What Does It Mean to Major In

What Does It Mean to Major in

Organizational Management?

This document is for students contemplating a major in Organizational Management at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) and those who have recently made that decision, to assist in preparation for a career in management. Specifically, this document contains information regarding these careers and your education, the nature of a university education, the liberal arts component of your education, the ‘business core’ courses, the types of courses in your major, the importance of summer work experiences, and the Organizational Management faculty.

Careers in Management & Your Education

Terms like “Jack/Jill of all trades,” generalist, integrator, and problem-solver describe careers in management. The tasks included in a manager’s job description are likely to be cross-functional. This means thatthe job is going to require the application of knowledge from accounting, finance, marketing, operations, human resources, management, organizations, and organizational behavior to orchestrate the organization’s activities in pursuit of its goals. The courses in the Labovitz School of Business and Economics (LSBE) ‘business core’ can be considered a part of the Organizational Management major, sincethis knowledge significantly contributes to one’s capability to perform in this cross-functional role.

Where are YOU headed with a major in Organizational Management? Often, ourgraduates go into business for themselves. Others find themselves working for a small organizationor returning home to work within a family business. Finally, many students are attracted to the larger organizations in our society, which commonly recruit graduates as management trainees. These people are hired and groomed into the organization’s culture so that they can be placed into management positions (e.g., departmentmanagers, assistant store managers) with the prospect that they will eventually move upward in the organization’s ranks and into higher-level management positions.

Perhaps you are considering or have elected another business major, but you wonder how Organizational Management could be related. When you get a job in your chosen field of study (e.g., accounting, finance, human resources, marketing) and if you are a high performer, you will likely be seen as a person with future potential to manage. For example, you could be promoted to manage your organizational function (e.g., manage the accounting function, manage the finance function, manage the marketing function) or a subdivision of that function, such as a sales region, audit team, or training activities. Opportunities of this nature often entail career advancement. They are accompanied by the need to understand organizations, organizational behavior, management, and the management process. Since this knowledge is the essence of the Organizational Management major, it is excluded from courses in accounting, finance, human resources, marketing, etc. Therefore, if you desire promotions and career advancement, we encourage you now to give serious consideration to double-majoring.

In each and every one of these cases – whether Organizational Management is your primary major or your secondary major, it is critically important that your education consists of a strong grounding in all of the organization’s functions (i.e., accounting, finance, human resources, marketing, and operations). Furthermore, it is essential that you understand the management process, nature oforganizations, and the task environment that surrounds the organization. To do this effectively, it is your responsibility to learn and engage with course materials, both in and outside of the classroom. This includes not only reading your textbooks, but also staying current with business news and actors. Being aware of the dynamic business context will lead to a better understanding of class materials, a deeper and more complex and contingent view of organizational theories, and exposure to the vast variety of decision contexts and decision makers.

What It Means to be a University Student

Organizations, of which there are many and many different types, are ‘social instruments,’ best conceptualized as socio-technical systems. They exist in order to help society fulfill its many different needs. Two of society’s needs are: 1) the creation of a literate and skilled populace, and 2) the passing along values, traditions, customs, language, and history of that society from one generation to the next.

Within this context, the dual roles of the university in society arecreating knowledge (through the conduct of research), and disseminating that knowledge (through teaching/lecturing, public speaking, and the publication of articles and books) for the public benefit. No other organization in society is charged with that dual function. These activities are the primary responsibilities of the university professor. Students often accompany professors in these endeavors.

Both high schools and universities are educational institutions, but they have many important and contrasting features. High schools are not charged with the ‘creation of knowledge’ responsibility, whereas the university is. Laws essentially mandate students being in high school, while attendance at the university is a matter of choice. For high schools, the federal, state, and local school districts play major roles in defining curricula, and ‘teachers’ assume a large role for this education. Within the university,curricula decisions are left to the faculty.A university should be seen as a large educational resource (e.g., lectures, classes, professors, library, laboratories, student organizations, conversations with peers). Here, you determine the extent to which you access all of the opportunities available.

