Introduction

I took Managing Teams and Projects from Professor Bo Tep in Spring 2008. This is an elective course in the MBA program at Santa Clara University. I took it as a late-night class, starting at 8:30 PM, before the business school eliminated that schedule spot.

Instructor profile

Professor Tep had a career in the telecommunications industry before moving recently to academia as a second career.

Classroom experience

The most important thing to point out is that half of most class sessions was spend on presentations and activities led by a student team. Each team was responsible for planning two group presentations that taught something substantial while keeping the class interested. Most of these involved some traditional talking over PowerPoint slides, a teamwork-related game, and a follow-up discussion relating the game experience to the topic in question.

Professor Tep made a few things clear at the start of the course. First of all, the course is all about teams, and not about projects. Second, Professor Tep tries to improve the course from quarter to quarter, so some things students have heard about previous sections may or may not apply to this section of the course. Of course, every instructor should make conscious improvements. When I started writing this series of course reviews, this statement influenced me to be sure to phrase my essays as reviews of specific course sections, not as timeless reviews of the course or the instructor.

Another thing to note is that Professor Tep used some of the course’s main themes about adult learners to structure the course itself. Students were assigned to teams by Professor Tep at the first class. The teams lasted all quarter, and most of the course work was done within these teams. Each team was responsible for two in-class presentations and two group papers during the quarter.

Each class had a topic corresponding to a chapter from the textbook, Joining Together by the Johnson brothers. Some chapters were split into two classes. As I noted above, about half of each class session was taken by a presentation led by one of the teams. The remaining time was spent with a short prepared lecture and general class discussion moderated by Professor Tep.

Coursework, exams, and grades

Each team was responsible for two group presentations, a mid-term paper, and a final paper. Each topic was expected to be 8-10 pages on one of the course topics. Groups had considerable leeway to define the subjects of their paper. Two individual papers were supposed to account for a total 15% of the course grade, but midway through the course Professor Tep made the second individual paper optional.

What I learned

I took a deeper dive into some of the topics that I learned about in MGMT 501. Most of this learning was about topics chosen for my individual and group projects: Sources of power and status within groups, positive and negative outcomes of intergroup conflict, and conflicts arising from mergers and acquisitions.

I also learned some things about effective presentations, spurred by Professor Tep’s high standard for keeping the whole class engaged in the class presentations, and a healthy competitive spirit between project teams.

Professor Tep’s lectures emphasized the importance of building trust within a team and the group leader’s responsibility for candid 1:1 communication outside of group interactions. I learned several group work techniques that were immediately applicable to MBA course projects — so I’m particularly glad that I chose to take this course early in the program.

Criticisms

It was too easy to skim through many of the topics, and because some of the topics were not discussed deeply in class, I missed some of the core material. Part of this is due to the fact that group presentations and group-led activities – a major component of this course – took up almost half the total class time.

I think it the course could have been structured for more breadth if Professor Tep required individual papers to be on specific topics, or planned lecture time with a bit more structure.

Recommendation

Once you visualize yourself engaging in an hour or two of games during the quarter, and planning and leading two of these activity sessions, you may have an easy time deciding whether you want to take this Professor Tep’s MGMT 538 class! I believe that every MBA student at Santa Clara should consider this course as an elective. If you have your heart set on a career that does not involve any work in permanent or temporary teams, or influencing external teams or assisting them in conflict resolution, an MBA might not be the right degree program for you anyway.

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This article was first written in 2008 by Dylan Salisbury for dylansalisbury.com. All rights reserved. I added this paragraph because spam blog sites pick up copies of my blog posts.

For a list of course reviews and a disclaimer, visit my Course Reviews page.

Allan Chen posted a review of this course from Winter 2007 on his blog.

Introduction

I took this course from Professor Ling-Jing Kao during my third quarter in the MBA program at Santa Clara University. This is an introductory marketing course that all MBA students must either take or waive.

Instructor profile

Professor Kao is a recent Ph. D. who began her teaching career at SCU in 2006.

Classroom experience

Most classes began with Professor Kao handing out lecture notes and other material (already stapled and 3-hole-punched) then a student summarizing the main topics of the previous lecture. The class was structured as a lecture with a reasonable amount of in-class discussion moderated by the instructor. The content followed the pre-published lecture notes closely.

