Entries in the Category "MGMT250"
Reflection on Fall 2005
Looking back my past three months, I have challenged many things along with my personal decision that I made in the beginning of this semester. Also there are many things I could not achieve because of the loss of opportunity with my laziness, or time and money constraints. What I learned form my past experiences is that smartness is not the first value to be able to acheive something, but hard work, passion to be successful, modesty are rather important aspects to make my dream come true. In other word, as long as I devote my life to one thing I really love, I might be able to gain something although I might sacrifice something at the same time. Also I feel how much I could have improved my daily actions by planning and carrying out it day by day. However instead, I have also gained a lot of things by going slowly and choose what I really want.
Performance Appraisal
As business competition intensifies worldwide, companies must strive more than ever before to improve quality and production while controlling cost. To get employees excited their jobs, beyond financial reward, I think that managers must make sure their work supports their career goal and perhaps the greatest motivator of all is workers to simply know they are appreciated that their contributions are not going unnoticed. Maybe resepondents revealed that lack of recognition is one of the primary reasons employees quit their jobs.Thus, Company should motivate team of professionals to contribute their best work by creating an environment which continaully celebrates outstanding performance.
Long Journey
My best is not nearly good enough. To improve my life from good to great and great to best, I should not see my limit, but look at the whole picture of the direction and keep walking toward my setting goal. It will be risky and long journey to establish and walk my way. Looking back my values and basic principles, what I would like to do is to contribute to the society by helping people in the world through my business. This is what I want in my life. I have challenged many things that other people don't. And, I will continuously put myself in risky situations in order to keep challenging myself. As now I am young, I have nothing to lose or conceal, and only hope and passion to be happy make me satisfied in my life.
E-trading Business
According to my current research, there are a lot of regulations in trading business and the environmentally friendly products, and only experts in the field can provide outstanding service in this competitive market. And, there actually are a lot of roles in terms of international trading and dealership, I deeply need to look into all of these elements.
Even though I do so, however, there are still a lot of uncertain constraints in terms of regulations such as international business laws, visa issue, international trading contracts and other potential risks. Therefore, I need to carefully consider whether or not I can do this within my capacity. If this business might have to spend my time beyond my assumption, I will avoid trading and try smaller scale business plan with online because the goal is to connect with stakeholders and deepen understanding of trading business.
Catch Your Dreams Exercise
The Catch your Dreams exercise provides me to understand what I am really interested. Before doing this exercise, I was not clear about my desire of personal goal such as volunteering for HIV/AIDS patients in Africa, family value and friendships.
Though this exercise, as I realize that I am interested and want to deeply research about African economic and social problems, especially in South Africa, and I would like to go there and volunteer for three months to figure out what is really going on.
In the future, one of my personal dreams is to contribute to educational and medical development in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Although there are currently many local or outside people, pharmaceutical or other types of corporations, government and international volunteer organizations providing various supports, there are still a lot of potential tasks they can carry out in the future.
Since I was in the routine flow of life cycle at this college, I did not think seriously about my future desire. By writing 17 values I would like to achieve, however, I clarify what I really want to achieve and how I should think about my dream.
Discrimination
Although there are some policies like affirmative action and EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commision) to prevent discrimination, which means the actual behavior resulting from prejudice in industry in advance, however, I think that discriminations, which means the actual behavior resulting from prejudice, are still prevailed in 21th century industry. Because the policies is not the best of guides about what is fair, the employers should make decision that involves ethics based on what is impartiality. The very first thing, we have to keep in mind is that everyone is equal in respect of the fact that we are humanbeing.
Business ethics
Last Tuesday in class a guest speaker from career center lectured regarding business ethics especially on job search. He talked about several things related to job research matters. After his speech, we had the Wall Street Journal work-place ethics quiz. Though our answers were a little bit different from surveys, it was pretty interesting document. I was astonished by sight that many of other students agreed with 50$ or 100$ on the question7 which asks " what's the value at which a gift from a supplier or client becomes troubling?" . Because in my country, Korea, we have fixed rule that exceed 30$ from a supplier or client is regarded as illegal. I underwent cultural difference from this point of view once more.
