School of Business | Management & MIS Department

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Management & MIS

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Where the American Dream is "best practices" and "maximum value"

Our Goals

The management department at SCSU is dedicated to preparing students for successful careers in modern organizations. We integrate management theory and practice so our students have a solid foundation of practical leadership skills and abilities needed to meet the challenges of rapidly changing technological and global environments. We offer superior value in management education at competitive prices.

Specific objectives include:

To develop students' leadership skills, so they can learn how to effectively network and influence others, build productive teams, and understand how the social side of business helps shape organizational dynamics.

To develop students' interpersonal and communication skills, so they can appreciate diversity, work well in teams, and present themselves professionally, whether in oral, written or electronic formats.

To develop students' analytical skills - the quantitative and systems side of business - so they can adapt to industry trends and effectively diagnose, trouble-shoot and resolve complex managerial challenges as internal change agents in their organizations.

To develop students' technologic skills, so they can take full advantage of the computer world, including management information systems, business software and hardware applications, and electronic business opportunities.

To provide opportunities in the classroom where students can explore how these skills interact in real-world management cases and simulations to develop higher-level "systems thinking" and professional integrity, including a capstone strategy course experience.

To provide world-class teaching by highly qualified faculty.

To pursue state-of-the-art research in managerial science in a variety of formats (from empirical to case), and share those findings with our students to enrich the teaching and classroom experience.

To develop and continuously improve academic programs and business centers to better serve our major stakeholders - our state, our community, our university, our faculty, and our students.

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The General Management Major

The general management specialization allows students to maximize their flexibility rather than focusing on one functional specialization within business administration (accounting, marketing, finance, etc.). Management students obtain foundation knowledge and skills that are suitable for operating a small business, or for advancing into a wide variety of middle and upper level management positions in a broad range of organizations (private firms, public corporations, non-profits, government agencies, etc.). By highlighting successful organizational processes and practices, this major helps students understand a wide variety of managerial concerns, and the analytical and administrative techniques commonly used to address them. The focus of the major is more than merely learning management theory, it is applying that theory in the real world to change organizations for the better.

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The Management Of Information Systems (MIS) Major

The MIS specialization helps to prepare students for positions that support and satisfy the information technology and operations management needs of modern organizations. Students will learn how to design and develop information systems for use in managerial monitoring and decision making processes. Students gain the skill sets of business systems analysts who develop information system specifications, then work closely with computer programmers to successfully implement those plans through the computer systems available in the organization. The focus of this program is on processing transactions and sharing information to optimize organizational effectiveness within the context of common administrative systems, and their constraints.

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Undergraduate Coursework

As at most universities, SCSU students must take a set of university requirements to ensure they receive a well-rounded undergraduate education. These 15 classes cover a variety of foundation subjects, including Psychology, History, English, Math, Philosophy, Science, Communication, and Economics. The purpose of these university wide requirements is to develop a set of universal skills which can be applied in any context - academic, professional or otherwise. For example, understanding how to motivate others, developing insight and analytical skills, and being able to write clearly and correctly not only are invaluable throughout life, but distinguish you from peers who lack these skills.

Business administration is a broad topic that includes a variety of specializations, such as Human Resource Management, Marketing, Accounting, etc. All majors in the school of business have a common set of core classes which allow you to explore different areas of business administration, so you can find out which areas you enjoy and have an aptitude for. This core curriculum consists of 12 classes, including:

Accounting
Business Law
Economics
Finance
Strategy
Human Resources
Marketing
Organizational Behavior
International Business
Management of Information Systems (MIS)

For more information on International Business and Study Abroad opportunities, take a look at the website of the Global Center, run by Professor Ellen Frank.

