Sabancı University Summer 2010

MGMT 201 Introduction to Management

Course Syllabus

Instructor: Özgür Özlük

e-mail: [email protected]

Textbook : There is a custom prepared course pack available at Canon

photocopy center.

Web Page : SUCourse, all course related material, including computer files,
lecture slides, assignments and their solutions can be accessed from
the course web page.

Course Forum : SUCourse’s “Discussions” feature will be used. This is a much more
efficient and effective way to discuss course related topics, so please
make use of it. We will be regularly checking the discussions and
providing responses to questions.

Objectives:
 To introduce the students to functional areas of management.
 To introduce the students to the management program at Sabancı University.
 To improve the computer skills of the students.
 To improve presentation and teamwork skills of students.

Knowledge Content:
 Sunk, fixed and variable costs
 Fundamentals of marketing
 Discounting cash flows
 Technological forecasting
 Making optimal location decisions

Skills Content:
 MS Excel for analysis, decision modeling, graphical presentation
 Simple database functionality of MS Excel
 Effective presentation skills
 Teamwork
 Business plan preparation

Learning Outcomes:
Upon successful completion of the course, a student should be able to:
1. Perform advanced data analysis and processing using Microsoft Excel.
2. Perform NPV analysis and other related discounted cash flow calculations.
3. Perform breakeven analysis and interpret the results.
4. Prepare and present a business a plan.

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Course Delivery:
The objective of the course is to make both the lectures and the recitations as interactive as
possible. Due to the skills-development goal of the course and heavy use of computers, the
lectures and recitations will be delivered in classrooms which enable students and instructors to
use their laptops with internet connection. This will enable students to download and upload
files from the course website (on SUCourse) during classes. Students will be able to work on
in-class exercises and submit their work at the end of the class and follow instructor-done
examples on their own laptops.

The in-class exercises will be submitted through SUCourse and grading will be done in such a
way that even if there are small mistakes or some incomplete work the student gets most of the
grade assigned to the exercise. This is because the in-class exercises are not meant to be
quizzes but they are means of creating an interactive class where students get the opportunity
to practice of the issues raised in the lecture. Hopefully, this will clarify what is learned and
what is not learned to both the instructors and the students so that this quick feedback will
enable better delivery of the course material.

The delivery of the course is designed to make it feel like a small class despite it being a rather
large one. In addition to classical communication channels such as office hours and email,
course “Discussions” on SUCourse on all major topics of the course will be closely followed
by the instructors with the goal of same-day response to all posted questions.

Requirements:
There are six main requirements of the course. In-class exercises, individual assignments, dyad
assignments, exam 1, exam 2 and teamwork consisting of business plan preparation.

During the in-class exercises students will be able to receive help from each other and from the
instructors, since these are not meant to be quizzes. Their main purpose is to provide feedback
to both the students and the professor during the lecture and facilitate learning by doing. Since
the students will be on-line during the lectures, they should turn off their messenger/chat
programs, e-mail notifications etc. so that they are not distracted.

Individual Excel Assignments

There are five individual Excel assignments of equal weight in grading. Their due dates are
specified in the schedule. Students will be expected to carry out the required work individually
unless otherwise specified. To clarify this point, the students can talk to each other about how
they tackle the assignments, but they should work on it individually or as a team, depending on
how it is required. More specifically, since all of these assignments are going to be delivered
as a MS Excel file, students should not give their own files to others even if the intention is to
give a hint or answer a specific question. It is very tempting for the receiving student submit
that file as his/her own and that would clearly be cheating; in that case both students would be
held responsible not just the receiving one. If you want to help a fellow student, discuss your
approach to the problem but do not give your file.

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Dyad Assignments
There are four assignments. You will complete the assignments in dyads. We will announce
your partner at the beginning of the 3rd week. Each assignment is explained in detail below.
Due dates can be found in the schedule. They are also listed on SUCourse and you will submit
your work through the SUCourse assignments section. Your assignments should not exceed the
page limits provided. Late submissions will not be accepted. Please write your essays double
spaced, in a page layout with normal margins using Times New Roman font of size 12.

In the class meeting following assignment submissions, everyone should be present in the
class, since the instructor will randomly choose a few dyads and ask for an informal
presentation on the assignments they prepared jointly.

