Shown below is the distribution of grades I
gave in the last seven sessions of this course.
|
Average grade
distribution |
|
|
A |
21% |
|
A- |
23% |
|
B+ |
25% |
|
B |
15% |
|
B- |
9% |
|
C+ or lower |
6% |
Your course grade will have the following six components: The weights mean that
55% of your grade will be based on your work as an individual and 45% will be
based on the work of your team.
|
Class Participation |
15% |
|
Midterm Examination |
20% |
|
Final Examination |
20% |
|
Team Case Analysis (Part
1) |
10% |
|
Team Case Analysis (Final) |
15% |
|
Team Case Presentation
(Oral) |
20% |
Class Participation
The course format includes short lectures,
discussions, videos, and case presentations. You are expected to complete all
readings, assignments, and cases, and to be able to contribute to class
discussion. Your participation grade will take account of attendance and
contributions to class discussions. Falling asleep is definitely not rewarded!
Because of the course’s structure, I view
missing class as a very serious issue. Since some material is presented only
via lectures in place of a textbook, you need to hear the lectures. Learning
from case discussions requires that you participate in the discussions. If you
are going to miss several classes, you should consider taking another course. Furthermore, I am looking for active
participation, not mere attendance. One potential advantage of studying with
students who have job experience is that you can learn from the other students,
so it is important that you share your experience with your classmates.
Midterm and Final Examinations
The one-hour midterm exam will cover
material in the first half of the course, and the one-hour final exam will
cover material in the second half of the course. These exams will be made up of
true-false and multiple-choice questions that will test your knowledge of the
assigned readings and in-class lectures.
Team Cases
Each team will study a
business and make two written reports and one oral presentation about this
business. Teams can study any businesses that interest them, including ones
that are far from
I want to meet with each
team during the week of February 21-25 to discuss the cases you are developing
(and to find out who you are). Please make appointments for these meetings,
which should take about 45 minutes per team.
The written reports should
be no more than five-pages long
(type-written, double-spaced, 12-pt font), no
longer. Content will count for 85%; clarity, conciseness, and grammar
(mainly spelling) will each count for 5%. To help to produce reliable grading,
you must divide your written reports into four main sections with the following
heading headings. This scheme for reports was developed through research
concerning students’ essays. According to this research, students who use this
outline write better essays. They are less likely to omit important issues.
They are forced to make distinctions between issues, theories, analyses, and
recommendations, so their essays describe their reasoning more clearly.
Issues (up to 1 page, type-written, double-spaced, 12-pt font)
Theories (up to 1 page, type-written, double-spaced, 12-pt
font)
Analysis (up to 2 pages, type-written, double-spaced, 12-pt
font)
Recommendations
(up to 2 pages, type-written,
double-spaced, 12-pt font)
The
page counts allow for more than five pages so that you will have some
discretion about how much to write on each topic. However, you must limit the
entire paper to five pages of double-spaced, 12-point type. Neither a cover
page nor a page of bibliographic references will count against the five-page
limit.
The
first written reports will be due on March 24. These reports should focus on
organizational culture, reward systems, and decision making processes.
The
second written reports will be due at the next class following your team’s
presentation. These reports should focus on leadership, organizational
structures, and strategies.
Writing Style
In
a multicultural, multinational world, it is important that business
communications be easily understood by people who have different language
backgrounds. You should be trying to write so that people around the world can
understand what you intend to say. Keep your sentences short and your words
common. If you feel that comprehension of your writing requires a reader who
was born in the U.S., you need to change your writing style.
Case Presentations by Teams
A key facet of management is communication,
and formal presentations are essential communication tools. Effective managers
can make informative and inspiring presentations. To help you develop
experience, each team will participate in a presentation during the last half
of the term. Your goal in these presentations should be to apply subject matter
from the course to the business your team has studied.
Presentations
will take place on April 14, April 21, and possibly April 28 (depending on the
class size). A lottery will identify which teams must present their studies on
each date. These presentations should encompass all management aspects of the
studied businesses – organizational culture, reward systems, decision making
processes, leadership, organizational structures, and strategies. However, you
must limit your presentations to no more than 15 minutes, which implies that
you need to be selective and efficient about what you present.
Inevitably, grades on case presentations depend
on the excellence of the presentations as well as their content. The content
should cover the same elements as the written reports (issues, theories,
analysis, recommendations) but you can organize the information in any way you
would like. To help you prepare for case presentations, the syllabus includes a
brief guide to preparing oral presentations: “A Guide to
Effective Oral Presentations: 3 S's and a Challenge”.
Most teams make use of every member and I
think it is a good idea to give everyone some sort of responsibility. Some
teams have presented a kind of skit in which different team members play
different roles, including even a team member planted in the audience. A couple
of teams have portrayed a TV show such as David Letterman. Several teams have
portrayed meetings within the companies, or meetings between the companies and
consultants, or meetings between the companies and business partners. Some
teams have had one team member concentrate on thinking of questions to put to
the other teams. However, what your team does is up to your team.
Most teams use slide shows. If your team
chooses to use a slide show, you can put the slide show on the server at Stern
in the H: drive, on which each of you has reserved space. Or, you can bring the
slide show on a floppy disk or CD-ROM that you insert into the desktop system
in the classroom. Or, you can send the slide show to me as an e-mail
attachment, and I will put it in my folder on the faculty drive. Or, you can
bring in your laptop and connect it to the podium. However, this last method
has sometimes not worked, apparently because of incompatibility of the laptop's
display with the requirements of the video projector. The classroom also has a
VHS tape player and a DVD player.
Grading is determined by rating sheets
that the audience fill out. Suchitra and I will also fill out the same rating
sheets: Our combined ratings count for one-half of the total and the audience’s
ratings count for one-half. The ratings sheets ask some explicit questions. So
far as grades are concerned, the most important rating items are: (1)
Information added to that provided by the instructor (2) Clear relations to
other material in this course, and (3) Overall Reaction.
Stern’s Code of Conduct and
Honor Code
The Stern School has adopted a Code of
Conduct and an Honor Code that apply to all MBA students. You should familiarize yourself with these
rules.