Recently in MGMT 101 Category

Jo Badge and Jon Scott have produced a very interesting paper entitled Dealing with plagiarism in the digital age.

In their concluding remarks, they argue that there is "little solid empirical evidence to show the effectiveness of these [plagiarism detection] tools in improving student practices". However, experience here is that the use of Turn It In makes a significant difference. I recall that a few years ago I did some pretty sound analysis of levels of plagiarism in MGMT 191/192 and in MGMT 101 and there was clear evidence of changes in behaviour ... as manifested in levels of plagiarism.

I do agree with Badge and Scott that the use of electronic detection tools are only a "first step" in addressing plagiarism. We (Lisa Callagher, Lynne Mitchelle, and I) developed a very good on-line tutorial (called AHA, Academic Honesty Assistance) that was used in MGMT 191/192 and MGMT 101 for many years. I think it was the combination of Turn It In and AHA that made the difference in the levels of plagiarism. Perhaps that is what Badge and Scott are meaning, it wasn't just the use of the detection tool that made the difference; it was the combination of factors.

As a something of an aside, Badge and Scott point out there is a CiteULike group of plagiarism articles. It contains many of the 'classics' to which I often refer, especially the Good practice guide from Oxford Brookes.

A few students are keen to know what the exam topics will be -- and this is before they have completed the first major assignment. I wonder if they want to know so they can figure out which lectures to skip (not you Marcus -- you don't seem the type).

I'm currently teaching Organisation & Management (aka MGMT 101) at Summer School. The majority of students fall into one of two camps. Firstly, there are the highly motivated (and often highly performing) students who are trying to get ahead in their studies. Secondly, there are those students who have failed the course before and are try to make-up for lost ground.

Anyway, the students have an essay due next week, and it is interesting (and sometimes frustrating) to read their questions about the topic. The essay question is:

Smith Bank has a policy of positive discrimination for female employees in New Zealand. As they expand into other countries they attempt to implement this policy as part of their international strategy. Discuss the ethics of such policies.

So, in priciple, the students need to address the question "Is it ethical for Smith Bank to engage in these policies?" (And I've said exactly this in class.)

Most student's don't know what is meant by positive discrimination, so they will have to do some research in order to answer the question -- how can you argue about the ethics of a course of action if you don't know what it is you are arguing about.

Surprisingly, to me anyway, some students are finding it hard to find a good definition, let alone synthisise one from their research. I spent 10 minutes in the reference section of the library to come up with some pretty robust definition, and found I could get some pretty good ones by using Proquest, ABI/Inform, EBSCO host, and the like too. (It wasn't to hard to find some pretty good ones on the Internet either; but I guess students have more difficulty evaluating the quality of Internet sources).

So, having decided what it is that Smith Bank is doing, the question is "Is it ethical to do it in New Zealand?" and then to ask "Is it ethical to do it elsewhere?"

Anyway, some of the questions I've been asked are?

• "Does it matter that Smith Bank is a bank, rather than a hospital?" (No)
• "Do I need to go through all the theories I know about ethics?" (No, it depends on how you are approaching the answer -- inductively or deductively)
• "Do I need to deal with the situation in New Zealand at the same time as I deal with the international question" (No, you can do them one after the other)

Some people are going down the track of showing how biased employement for women is in New Zealand. This isn't really necessay. It adds spice to the essay, but it isn't needed.

Some people are going through the pros and cons (generally) of positive discrimination, but not really framing it around ethics (which is a clever trick).

Anyway, I'm look forward to reading some of the essays as some of the questions have revealed some deep understanding of the issues involved.

Since I've just finished marking my share of the MGMT 101 Organisation & Management examination scripts, I thought I'd put my reflections down whilst they are fresh in my mind.

Overall, it was a disappointing experience. The quality of the handwriting (which made the scripts hard to read), the quality of the grammar (which made the scripts hard to understand), and the lack of logic (which failed to answer the question), depressed the average grade well below the B range.

In particular, the lack of care in answering the question had a big impact on the marks. In the prep for the examination we told all the students to "read the question carefully and make sure you answer the question that is asked".

Well, for example, one of the questions was:

If you ran a small business providing office cleaning, how would you ensure that a quality product was provided? In answering this question, you should define what is meant by quality.

The key phrases from this question that need to be addressed are:

• Define quality
• Small business
• Office cleaning
• Deliver a quality product

The question doesn't ask for any of the following (and generally they added no value):

• A history of quality management
• The importance of TQM/Quality management/etc in contemporary business
• The impact of Taylorism of quality
• How the responsibility for quality has shifted from the worker, to the foreman, to the manager, and so on.
• A shopping list of every idea / theorist that had anything to do with quality.