You should focus on a particular specialization after you are familiar with the subject matter, find it consistently interesting, and have a real talent for it. If you do not love what you are doing in your career, you will consistently find yourself outperformed by those who do love it. Not caring about your work is a real disadvantage, and often prevents you from receiving the bonuses, the promotions, and the managerial fast track you may hope for. The challenge is to find something you love enough to spend a big chunk of your life doing, without regrets. Once you know where you are going, the management program gives you some flexibility in choosing elective courses to help you get there. Beyond required classes, electives for management majors include:

Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development
Labor-Management Relations
Legal Environment of Business
Real Estate Law
Women in Management
Diversity in the Workplace
Diagnosing Management Problems
Values and Conflicts in Managerial Decision Making
Creativity and Innovation
Developing Managerial Skills

MIS majors choose among a variety of university, computer science and information technology elective classes, including:

Computer Programming
Computer Graphics Software
Internet: Applications and Management
Network Technology
Purchasing, Inventory Management and E-Commerce
Production-Operations Management
Business and Executive Information Systems
Quality Control Management
Global Information Systems
Productivity Improvement
Management Information Systems Design

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Internships

Many business are using internship programs as recruitment tools. They invite potential recruits to work as interns, evaluate their work and their potential, see how they fit in, and offer permanent employment on that basis. The importance of jump starting one's career with an internship is hard to overestimate - some companies restrict the hiring of many entry level positions to former interns.

The management department not only encourages students to take advantage of internship opportunities, but allows them to receive class credit as well. Both the management major and the MIS minor give 3 hours of credit to students who register in the Internship course and submit a written report analyzing their experience. Independent studies courses offer yet another opportunity to apply management theory and research design in real-world business settings, and receive 3 hours of credit for their work.

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Planning Your Management Career

Management career opportunities depend upon education, experience and expertise. Typically successful managers are experts in their specialty, they have a business degree on the undergraduate or graduate level, and they have experience in their industry, or field of expertise. While it is possible to compensate for a lack of experience, formal business education, or certain areas of expertise, it is much more challenging. An undergraduate management degree offers students the basic skills they need for entry-level positions in a variety of sectors:

Most managerial opportunities will be found in the private sector, which includes everything from small, family-owned start-up shops to multi-national corporations. In general, successful careers in larger organizations require graduate education for personal knowledge and expertise to match the sophistication of these state-of-the-art managerial systems. Given differences between major industries in the private sector (agriculture, manufacturing, health care, high technology, retail, service, etc.), successful career paths vary, and are often industry specific. Consult a working professional in industries you might be interested in pursuing to understand what kinds of education, experience and expertise will be required for a promising future career.

Some managerial opportunities will be found in the public sector, which includes federal, state and local government offices and agencies, the military, and public education. In general, advancement in non-political government jobs is based on documented qualifications, such as degrees, certifications, training programs, or years of experience. Government administration lacks the income potential of the private sector, but provides a level of long-term career stability and benefits packages, which are rare in for-profit businesses.

Other managerial opportunities will also be found in the not-for-profit sector, which includes charities, foundations, religious groups, health service providers, public interest groups, and service organizations. While non-profit jobs are harder to find and usually do not offer the same level of compensation as for-profit or government organizations, advancement often hinges on expertise and attitude, over educational qualifications and experience.

You can explore your career interests by interviewing family and friends who are familiar with those kinds of management positions. They can help you understand how to customize your selection of management electives, and can advise you on what kind of internship would be most advantageous. They can also point out if a successful career in your area of interest requires graduate studies. For example, those intending to become professional managers in large organizations usually choose to go on for an MBA. In many large organizations, an MBA is increasingly becoming an expected prerequisite - you are at a distinct disadvantage in some career tracks without an MBA on your resume. Interviewing working professionals in your field of interest helps you set realistic expectations - forewarned is forearmed.

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Management Career Opportunities

Regardless of whether jobs are in the public, private, or not-for-profit sectors, the management major prepares students for the following careers:

Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development
Entry-level Management and Supervisory Positions
Human Resource Management (personnel, compensation, equal opportunity)
International Business Opportunities
Organizational Development External or Internal Change Agents
Management of Innovation
Quality Control and Improvement
Labor and Industrial Relations
Management Training and Education

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MIS Career Opportunities

Regardless of whether jobs are in the public, private, or not-for-profit sectors, the MIS major prepares students for the following careers:

Information Technology
Network / LAN Administrator
Database Administrator
Web Administrator
Electronic Business Resource Planning
MIS Training and Education
Purchasing
Distribution and Logistics
Production (supply chain management)
Operations Research

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Online Management Career Resources

A variety of online providers offer detailed listing of management/MIS opportunities in a variety of industries. Free search engines allow you to select a position of interest and see what is available at desired locations, both nationally and internationally. While this section refers you to two of the biggest websites offering career resources, there are many others, with some specializing in particular functional specializations (human resource management, MIS, management consulting, etc.).

