How to conduct business successfully in a globally competitive marketplace? That's a question faculty and students in the Management and Organization Department, School of Business, explore daily. Step into Dr. David Fearon's Organizational Behavior class, and a student is asking, "Why does Wal-Mart get bigger while Kmart declares Chapter 11? Why did Southwest hold its own and grow even after September 11, while other airlines are facing bankruptcy and going to Congress with tin cups?" Another student suggests, "Southwest's leaders refocused on core values, got its employees more engaged in solving problems. The employees got them through. It's the same thing with Big Sky Fitness. Its success, I think, is based on the leadership being able to develop good employees and retain them in an industry of high turnovers."

Preparation for Leadership

The Management and Organization Department prepares students for the managerial roles they may one day assume in their careers in business, government, and non-profit organizations, as well as readying them for graduate study. While most students elect the general management major, the department offers additional concentrations in entrepreneurship and in human resource management. Unifying all three areas of study, Dr. William Tracey, Jr., department chair, explains, are some basic issues students must tackle to enable them to succeed in the constantly changing world of business: What strategies and practices are working well in business? What new capabilities of individuals and organizations must be developed next? and How are these developed in order to keep any business running well?

Engaging students in these questions are faculty members who bring broad-based knowledge grounded in scholarly research and practical experience: Drs. Eugene Baten, Steven Cavaleri, David Fearon, Min Soo Kim, Lee Wonsick Lee, Daniel J. Miller, Margaret Mitchell, William Tracey, and Professor Henry Ulrich.

Managing the Whole Business

A management major must come to see "the interconnectivity of various business functions—marketing and sales, finance and accounting, information, production—and how leadership focuses and orchestrates people and processes into a working whole," states Tracey. Reid Gorman, CCSU Class of 1994, now director of strategic sales at Callaway Golf, embodies in his remarkable success a graduate who mastered this art. Fearon, an Excellence in Teaching award recipient, says, "He is a comprehensive business thinker. He can talk about financing, training, marketing, all phases of design and production. You name the problem, and he reaches sales goals." Recently, Gorman addressed Fearon's Management Theory and Practice class via a conference call from Carlsbad, CA. "My Organizational Behavior students learned how Reid dramatically accelerated the growth of business by reducing the cost of shipping from the West to East Coast while speeding up the delivery of orders to customers."

Keeping ahead of the learning curve himself, Fearon teamed with Dr. Steven Cavaleri to research and write a book, Managing in Organizations That Learn (Blackwell, 1996), dealing with the discipline of Organizational Learning. They are now preparing a book in the related discipline of Knowledge Management entitled How Knowledge Works. As a result of their collaborative scholarship, which found that business practices must continually change to be in accord with what works, a new course has been launched, Managing Knowledge for Business Performance.

Students benefit from the department's international business component. Hunter Mathena '01, now a top sales representative with United Oil Recovery in Meriden, CT, remembers, "I took business program trips—to Germany, Austria, and Sicily—with Dr. Tracey, and I was surprised to learn that in spite of the differences between cultures, selling is still a matter of interpersonal relations. It's about fulfilling customer needs and expectations and doing so by communicating effectively and trying to solve customer problems."

Entrepreneurship

Typically, students electing the entrepreneurship concentration "enjoy the prospect of working for themselves, have a high need for achievement, and welcome being responsible for an entire enterprise," says Professor Ulrich. Because they need to understand the many facets of running a business, entrepreneurship courses are integrative. "In starting up a business, one needs to have skills in management, marketing, finance, accounting, and information systems," according to Ulrich. "Entrepreneurs need to ask, Where do I locate, what's the target market, how do I keep the books, what's the hiring process?"

In the Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation course, students come up with an idea for starting or buying a business, then test its market feasibility. Progressing to the capstone course, Field Study in Entrepreneurship, students devise a full business plan or intern at a non-profit agency.

Human Resource Management

The human resource management concentration encompasses numerous facets: job design, recruitment, selection, placement, training, compensation, benefits, industrial relations, collective bargaining, safety and health, how laws affect human resources (HR). The goal is to prepare students for careers in human resource management or personnel administration in a variety of business and non-business settings.

"One of the biggest challenges our graduates will face is coping with the difference between the best practices they learn here and the range of behaviors they will encounter in the workplace," says Dr. Mitchell, noted for her academic rigor, scholarship, and research in the human resource field.

Discussing actual case studies, students examine how federal and state laws relate to each other in terms of workplace protections, for example, disability laws. They need to know that employers must check out job candidates for criminal records or past problem tendencies. Mitchell explained how in one instance an employer hired an individual who in his past place of employment had brought a gun to work. Although unaware of the candidate's history, his next employer was charged with "reckless hiring" when the employee subsequently committed murder.

While students master the principles of good HR practices, they must also know how HR relates and supports the organization's mission and objectives. "Some companies want to hire team-oriented staff; others are geared to training and developing their people," says Mitchell.

From Textbooks to Dreams

Building on the basic management theory and practices learned in the Management and Organization Department's program, seniors Brian Kiarnan Lynch and Inga Schmitt are better equipped to realize their career hopes. Says Lynch, "I've always loved music and ultimately I want to start my own independent record label company." Schmitt's dream is to open up a "huge and gorgeous day spa somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico." They admit financing will be a challenge, but with their minds filled with business management and organization skills, they look ahead with confidence.

Photo: Dr. David Fearon, professor of Management and Organization, teaches his Business Organizational Behavior class in one of the cutting-edge "smart" classrooms of the Robert C. Vance Academic Center.

— Geri Radacsi