1. Movie Analysis: As a dyad, you will choose one movie to analyze from a list of movies
that will be provided. The movies will be on the library e-reserve system, so that you
can watch these movies on-line. After watching the movie on your own time, your job
as a dyad will be to analyze the movie to determine what factors lead to success and
failure of entrepreneurs. All dyads will submit a (maximum) 2-3-page written analysis
on the due date and be ready to discuss their work during class time.
2. Ethics case: You will be provided an ethics dilemma and asked to critically reflect on
it, when doing so you are expected to answer the questions provided in the framework.
All dyads will submit a (maximum) 2-3 page written analysis on the due date and be
ready to discuss their work during class time.
3. Critique of a business plan : As a dyad, you will submit a (maximum) 2-3 page
analysis and be ready to discuss your work during class time.
4. An Interview with an Entrepreneur : Find an entrepreneur (e.g., a local shop owner in
your neighborhood) whom you could interview. Identify which factors they considered
when they started up their job, the difficulties they have encountered and how they
dealt with them. . As a dyad, you will submit a (maximum) 2- 3-page analysis
consisting of the organization and entrepreneur’s experiences during establishment and
forward. Please be ready to discuss your work during class time.

Research Participation
There will be 5 points if you complete ALL surveys in which you evaluate your own skills and
your teamwork. Even if you miss one of them, you will receive 0. The survey sessions are
indicated as In-Class Survey on the outline. Please make sure you bring your laptops and their
adaptors to the class on the indicated dates. Your responses to the survey questions will be
confidential (neither the instructors nor any of your classmates will see your responses) and
will be used for research purposes.

Exams
Exam 1 and exam 2 will be done on-line. The questions will include short-essays, analysis and
modeling done in Excel. An FTP server is used to deliver question data files as MS Excel
workbooks and then collect answers/solution also as MS Excel workbooks. Grading will be
done in a semi-automated fashion using an MS Excel Macro, and the students will be given a
detailed description of how the grading process works.

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Business Plan
Business plan is an important part of the process, both in terms of the time the students should
devote to it and in terms of grading. The goal is to engage students in a process where they
think about different elements of designing and managing a business, how different elements of
a business interact, how teams operate and how business ideas should be presented.

Grading:

Individual Dyad Team

Excel Assignments 10.0%
In-class Excel Exercises 10.0%
Ethics Case 5.0%
Research Participation 5.0%
Exam 1 20.0%
Exam 2 20.0%
Business Plan (Total 30%)
Movie Analysis 3.0%
Critique of a BP 3.6%
Interview w/ an Entrepreneur 3.9%
Marketing Report 4.5%
Final Report 9.0%
Oral Presentation 6.0%
Total 65.0% 15.5% 19.5%

Business Plan Resources:

To guide you through the business plan preparation and presentation process besides the
associated lectures we are providing you complementary materials in MGMT 201 course pack,
in SUCourse (under Learning Modules there is a section on Business Plan with additional
instructions) and in the reserve collection of Information Center.

The following materials are on reserve at SU Information Center:

 Business plans handbook: A compilation of actual business plans developed by small
businesses/no author [HD 62.7 .B87 1996]
 The Harvard Entrepreneurs Club guide to starting your own business / Poonam
Sharma [HD 62.5 .H37 1999]
 Leading edge business planning for entrepreneurs / James Arkebauer, Jack Miller [HD
62.5 .A74 1999]
 New venture creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21st century / Jeffry A. Timmons,
Stephen Spinell. [HD 62.5 .T56 2004].

Academic Honesty:
Copying from others or providing answers or information, written or oral, to others is cheating.
Copying from another student’s paper or from another text without written acknowledgment is

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plagiarism. Unauthorized help from another person or having someone else write one’s paper
or assignment is collusion. Cheating, plagiarism and collusion are serious offenses resulting in
an F grade and disciplinary action.

Specific to this course, it is important to know that submitting a computer file (e.g. Excel
workbook) prepared by someone else, even partially, is cheating. You may talk to others about
assignments but in the end you should be doing all the work. It is important that you do not
share your solutions as Excel files with anyone until it has been graded. Sharing your file with
others could easily tempt them to submit part or all of it as their own. This would be cheating
and in most cases easy to detect. Once you share your file with someone, it could easily be
forwarded to a lot of students and some of whom could cheat or plagiarize. Plagiarism is a
very serious misdeed that can result in a reduced grade or an F (for the assignment and/or the
course). Please pay utmost attention to avoid this accusation.

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Course Plan:
Note: This is a tentative schedule that is subject to change.

Recitation
Week Lecture Topics Topics
1W Introduction
Exploratory data analysis
1R Exploratory data analysis MS Excel /
Data Analysis
2W Marketing
Intro to Business Plans
2R Technological forecasting Data Analysis /
Case 1 (Forecasting) Forecasting
3W Visual display of quantitative information
3R Visual display of quantitative information Visual Display
Doing business research & business plans
First Exam
4W Time value of money
Case 2 (Time value of money)
4R Costing Time Value /
Costing
5W Costing
Case 3 (Costing)
5R Database (DB) concepts Costing / DB
Techniques
6W Database concepts Database
Techniques
6R Location analysis Location
Case 4 (Locating warehouses)
7W Presentation skills, Business plans
Review
7R Business plan presentations
Final report submission
Peer evaluation submission

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