorous intellectual manner. At the end of the course students will be able to think more clearly about business issues.

5. Ethical Awareness -- Students will develop a high degree of awareness of ethical concepts and issues in the world of business and will begin to learn to develop strategies to both recognize and deal with ethical problems.

6. Global Awareness -- Students will develop an awareness of the global community in which business operates and how management and business operations are likely to vary between countries and cultures.

7. Information Literacy -- Students will read articles from the business press and learn to extract the key lessons from those articles. At the end of the course students will be able to capture the key message from a business article in a brief amount of time.

8. Practical Experience -- Students will develop the ability to apply academic knowledge to their own real-world work situations.

9. Teamwork -- Students will have the opportunity to work in a team and apply group concepts and techniques of leadership and conflict resolution toward the effective functioning of the team. At the end of the team process students will be better team members and leaders.

10. Leadership Skills -- Students will b develop an understanding of leadership roles and skills and how leadership methods may change depending on organizational circumstances.

11. Problem Solving -- Students will be given the opportunity to use problem-solving and decision-making tools to better understand organizational problems and issues. They will be better decision makers at the end of the course than at the beginning.

The textbook will give you the background you require to understand how scholars of organizations have studied organizations and the people who work within them, and the findings to date. You are responsible for reading the text as a foundation for your knowledge of management. In class we will clarify and expand on some points, then go beyond the text in discussions of topics and the completion of relevant activities. These are designed to give you personal exposure and insight into topics of importance to understanding how people behave in the context of organizations. It is imperative that you participate in class discussions and activities. Sharing your thoughts and opinions and working effectively with others is a key requirement in the organizations of today. If a class or part of a class is missed the student is responsible for conferring with peers in the course to determine the materials covered that day and any activities engaged in by the class.

The course grade is determined from several components. Assigned weight will not be moved from one component to another.

Individual Work 10%. This component is composed of 5% for a resume and 5% for a cover letter for your first full-time career job.

A Team Project is worth 20% of the final mark. 

The Team Project may be presented live in class or submitted April 2 as a recorded DVD. Presentation time slots are allocated on a first-come first-served basis. I reserve the right to adjust the course schedule as required to accommodate live presentations.

Teams of four or five members will be self-formed by late January. If you join a team, you must commit to work with them. If your fellow team members fire you from the group, you will have an individual project due at the final exam.

Project expectations will be identical for teams of different sizes. This is because there is a trade-off between team size and coordination costs. Teams of four have less work per person but higher per-person coordination costs. Should a class member not find a group to work with, that person will prepare an individual project.

Your team membership is your choice. You may wish to consider having a mix of Cohort students and non-Cohort students in order to better integrate them into the class.

PLEASE DO meet and work together as a group on the project so that you may benefit from each other's input. This takes longer and doesn't seem as efficient, but will be more fun and interesting for you. Effective teams are noted to have seven characteristics: Shared leadership, team accountability, distinctive purpose, shared work, open-ended meetings, collective measures, and real work. You should try to use these principles to guide your group work for this project. PLEASE DON'T decide quickly on a topic and then immediately break the task into chunks to be assembled the day before the team project is due. This increases efficiency but is less likely to be effective, or fun. If there are problems within your group with contributions of the members, see the instructor as soon as you can. See the Presentation Rubric for grading guidelines.

Each team will choose a movie (e.g. Ocean's Eleven, Green Lantern, Forrest Gump, and so on) or a T.V. series (Seinfeld, Better Off Ted, and so on). Given that choice, the title of that group's presentation is: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MANAGEMENT I LEARNED FROM ___________________" where the blank is filled in with that group's media choice.

There will not be duplication of media choice, so let me know as soon as you can what media you have chosen.

Each team will create a 20 minute presentation on CD or DVD (a USB can work as well). What is handed in on the due date at the start of class is that media and its presentation case. There is no associated report or transcript. The media will contain your group's presentation, which must be a video showing the members presenting their project. Make sure your presentation will play on another computer than the one it was created on. If you absolutely cannot make your CD/DVD, then hand in the presentation on USB stick. Make sure, though, that it will run on another computer.

The first five minutes or so of your DVD presentation MUST include introductions of your group members, an introduction to your media choice, and a preview of what you will cover in the rest of your presentation. This part does not have to last the full five minutes.

The duration of the presentation is to be 20 minutes (which includes the introduction of up to five minutes) of which five to eight minutes is used for video clips from your media choice and twelve to fifteen minutes is used for the group members explaining, demonstrating, or illustrating the ideas in the text with reference to the media choice. Think of this as an in-class presentation but not presented in class. Each group's objective is to educate the class in an interesting and creative way about how we can learn more about management by studying the program. The presentations created will not be used for any profit-making purpose and are solely created for learning purposes.

Presentation criteria are: Presentation Skills and Interest; Content and Key Learning Points (what the class should learn and take away from the case presentation); Quality of Thought and Argument; and Timing. Each of the first three criteria are equally weighted and will be graded out of 30. The timing criterion is graded out of 10.