I was surprised how well students are able to memorise the text book. Many of the answers began by repeating the first paragraph of the relevant chapter. Alas, that doesn't actually answer the question.

So, thinking of those key phrases in the question, what else might go wrong.

Define quality: Many answers said things such as "it is a complicated to define" then gave a one sentence definition. Others, said it means giving the customers what they wanted. And, of course, many people didn't define it at all. Those who did define quality, rarely linked the definition into what they wanted to do. Some answers went wide and said "quality is many things to many people", and didn't try and operationalise the term, i.e. provide a defition that allows you to do something with it. Overall, the definitions were short/trivial, e.g. one sentence long.

Small business: So it is a small business, that probably means that setting up a quality department isn't going to be viable. Massive training campaigns may not be feasible either.

Office cleaning: So, it's a service (good point), where production takes place at the point of delivery (excellent point), and we are highly reliant on people more than machinery (another good point). Also, it probably involves working non-standard hours -- who wants to have their office cleaned whilst they are working in it? Whilst students aren't meant to have a detailed knowledge of office cleaning (although a few did), it is necessary to have some sense of what office cleaning is about. Other features of the business are, that is a price sensitive which typically pays very badly; minimum wage or less (bonus points), so managing/motivating the people can be tricky. Often there is a high turnover of staff. Finally, we are dealing with a business-to-business situation, and not a business-to-consumer situation.

Deliver a quality product: Many people weren't consistent in what they said. For example, one student said he was going to use Deming's 14 principles and if a employee didn't perform he would fire them -- what ever happened to Deming's idea of "Drive out fear"? Many answers said they would build in quality by having supervisors do random inspections -- surely that is inspecting in quality. The important thing to do was to link the approach to delivering quality with selected definition, in the given context (small business, service provider). Too many answers didn't connect the dots so to speak. This was the biggest problem; consequently, many answers ended up looking like a shopping list of everything the student knew about quality.

Other boo-boos:

• Adopting statistical process control by surveying customers (the point of process control is that you are controlling the process as it happens and not at the end).
• Ignoring the cost of the service (bonus to those who brought that into their definitions).
• Choosing a technique that was different to the definition of quality. For example, if the definition was "zero defects" saying that the method is going to be based on surveying the customers needs and then doing what they want doesn't quite fit,
• Saying that TQM was the answer to everything without explaining why.

Having read the question, I always asked myself, "Could my mother have written this?" My mother has no training in management, and hasn't been to university. If my mother could have written the answer I have to wonder what "value" the student has taken from their time here.

Some of the nice answers came from a slightly different angle, e.g.:

• Control - pre/concurrent/post
• Leadership

Some of the more off-tack answers drew in ideas from the other questions, such as:

• Teams and centralisation
• Motivation (with out connecting it to quality, other than by having people work harder)

Anyway, that's it until next year. I do wonder if an essay based question (as a form of summative assessment) is a good choice in this course. Would some other type of examination, e.g. short answer or multiple-choice, be better (and still achieve the same result)?

I think the students sit their final examination tomorrow. And so Friday and Monday will be taken up with exam marking. The team will be 'locked up' and not allowed out until it is finished.

But we have already begun planning for next year. I'll be teaching this course at summer school. Since summer school only lasts six weeks, we pack in twice the number of lectures into each week.

Anyway, there are some changes in the pipeline. Perhaps the biggest is the shift to a new text book by Samson & Daft called Management. It will be replacing Management: A New Zealand perspective by Inkson & Kolb. The old book has served us well, but a new edition isn't available yet. So, it is onto Samson & Daft.

This means we need to re-work the lectures (and the tutorials) so they match the emphasis (and the structure) of the book. After all, trying to do things in a different sequence to the book can often be confusing because the book has its own internal logic.

I'm spending tonight working out some sample assignments for the course. Because of the tight timeframe, assignments need to be well crafted so that they can be turned-around quickly enough -- the students do need to get their feedback before each assignment.

Anyway, enough chat. I've questions to write.

I think I owe my MGMT 101 class (in general) and some MGMT 101 students (in particular) an apology. Things didn't go as well as I would have liked. On almost every measurement I use to judge my performance in class, I scored a 'Not very good'. So, I'm left sitting here reflecting on "What went wrong?" How did I manage to turn today's class into (what might generously be called) a farce?