Both Monster.com and Hotjobs.com link career searches to managerial level, giving you the option of targeting entry, middle management or executive level positions. Hotjobs.com lists internship opportunities as well. A wide variety of industries and positions are listed.

Salary information on most private and many public sector jobs is available at websites such as Salaryexpert.com. Once again, search engines allow you to explore salaries by the position you are interested in, and the location where you intend to work. Not-for-profit salary information is available through the annual survey of an industry publication, The Not-For-Profit Times (nptimes.com/Feb00).

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Faculty Research Interests

Dr. Mel Cottrill

My research interests focus on business law, and the implications of law on management - standards of social responsibility and business ethics. Business law provides the playing field on which competitive strategies are pursued, and defines what competitive moves are off limits. Best yet, the playing field is constantly changing, and the rules are continually shifting, as politicians and judges debate over what standards of social responsibility should be mandatory, and which should not. As social expectations of management increase, and business environments become increasingly dynamic, understanding the constraints business law imposes on corporate strategy becomes critical for any organization to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage. To capture the complexities of these topics, I turn to case study and business simulation research to give my students a taste of the real world.

Dr. Ellen Frank

Dr. Frank began her career as an applied behavioral researcher, collecting organizational data in order to identify potential managerial trouble spots, given her interests and teaching responsibilities in organizational behavior and human resources management. Her research spanned both the private and public sectors, and even applied to Southern -- she received a CSU Research Grant to conduct a study on the level of organizational conflict at Southern, and a second grant to write a report on faculty job satisfaction across the university.

As Director of the Global Center, her organizational behavior and HRM research activities have taken on a comparative management/cross cultural flavor. She is now involved with extending some of her older research interests, such as perceptions and acceptance of women managers, to international samples. Research in Eastern Europe and Asia has led to a series of award winning articles on international issues, such as Chinese acceptance of females in managerial positions, and the current entrepreneurial environments of China and Poland.

Dr. Frank is currently designing a longitudinal study in China for both of the above research focuses. In the Fall of 2002, she plans to return to China to collect further data. She hopes to coordinate data collection over the next 10 years with the assistance of some Chinese professors. If this collaboration is successful, it should represent an important measure of how Chinese society is evolving under a more Western business system.

Dr. Bob Mullen

My research interests focus on developing expert systems, EIS - executive information systems, and on increasing the effectiveness of Chief Information Officers (CIOs). In the Internet age, businesses are literally drowning in data - the amount of information available from a few keystrokes on virtually any computer is staggering. Unfortunately, sifting through that information, identifying critical areas where more data is needed, and presenting a cogent analysis in a timely manner through a variety of accessible electronic media, is a monumental task which many firms have considerable difficulty handling well. Organizations which meet this challenge find that effective management information systems are - in and of themselves - a source of sustainable competitive advantage. The ascendance of Wal-Mart, eventually driving Kmart into bankruptcy, can be directly attributed to Wal-Mart's leading edge information systems. Understanding how CIOs can leverage their electronic resources to give decision makers the information they need to know when they need to know it drives my research, as well as my teaching.

Dr. Madan Nangia

Dr. Nangia has followed in the footsteps of his Doctoral program mentor, Peter Drucker, in studying the philosophy and history of management. Beyond comprehensive reviews and analyses of the contributions of Drucker to the fields of management and strategy, Dr. Nangia explores the impact of management and technology transfer on quality of life and social responsibility issues.

Dr. Omid Nodoushani

Dr. Nodoushani has developed his research interests during the course of his doctoral program at the Wharton School by closely associating with Dr. Russell Ackoff, the pioneer of strategic management. Beyond managerial strategy and corporate planning, Dr. Nodoushani has expanded his research interests to include corporate governance, management education, entrepreneurship, professional ethics, management history, post-modern management theory, and post-positivist research methodology.