Learning Plan
Though it was pretty long to write down, learning plan drived me able to concentrate more about myself. Especially, when I wrote down about "My Values" , I could find what are the prior things of my life. It was really helpful for me to arrange myself. Through this work, I realize about my identity in some ways that I had never thought before. Interviewing two people who works in fashion industry was really interesting job. Actually, it was my first time to interview someone. However, they replied very kindly and courteously to my questions as if I am a really interviewer. I was glad to make connections with them. They both allowed to me free to contact whenever I need help or curious about real industry. In conclusion, learning plan was really helpful assignment to know who I am and where I am headed.
Training, Development and Education
I felt very familiar when I first met these words because I often had to dealing with these words in my HR simulation. Thus, I wanted more accurate definition or meaning of these terminologies in management field. First of all, training is generally job specific with the outcome focused on improving. So it is immediately applicable to practical situation. Secondly, development falls between specific training and general education. The focus of development is on the general needs of the organization, so it is more oriented toward the future and is broader in scope than training. Finally, learning is relatively permanent change in knowlege or skill. Thus it requires more general knowledge and more time.
Iceberg Theory
Iceberg theory was remarkable concept that I learned in the class. It tells a large portion of our personality is hidden from our conscious perception like ice berg. In submerged part, there are feelings of gulit, inferiority, self-doubt, childhood conflicts, conflicting needs existed. I think that we have to focus on the hidden part of the those part. Because the interpersonal and social environments influenced the outcome of the individual efforts, however the real motivation for those was typically not available to the conscious mind. It was pretty interesting to see that phychology impacts on motivation in management field.
Motivating Employees
I think that if managers truly want to create a team of highly motivated employees take the time to listen their comments and ideas. They should let the employees have a wealth of information and can often contribute valuable suggestions to improve the business. There are many managers say they have an open door policy but, in reality, will only listen to an employee if his or her ideas are in sync with their own. Managers should foster an environment that encourages the open sharing of information. In addition, they should be always open to new ideas and methods of improving business and some of the best ideas come from the front-line staff.
Group V.S TEAM
While I worked as a team member in management class, I had a time to think about the meaning of team. Before I considered about it , I regarded as group and team are same thing. But, they has a quite different nuance. I think the biggest difference between group and team is lying on the process to achieve their common goal. Groups have people who has more phschologically aware of each other, however, teams are chracterized as having members who share the same goals, are interdependent, and are mutually accountable to each other. The fact that the result of team is relfected by high quality and high team member satisfaction, team effectivemess attracts me more than groups.
MBTI
MBTI was good enough to concentrate on to define the part of my identity. The interesting thing was that all of us have different 16 types of preferences. I got ISTJ on it. To my surprise, that was a quite correct pereference of me that I have felt during my life time. My curious about MBTI made me web-surf to www.personalitypage.com I saw and learned more about MBTI which I didn't hear on the class. I suggested to my friends to take the MBTI test roughly and explained about it. They were really satisfied about it. It was a thing motivating me one more step on my goal.
Networking
Yesterday in management class, we had a special time for networking. I thought it is a little bit awkward to make an artificial connection with others to do well in the future business, however, it was kind of one's business related merits by birth who has a lot and deep relationship with others. If you receive other person with the whole heart, they might be pleased although you are not good at networking. I learned various tips on workplace communication, professional skills and so on from upperclass students and alumni. It was also really grateful experience to meet several classmates and felt sympathy each other's opinions.
Mock Interview
Last Friday, there was a mock interview which was opened by Case career center. It was great experience to me. Over the long haul, I dressed up for the interview and felt a little bit nervous about it before I meet my interviewer. My interviewer was Nordson Company’s human resource section worker. She interviewed me with a lot of various questions and the end of the interview she provided me good tips for the interview. Although my English ability is not enough to cope with the interview, however I tried to do my best with confidence. After the interview, I could know about myself more, what is the merit and what is the weak point of me. I really satisfied about the experience that I had last Friday.