ADMS 1010 Midterm (06-25-2024) Flashcards
Critical thinking is
explicit and conscious
Critical thinking is an approach to
reading, thinking, and learning
Critical thinking involves
asking question, examining assumptions, and weighing the validity of arguments
Critical thinkers are
- self-aware (introspective, know personal biases, strategic)
- curious (explore beneath the surface of the issue, try new approaches, and seek new viewpoints)
- independent (listen and learn from others, develop opinions, make judgements)
Business Corporation is the
dominant institution today.
Business Corporation main discourse
economic performance, productivity, global markets, financial investments
Business values are spreading
into non-business sphere (universities, health-care, government)
Business corporation current affairs
- corporate scandals (2000), where companies faced serious ethical and global issues (Enron’s fraud case)
- Global financial crisis (2008) resulted in an economic downturn due to financial system failures
Business corporations developed
ethics, CSR, governance, sustainability, age of experts
Trouble with experts
noise (uncertainty) in business world
Experts stepped in to fill the void
often wrong and disagree with each other
Trouble with experts results in people having the
need to develop procedures to assess the validity of different ideas due to fake experts
Bulldoze the business school?
- b-schools teach students how to get money from ordinary people
- b-schools teach Capitalist Market Managerialism
- Financial strategies to maximise returns from investment exacerbates social and economic inequalities.
- Human resources are exploited to maximise returns
- Ethics, CSR, and sustainability are seen as window dressing.
- Capitalist Market Managerialism is promoted as desirable, inevitable, and taught as a science rather than an ideology
School of Administrative Studies
Administrating/Managing…
* Focuses on business, government (public administration), non-profits, disasters and emergencies
Early Years of B-Schools
First U.S. B-schools were established around 1900 (turn of the century)
* Commerce de Paris
* Wharton UPenn
* U of Chicago Graduates.
Became common with publicly-traded corporations
B-Schools aim
to develop a professional degree similar to law and medicine
* manage corporations in the interest of stakeholders (shareholders, employees, customers, society).
* Code of ethics and standardise body of knowledge.
The education was neither rigorous nor effective
B-Schools Growth
Growth of B-Schools following WWII…
* returning soldiers needed jobs
* Public policy goal = have 0 unemployment
Carnegie and Ford Foundations commission studies of business education in 1950
Critical of B-school students, faculty, curriculum…
* resulted in traditional academic curriculum, with specialised functional disciplines
*led to legitimacy and power within universities
B-SChools Characteristic Friedman’s view
Goal of business is to maximise profit
* Teaching methods include traditional skill-base, lecture style, case-method
Dilbert View
Managers do not to actual work, because all the decisions are made above and the work is done by the people below.
Case method (harvard)
- no textbooks when Harvard was founded (1908)
- Harvard interview leading practitioners and wrote what they did are the best practices while lacking criteria to judge whether their actions were good or bad.
- Instead, read the case -> discuss in class -> offer recommendations with students taking on the role on manager.
Critical Discourse: Classical View (Rational – Henry Fayol)
Managers plan, coordinate, organise, and control
Manager Myth: Planning
Folklore: Managers are reflective and systematic planners.
Fact:
- Managers work unrelentingly.
- Manager activities are varied, discontinuous, and brief (brevity).
- Managers prefer actions, and avoid reflection.
Evidence:
- ½ of their activities lasts < 9 minutes.
- Average of 583 activities in 8 hours shift (1 every 48 seconds).
- Work for 30(+) minutes every 2 days.
Manager Myth: Duties
Folklore: Effective managers have no regular duties.
Fact: Regular duties include..
- Ritual and ceremonial.
- Negotiations.
- Procession of soft information, linking organisation to its environment.
Evidence:
- Managers in small companies step in to fill the gap of staff specialists.
- See important customers.
- Ceremonial duties are part of managers work (meeting dignitaries, rewarding watches, christmas dinner).
Manager Myth: Information
Folklore: Managers need aggregated information provided by a formal management information system.
Fact: Managers favour verbal media, calls, and meetings over documents.
Evidence:
- 66%-80% of time in verbal communication.
- Treat mails/reports a burden.