A ‘teacher’ is one who shows you how to do something; teachers give instruction, train, provide lessons, guide study, provide (impart) knowledge, and stress the development of latent skills and abilities. Teachers, in general, aretrained in the method of teaching; they are not licensed or hired to ‘profess.’ In contrast to a high school teacher, a professor is one whoprofesses something through his/her academic training and scholarly pursuits. To profess simply means to make an open declaration, to affirm, to lay claim, and to declare one’s beliefs. As such, university-level instructors may sometimes include a healthy dose of underlying values and perspectivesthat requires college students to choosewhether to adopt a professor’s philosophy and beliefs or to argue against them. While professors do in fact teach and guide your studies, the bulk of their training involved the development of a deep familiarity with a discipline and the development of the skills to conduct research for the creation of knowledge within that discipline. Given that the university professor is not first and foremost a ‘teacher,’ they have not been trained to ‘teach.’ Instead they should be seen as a resource to be employed to advance your own education.

It is important to recognize that research-based universities, as a general rule, do not focus on developing practical skills within their students; universities are not vocational training institutions. Consequently, relatively little emphasis is placed on the use of pragmatic tools or presentations on “how to manage.” These topics and practical approaches are best handled in training seminars within work organizations, according to their specific policies and practices. You are encouraged to view your university education as an opportunity to practice the skills of raising penetrating questions, thinking critically, learning to apply relevant models and theories to contemporary problems, and developing analytical, communication, and teamwork capabilities. The university seeks to help students develop an understanding and appreciation for the complex worlds in which they live, and to realize their highest potential of intellectual, physical, and human development.

As a student you are both a customer and product, and it is important to understand the difference. Most of the time in your student-professor relationships, learning, education, enlightenment, and personal development are the primary objectives. In this sense, you are the product of the university and its educational process rather than a customer. Most of the faculty will see you in this light, assuming you are here because you want to learn by tapping into their years of academic work and reflection that came before your arrival. Since you are the product of the university you deserve to be listened to and treated with respect. We want your stay at UMD to be personally rewarding, and we want you to encourage others to seek their education in LSBE and the Department of Management Studies. When your education here is complete, we want you to be proud and active alumni.

In addition to being a product of the university, there are many interactions with the faculty and university in which you are the customer. For example, as a customer you borrow a book from the library, request information from a departmental secretary, secure a student loan, purchasea parking permit and items from the bookstore, attend the theater or athletic event, and ask a professor for feedback on a term paper. During interactions of this nature you deserve to be treated with kindness and respect in a timely fashion while your concerns are being listened to and your needs are met.

Finally, being a student and getting a high-quality education is a full-time job. By choosing to attend the University, you are investing a large amount of time and money into yourself and your future. Ultimately, you are here for an education that will be accompanied by a degree, not simply to get a degree for the sake of receiving one. After graduation the degree itself will have very little value, whereas the quality of your education will be priceless and will likely pay for itself several times over.

To obtain this education, you must consider the important relationship between time and the quality of your university experience. A typical course load for a student wishing to graduate in four years is 15 credit hours per semester. Most professors of education will tell you that a student wishing to get a sound education should spend two to three hours outside of class studying for every hour in class. This translates into (a) 15 hours in class per week, plus (b) 30 to 45 hours per week studying. The calculation here is simple and straightforward – getting a sound education involves 45 to 60 hours per week –thus, it is a full-time job! The remainder of that week’s time is available for activities such as sleeping, eating, socializing, entertainment, employment, and attending to one’s physical and spiritual needs.

Your Liberal Arts Education

The Management Studies faculty and LSBE place a high value upon your liberal arts education. As you most likely noticed, many courses you take during your first two years at the University are those that meet the University’s liberal arts requirements. In addition, you are required to take many credits outside of LSBE as a part of your upper-division coursework, which emphasizes the importance of your liberal education.

We strongly value this liberal arts education for several reasons. First, for your benefit and that of the community in which you will live, we value your becoming an informed, inquisitive, and an educationally well-rounded citizen. Second, in order to be a successful manager, it is critical that you understand the general environment within which you and your organization are embedded. This entails an understanding of, for example, the economic, legal, political, technological, historical, international, social and cultural contexts that surround our organizations. Most employing organizations don’t want to hire just technicians; they want future managers who can and will represent them well within a variety of public and community contexts, and a liberal arts preparation is essential for these roles.

The ‘Business Core’

Most of the courses that comprise the LSBE‘business core’focus on the organizational functions – Finance, Human Resources, Marketing, and Operations. These are supplemented by lower-division Accounting courses as well as supporting courses in Business Law and Management Information Systems. All students graduating with a Bachelor of Business Administration or Bachelor of Accounting degree are required to take this core. However, these courses will be more important to Organization Management majors than to any other major in LSBE. We see those courses as an integral part of your management major.

