Addendum to Course Syllabus

ASSURANCE OF LEARNING AND PROGRAM OUTCOMES ASSESSMENT

Students enrolled in MANA 4322 - - Strategic Management

Instructors Nordtvedt, Long, and Ozbek

Fall 2014

Background and Learning Goals

The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) require in their accreditation standards that academic units assess student learning, or measure the acquisition of knowledge and skills in a particular field of study. Assurance of learning and program assessment are done in the context of a set of learning goals. The following content and process learning goals form the domain for program assessment of all College of Business degree programs:

  1. Display understanding of multiple business functions (finance, marketing, etc.)

and inter or cross-functional problems and issues.

  1. Show evidence of problem solving and decisional ability in dealing with

strategic and other business problems and situations.

  1. Exhibit awareness of global business and economic systems.
  1. Demonstrate knowledge of basic business research methods and data

analysis techniques.

5. Understand importance of leadership, teamwork, and interpersonal skills in

building/managing a successful organization.

6. Demonstrate knowledge of information technology and its impact on

effectivemanagement of the enterprise.

7. Understand the values and practices associated with the ethical and legal

responsibilities of managing organizations.

8. Demonstrate competency in oral and written communication through

presentation of clear and concise information.

No one program contains all eight goals and multiple methods can be used to assess any particular goal; assessment methods include questionnaires and surveys, case studies and projects, locally-developed and standardized tests, exams for certification and licensure, transcript and grade analyses, and exit interviews and focus groups.

One method for program assessment in the College of Business involves using the 'major field test in business' developed by the Educational Testing Service (ETS). More than 400 schools of business in the past two years have used this standardized test which is designed to "assess mastery of concepts, principles, and knowledge of business and evaluate students' abilities to analyze and solve problems, understand relationships and interpret material such as graphs, diagrams, and charts."

Test Content and Sample Questions

The major field test in business contains 120 objective (multiple-choice) questions with 60 items in each of two exam parts. Questions vary in difficulty over areas known as the 'common body of knowledge' as specified by AACSB. This common core includes accounting, economics, management, quantitative business analysis, information systems, finance, marketing, legal and social environment, and international aspects/issues of the business enterprise.

From ETS major field test information, the business test is intended to:

  1. Measure students' academic achievement in the multidisciplinary subject

matter representative of undergraduate business education.

2. Provide information to students regarding their level of achievement.

3. Provide information to faculties regarding the achievement of their students;

information that can be used by the institution to assess their performance

relative to their specific mission and objectives.

4. Provide information to facilitate development of appropriate goals and

educational programs, and to enhance the accountability of undergraduate

business education.

Major areas covered and test proportions are as follows:

I. Accounting (about 15 percent of the questions)

A. Financial accounting

1. Conceptual foundation

2. Income Statement and Statement of Retained Earnings

3. Balance sheet

4. Statement of cash flows

B. Managerial Accounting

1. Cost concepts

2. Product costing systems

3. Activities-based costing

4. Cost, volume, and profit analysis

5. Budgeting (except capital budgeting covered under Finance)

6. Standard costing

7. Non-routine decision-making

C. International Accounting

II. Economics (about 13 percent of the questions)

  1. Basic economic concepts
  1. Scarcity and opportunity cost
  2. Production possibilities frontier
  3. Comparative advantage and specialization
  4. Economic systems

B. Microeconomics

1. Supply and demand

2. Models of consumer choice

3. Production and costs

4. Product market structures

5. Resource markets

6. Market failure

7. Role of government

C. Macroeconomics

1. Measurement of economic performance

2. Aggregate demand and aggregate supply

3. Money and banking system

4. Monetary and fiscal policies

D. International economics

1. Internal trade and policy

2. Balance of payments

3. Exchange rates

III. Management (about 15percent of the questions)

A. Management Principles

1. History and theory

2. Functions (organizational structure, planning, and controlling)

3. Group/team dynamics

B. Organizational behavior

1. Leadership and motivation

2. Managing diversity

3. Human resource management

C. Strategy and policy

1. Strategic analysis

2. Policy determination

D. Operations management

1. Operations design

2. Operations execution

3. Top quality management

E. International management/cross-cultural management

F. Entrepreneurship

IV. Quantitative Business Analysis and Information Systems (about 11

percent of the questions)

A. Probability and statistics

1. Measure of set operations

2. Conditional/joint probabilities

3. Counting rules

4. Measures of central tendency and dispersion

5. Distributions (including normal and binomial)

6. Sampling and estimation

7. Hypotheses testing

8. Correlation and regression

9. Time-series forecasting

10. Statistical concepts in quality control

B. Quantitative operations management techniques

1. Linear programming

2. Project scheduling (including PERT and CPM)

3. Inventory modeling

4. Statistical process control

5. Special topics (including queuing theory, simulation and decision

analysis)