- Prefer soft information (gossip, hearsay, speculation) for speed.
Manager Myth: Science and Profession
Folklore: management is a science and profession.
Fact:
- Managers’ programs remain locked in their mind.
- Rely on judgement and intuition for ignorance.
Evidence:
- Managers verbally communicate and make decisions
- Managers cannot easily delegate tasks.
- Managers’ work is superficial, brief, and fragmented.
Manager’s Roles (Formal authority and status)
Interpersonal Roles: Figure Head, Leader, Liaison.
Informational Roles: Monitor, Disseminator, Spokesperson.
Decisional Roles: Entrepreneur, Disturbance Handler, Resource Allocator, Negotiator
EFfective Management
Managers need to be introspective to learn on the job.
Managing Oneself
Compare yourself to yesterday.
Importance:
- Knowledge workers must be their own CEO’s.
- Companies do not manage their employees careers.
Knowing Oneself
What are my strengths?
- Feedback analysis (when making a decision, create a forecast of 9/12 months and compare).
- Knowing one’s strengths encourages performance, results, and remedies bad habits.
- Implications are to improve strengths, do not focus on weakness, and root out intellectual arrogance.
How do I perform?
- Reader or Listener?
- Do I learn by writing, acting, talking, or reading?
- Do I work well in groups?
- Am I a decision maker or adviser?
- Am I uncertain or structured?
- Big organisation or small?
What are my values?
- Not just about ethics (mirror test).
- Values alignment.
Where do I belong?
- Most do not know until past 25.
- Knowing strengths, performance, values, and where you do not belong helps.
What should I contribute?
- What does the situation require?
- What results should be achieved to make a difference? (look 12-18 months ahead).
- Goals should be challenging and achievable.
- Contributions should be meaningful, visible, and measurable
Claims
Major conclusion that the author is trying to persuade you to accept.
Identifying Claims
First step in evaluating an argument
- Are the claims explicit or implicit?
- Claims may be in the title, introduction, or conclusion.
- State the claim in your own words fairly.
- Claim indicators: therefore, thus, in summary, I believe that, clearly, in short, the data shows that, as a result, in fact
Tips on Identifying Claims
- Avoid referencing just the title, being distracted by a strong opening statement, latching onto a secondary claim.
Steps to identify the Primary Claim:
- Read the entire article, review the title, intro, and conclusion, and ask yourself, “What is the main point the author is trying to convince me?”
Representing Claims
- Present main ideas with clarity and emphasis
- Place claim near the beginning or end, using cue words
- Use titles effectively and create a memorable claim
- A concept map
Types of Claims
Uncontested Claims:
- Consistent with experiences and observations, and includes facts that are independent of interpretation.
- Agreed amongst experts and can be technical or mathematical claims.
Contestable Claims:
- Questionable validity of claim that must be justified with evidence, and with forceful rhetoric (“the fact is…”, “There is no doubt…”).
Chandler – Big
- Logic of managerial enterprise is growth and competition.
- Large companies can be bought, sold, split up, and recombined.
- If managerial firms fail to maintain and nourish their competitive advantage, they will lose markets and profits.
- Primary Claim: Bigger is better (business/industry).
- Large firms are able to capitalise on economies of scale and scope.
- Caveat: unrelated diversification is bad.
Schumacher – Small
Primary Claim: Small is beautiful (people/society).
One size does not fit all, both are needed.
People who favour smallness without considering its purpose will oppose anything large.
Some endeavours require: Order for large scale unity and coordination.
Other endeavours require: Freedom for small autonomous units (i.e.: entrepreneurship, innovation, and action).
Organisations: Primary Characteristics
- Social entities are made up of people, pursuing a common goal
- Linked to the external environment
Traditional Organization Type
- Business: for-profit/private
- Government: public
- Non-profit (NGO): civil society
Organisational Theory
- Study of structures and operations of organisations (businesses, and bureaucratic institutions), and its relationship with the environment.
- Size (big or small).
- Strategy (relationship with environment).
- Structure (relationships, groupings, designs).
Evidence
- Response to the question: Why is it true?