It would be easy (but wrong) to blame the students. Whilst, it takes 'two to tango', I should have managed events better. The responsibility for the class is mine.

But, before continuing, I hope the class will accept my apology for my lack of professionalism this evening. And, to the students to whom I was unfair, I hope you will accept this apology too.

So, what went wrong, and what have I learnt from this?

Basically, the class got lost, and both I and members of the class got over excited by out positions.

I think that I took the subject (business ethics) too personally (as opposed to too seriously). I've seen so many managers make unethical decisions with no real consideration of the consequences of their actions. Furthermore, I've seen students do likewise¹. And, often, I've been left to pick up the pieces. Hence, when I saw the direction the class (or some of it) were taking I got a little excited and very defensive. Certainly towards the end of the discussion I was adopting the classic "win do not lose" attitude that is talked about by Argyris & Schön]. I was well and truly stuck in Model I, and rarely ventured out into Model II.

So what could I have done differently? It would be trite to suggest that I be more Model II. Rather, I think David Barry's admonishment to slowing things down is good - if things had been slowed down I would have had more time to think about what was happening and try and change the direction.

My other reflection is this -- ethics is a difficult subject. Not hard, but difficult in that it can cause us to challenge some of our fundamental beliefs, and that can always make for an 'exciting' class.

Footnotes

¹ You can tell from that statement I'm not an ethical relativist.

² Argyris and Schön (1974) lay out is magnificent detail the realities of defensive reason in organisations.

I had a really good class in MGMT 101 this morning, they were animated and talkative (in a good way). I wonder how much that was a consequence of having them all sit together at the front of the class.

Marie Wilson once reminded me of the difference that occurs in class dynamics as a result of how spread out the students are.

Anyway, one of the things that I don't think I made clear today, was the relationship between the Trait Approach to leadership and the music I was playing (O Superman -- see below for the details).

In a glib way, the trait approach presupposes that one either has, or doesn't have, the necessary characteristics to be a great (or heroic) leader. Alas, there are so many organisations and so few 'heroic' leaders -- that is to say, from the trait approach, perhaps the world doesn't have enough supermen/superwomen.

Actually, it is interesting to compare and contrast the Trait Approach to leadership with Jim Collins' ideas of Level 5 leadership. Although the traits are different between the two, one is still left wondering where these 'heroes' are going to come from.

References

Yesterday, in MGMT 101 - organisationa and management, I was laying out some of the territory that the class (and I, I suppose) will be covering in the coming weeks. For whatever reason¹, much of the course is structured around PLOC²; planning, leading, organising, and controlling. As I pointed out in class, this isn't an accurate description of what managers do. I mentioned that since the 1970s we (academics) have had a much richer view of the work of managers. In fact, I was alluding to the early (earliest) work of Henry Mintzberg³.

Anyway,as I was reading today, I came across a nice introductionary article to Henry Mintzberg. It's well worth reading by stage I students, and is called:

de Holan, P. M., & Mintzberg, H. (2004). Mangement as life's essence: 30 years of The nature of managerial work. Strategic Organization, 2(2), 205-212.

Additional, the article shows the serendipitous way in which new management ideas are 'discovered' and how they rise to prominance. There is a link here for later - in future we'll talk about In search of excellence, by Peters & Waterman. At that time, remember to ask why the book was so sucessful.

Henry also makes a point of saying how hard it is to teach management to those people who aren't managers - he is so right. Until you've been there it doesn't make much sense. Management is a practice (in Turner's sense) more than it is a science (or even an art), and so there is a significant element of management that is tacit (as there is in most parts of social life).

¹ Well, a good part has to do with the requirement that ICANZ put on institutions about the content that wanabe accountants have to be exposed to.

³ Which of course is based around Henri Fayol's ideas of planning, organising, commanding, co-ordinating, and controlling -- the commanding was reinvented as leading, and co-ordinating became organising.

² Mintzberg is mentioned quiet early on in the textbook - Inkson & Kolb, 2003 - but I dont' think it explains how he debunked the myth of the manager spending her/his time PLOCing.

References

Inkson, K., & Kolb, D. G. (2002). Management: Perspectives for New Zealand (3rd ed.). Auckland: Pearson Education.

Peters, T. J., & Waterman, R. H. (1982). In search of excellence: Lessons from America's best-run companies (1st ed.). New York: Harper & Row.

Turner, S. P. (1994). The social theory of practices: Tradition, tacit knowledge and presuppositions. Cambridge: Polity Press.