Level 6 • Business Management

Course Description

This course describes the Management as the central organ of the current institutionalized society. It is called Management & Organization because it goes beyond the “business management”, embracing every type of organization. The content is mainly focused in the four functions of Management: Planning & Controlling, Organizing, and Leading. It is especially designed to be interrelated with the actual living environment of organizations (e.g. technological changes, social impact, etc.), intending to meet the personal reflection spaces of the new generation of students. The teaching methodology and pedagogy are multidisciplinary and rely on different methods and techniques. The classical theoretical part is integrated with the practical one. The later includes case studies, teamwork exercises, self-assessment and “meaning catch-out” (including articles, videos, etc.). The main objective is to engage students from a perspective of active inquiry rather than as consumers of facts and prescriptions. Strong foundations that the students will gain on this course will assist them to notice the connections with the real world of management applications. The Management & Organization course is deeply rooted on a Druckerian philosophy, that is summarized with the words of Peter Drucker: “A manager who understands the discipline of management will still be an effective — perhaps even first-rate — manager with no more than minimum competence in managerial skills and tools. A person who knows only the skills and techniques, without understanding the fundamentals of management, is not a manager but merely a technician.” (Drucker, 1974).

Course Objectives

Gain knowledge of who managers are and what they do. Learn about what management is and the different theories regarding the management field. Understand the four functions of management: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Develop the employability skills, such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, knowledge application, and ethics/social responsibility skills that employers are looking for, and understand how the concepts learned from this course actually work in today’s dynamic business world.

Key Concepts

1. Business management
2. Business environment
3. Planning
4. Organizing
5. Leading
6. Controlling
7. Organizational structure
8. Motivation
9. Human Resource
10. Entrepreneurship

Course Outline

Learning Outcomes

1. Understand what management is and who managers are, as well as, what managers do in terms of the functions they perform, the roles they take, and the skills they have.
2. Describe the 8-step decision making process and explain the five approaches that managers can use when making decisions. Describe how biases affect decision making and identify cutting-edge approaches for improving decision making.
3. Define the nature and purposes of planning. Classify the types of plans organizations might use. Identify the key contingency factors in planning. Compare and contrast approaches to objective setting. Discuss contemporary issues in planning.
4. Understand the functions of Human Resources.
5. Describe six key elements in organizational design. Discuss the contingency factors that favor either the mechanistic model or the organic model of organizational design. Discuss organizing for flexibility in the 21 century.
6. Define the most important theories of Motivation and the current motivation issues that managers face today.
7. Define leader and leadership. Compare and contrast early theories of leadership. Describe the three major contingency theories of leadership and contemporary theories of leadership. Compare the various theories of leadership for their validity. discuss twenty-first century issues affecting leadership.
8. Describe the nature and importance of control. Describe the three steps in the control process, explain how organizational and employee performance are measured. Describe tools used to measure organizational performance. Discuss contemporary issues in control.
9. Develop employability skills such as critical thinking, communication, and collaboration.