INLS 131:  Management for Information Professionals

Week 3: January 22-28, 2002
Building Community;
Motivation;
Case Study 1

Assignments

This week we will begin interacting with one another and developing some discussion. We will continue to work on the four topics introduced last week:

• getting to know one another
• developing the psychological learning contract and applying the idea to a working organization
• forming a mental picture of a good manager
• applying the learning model.

We will also investigate what motivates us and others and apply some of our preliminary learning to a case study where you will have your first experience, for this course anyway, in working with a virtual team. Your team members will be some of your classmates in INLS 131.

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Task 5: Forming a Learning Community and Developing a Learning Contract

Go to the Getting to Know You forum and read some (all?) of the entries posted by your classmates. Select three to reply to in a "getting acquainted" mode. Try to choose different people so that everyone receives at least one response. Before sending your response, read the postings made by the people you have selected on the Expectations and Contract forum and the Managerial Skills and Roles forum. Discuss these ideas with the three person group you have formed. For example, from the comments on the Expectations and Contracts forum, do you get a clear sense of what your fellow students expect to learn and how they expect to contribute to the class? How might you or a fellow student negotiate a clear and satisfactory learning contract?  Do you see any applications to your current or past work environment?  From the Managerial Skills and Roles forum, do you see consensus forming about what a good manager does?

Please post your responses as replies to your selected classmates to the Getting to Know You forum by or before January 28.

In addition, send me an e-mail (daniel@ils.unc.edu) giving me the names of four or five of your classmates with whom you might like to work for future group assignments based on their descriptions and their comments on all three discussion forums. I don't guarantee you'll get all your choices as I create the first grouping, but I'll do my best.

Please send me the e-mail message by or before January 28.

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Task 6: The Psychological Contract

Read the personal application assignment in Chapter 1 on page 18 and write a one to three page paper answering the questions provided. You may post the paper as an URL to an html document or as text to the Expectations and Contract forum, or send it to me by e-mail either as an attachment (.doc, .rtf, or .txt) or inserted into the body of your message. (Let me know if you have any difficulty with the mechanics.)

This paper is due by or before February 4.

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Task 7: Motivation

Read Chapter 4. In past classes, I have had students write short stories relating to the pictures given at the beginning of this chapter. We have then analyzed the stories to see whether you have projected into the story needs and motivations that are important to you. The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is described in the text in the section entitled McClelland's Theory of Needs. It's a fun party game and, as in any projection, tells more a lot about your own motivations. You may want to try the TAT sometime.

The assignment I'd like you to do in place of the TAT is to describe one or two situations you've experienced in the past (work, family, class, clubs) where you have felt satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) that might be due to a match (or mismatch) to a need that motivates you. Have you observed others who "fit" (or didn't) their work situation perhaps because there was a lack of the qualities in the situation that would motivate them?

Do you see any applications in the learning contract we are developing for this class? Look at the list of job design attributes and the model on pages 87-88. Can you apply these to the class or to one of the work/life situations you described?

Post your responses to the Motivation forum. Use the subject line, "Task 7: Things that Motivate Me."  Do this task by or before January 28.

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Case Study 1: The Donor Services Department

Three case studies will be assigned throughout the course. Each is to be studied and discussed with a group of other students. The list of students you will be working with can be found at the Group Assignment page. Your task for each of the three case studies is to read the case carefully and then consider what management issues relative to the material we have been studying are manifest in the case. It's an opportunity to apply the concepts you are learning to a common problem and to work collaboratively in diagnosing problems and recommending solutions. In the second and subsequent case studies we will attend to some group process issues, but I won't ask you to do that for the first case.

For the first case study, please read the case--probably at least twice if not three times. The Donor Service Department case can be found on pages 503-506 in the text. Contact your assigned group members by e-mail so you can initiate a conversation. Past students will suggest that you initiate the email contact as soon as you know who the members of your group are and get a conversation going. "Don't wait until the last moment," they counsel. It will be helpful if you each do an initial analysis and share that with your colleagues but be mindful of other people's time and don't send a message so long that folks won't want to read it immediately. There are some questions at the end of the case that may help suggest aspects of the case to attend to. In addition to these issues, you may want to consider:

• the psychological contract (from the perspectives of all the major players);
• what the management "theories-in-action" are for each of the two managers (Sam and José);
• whether the elements are there (or might be) to create a "learning community" in this small organization;
• what kinds of motivational drives you can detect in the various players in the case;
• whether there are possible (or actual) value clashes and/or ethical concerns in this case.

For each of the case studies, you may find it helpful to ask one member of the group to act as coordinator. I will be interested to hear volunteers for the coordinator role (a good leadership practice exercise). Send me an email if you are willing to act in this capacity. In any event, I will identify someone to act as your coordinator for the first case study and then let you select your own in future case studies. You have three weeks to complete your analysis of the case, identify the issues, and make some observations and recommendations. Please post a two- to four-page summary of your collective work on the Case Study Analyses forum. The summary will be understood to include input from all members of the group, and all the names should be listed on the "from" line. Please use the subject heading "Donor Case Analysis."  Submit your work by or before February 18.

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Week 4