During a few classes, we watched videos (two video split over three or four classes) that described marketing strategies undertaken by two consumer companies. After the videos we discussed them briefly in class and tied some future lecture topics back to the videos. These video cases were the subject of some mid-term and final exam questions.

The basic framework for the material was provided by the Harvard Business School publication “Note on Marketing Strategy” describing on overview of the marketing process. We referred back to this again and again as we moved through the lectures and homework.

Professor Kao kept class time well balanced among lecture and discussion, and rarely let the class go very far off topic. Some of the discussions went very well, but there were a number of subject areas where she just didn’t seem to be able to answer students’ questions for one reason or another. Some of it may have been due a language gap, but I also suspect that Professor Kao is very well versed in certain areas such as consumer market research, but less comfortable fielding questions on other topics.

Coursework, exam, and grades

There were two exams and two group papers. Each was roughly 25% of the final course grade.

The exams mostly drew on lecture material and the video cases discussed in class. The exams were each part multiple-choice, part short essay question. A few of the multiple choice questions may have been on topics covered in the required reading but not in class.

The projects each involved producing a concisely-written 4-page paper that follows the marketing strategy model from the HBS paper. 4 pages isn’t a lot of text, although we were allowed unlimited exhibits, which could themselves be somewhat wordy. In the editing process my group critically evaluated which ideas and recommendations were relevant and which didn’t fit. I didn’t get much insight into how closely Professor Kao followed her own grading guidelines.

I came into this course not really knowing what marketing was, and by the end I had a solid understanding of the scope of marketing activities, where they belong in the business planning and execution cycles, and a very strong concept of appropriate and inappropriate uses of the basic types of market research. I used this knowledge right away to ask intelligent questions about marketing and strategy at my own workplace and in a start-up venture that a colleague embarked on.

Criticisms

Professor Kao didn’t add as much real world insight into marketing topics as I had hoped. I suspect that this is because all of her expertise is in market research and she has only a few quarter’s experience fielding discussions with graduate students.

Although there was regular required reading from the textbook (Kotler and Keller), it was easy for me to skip the readings and keep up with the class until I hit those few exam questions that relied on the text. Professor Kao indicated that she thought the text was difficult to work with, but she expected us to read it because it is a widely used textbook that almost every MBA student is familiar with.

Another student described this course in general (not just Professor Kao’s section) as being an simple undergraduate Marketing course packaged as a graduate course. That might be somewhat valid, but for the group of students in my course, starting an MBA program without this knowledge, the content seemed appropriate.

Recommendation

I would recommend taking this course from Professor Kao because it was well structured and covered the basic marketing model and market research techniques thoroughly. Because Professor Kao doesn’t have industry experience, a different instructor with a professional background may add a lot of value for many students. Also, if you are a new MBA student who already has some marketing education you should consider waiving this course altogether.

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This article was first written in 2008 by Dylan Salisbury for dylansalisbury.com. All rights reserved. I added this paragraph because spam blog sites pick up copies of my blog posts.

For a list of course reviews and a disclaimer, visit my Course Reviews page.

Introduction

I took Managerial Accounting from Ahmad Hosseini in Winter 2008, my second quarter in the MBA program. This was the first quarter that introductory managerial accounting was taught as a separate course to graduate students. Before this, ACTG 301 combined financial and managerial accounting.

Instructor Profile

Professor Hosseini has an extensive international academic career in accounting that includes rising to Dean of Sonoma State University’s business school then going to Africa as Founding Dean of the American University of Nigeria’s business school. At Santa Clara he runs the Certificate in Advanced Accounting Proficiency program in addition to lecturing.

This course covers the basic concepts of Managerial Accounting, and Professor Hosseini kept the class focused in this content.

Classroom Experience

The majority of each class was a prepared lecture. These lectures were based on PowerPoint slides provided by the textbook publisher, but they had been edited somewhat by Professor Hosseini, who also added on some other examples.

Before each homework assignment was due, Professor Hosseini walked through solutions to practice problems which were generally very similar to the homework problems. These were presented on the computer display and were pretty easy to follow.

