82179 - Management Skills

Learning outcomes

The aim of the course is to provide students with the theoretical and practical framework related to the profile Staff, Competencies, Motivations and performance required to top managers and middle managers. At the end of the course students are able to: (a) understand the key issues related to the evaluation of managers and curricular components; (b) analyze the management's aspects linked to the business dimension, to the phase of life cycle and to the strategic focus in connection with the elaboration and management of business plans; (c) evaluate and use the potentialities of the networking approach in project and business networks development.

Course contents

The course touches the following topics:

1. The Classical View on Organizational Design;
2. Coordination by Feedback / Mutual Adjustment in Canonical Games;
3. Coordination by Feedback / Mutual Adjustment in Organizational Routines;
4. Flexibility out of Standardization;
5. Flat Hierarchies.

Moreover, students have a possibility to learn the basics of building artificial organizations on NetLogo.

Readings/Bibliography

All teaching materials are freely available on VirtuaLE.

Teaching methods

Front lessons, videos, computer simulations, class discussions, exercises on building computer simulations.

Assessment methods

The final grade is expressed as fractions of 30. Here is a correspondence with natural language:

• <18: insufficient
• 18-23: sufficient
• 24-27: good
• 28-30: very good
• 30 with honors: excellent
  

The exam takes 20 min. It's a written exam consisting of 10 multiple-choice questions arranged in 2 series of 5 questions each. Each series deals with one topic. If many students enroll, the exam is split in two sessions for even and odd enrollment numbers, respectively.

Each question can receive at most 3 marks. Three possible answers are proposed for each question. Students who pick up the right answer receive 3 marks. Students who pick up a wrong answer, several answers, or no answer at all, they obtain 0 marks. Students are allowed to change their initial choice provided that their final choice is absolutely clear.

Sometimes, knowledgeable, profound students receive low marks in multiple choice exams because they have interesting thoughts that are different from those of the professor. In order to alleviate this problem, students have a possibility to leave a comment where explain why they selected a certain answer. If this was the wrong answer, but it was chosen out of interesting reasons, I shall assign 1, or 2, or even 3 marks. Comments cannot decrease the evaluation of a correct answer. If comments make clear that the right answer was selected out of a wrong reason, that answer receives 3 marks nonetheless.

By attending the NetLogo [https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/] exercises and by delivering a personally modified model students can obtain 1 additional mark that is to the grade obtained in the written exam. Students who reached 30/30 at the written exam obtain honors.

There are no partial exams. Only students who enrolled through AlmaEsami are admitted to the exam. The final mark cannot be changed by means of oral discussion.

Exams correction times depend on professor's duties, which are larger than this course. Timing cannot be foreseen. Please do not ask questions on correction time.

Students are allowed to reject their evaluation and re-take the exam. Since the grade obtained on Management Skills is averaged with the grade obtained on Organization to obtain one single comprehensive grade labeled Organization and Management, this comprehensive grade cannot be recorded unless both component exams have been passed. The grade obtained on Management Skills remains available until the other exam is passed.

 

Teaching tools

Blackboard, beamer, class discussions.

Office hours

See the website of Guido Fioretti