Great Minds in Management - Assignment Example

are required to develop a 1200 word reflective report on their learning experience throughout the module. The reflective report should be written in a personal manner and highlight the students learning experience. It is advised that students keep a weekly learning journal, as this will help form the basis of the reflective report. As a guide, students may wish to consider the following points/questions when considering to write their reflective report: 1. Describe your learning experience from this module. 2. What were your significant learnings? Why were they significant for you/ 3. What areas would you like to learn more? 4. What made it difficult/easy and how did you manage them This report summarizes my experiences throughout the course. It is outlined in four categories which are learning experiences I have from this module, what the significant lessons garnered are, and why they are important to me. It also identifies those areas of which I wish to learn more, and the ease of difficulty that I had encountered in the course. Learning experience from this module I started the module with a lot of questions in mind, such as what knowledge the module shall bring to me. What will I learn from it? Great Minds in Management! What are they? How can I apply what I learn in practice? Will I be required to develop a new theory at the end of the course? Those questions have occupied me and have inspired me to seek out and discover the answers during the course. It is really interesting to learn how great scholars develop their theories. Theories are not developed over a short period of time, nor are they without empirical research. The development of academic theories involves a long process of thinking, proving and refining, supplemented with empirical evidence. The course also taught me how to coordinate with the online team members. In my job as an auditor, I work with my team regularly and I certainly know how to deal with them. Other than through online collaboration, I learned some courses in the program via face-to-face sessions, and I had the opportunity to work with other students in teams to complete group assignments. It seems to me that I know how to deal with team work very well. However, I felt that dealing with online team members for group assignments is quite different. There are four members in my group. Some had been active (including me) but others have been really passive and seemingly paid less attention to group goals. For instance, Palat Khun and I were very active in the group assignment. I selected the company for case study and also assigned who should do what. I also posted reminders of the deadline on a regular basis. However, while some responded to me, others stayed inactive until the last minute! Eventually, once we had four members in the team, we had been able to reassign the workload and the team agreed to devote the needed effort to meet the deadline. Though the group met the deadline and achieved a fairly good result (14/20), the team activity proved to be quite strenuous for me. Dealing with online team members has really been less productive as it is not possible to manage team members if they are not responsive. Significant lessons learned and why they are significant To me, all of the modules in the text are worth learning. However, due to time constraints, only ten modules were selected and those ten modules represent the state of the art theories in the management field. They are the most important modules that the students must go through. I am particularly interested in Chapter 5- Grand and Mid-range theories, particularly the context in which grand and mid-range theories are developed, and the fact that cultural difference has significant influence on how theories are developed. For instance, Germans tend to be well rounded and stick more to grand theories, whereas Americans tend to look into detail and find solutions for a particular issue. Though I find all the theories engaging, I am particularly interested in goal setting and stakeholder theories as the terms goal setting and performance measurement, and stakeholder impact are part of my daily work. As mentioned above, I have lived with these terms for a long time since I started my career as an audit professional but I have never had the chance to think about how these theories were developed and who developed them until I took this course. By now I have had the chance to learn and acquire a thorough understanding about them. Adding to the list of my favorite theories is the Goal Setting Theory which is covered in Chapter 7. The reason for my preference of this theory is that as a professional auditor in Australia, my daily work is in fact related to setting performance goals for myself and my counselees. Hence, this is a good chance for me to explore and get a thorough understanding about goal setting theory in order for me to better apply its principles in my work. There is much to learn from goal setting theory. For instance, to be effective, goals should be set at the level that is achievable by the employee. For an audit assistant to be assigned the goal of getting new clients for the firm would therefore be irrelevant and counterproductive. Goals should be set so that they are attainable. I am also fond of stakeholder theory as stakeholder is one of the terms I also encounter in my day to day work, for the reason that as an auditor I have to devote attention to those who exert an influence over my client’s affairs. For instance, key stakeholders like shareholders are among those who influence the future of a company to a great extent. Hence, it is critical to know who they are and how to deal with them so that we could create extra value for them and also keep them in the client pool. Areas wish to learn further The resource based view theory (RBV) is an area that I want to explore more in order to fully understand this theory and how to apply its principle in the real business context. As a practitioner, I always ask questions such as how limited available resource may best be utilized to maximize the benefits, or whether RBV is the sense making theory. To me, in order to apply the RBV theory effectively in practice, it is necessary that the management possesses a great deal of experience and a thorough understanding of the business environment in which the company operates, as well as a clear understanding of its competitors. Furthermore, stakeholder theory is an area about which I also want to learn more. Solid knowledge in stakeholder theory will definitely help me a lot in my career as an external auditor. As mentioned above, a better understanding of stakeholder theory will help me in giving better consultations to my clients in dealing with key stakeholders such as shareholders and governmental agencies. Difficult or easy things and how they were managed To me and possibly to all of working students, time is really the biggest constraint. As an auditor, my workload is high. I always have project deadlines. Hence, I have to learn to manage my time more effectively from the beginning of the course. I have to better manage deadlines at work so that I can have time to maintain regular contributions in the forum. Moreover, I have to pay attention to the deadline of the group presentation, particularly the individual research report and reflective learning report. I have to manage to ensure that the work completed by my assistants and myself meet the standard of my Firm. But of equal importance is the quality of my weekly contributions to the forum and the reports submitted to the lecturer. I have not noted any areas that are easy in the course although I am a fast learner (a conditioned nature of an experienced auditor) and I have enjoyed the course very much although it proved quite difficult. However, commitment to what I have set out to do has enabled me to meet the challenges encountered both in the course and in my work. I am pleased with what was delivered in the course and the way the lecture guided us throughout the discussion. Read More