MGT 224. Human Resource Management: Managing in High-Tech Environments. Course Overview, Readings, Requirements, and Schedule

Transcription

1 Graduate School of Management University of California, Davis Spring 2002 Professor Beth Bechky AOB IV rm. 147, Office Hours: Monday 3-5 pm MGT 224 Human Resource Management: Managing in High-Tech Environments Course Overview, Readings, Requirements, and Schedule Course Overview In the course of your career you will need to make decisions regarding how to manage, compensate, and motivate people. Northern California is a region with a high technology, knowledge intensive workforce. This course provides an understanding of how firms and managers make choices about organizing such a labor force. The aim of this course is to provide students with a solid grounding in the management of labor, work, and the employment relationship. In MGT 224, students will examine firms human resource systems, the interrelated policies and practices for managing people. The course is not intended to be a preparation course for human resource managers. Instead, we will focus on how firms organize their labor force in response to the environments they face. We will investigate the changing workforce and workplace, with a particular emphasis on high-technology workplaces. The course is intended for students who seek to understand how to strategically structure, manage, and motivate their labor force. In MGT 224, we explore several kinds of human resource systems, from the historical systems in the US to the current ways firms manage workers in high technology and knowledge intensive environments such as software development, engineering, consulting, and filmmaking. We will examine relevant features of the environment external to firms -- labor markets, product markets, laws and regulations, and technology. We will then look at how these conditions affect the choices firms make in governing and managing their workers the decisions as to wages, benefits, working conditions, ways of organizing work, and other human resource policies and practices. Students will develop an understanding of these choices by analyzing the systems fit with the environment and the consequences of policies and practices under different systems.

2 Required Readings Course packet available at Navins. There is no textbook for the course. The readings are drawn from a number of sources. They include some academic articles, excerpts from longer works, cases, and short articles from the popular and business presses. Some additional materials may be distributed as the course progresses. Course Requirements Your grade will be based on (1) A group project comparatively analyzing the human resource systems of two organizations in the same industry. The project will consist of an 8-10 page paper as well as a group presentation on the final day of class. It is due on June 6th and is worth 40% of your grade. More details will be given on the project as the quarter gets underway. (2) One individual case analysis of your choosing, which is worth 20% of your grade. We will be discussing cases in sessions 3, 5, 6, and 8. Your 2-3 page analysis is due at the beginning of the session in which the case is discussed. (3) A short (3-5 page) book report on a human resource or industrial relations book of your choosing. As much as I would like to, I cannot possibly cover every human resource topic in a 10 week course. Therefore, I would like you to think about what human resource issue most interests you, find a book that analyzes it, and present this book to the class. The report is worth 25% of your final grade, and is due June 3 rd. Students in the class will receive copies of all reports. (4) Participation. Participation includes class attendance, informed involvement in class discussions, cases and exercises. Participation counts for 15% of your grade, and is evaluated seriously. 2

3 MGT 224 Spring 2002 Class Schedule and Reading Assignments Session 1: Introduction and Course Overview (Mon, April 1) Charges of Exploitation Roil a Catfish Plant, New York Times. (Distributed in class.) Session 2: Employment Relationships and the New Deal Framework (Mon. April 8) Historical Evolution of the U.S. Collective Bargaining System, Thomas Kochan, Harry Katz, and Robert McKersie, Chap. 2-3 from The Transformation of American Industrial Relations. The Development of Internal Labor Markets in American Manufacturing Firms, Sanford M. Jacoby, Chap.2 in Internal Labor Markets, Paul S. Osterman, ed. Fundamentals of Scientific Management, Frederick W. Taylor, in Working in America, Amy Wharton, editor. The Principles of Scientific Management, Frederick W. Taylor, 1967, p Is the New Deal Collapsing? With what might it be replaced? George Strauss, Industrial Relations, 34, p Session 3: From Job Enrichment to High Involvement Work Systems (Mon. April 15) A new strategy for job enrichment J. Richard Hackman, Greg Oldham, Robert Janson, and Kenneth Purdy, California Management Review, 1975, vol. 17, p Producing competitive advantage through the effective management of people, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Academy of Management Executive, 1995, p Work Organization: From Taylorism to Teamwork, Paul S. Adler, in Perspectives on Work, p , How I Learned to Let My Workers Lead, Ralph Stayer, Harvard Business Review November- December 1990, p Session 4: Diversity and Discrimination (Mon. April 22) Myths about diversity: What managers need to know about changes in the U.S. labor force, Judith J. Friedman and Nancy DiTomaso, California Management Review 38(4): Managing Cultural Diversity: Implications for Organizational Competitiveness, Taylor H. Cox and Stacy Blake. 3

