Introduction to Strategic Management, Organization, and Entrepreneurship (SMO 310)
Instructor Course Section
Maxine Clarke, MSOD Email: [email protected]
Office Hours:
MW 9:30 – 9:50 on Zoom https://zoom.us/j/420909089
Fall 2019 Section A1 MW 8:00 – 9:20
BUS 1-05
Course Overview
Objectives
Welcome to SMO 310! SMO 310 introduces students to the fundamentals of human resource management, strategy and organizational theory, and entrepreneurship/innovation. Topics include: motivating employees, designing jobs, staffing, ethics and decision making, leadership and managing teams; developing and implementing an organization’s strategy, structure, control systems, and change initiatives; and, identifying and evaluating opportunities, launching and growing a business, establishing networks and legitimacy.
In addition to introducing you to the majors/minors within SMO, this course will support you in developing skills that are core to the Alberta School of Business BComm program, such as critical thinking, teamwork, ethical awareness, oral communication, and written communication. This will include practicing sharing your ideas in small and large group settings and creating written deliverables that suit business environments, as you will be expected to do upon graduation.
By the end of the semester, you should have developed the following course-specific knowledge and skills:
• a basic understanding of the major topics taught in the three majors/minors within SMO: human resources management; strategic management and organization;
and, entrepreneurship and innovation.
• a broad understanding of the ways in which organizations attract, develop, engage, and manage their workforce
• a theoretical awareness of entrepreneurship and an understanding of practices that foster innovation
• a high-level understanding of the strategic decisions that organizational leaders must make, and the forces that impact an organization’s ability to deliver on its purpose and goals
ALBERTA SCHOOL OF BUSINESS STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND ORGANANIZATION
Structure
Module 1 – OB/HR: Right People, Right Place, Right Time
In this module we will explore some key challenges that managers navigate: making decisions, motivating others, designing jobs, hiring and training employees, creating and managing teams, and
evaluating performance and giving feedback. Many of you will have, provide service to, or become managers within the first few years of your career, and these foundational skills will serve you in working within the organizational context.
Module 2 –
ENT/INNO: Sensing and Seizing New Opportunities
In this module, we will explore the challenges associated with starting and growing a business. This will include identifying and evaluating opportunities, launching and growing a business, and establishing networks and legitimacy. These skills will support you whether you become an employee, manager, founder, client or supplier, as most of you will engage with helping organizations define and/or achieve their purpose in some way.
Module 3 – OMT/STR:
Surviving, Thriving, and Adapting
In this module we will explore the bigger-picture challenges that you will be party to throughout your career, and some of you will one day be in decision-making positions as members of an executive
management team, next-generation leaders of your family’s business, entrepreneurs or professional advisors to other firms.
These include how to develop and implement an organization’s strategy, structure, control systems, and change initiatives.
In-Class Expectations
Please come with a mindset open to participation in a variety of experiential teaching
approaches. In addition to mini-lectures, these may include small and large group discussions, Q&A periods with guest speakers, video analyses, mini-experiments and role-plays. These activities are designed to help strengthen your ability to apply the course concepts to realistic managerial scenarios.
Interestingly, research1 demonstrates that when instructors call upon students by name, significantly more students answer questions voluntarily and students’ comfort participating in class discussions increases. So, in the interest of everyone learning from everyone else’s perspectives and contributions, I have a practice of doing this and believe it provides a positive stretch experience for most. I do appreciate that for some of you this may provoke overly high levels of anxiety, so if that’s the case for you please come talk to me early in the semester.
Readings: Completing the readings in advance of each class will enrich your ability to make sense of the material and contribute.
Class Notes: Given that the exams will be based only on the material covered in class, I strongly encourage you to be in attendance for as many sessions as possible. Because the sessions are experiential in nature, PowerPoint slides will be posted to eClass just prior to each class to facilitate download in advance and note taking during the session.