Before the first day of class, Professor Hosseini organized the class into 9 groups of 4 or 5 people by order of last name. These were teams who did two brief class presentations during the course (more on this below).

There was not much Q&A or student interaction during the class except during the team presentations. I think this was mainly Professor Hosseini’s style, as he wanted to fit a lot of the core content into the course and already had enough structured presentation material to fill each course. Professor Hosseini did call on students to answer questions during the class, but there wasn’t much open-ended discussion or exploration of other aspects of accounting.

Coursework, exams, and grades

The almost-weekly homework assignments took a bit of time, but they were not too hard because of the sample problems that were covered in class. Many students, including me, spent a lot of time lining up tables properly in Excel. The wiser students did the homeworks using pencil and paper, which helped them prepare similar tables during the exams under time pressure.

Two mid-terms and a final exam made up the majority of the class grade. Individual problems were not very hard, but all three exams presented a time crunch for most students. Each exam had a lot of low-credit multiple choice questions. To me, some of these questions were easy but others took as much time as the non-multiple-choice problems.

Each team prepared two 15-minute presentations for homework problems that were somewhat open-ended and subject to interpretation and opinions. These could generally be prepared with one or two in-person meetings the week before, and a little coordination over e-mail. These were good learning experiences for me, and the Q&A sessions between other students and the presenting teams were also useful.

What I learned

I learned the core concepts of managerial accounting. Not having any experience with any kind of manufacturing company, I got some initial insight into the financial and planning considerations faced by a company with a multiple stage production system.

Criticisms

Several students in my section were unhappy with Professor Hosseini’s lecture style. I beleive this was due to the speed of his lecture and the fact that he was not very interactive with students during the class. There might be other reasons that I misunderstood.

As an MBA student who is probably never going to work directly an accounting or finance, I would have preferred a class experience that tought me more about the practical impact of accounting principles on decisions faced by managers throughout a company (something I got a lot of insight into from Paisley’s Financial Accounting course). In other words, I think I wanted to learn how to work with managerial accountants rather than how to be a managerial accountant.

The course syllabus was revised several times during the quarter, and from the start it was not very clear exactly what day each homework set was due until a class or two beforehand. This was distracting, but because it was the first quarter ACTG 302 was ever taught I expect this will not be as much of a problem in the future.

Recommendation

If you are considering a professional or academic career in accounting, you should get to know Professor Hosseini. It is clear that he has a tremendous amount of knowledge and contacts about the accounting and business worlds that we barely touched on during this class. I suspect that he would also be a good instructor to take an advanced accounting course from.

For an MBA student who is looking at ACTG 302 as a required course, you can expect to learn the fundamentals in this course with a predictable class structure and amount of work required.

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This article was first written in 2008 by Dylan Salisbury for dylansalisbury.com. All rights reserved. I added this paragraph because spam blog sites pick up copies of my blog posts.

For a list of course reviews and a disclaimer, visit my Course Reviews page.

Introduction

I took Organizational Analysis and Management, a.k.a. Organizational Theory, from D. R. Palmer in Winter 2008.

This course is currently required for all non-executive MBA and MSIS students at Santa Clara.

Instructor Profile

D. R. Palmer, not to be confused with the tenured management instructor who is also named David Palmer, is a lecturer at Santa Clara University and management consultant. He also leads workshops through Santa Clara’s Executive Development Center. Palmer has a range of academic credentials including study under Peter Drucker.

I’d better get the main theme of this course review out early: Dr. Palmer is passionate about giving career advice and coaching on career growth, but perhaps not so passionate about Organizational Theory. There was a strong emphasis on practical career advice throughout this course, and generally that is appropriate for a class full of working students who are near turning points in their careers. But that emphasis came at some cost to in-depth coverage of the core course content.

Classroom experience

Class sessions were generally structured as a combination of lecture and open discussion. Typically Dr. Palmer discussed something related to the homework or a career management topic then went into the chapter’s material. For some classes the chapter material review didn’t start until more than halfway through the class period.

Coursework, exams, and grades

The course grade was comprised from five short in-class quizzes, and individual project, a group project, and a class participation factor.