V. Information systems(about 10 percent of the questions)

A. Information system in business and society

1. Information management

2. Security

3. Privacy and ethical issues

  1. Information technology concepts
  1. Hardware technology
  2. Software technology
  3. Database management systems
  4. Network and internet technology
  1. Business information systems
  1. Automation and support systems
  2. Transaction processing systems
  3. Management information systems
  4. Decision support and expert systems
  5. Enterprise systems
  1. Systems development
  1. Systems investigation and analysis
  2. Systems planning, development and implementation

VI. Finance ( about 13 percent of the questions)

A. Coporate finance

1. Time value of money

2. Capital budgeting

3. Working capital management

4. Financial statement analysis

5. Cost of capital

6. Capital structure

B. Investments

1. Risks and returns

2. Valuation of securities

3. Financial markets and environment

C. International finance

VII. Marketing (about 13 percent of the questions)

A. Marketing processes

1. Strategic marketing

2. Scanning marketing environment

3. Marketing research and information systems

4. Consumer and organizational buyer behavior

B. Serving selected markets

1. Marketing mix (product, price, place, and promotion

2. Segmenting consumer and industrial markets

3. Marketing services

4. Marketing for non-profit organization

5. Marketing of social causes

C. International marketing

VIII. Legal and Social Environment ( about 10 percent of the questions)

A. Legal environment

1. Courts and legal systems

2. Constitution and business

3. Administrative law

4. Tort law

5. Crimes

B. Regulatory environment

1. Employment and labor law

2. Antitrust law

3. Consumer protection

4. Environmental and international law

5. Security regulation

C. Business Relationships

1. Contract and sales law (including UCC)

2. Business organizations

3. Law of agency

4. Intellectual property

D. Ethics and Social Responsibility

1. Ethics

2. Social responsibility

XI. International Issues (overlapping and drawn from other content areas

above).

The following questions indicate the range of items in terms of difficulty, content area, and data provided:

1. In marketing research, a firm might consider using secondary data over primary data because

(A) secondary data are usually cheaper

(B) secondary data are usually more accurate

(C) primary data are usually nonspecific

(D) primary data are likely to be outdated

2. In organizational decision-making, managers are able to exercise the

greatest degree of discretion in the

(A) promulgation of internal policies

(B) settlement of legal disputes

(C) restructuring of outstanding loans

(D) compliance with federal regulations

Questions 3 and 4 are based on the following information.

Dreamland Pillow Company sells the "Old Softy" model for $20 each. One pillow requires two pounds of raw material and one hour of direct labor for manufacture. Raw material costs $3 per pound and direct production labor is paid $4 per hour. Fixed supervisory costs are $2,000 per month and Dreamland rents its factory on a five-year lease for $4,000 per month. All costs are considered costs of production.

3. How many pillows must Dreamland produce and sell each month to

earn amonthly gross profit of $1,000?

(A) 300

(B) 350

(C) 600

(D) 700

4. Another firm has offered to produce "Old Softy" pillows and sell them

to Dreamland for $12 each. Dreamland cannot avoid the factory lease

payments, but can avoid all labor costs if it does not produce these

pillows. Under these conditions how many "Old Softy" pillows must

Dreamland sell to earn monthly gross profits of $1,000?

(A) 417

(B) 500

(C) 625

(D) 875

5. All of the following are true of the Federal Reserve system in the United States EXCEPT:

(A) It is divided into twelve Federal Reserve districts.

(B) It holds deposits (or reserves) of member banks.

(C) It provides facilities for check clearance.

(D) It includes all commercial banks as members.

6. In the process of interpersonal communication, the sender's translation

ofideas to words is known as

(A) encoding

(B) decoding

(C) feedback

(D) empathy

7. The long-run trend in international trade as formalized in the North

American Free Trade agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement

onTariffs and Trade (GATT) agreements is the

(A) reduction of trade barriers of all types

(B) movement of trade barriers from tariffs to quotas

(C) development of trade barriers for countries and firms outside

the agreements

(D) reduction of trade between trading blocs and improvement of

tradewithin trading blocs

8. In an economy the unemployment rate is 10 percent and the inflation

rate is 1 percent. An appropriate fiscal policy in this phase of the

business cycle would be to

(A)increase government spending

(B)increase income taxes

(C)decrease transfer payments

(D)decrease the money supply

9. Family branding refers to a group of

(A)similar brands of products from different makers

(B)different brands of products from different makers within the same industry

(C)different products marketed under a single brand name

(D)similar products sold by small, family-owned firms

10. An information system that enables all business departments in the

same firm to share relevant information and data is called

(A)an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system

(B)a material requirements planning (MRP) system

(C)a decision support system (DSS)

(D)a point-of-sale (POS) system

Test Administration and Results

The test will be administered online to all students enrolled in MANA 4322. More information regarding when the exam will be scheduled and the process of its administration will be provided later on in the semester.