98668 - Management Skills Lab

Learning outcomes

The integrated course “Organization and Management” aims to provide students with theoretical and practical competences to understand, evaluate, and manage organizational structures, processes, and managerial roles within firms. Upon completion of the course, students will be able to: - understand the main theories and approaches to organizational analysis and development; - evaluate different organizational structures and business functions from a managerial perspective; apply methods and tools to analyze and solve organizational problems; - recognize and assess managerial competencies, motivations, and performance factors relevant to different organizational levels; - connect management practices to business strategy, life-cycle phases, and business planning; - apply networking and collaboration approaches to support organizational and project development. The course provides students with an integrated understanding of organizational systems and managerial practices, combining theoretical frameworks with applied managerial skills.

Course contents

This course focuses on managing and designing flexible organizations. In particular, this course spans the following topics:

• The classical prescriptions of organizational design. Interdependencies and coordination modes. Usage of different coordination modes at different hierarchical levels.
• Types of standardization. Context standardization (standardization of boundary conditions) as a means to obtain greater organizational flexibility. Applications in the software industry.
• Emergence and management of organizational routines. Group size limits.
• Lean manufacturing as a means to highlight problems. Learning and coaching vs. management by stress.
• Agile network organizations originating. From the organization of agile programming to sociocratic applications and beyond.

Readings/Bibliography

All teaching materials are available on VirtuaLE.

Students are invited to avoid materials available on blogs or elsewhere. This material is generally not pertinent.

Teaching methods

This is laboratory course. This implies that exercises and computer experiments will be carried out in class. In particular, the  NetLogo platform for building agent-based models will be expounded in the last 3 lectures (9 hrs). This platform can be used by students who wish to obtain 1 additional grade by modifying an existing model.

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. If many students enroll, the exam is split in two sessions for even and odd enrollment numbers, respectively. Cellular phones, headphones and other devices capable of connecting to the Internet are not allowed.

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.

Three lectures will be devoted to learning how to build a NetLogo model. By attending one of these lectures, constructing a model and delivering it by e-mail to the instructor, students can obtain 1 additional unit grade to be added to the exam grade. If 30/30 has already been reached, honors are granted. Each student can only obtain one additional unit grade. The professor has the right not to award this additional grade if the model delivered by the student is not sufficiently original and innovative. Max 45 seats are available for the three NetLogo class exercises. Enrollment will be announced in class, precedence will be given to students who attend lectures.

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.

Smartphones, earphones and smartwatches are not allowed. Students equipped with such devices will be invited to leave them at adequate distance.

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 refuse the grade that they obtained. Please communicate this decision by e-mail within one week after publication of grades (holidays included). Late communications may be accepted upon discretion. Earlier deadlines may be occasionally stated in the section "Notice" of this web site. Students who successfully passed an exam and did not refuse their grading are not allowed to attend subsequent calls of the same exam.

For regular students

The grade obtained on Management Skills Lab (3 ECTS) is averaged with the grade obtained on Organization (6 ECTS) with coefficients 1/3 and 2/3, respectively. The resulting comprehensive grade is approximated to the closest integer. This comprehensive grade cannot be recorded unless both component exams have been passed. The grade obtained on Management Skills remains available within the current academic year. If Organization is not passed, the grade obtained on Management Skills is discarded.

For Erasmus students

Erasmus students are not compelled to take both Management Skills and Organization. Even if they choose to take both courses, they are not compelled to average the grades that they obtain. In order to do so, please declare Management Skills and Organization as independent courses in your Learning Agreement.

Teaching tools

Front lessons with slides, class discussions, case-studies. Computational experiments on NetLogo.

Office hours

See the website of Guido Fioretti