The individual project, Process Map Analysis was a project for each individual to research and map out their own work group in a number of different ways. The idea is to give the student new insight into their own work situation and opportunities for increased effectiveness and advancement. This was a valuable activity for me. Students whose employer had a “no public org chart” policy had a much harder time finishing this assignment than others.

The group project was the major work effort of the course. The class self-organized into groups of about six, and chose one of our employers’ divisions to do the project on. The project involves interviewing around six members of the chosen organization and producing a paper that analyzes the current structure and recommends structural changes.

My class generally found that some of the quiz questions were ambiguous. Students argued about a couple of them in class and won Palmer over. In Palmer’s defense, the entire cohort took ACTG 300 the previous quarter from Chris Paisley, who intentionally put tricky true/false questions on his exams that required careful parsing. Palmer was trying not to use tricky wording, but when the wording was slightly ambiguous we suspected a trap.

What I learned

I had a great experience with the group project, because I had a smart hardworking team and one of our team members got high-level buy-in from his organization to support our project. I probably learned the most from just exploring the current challenges faced by the organization and the historical and structural factors that led to them. My whole career has been in software development organizations, and it was great to see similarities and differences faced by an organization full of knowledge workers in a different industry.

From the individual project I got some good insight into my place in my company. Particularly, I started differentiating between direct power over resources and business plans and indirect power such as dependent work relationships. My work group is high in informal power — people throughout the organization rely on us to help meet their goals, and we have specialized experience and knowledge that can’t easily be replaced. Yet we do not have a comparable amount of direct power over financial resources, large-scale hiring, or setting business plans. This changed some of my long-term career thinking, which is the whole point of the project.

I don’t think I became too well grounded in Organizational Theory itself, but I learned many of the key concepts and terms and I’ll be able to use the text and other resources from here to keep talking the talk as I continue in the MBA program.

Criticisms

Not enough class time was spent on the core OT topics. Although Palmer’s emphasis on career planning was very appropriate for the SCU graduate student body, he could probably have cut the amount of lecture time devoted to this by half and had a more effective course.

Recommendation

I got a lot of value out of this course and the workload was manageable, yet I’m hesitant to give it a blanket recommendation because some students will be put off by Palmer’s lecture style. If you’re ready for some introspection on your career growth, think ahead about a project group you’d like to work with and a company you can do the project on, and take this course.

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This article was first written in 2008 by Dylan Salisbury for dylansalisbury.com. All rights reserved. I added this paragraph because spam blog sites pick up copies of my blog posts.

For a list of course reviews and a disclaimer, visit my Course Reviews page.

Update 2008-08-17

Allan Chen posted a thorough review of this class from the previous quarter on his blog. Although his review is more critical than mine, I think our reviews are very consistent.

Introduction

I took Managerial Competencies and Effectiveness, a.k.a. Organizational Behavior, from James Hall in Fall 2007, my first quarter in the MBA program. This course is currently required for all non-executive MBA students to take during their first quarter in the program.

Instructor Profile

Professor James Hall is a professor at Santa Clara University and management consultant. He served two multi-year tenures as chair of the Management department, a fact he weaved into his lectures for this course.

Classroom experience

Class sessions were very well balanced between discussions of the current topic and a variety of structured activities. Many of those activities were smaller group discussions about the course readings. There was one role-playing exercise. Some other activities included self-assessments of leadership and conflict resolution styles.

Professor Hall was very good at answering students’ questions thoroughly while keeping the class moving. I got the impression that Professor Hall has broad knowledge of the research grounding the various topics covered in this foundational course. Why? Because many of his answers to student questions were prefaced with something such as, “the research in this area suggests….”

On a Saturday near the end of the quarter all students participated in a day long management simulation exercise, along with students from other MGMT 501 sections.

Coursework, exams, and grades

The course grade was comprised of two in-class written exams and a paper based on the simulation. Professor Hall provided study guides for the exams and was very clear on the grading criteria for the paper.

The grading criteria for the exams were mainly around being able to clearly explain the core concepts of the course or apply them briefly to example situations. In-depth writing or analysis of any particular topic was not required for the exams or the paper.

What I learned

Primarily, I learned a lot about my own work styles and preferences from the class discussions and exercises. I was also grounded in the basic concepts and lingo around organizational behavior.