1 Dallimore, E.J., Hertenstein, J.H. and Platt, M.B. “Impact of Cold-Calling on Student Voluntary Participation.” Journal of Management Education, 2013, 37 (3), 305-341
Electronics: As in work environments, technology is a powerful way to augment the work and learning of groups and teams. Many classes will involve research or activities that require access to the internet, so I encourage you to bring a smart phone, tablet or laptop to class in order to participate in them. That said, I will ask that you leave your electronics alone while in class unless their current use augments or helps you take notes on what is happening in the classroom. If you are online doing unrelated things, not only are you not gaining anything from being in the room, you are also not contributing productively to the classroom environment which impacts the learning of others as well.
Food and Drink: You are welcome to bring something to eat or drink, as long as it is not overly noisy to consume or odorous.
Required Textbook
There is no required textbook for this course. Selected readings are noted and linked in the Course Overview and Schedule section below.
Assignments and Weights
Item Weight
Module 1 Exam (40 minutes) 20%
Module 2 Exam (40 minutes) 20%
Module 3 Exam (40 minutes) 20%
Group Project - Presentation 20%
In-Class Participation 10%
Self-Evaluations 5%
SMO for Life Reflection Paper 5%
Course Overview and Schedule
Module 1 – OB/HR: Right People, Right Place, Right Time
Date Topic Readings Assessment or
Assignment W Sept 4 Welcome! Review Syllabus
Intro to Module 1 on OB/HR Individual Differences: What Makes Us Unique
M Sept 9 Employee Engagement and
Motivation Groups Assigned
(Randomly) W Sept 11 Teams, Ethics, and Decision
Making
M Sept 16 Leadership, Power, and Self-Evaluation 1
Negotiation
W Sept 18 Workforce Planning (Job and Organizational Design, HR Planning)
M Sept 23 Acquiring and Development Talent
W Sept 25 Rewarding Employees
M Sept 30 1. Presentations
from 1/3 of the class on Module 1 (acts as review for exam)
2. Self-Evaluation 2
Module 2 – ENT/INNO: Sensing and Seizing New Opportunities
Date Topic Readings Assessment or
Assignment
W Oct 2 Intro to Module 2 on ENT/INN Module 1 Exam
M Oct 7 Identifying Opportunities W Oct 9 Launching a Venture M Oct 14 Thanksgiving – No Class
W Oct 16 Scaling your Business Self-Evaluation 3
M Oct 21 Entrepreneuring in Large Organizations
W Oct 23 Evaluating Opportunities and Resourcing
M Oct 28 Building your Network and Leveraging your Ecosystem
W Oct 30 1. Presentations
from 1/3 of the class on Module 2 (acts as a review for exam) 2. Self-Evaluation 4 Module 3 – OMT/STR: Surviving, Thriving, and Adapting
Date Topic Readings Assessment or
Assignment
M Nov 4 Intro to Module 3 on OMT/STR Module 2 Exam
W Nov 6 Intro to Organization Theory
M Nov 11 Reading Week – No Classes
W Nov 13
M Nov 18 Intro to Strategy
W Nov 20 Internal and External Sources of
Value Self-Evaluation 5
M Nov 25 Organizational Culture, Identity and Change
W Nov 27 Institutional Theory, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability
M Dec 2 Final Class: SMO for Life
W Dec 4 1. Presentations
from 1/3 of class on Module 3 (acts as review for exam) 2. SMO for Life
Reflection Paper F Dec 13
2:00 PM
1. Module 3 Exam
Individual Contributions
In-Class Participation
Once you start your career in the business world, you will most likely find yourself attending a lot of meetings and being part of teams in which you will be expected to actively participate. So, in- class participation is an expectation in this course as well.
Given the large class size and respecting a combination of levels of comfort with public speaking, I will be assessing participation within about 10 classes throughout the term. To do so, I will use of the following methods:
• Submission of records of small group discussions, where you will discuss or create something, attach your name to it, and submit it.
• Submission of comments about guest speaker presentations that I can share back with the speaker as a way of thanking them for their time and effort. Meaningful comments include a statement of substance, such as “Your story about your first job was very helpful. I empathized with what you went through.” A statement such as “Thanks! Great presentation!” will not receive a mark.