Dr. Jeanette Oppedisano

Dr. Jeannette Oppedisano's research interests are in the areas of behavioral outcomes and women's entrepreneurship. Her doctoral research focused on the socio-technical consequences of technological innovation, particularly on the implementation and utilization of information systems for organizational management of human resources. As a result of her active participation in Women's Studies programs where she was developing courses in women's economic contributions through enterprise, she began to unearth women's historical entrepreneurial achievements and to develop multiple avenues for dissemination of this knowledge about their contributions.

Women entrepreneurs are those who have started an entity, taken substantial risks (human, physical, financial) in doing so, and have had an economic impact locally, regionally, nationally, and/or internationally. Considering the social-political-ethical environment within which these women functioned is critical to assessing their accomplishments. The integrated research methodologies and disciplines involved in doing so include economics (historical review and quantitative data analysis), American studies (literature and archival review and analysis), history (oral history interviews of primary sources and literature review of secondary sources), sociology and anthropology (assessment of both the quantitative data and the cultural mores of the relevant time periods within which the particular women lived), business (entrepreneurship, strategy and policy design and implementation in both the for-profit and not-for-profit fields of endeavor), and women's studies (comparative analyses of the American women entrepreneurs and their achievements). In addition, Dr. Oppedisano's research program involves a study of diverse women in terms of age, ethnicity, color, economic status, social status, and disability. Included are entrepreneurial women in religion, education, the arts, finance, manufacturing, construction, agriculture, communications, and trade.

The direct outcomes of this research to date are a book with the academic publisher, Greenwood Press, titled an Historical Encyclopedia of American Women Entrepreneurs 1776 to the Present; a case study with teaching note, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia: Founder Linkages to Brand, co-authored with Dr. Kenneth Laird; and a research paper, True Grit: Entrepreneurial Women Beating the Odds of Life Expectancy, co-authored with Dr. Sandra Lueder. She is currently writing a chapter to be included in the International Handbook of Women and Small Business Entrepreneurship being co-edited by Drs. Sandra Fielden and Marilyn Davidson. Dr. Oppedisano's has presented her research at regional, national, and international professional conferences and been published in the proceedings of these meetings.

Dr. Rob Page

My research interests focus on organizational innovation, transformation, and change, because I want to focus on the positive potential of work. Just as a dysfunctional organization can be a very toxic experience, experiencing a functional one accomplishing a worthy goal can be almost transcendent. My empirical research focuses on the management of innovation. This allows me a great deal of flexibility concerning the scope of my research, and I have published on everything from "micro" topics such as individual career paths to "macro" topics such as organizational strategy, all in the context of high technology organizations. Within that range, I am most interested in inter-group dynamics, because this is where the action is. When major functional specializations (marketing, manufacturing, engineering, etc.) collide you often find a soap opera in the making: charismatic leaders, dangerous rogues, bold strategies, vast resources, all of which are energized by raw power - truth is often more interesting than fiction. This reality led to another research focus on social responsibility and ethics - how managers can hold on to their integrity when the stakes are so large, and everything is moving so fast. To translate these insights into teaching tools, I develop case research so students can see these dynamics unfolding through the documented experiences of real managers.

Dr. Durga Prasad

As a student of business law, Dr. Prasad noted that while the courts and legislatures continue to embrace the principles of social justice and social responsibility, legislative and judicial "solutions" often create as many problems as they were supposed to remedy. Dr. Prasad's research indicates that effective application of ethical principles such as social justice rests on a multi-stakeholder approach. This requires business leadership to both respect and balance the legitimate needs of competing stakeholder groups (owners, customers, employees, and community members). Dr. Prasad is particularly interested in applying this approach to international business, where disparities between stakeholder groups are most pronounced. He is convinced that once research in this area empirically establishes the mutual beneficial nature of social responsibility for all stakeholder groups, business leaders will establish and enforce international standards because it is in their best interest to do so. The current approach, which relies on political and judicial processes, is not a viable alternative, and has become a major source of the instabilities which undermine international business efforts today.

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