The effective way that Professor Hall ran the classroom contributed to healthy norms and trust within the class cohort that started forming during this quarter.

Criticisms

I’m not sure if I learned enough from the management simulation exercise to justify the amount of time it took up. That’s about the only negative thing I have to say about this course.

Recommendation

Because this is a required first course, it seems unlikely that someone will find this article before choosing a section for MGMT 501. Based on my experience in this class, I would recommend taking Professor Hall for any course or workshop he teaches.

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This article was first written in 2008 by Dylan Salisbury for dylansalisbury.com. All rights reserved. I added this paragraph because spam blog sites pick up copies of my blog posts.

For a list of course reviews and a disclaimer, visit my Course Reviews page.

Introduction

I took Financial Accounting from Chris Paisley in Fall 2007, my first quarter in the MBA program. This was the first quarter that financial and managerial accounting were taught in separate introductory courses to evening MBA students. Previously a single course covered both subjects.

Instructor Profile

For someone hoping as an MBA student will to learn the fundamentals of financial accounting along with a understanding of how the concepts impact board room decisions, there could hardly be a better instructor than Paisley. Beyond his former role as CFO of 3COM, he continues to serve on boards of private and public companies, including chairing audit committees. He teaches the fundamentals of accounting to undergrads, graduate students, and corporate executives.

Classroom experience

Each class followed a simple lecture format. Lecture outlines were available beforehand on ERES, and also displayed on overhead projector during the lecture.

During the first class, Paisley distributed the Brocade 10-K and presented an overview of the document. He referred back to specific parts during many lectures.

Paisley’s lectures covered the fundamentals principles and rules of U.S. financial accounting while tying them to Brocade’s filings and relevant stories of real-world situations he has experienced.

Paisley had a few particular points where his opinion differed from the textbook. If you take his class you will learn which technique for “managing earnings” is frowned upon by the text but considered completely legitimate by this experienced CFO. He was very clear that these opinions were part of the course content, and they were mentioned in his lecture notes and reflected in the exams as well.

Several classes ran late, including one that was interrupted by a medium-intensity earthquake! After each midterm, sessions were scheduled after regular class time to review each problem.

Two classes were devoted to presentations of the group projects.

Coursework, exams, and grades

Course grade consisted of two midterms, a final exam, and a group project.

Each exam consisted of true/false questions and a number of accounting problems. Many students felt that the true/false questions were trickier than they expected – some depended on carefully evaluating details of the sentence.

The group project involved digging into the public filings and earnings calls of a public company and producing a powerpoint slide with summaries and recommendations for investing in or lending to the chosen company.

Homework problems were assigned but not collected. Paisley monitored the ERES discussion board for questions about homework and responded promptly.

What I learned

I definitely learned the fundamental principles and rules of accounting and I got a sense for how they play out when company leaders make decisions and approve financial statements. The group presentations gave me some interesting insight into the different practices followed by some companies in particular industries.

Criticisms

Paisley’s lecture format and style is not well suited to a student who is falling behind. This is because the content moves quickly and he does not use alternative presentation styles to illustrate a concept that some students don’t “get” the first time. That being said, the core concepts of financial accounting are fairly standard and many resources are available to students who need extra explanation and examples, including free tutoring at SCU.

Recommendation

If you consider yourself to be a smart student and you see yourself in the board room someday, go out of your way to take this course from Paisley. If you have reason to think accounting may be a difficult subject for you or if this course description sounds intimidating, there may be another instructor with a style that works better for you. Like many graduate courses, you will need to do ungraded homework with discipline in order to keep up with the course.

Many students will benefit from recording the lectures and having them available for reference when studying for the exams.

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This article was first written in 2008 by Dylan Salisbury for dylansalisbury.com. All rights reserved. I added this paragraph because spam blog sites pick up copies of my blog posts.

For a list of course reviews and a disclaimer, visit my Course Reviews page.