• Submission of response to practice exam questions
On the assessment day, you will receive 1 point if you submit the requested information as instructed, before the class is over. Unfortunately, you cannot score a point if you are not in attendance or do not contribute in the preceding way. I will then divide your total number of points earned by the number of assessment days, converting that proportion into a score out of
5 (for example, if you contribute in a positive manner on 9 of 10 assessment days, your participation score will be 4.5)
Given that I won’t be divulging the assessment dates in advance, I recommend regular attendance and participation.
Self-Evaluations
Five times throughout the semester, you will be asked to reflect on what you are learning and how you are contributing to the learning of others via an online form. Self-Evaluation surveys will be made available on eClass on the date they are assigned (in the Course Overview and
Schedule) for one week. You must fully complete each survey within the week of it being assigned to receive a mark.
SMO for Life Paper
Details about the SMO for Life Paper will be posted to eClass two weeks before it is due.
The SMO for Life assignment will be evaluated by a modified version of Switzler’s (1994) SSSAP framework for effective business communication, as follows:
Header and overview statement
Degree to which the content, purpose and tone of the memo are effectively set (or established) at the outset by: a title that clearly specifies the
overarching topic; an overview statement that establishes interest and rapport, previews the document’s content, and provides a statement of its purpose (i.e., an indication of what you would like the reader to do with the material provided).
10 points
Section 1 Degree to which the content of the first major section is effectively supported, sequenced and accessible; where supported = material is comprehensive, relevant and sound; sequenced = material follows the “spill the beans approach” of first providing the overarching answer to the requested question and then providing the supporting justification; and, accessible = answer is easy to find and supporting examples are specific and vivid.
10 points
Section 2 Degree to which the content of the second major section is effectively
supported, sequenced and accessible (as described above). 10 points Section 3 Degree to which the content of the third major section is effectively
supported, sequenced and accessible (as described above). 10 points Structure
and style Degree of attention to the following polishing touches: clear organization using section headers (and sub-headers if applicable); minimal grammatical errors; page numbering; visually-appealing page formatting (bullet-point lists are acceptable); and summary statement (that includes an explicit ‘request for action’ where relevant).
10 points
If English is not your first language, I strongly encourage you to book an appointment for copy- editing assistance through the university’s Centre for Writers (http://c4w.ualberta.ca/)
well in advance of the due date for each assignment. Please note that you are welcome to use the copy-editing services provided by this centre for any of the written assignments in this course, even if English is your first language.
Module Exams
There will be three closed-book, 40-minute, multiple-choice exams. The exams cover materials from their respective modules only; the exam questions are not cumulative (ie. Module 3’s exam will cover only Module 3, not Module 1 or 2 content).
Group Project
Group Formation
Groups will be randomly assigned.
Assignment Overview
Your team’s task will be to critique how a manager or leader deals with an organizational
scenario and to offer suggestions for improvement. Ideally, I would send you out into the field to shadow and video-record a real manager, but this won’t be feasible. Instead, I would like you to find a publicly accessible video clip and to pretend that it features a manager that your team has been following as they go about their day within their organization.
It is important that your selected video clip features a manager dealing with an organizational scenario relevant to the module assigned to your group. The video clip can be from a movie, television show, or the Internet—and can be fictional or real and recent or older—but please choose a clip that is less than 3 minutes in length so that it can be shown during your presentation.
To avoid duplication with other groups or videos I may play in class, please check with me in advance to authorize your choice. Here are the approval criteria:
• the clip should be in good taste, with little offensive language and no ethnic/racial slurs
• the clip must not already have been proposed by any other team – first come, first serve
After I have authorized your choice, your task is to analyze the video clip by applying principles from two to three topics covered within the module assigned to your group. Your analysis should reflect your evaluation of how well the manager in your video clip handled the scenario as well as your suggestions for improvement.
More specifically, your analysis should include:
• background information on the situation that the manager is facing and a discussion of how that situation relates to a more general issue or challenge that managers often have to deal with in the workplace (e.g., a case of conflict between two employees)
• an assessment of how well the manager dealt with the situation according to the theoretical principles relevant to your two to three topics
• recommendations for how the manager could have better handled the situation
Please note that that the group assignment is deliberately more open-ended to both model the somewhat ambiguous nature of most assignments in actual organizational settings and to create an opportunity for you to demonstrate your creativity.
