Abstract
As I sit preparing for the first issue of the new year, I am overwhelmed by the quality of articles over the past few years. With the first issue, I thanked the previous editors. This issue, I want to extend my gratitude to the true rock stars of Management Teaching Review: the authors who have provided the content to MTR and who patiently wait for their articles to appear in an issue. There have been so many excellent articles submitted, reviewed, and approved that there is currently a backlog of articles to assign to an issue. Normally, you may be used to seeing a general theme in each issue of Management Teaching Review. With my first issue, I kind of continued that with a focus on leadership. However, I decided that with the new year it was time to start fresh and get articles that have been waiting for a while into an issue. So, with that in mind, this will be another supersized issue offering 12 articles made up of 10 experiential exercises, a format translation, and a resource review. The authors of these articles had their manuscripts accepted over a year ago and have been patiently waiting for their inclusion in an issue. It is with great pleasure that I offer them to you now. I hope you enjoy them.
The first experiential exercise is “Employee Support for Unionization at Starbucks? A Peer-Influence Negotiation” by Regina M. O’Neill and Laurie L. Levesque, which is a four-person negotiation exercises where students prepare negotiation strategies in an attempt to influence their peers on whether to support unionization efforts at their store. Students learn how to prioritize goals, develop a negotiation strategy, and practice active listening.
Next up is “Tell Me about Your Job . . .: An Experiential and Relational Job Analysis Exercise” by Kirsten Robertson which takes on the important human resource management (HRM) function of job analysis. Students work through a 3-hour exercise in which they conduct a job analysis interview, design a job description, and assess the job’s design. In addition, as part of the exercise, students are working with people working in a job related to the students’ interests.
Timothy D. Golden brings us “Remote Work Arrangements: Negotiating the Duality of Managerial and Employee Perspectives,” a timely experiential exercise that addresses the rapid growth of remote work. Students explore issues related to remote work and conduct negotiations between managers and employees on appropriate work arrangements.
John Fiset takes us from the home office to the basketball court as students manage their own fictional basketball franchise and conduct a player draft in “Talent Selection Under Uncertainty: Exploring Cognitive Biases Through the Lens of a Professional Basketball Entry Draft.” Students conduct research on decades of drafts, identify systemic errors, develop a rationale for their decisions, and assess bias.
The next experiential exercise article gets students to examine their time management and accompanying stress as it relates to managing workload. In “Stimulating Simulation: Managing Stress Through Effective Time Management,” Eric Lamm, Jennifer Tosti-Kharas, Danna Greenberg, and Keith Rollag introduce us to an e-mail-based simulation in which students have to make quick decisions on how best to use their time in a short, 30-minute period.
Amanda Weirup and Phylicia Taylor introduce us to the concept of jargon literacy in “What Do You Mean? Developing Jargon Literacy for the Workplace.” In this experiential exercise, students identify various forms of business jargon and examine the impact on communication effectiveness as different students receive different definitions of industry jargon. Alternatively, the exercise can also focus on intergenerational slang.
Next, Christine M. Dawson and Jessica Rae Salmon introduce us to Visual Thinking Strategies (VST) in “What’s Art Got to Do with It? Using Visual Thinking Strategies to Develop Critical Thinking Skills.” Students are provided with visual artwork and, through a series of prompts, make evidence-based claims while articulating their reasoning and challenging assumptions.
In the next activity, Emily Tarr and Vanessa Shum provide a two-part exercise that has students reflecting on their online and in-person learning experiences while relating them to work arrangement considerations. This allows students to understand the complexity and implications for work arrangements from several different viewpoints while also discovering their own preferences.
In another experiential exercise article, “Betwixt and Between: An Exercise in Work Identity and Transition,” Helen H. Chung, Nahrie Chung, Monique Ticzon, and Jalá Harper introduce an exercise that leans on work identity theory and transition theory. Students reflect on a personal change event, discussing it with peers, and learn to better navigate and support themselves through transitions in their lives. The focus on these transition events also allows students to address identity changes that may come as a result.
In “Applying Latin American Cultural and Literary Studies to Diversity Management Education,” Heidi Batiste and Molly Appel present an experiential exercise that provides a framework for addressing complex interpersonal issues in the workplace. The exercise uses theory that is grounded in Latin American cultural and literary studies to guide the discussion of mini cases.
In a format-translation article, Tiffany Bayley, Kyle D. S. Maclean, and Tessa Weldner take us back to the past with a modern twist in “Back to the Future: Implementing Large-Scale Oral Exams.” The authors implemented Concurrent Video-Based Oral Exams (ConVOEs) in a business analytics course using essay questions in their learning management system and requiring 1-minute video responses.
In this issue’s resource review, Amy C. Lewis and Matthew D. Mangum provide a method to use an animated TV show to introduce the role of compromise in negotiation. In “A Compromise! Using Star Trek: Lower Decks to Help Negotiators Move Beyond Splitting the Difference,” the authors take humorous clips from the animated series and have students analyze different strategies for negotiation.
I hope you enjoy these articles and that they assist you in helping your students understand decision-making, critical thinking, change, and conflict.