- Argument = Claim + Evidence
- Quality of evidence should be accurate, precise, sufficient, representative, and authoritative.
- Insufficient evidence results in the fallacy of hasty generalisation.
- Accepting a claim because an authoritative figure says so, results in the fallacy of false appeal to authority.
- Claiming a truth because many people think so, results in the fallacy of argumentum ad populum (appeal to people/ bandwagon effect).
Corporate Social Responsibility
Use its resources and engage in activity in order to maximise profits.
- Only people can have social responsibilities (corporations are legal entities and cannot have social or moral responsibilities).
- Corporate executives (agents) are employees of shareholders (principals).
- Agents must act in the interest of the principals and generate profit.
- CEO’s can choose to spend their money however they want (i.e.: social causes).
- As agents, CSR expenditures equate to spending someone else’s money (taxes, spending proceeds).
Social Responsibility of Business
Private competitive enterprise forces people to be responsible for their actions and make it difficult for them to “exploit” others.
Backstory
- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): First government department to mandate natural environment.
- Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC): Created oil embargo and introduced fuel efficiency standards.
- Stakeholder Approach: Firms perform better if they focus on stakeholders rather than shareholders.
- Sustainable Development: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
- ISO: Environmental standard for industrial firms.
- Triple Bottom Line (TBL): Economic, social, and environmental performance is the dominant concept of business and sustainability.
- Energy Company Enron collapses amidst corporate fraud, along with Arthur Andersen (resulted in a new focus on ethics and corporate governance).
- Roundtable stated, the purpose of a corporation is to serve shareholders, deliver value to their customers, invest in employees, deal fairly with suppliers, and support the communities they operate in.
Disparate View
Business (most important system) is separate from society and nature.
Intertwined View
- Concept of CSR/Sustainability
- Doing well by doing good (social and environmental initiative generate profits)
- Create simultaneous value in all dimensions.
Embedded View
- Business is the most dependent system (cannot exist without society and nature).
- Finite system.
IPCC 6
- Primary Claim: Human activities change the earth’s climate and threaten the livability of the planet.
- Despite combating climate change, GHG emissions are high.
- Immediate action to limit the rise in temperature to 1.5-2 degrees C.
- Energy is responsible for ⅓ and industry for ¼ of GHG.
- Impacts include the increasing water cycles, changes in sea levels and frozen regions, and increased extreme weather.
Wealth of Nations
- Division of Labour: Specialising tasks to increase productivity.
- Factors of Production: Land, Labour, Capital.
- Self-interest: Individuals pursue their own advantage in economic decisions.
- Invisible Hands: Self-interest in markets promotes social benefit.
Marginalist Revolutionaries
- Marginal Utility: Increase/decrease in value from a marginal consumption.
- Diminishing Marginal Return: Increase in additional units leads to less value.
Homo Economicus (Behavioural Assumptions)
- Self-interested Utility Maximizer: Decisions are made to benefit oneself.
- Rational: Preferences are known and stable.
- Independent: Agents act independently and can compete.
- Perfect Competition.
Neoclassical Economics (Unrealistic Assumptions)
- Rational or ‘bounded rationality’
- Over-dependence on complex mathematical models.
Heuristics and Biases
- Representative Heuristics: Objects of similar appearance are assumed (can neglect relevant base rates).
- Availability Heuristics: Judgement is based on how easily we remember an event, rather than complete data.
- Framing Effect affects decisions
- Loss Aversion (Prospect theory): Individuals prefer to avoid losses than making gains.
- Risk-seeking when choices are framed as gains and risk-averse when choices are framed as losses.
Neoliberal Claim
- Competition is the Only means of coordination that does not require coercion.
- Money is an instrument of freedom, allowing people to make a choice.
- Market is capable of coordinating activities (free market = better society).
Underlying Assumptions
- Fills the gap between evidence and claim.
- What must be true if the claim is to follow from this evidence?
- What principle might link this particular claim to this particular evidence?
- What beliefs might I expect from this type of person?
- Could someone believe this evidence and still disagree with the claim? Why?
- Reality Assumptions: Beliefs about reality (positive) and changes with information.
- Value Assumptions: Moral/ethics (normative) and resistant to change.