Oral Presentation
Each group will deliver a 12 minute oral presentation of its video clip analysis to the rest of the class on the date indicated in the schedule at the end of this syllabus. It will be evaluated according to the following rubric:
Presentation
Skills • Was the material well presented?
• Were the slides readable?
• Did the presenters speak clearly and audibly?
Note that it is the quality of the presentation that counts, not the clips or slides. This is worth taking seriously: the ability to make
convincing, clear arguments is an important skill in business and elsewhere.
30 points
Application • Did the presentation leave us with a clear understanding of the clip?
• Did the presenters explain why the situation and clip were important, and why the selected course concepts were relevant?
• Did the presenters accurately and thoughtfully apply concepts to the clip, in a way that enhanced our understanding of the situation?
• Was there a well-expressed summary, or a clear takeaway from this part of the presentation?
30 points
Insights • Did the presentation help us better understand the concepts that were being applied?
• Did the presenters go beyond articulating the concepts and their application, and clearly explain some lessons we could take away from their presentation?
• Were these lessons justified?
• Was this justification made explicit during the presentation?
• Bear in mind, audiences can usually only assimilate a small number of key points during a presentation – perhaps three or four.
• Were there three or four key points, clearly put?
30 points
Timing • Clips should run a maximum of 3 minutes
• Grading of your presentation ends after 15:00 minutes
• At 18:00 minutes the timing grade will be zero out of 10
10 points
Hopefully you will benefit tremendously from working as part of a diverse team for the group project. Should you experience any difficulties along the way, please will contact me as soon as possible so that we can work together to resolve any issues before they become too problematic.
Grading and Disciplinary Policies
Assignments: Assignment details will be posted to and assignments will be submitted via eClass. The group assignment is to be submitted by just one group member.
Late Assignments: As within the business world, deadlines are established to enable all parties to plan ahead and keep work moving at a suitable pace, and you are expected to deliver your work within the defined deadlines. I typically deduct 10% for assignments submitted within 48 hours of the due date and 20% for those submitted within one week of the due date. I will not accept assignments beyond one week of the due date unless official documentation is provided to support a claim of extenuating circumstances.
Converting to Final Letter Grades: Marks on the assessment components are accumulated over the term, ending with a final mark out of 100. At the very end of the course, numeric marks are converted to alpha grades. Grades are determined by your absolute performance on the assignments as well as your relative performance to the other students (in your section only).
Historically, the average grades in SMO 310 tend to be in the B range (e.g., GPA in the 2.8 to 3.2 range).
University Policy on Recording: Recordings shall be at the discretion of the instructor. Any use beyond personal study must have the explicit approval of the instructor. Instructors shall grant permission to record to assist students with disabilities. (See Guidance on Recording Lectures Enhancing Individual Study & SSDS) Lectures, demonstrations etc. are the intellectual property of the instructor. Any recording of these events is to be used for private study (fair dealing). Copyright for classroom recordings remains with the lecturer and that only the lecturer may record lectures unless express permission is given to others
University Policy on Class Disruption: The University of Alberta Code of Student Behaviour (online at http://www.ualberta.ca/~unisecr/policy/sec30.html) 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 disturbing, disrupting, or otherwise interfering with a class."
Academic Dishonesty: 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 www.governance.ualberta.ca) 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.
In cases where you are directly using someone’s own words, you must quote them exactly and cite the source of material. In cases where you have benefited generally from reading
something or talking to someone, this should be acknowledged through a footnote or citation in the text. You should also provide a full reference for these citations, either in the form of a footnote or at the very end of your document, as is done below.
Policy about course outlines can be found in Section 23.4(2) of the University Calendar.
References & Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the work of many members of the Alberta School of Business Strategic Management and Organizations Department, and especially the contributions oof Faculty Members Ian Gellatly, Angelique Slade Shantz, Joel Gehman, and Jennifer Jennings, and PhD student Joseph Owusu, for their significant contributions to the design of this course and this syllabus.
Switzler. (1994). SSSAP framework for effective communication. In Quinn, Faerman, Thompson
& McGrath, Becoming a Master Manager. New York: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 289-29