Presentation Skills and Interest is judged on how well the material is presented. Can the video be seen? Are slides able to be read? Do the presenters speak clearly and with enough volume to be heard? Do the presenters speak in a way that generates interest in the material by the viewer? Is the content presented in a creative way? At the end of the presentation does the viewer wish to see more? Note that the quality of the media clips is not being evaluated, as long as the clips may be seen and heard. The project isn't about the media choice or the quality of the media itself, but about how well you present it. Don't spend a lot of your time on making your media look good -- spend your time on presenting your points in an interesting and effective way.

Content and Key Learning Points is about the breadth of the coverage on the topic. Does the group cover important and useful management theory? Does the group make it clear to the viewer what they have been taught by the presentation? Usually a viewer can only take away three or four main points from a presentation. Were there three or four main points? Were these made clear to the viewer and why they are important?

Quality of Thought and Argument is about depth of the coverage of the topic. Did the group accurately understand and use management concepts from the text and classes? Did the group do a fairly surface treatment of the management theory as it applies to the video content, or did they give some depth and subtlety of coverage? Were the points made about management, as illustrated by the media selected, useful, practical, and important? Did the group use the media to show examples of management concepts ("Here we see leadership in action ...") or, better, were the theories and concepts of this course used to understand the media chosen ("Notice how we can better understand the character's leadership by using this concept ...").

The Timing grade is calculated as the percentage of assigned time used and factoring in if the group used five to eight minutes of media in its presentation. Timing starts from the moment your presentation begins (that includes opening credits) and stops when the screen goes blank or when the words "THE END" appear. This includes closing credits. Grading stops at "THE END". Anything after that point will be watched for interest after grading is completed. Media minutes count any time the clip is playing, even if your group is doing a voice over while it is playing. Still motion captures from your media example do not count towards your media time. For example, if a group were to hand in a project of 18:00 minutes or 22:00 minutes, a raw timing score would be calculated as (20 minutes x 60 seconds - 120 seconds/ 1200 = .9 times 5 equals 4.5 out of 5). If the group had five to eight minutes of their media choice then this grade would stand. If the group used more or less than five to eight minutes of their media choice then this grade would be adjusted downward. The adjustment is the number of seconds under or over the target of 5 to 8 minutes subtracted from 300 or 480 then divided by 300 or 480. This number is multiplied with your raw timing grade to determine your final timing grade. The point is to try to stay between five and eight total minutes of clips. OUTTAKES do not count against your total time. Outtakes are short clips of funny incidents of the group preparing its presentation. On the label attached to your project include a note with your total running time and total clip time so that I don't have to calculate that for each group.

Your group will receive an email from me when all the presentations have been graded. In the email you will receive:

a. A few paragraphs on my reactions to your group's work

b. A grade using the rubric that lists your mark on each criterion in the rubric

c. The class average across all groups

d. How your group ranked in the top half of groups or if your group ranked in the bottom half.

The Midterm Exam is worth 35% of the course mark. The closed book midterm exam will consist of Multiple Choice questions. The midterm will require knowledge of the textbook, class lectures and readings assigned, guest speakers, activities, videos, and class discussions. The midterm will cover the material from the start of the course to the test date and will be composed of multiple choice questions. A missed midterm exam will be made up at the final exam by writing a separate midterm makeup.

The Final Exam is worth 35% of the course mark. The closed book final will require knowledge of the textbook, class lectures and readings assigned, guest speakers, activities, videos, and class discussions since the midterm exam. The final is not cumulative -- it covers only the material in the course from AFTER the midterm. The final exam will consist of Multiple Choice questions.

Multiple choice questions generally have five answers from which the student is asked to choose the best one.  Multiple choice questions will be primarily from the textbook chapters, so read that on your own. Other questions from class powerpoints, lectures, discussions, and videos will be added to supplement textbook questions. There are some sample questions available on the textbook website for the first five chapters. See the student website for this text at: http://www.understandingmanagement.nelson.com/student/

Grading

The University of Alberta recommends for third year courses a mean grade of 3.00, or a "B". Shown in the table below are the university recommended percentages of students who should receive each grade. Course grades in this course will follow the university recommendations as guidelines but with some variation allowed as required by student performance. The system used may be called a "first past the post" approach. Grades will be determined by ordering students from high to low on course performance and assigning approximately the top 6% the grade of A+, the next 9% the grade of A, the next 14% the grade of A-, and so on down to the bottom 1% of students who may receive the F grade. The target for the mean grade in SMO 310 is 3.00. Your final grade is a combination of your absolute performance in the course and your performance compared to the others in the class. To pass in this section of SMO 310, a minimum class grade of 60% is required.

You may have your laptops, cell phones, and Blackberries with you. Laptop e-mail, texting, tweeting, and Internet access via iPod touch, Blackberry, or similar device is not allowed in the classroom. Your cell phone may be on vibrate and calls received may be taken in the hallway. Laptops may only be open in class when you are using yours to access electronic versions of the SMO310 course text and articles or taking course related notes. No poker, no email, no Facebook, no texting, no Twitter, no Internet access.

Eating hot food in class is not allowed. Hot food in class changes the atmosphere from one of professional level work to that of a lunchroom. Disruption of the class in any way is not allowed. Coffee/tea/hot chocolate are ok. No pizza, no French fries, nothing that will pervade the room with the smell of your food.

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