Centralization vs. Decentralization
The title says a lot for tonight’s post, which is pulled from the Principles of Management class I took at Umass-Amherst during the winter 2007 semester. The advantages and disadvantages of centralized versus decentralized organizational structures lies greatly in the inherent qualities and effects of the structures themselves. Robbins and Coulter describe this very well, […]
It Just Works: How Apple’s Planning & Strategy Create Intuitive Interactions for Consumers
Pending any errors or glitches, I’m done with my group project for my Statistics course (10% of the final grade), so now all I have to do is take the Statistics Final and I’m done with the Spring semester! To mix things up a bit, tonight I’m posting the last essay for my Fundamentals of […]
Planning at the Lend Lease Corporation
The majority of my finals will be over tomorrow night, so you’ll start seeing some fresh content soon. For tonight, I’ll be publishing one more discussion post from the Principles of Management class I took at Umass-Amherst in the Winter 20007 semester. To anyone who has the textbook, Management by Stephen Robbins and Mary Coulter, […]
Severance Contracts: What About the Rest of Us?
Today’s post is another from my discussion assignments for the Principles of Management class at Umass-Amherst. I’m still in finals week right now for the Marketing and Stats classes I’m currently taking so I won’t have much time to post anything else. Today’s post is relevant to an event that occurred a few days ago […]
Fair Trade vs. Global Business
The material in this post is another discussion assignment from my Principles of Management class at Umass-Amherst. The two classes I’m currently taking are in finals week right now, so I likely won’t have much time to post new original content here this week but will try to write a post or two unrelated to […]
Intuit: The Small Business Helpers
Another day, another discussion post from my Principles of Management class at Umass Amherst. This assignment involved describing why a company on Forbes’ 25 best managed list was so well managed. I chose Intuit, the makers of Turbo Tax and other accounting software. If there are any Intuit employees out there reading this, I would […]
Au Bon Pain, Richard Thibeault, and the Controls that “Guide” Them
This discussion post, for a Principles of Management class at Umass-Amherst, was in response to an article in the Wall Street Journal, entitled “In Name Only: For Richard Thibeault, Being a `Manager’ Is a Blue-Collar Life — Grueling Hours, No Respect Make Low-Tier Bosses Feel Tired and Troubled — `Factory Work Was Easier‘”, written by […]
Timbuk2 Case Analysis
The below post was an assignment for the Principles of Management class at Umass-Amherst. The question posed was whether Frederick Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management would be beneficial for Rob Honeycutt, the owner of Timbuk2 Designs. Part of this assignment was also to post a response to my classmate’s responses; I have not included this […]
Javaprenuers: Corporate Managers Tackle Small Business Ownership
The below essay was written as a mid-term assignment for a Principles of Management class at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The very summarized case background involves two people, Jose and Gladys, who rose to upper management positions at Wal-Mart and J.C. Penney (respectively), yet were not content with their professional lives. The two […]
ABA, Always Be Authentic: A New Decree for Modern Salespeople
As a former sales representative, I have some insight into this week’s assignment: “Is the role of salespeople under appreciated by consumers and/or over abuse by companies? In your experience as either a salesperson or a buyer, what attributes of salespeople tend to be the most important or annoying?”. I submitted the below response for […]