Managers and those who aspire to be successful managers need to be well-versed in and understand each of these organizational functions. Furthermore, those called upon to manage organizations and organizational operations need to think about the system as a whole and not just one of its internal divisions (e.g., the Finance Department, the Production/Operations Department, the Human Resources Department). Those called upon to manage organizations and organizational operations must understand, play a team role within, and be able to integrate all of the organization’s functions as decisions are made, as plans are formulated, and as activities are coordinated and controlled. Without an intimate understanding of each of these functions, you will find yourself incapable of thinking about the larger picture as a whole (i.e., the business or organization) and dealing effectively in your use of these functions.

Your Concentrated 21 Credits in Organizational Management

Your studies will be focused in three important areas, each of which is intended to facilitate your understanding of organizations and the practice of management. You will be asked to select courses from three distinct areas within the domain of management and organizational studies. These include macro-organizational behavior, micro-organizational behavior, and management and the management process.

Macro-Organizational Behavior Courses –these courses are intended to focus your studies on the organization. They will add to your understanding and appreciation of the context within which organizations function (i.e., its task environment), the structure of an organization (e.g., bureaucracies, virtual organizations, and high involvement organizations), organizational processes (e.g., decision making), and ultimately the behavior of organizations (e.g., productivity, innovation).

Micro-Organizational Behavior Courses – these courses are intended to focus on the study of individuals and groups within a work and organizational context, and the study of internal processes and practices that affect individuals and groups (e.g., affect their motivation and performance behavior).

Management and Management Process –these courses are intended to focus your studies on the practice of management (e.g., decision making, planning, controlling) within the work organization and larger organizational context (e.g., economic, cultural, global) and involve a variety of contextual and process-related topics (e.g., entrepreneurship, innovation).

Your Summer Work Experiences

With the forever-rising cost of education, we recognize the necessity of ‘working’ that faces the majority of today’s university students. That said, we would like to strongly encourage you to use your summers to gain a variety of work and organizational experiences. These will assist you by providing some real world experiences within which to anchor the literature you will be exposed to in the different courses in your major. Most future employers are looking for well-educated students, students who have a literature-based understanding of organizations and organizational operations, and people who have a true sense of ‘organizational reality’ that comes from first-hand organizational experiences. A sense of this organizational understanding can only come from the work experiences that you accumulate outside of the classroom.

In addition, and as a part of this joint educational/summer experience process, we encourage you to give serious consideration to making an Internship as part of your formal educational experience. More can be learned about internship opportunities by speaking with the individual who coordinates this program for students within LSBE (Duane Kaas; ).

Your Organizational Management Faculty

The Organizational Management faculty are confident that the quality of your education will be second to none. Our faculty are well-prepared, dedicated, creative, and caring scholars who will challenge you in many ways to stretch your minds. The Organizational Management faculty members are passionately committed to the education of our undergraduate students. The following words, taken from our value statement, speak to this matter: “We are committed to the intellectual growth and development of people. We will strive to make this vision a reality: (a) through our commitment to the creation, interpretation, application, and dissemination of knowledge, and (b) by working to create an environment in which students are encouraged to consume knowledge, think, question, analyze, and explore problems and their solutions, and to articulate their own emerging theories of management and organizations.”

Your full-time faculty include:

Dr. Geoffrey G. Bell (Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1999, Strategic Management)

Dr. Patricia Borchert (Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 2006, Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management)

Dr. Sanjay Goel (Ph.D., Arizona State University, 1995, Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship)

Dr. Kjell R. Knudsen (Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1973, Strategic Management).
Dr. Knudsen is also the Dean of LSBE.

Dr. Xin Liang, (Ph.D., University of Kansas, 2007, Strategic Management)

Dr. Jennifer Mencl (Ph.D., University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2004, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management)

Dr. Jon L. Pierce (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1977, Organizational Studies)

These faculty are occasionally supplemented by part-time faculty, drawn from the local community, who have undergone rigorous screening and are recognized for their relevant experiences.

Final Thoughts

In closing, whatever your organizational and management career entails, it will be your education – not your degree – that will play a crucial role. It is, therefore, extremely important that you become well grounded in the literature to which you are exposed through your university education. As a business graduate, you should be able to have conversations about businesses with others, including expressing opinions about certain business decisions that occur and are reported in real life, and back these opinions with some analysis/arguments.