Does your company have different functions in different geographic locations, or will it hire the best people it can find regardless of where they live and let the geographic structure of the company follow? Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO and co-founder of NVIDIA, presented many of his thoughts on running an international knowledge-based company the Spring 2008 Leavey Lecture on Monday. Priya Natarajan, President of the student International Business Network interviewed Mr. Huang in a casual conversation dubbed a “fireside chat.” The primary theme of Mr. Huang’s remarks was that NVIDIA let a rather organic worldwide structure form as a result of its early formation as a networked organization and its subsequent pursuit of great talent around the world. Some notes and quotes on the main topics that were discussed are below. The format for the talk worked really well - Congratulations to the International Business Network for setting this up. At the time, it seemed too much of the limited time was used up at the start by showing a video produced by company employees for a company meeting. But in hindsight the video helped to set the atmosphere for the conversation about the company structure and culture, and this was the most substantive of the three Leavey Lectures I have attended. Notes on the main subjects of the conversation: Comparing the role of CEO in a start-up to his role today: There’s no management in the early days of a company because there are no resources to manage. A big part of the job is continually raising money. Another part is leadership. (”Lead. Compel. Evangelize.”) Now that the company is large, leadership remains an important part of his job. NVIDIA as a networked company: When the company was started in 1993, they found that the only way for everyone to their own e-mail client at their workstation was to use a network of Sun workstations. NVIDIA was started at exactly the right time to be a networked company from the start. NVIDIA started its remote offices in response to finding and hiring people who happened to live in a particular area. Some of these remote offices were, and still are, one or two people working out of their homes. Cultural differences: Over time, the company acquired what Mr. Huang called global “sensibilities” - an understanding of how to operate in different cultures (countries). This was a recurring theme of Mr. Huang’s talk. These sensibilities apply to developing products that resonate with the culture, managing people working in the culture, and working with customers and business partners in the foreign culture. Indian parents: Mr. Huang (born in Taiwan and raised in America) got a spirited positive response from the audience after comparing how to deliver an “average” performance assessment in America and how to do it in India. He said that if you simply tell a worker in India that they are doing an average job and meeting expectations, the worker will be very upset and their parents may call you to ask what the problem is. “I have met more employee parents in India than in all other countries combined!” He recommends delivering an evaluation in China with a speech such as, “I’m really disappointed, because you can achieve such great things, and I expect much more from you than this.” This will be more readily accepted because the worker is probably used to hearing this kind of nagging from his or her parents all the time! [Editing note: I thought he was still talking about India here but another student corrected me.] Outsourcing: Mr. Huang was rather frank here. First of all, he criticized the culture of other countries for not being aware of why many Americans feel threatened by the effects of globalization on the work force. “In a way, they are taking our jobs.” However, like any modern CEO he believes that by using all of the company’s resources efficiently the company will grow more rapidly and benefit everyone. He used the US health care system as a counter-example of a system in which inefficiencies in the system cause everyone to suffer. How to best use the workforce in each country: Mr. Huang turned the table on a question of how NVIDIA is able to use the strengths of each country in the overall operations. He presented the examples of coworkers from America who have recently returned to their home country of India or China. Did the Indian suddenly change from a computer architecture expert to a software QA engineer when he got to India? Should the Chinese programmer start working on PCB boards? The network is the computer, or the display is the computer? Mr. Huang presented a vision where the network becomes to ubiquitous as to disappear, and the only part of a computer that the user is conscious of is the display. The loosely connected organization: Mr. Huang believes that NVIDIA has an “organic architecture” as a company without a well-defined org chart and little emphasis on strict direct reports. He himself has 16 direct reports and is comfortable not having weekly 1:1 meetings with each member of his staff. He believes in using informal e-mail updates to make sure everyone is working in the same general direction, but also having them work towards a few important KPIs (key process indicators). He emphasized that the company relies on innovation and serendipity, which cannot be clearly predicted. Contributing to multiple products: In an after-speech conversation with some students, he said that the company is able to produce more products than its competitors, but because each employee contributes to many products, an employee may not feel the same sense of craftsmanship that he or she would have from a larger role on one particular product. Those are the main things I took away from the speech, aside from the fact that Mr. Huang is a very comfortable extemporaneous speaker with a healthy sense of humor. I left out some of the personal stories and I probably missed a few important points. Altogether, this was a good event to start out the quarter with, and as far as I hope the next lectures are as interesting as this one. [Editted 2008-04-04 to say that the parental-lecture style of performance evaluation was about China rather than India.]