4 Technology and Tolerance Richard Florida and Gary Gates, The Brookings Review, Winter 2002, p Excerpts from Human Resource Management, Mathis and Jackson. Session 5: Science and Scientists (Mon. April 29) The Normative Structure of Science, p in RK Merton, The Sociology of Science. Chicago, University of Chicago Press Invisible Colleges and the Affluent Scientific Commuter, pp in DJ De Solla Price, Little Science, Big Science, And Beyond. New York: Columbia University Press. Performance evaluation in high technology firms: Process and politics Gerald Ferris and M. Ronald Buckley, p in Luis Gomez-Mejia and Michael Lawless (eds.) Organizational issues in high technology management Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Case TBD Session 6: Technology and Engineers (Mon. May 6) Autonomy in the Industrial R&D Lab, Lotte Bailyn, Human Resource Management 24(2), p The dual ladder: motivational solution or managerial delusion? Thomas J. Allen and Ralph Katz, R&D Management 16(2), p CASE: Soul of a New Machine. Tracy Kidder Chapters to be distributed in class: Engineering Culture: Control and commitment in a high tech corporation. Gideon Kunda, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. The Social Production of Technical Work. Peter Whalley, Albany: SUNY Press. Session 7: Knowledge work: Technicians and professionals (Mon. May 13) The invisible technician. Steven Shapin, 1989, American Scientist 77: The Professions, Ch. 4, p in Working: Sociological Perspectives, Robert A. Rothman, 1998, Prentice-Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ. Hired Guns: Partners and Associates in Large Law Firms, Paul Hirsch. Pink Slips for Law Firm Partners, New York Times. Law Firms Add Second Tier, New York Times. Boom in Temporary Jobs Eases Lawyer Layoffs, New York Times. The New Letdown: Making Partner, New York Times. 4

5 Session 8: Information Technology and the Changing Workplace (Mon. May 20) Trust and the Virtual Organization. Charles Handy, Harvard Business Review, 73, 3, pp Learning from Notes: Organizational Issues in Groupware Implementation Wanda Orlikowski, Information Society, 9, 4, pp Two cheers for the virtual office. Thomas Davenport and K. Pearlson, Sloan Management Review, 39, pp HBR Case: How do you manage an off-site team? Maruca, R.F., Session 9: Managing Network and Project-Based Organizations (Mon. June 3) Net-working for a living: Irish software developers in the global workplace. Sean O Riain, in Global Ethnography, Michael Burawoy et.al., eds, Berkeley: University of California Press. Paradox in project-based enterprise: The case of film making, Robert J. DeFillippi and Michael B. Arthur, California Management Review, 40, p The New Managerial Work, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business Review, November-December, 1989, pp The Contingency Work Force, Jaclyn Fierman, Fortune, Jan. 24, 1994, p. 3 Contingent and alternative work arrangements, defined, Anne E. Polivka, Monthly Labor Review October 1996, p A profile of contingent workers, Anne E. Polivka, Monthly Labor Review October 1996, p Session 10: Group presentations Wrap-up: 21 st Century Work and Management (Thurs. June 6) The Changing Social Contract for White-Collar Workers, Charles Heckscher, p in Perspectives on Work, Vol. 1(1), What is happening to Professional Work? J. Richard Hackman, p. 4-7 in Perspectives on Work, Vol. 2 (1), The Shamrock Organization, Chapter 4 from The Age of Unreason, Charles Handy. 5