This course is offered by the School of Information. It focuses on managing people and processes in highly information and knowledge-intensive organizations, such as firms in the high-tech, biotech, pharmaceutical, media, consulting, and investment banking industries. In these settings, human and intellectual capitals are critical to success, and the management of these resources (or lack thereof) often makes the difference between success and failure. In this course, we will take a process lens and a general management approach (vs. a functional specialist one): we will focus on people-oriented processes that a manager can put in place to improve performance. That is, this course will not focus on technical IT topics or business strategy issues void of people considerations. Instead, it focuses on how managers can organize a sequence of activities that guide how people carry out work.

While other courses concentrate on one activity (e.g., a course on innovation), this course will cover three important processes that are salient in information-intensive settings:

• Managing innovation
• Managing collaboration
• Managing team decision making

The idea is that a manager needs to adopt and execute these three processes in order to create a high-performance work unit. The primary emphasis will be on these processes within established companies (vs. a startup or between companies).

This course is useful for students who want to work in high-tech companies, consulting, healthcare, investment banking, and other knowledge-intensive companies and institutions. You will soon be asked to manage teams and then larger groups in those settings, and this course will equip you with skills to do that. The course is also useful for PhD students who wish to understand these three processes and organization theory more broadly.

Pedagogical Approach

The course will rely on a mix of pedagogy, with an emphasis on cases. Class attendance and weekly preparation and participation is critical to make this class fun, interesting and useful.

Each session will typically have a case on a large company and one or two readings. We will spend the first part of each class discussing the case and then take a step back and discuss the main concepts. Because we will discuss a case in every class, you will need to study the case beforehand for each class and be well prepared to discuss it in class. This is an absolute requirement for taking the course.