Joseph E. Garcia

Management Skills in Action: Four Teaching Models

Business schools across the country have demonstrated an increasing interest in teaching management skills in undergraduate and graduate programs. This article describes four models for skills courses based on existing courses. It includes for each course (a) an overview, (b) a statement of philosophy and pedagogy, (c) unique features, and (d) facilitator and student responses. The four models are then discussed as a group, and issues related to skill learning are raised.

Script Management A Link between Group Support Systems and Organizational Learning

An important contribution of Group Support Systems (GSSs) may come from improvement of organizational memory and learning through dynamic script management. The evolution of script management is briefly outlined with suggested links to organizational memory and learning. Practical suggestions and research questions are proposed based on the relationships among scripts, meetings, and broader organizational processes.

Isn’t It Time We Did Something About the Lack of Teaching Preparation in Business Doctoral Programs?:

In this essay, we explore why there has traditionally been so little emphasis on teaching preparation in business doctoral programs. Program administrators and faculty typically espouse support for teaching development; yet the existing reward systems are powerfully aligned in favor of a focus on research competency. Indeed, through the lens of a performance diagnostic model, it is entirely predictable that doctoral programs have not offered more teaching development opportunities, as administrators often do not have the requisite motivation, ability, opportunity, or resources to develop comparable teaching competence. However, given that the average graduate will take a professorial position with greater than 50% of responsibilities devoted to teaching, most external observers would conclude that there is a curious dearth of teaching preparation in contemporary business doctoral programs. However understandable the dearth of teaching development, we argue that those reasons are no longer acceptable, and the present essay is predominately a call for change. Suggestions for enhancing the depth and nature of teaching development are offered, and we include some examples of progressive initiatives underway in the hopes of provoking a more intense conversation on the teaching preparation of the next generation of business professors.

The facilitator and the chauffeur in GSS: Explorations in the forging of a relationship

This study investigates two roles in Group Support Systems (GSS) meetings, those of the facilitator and the technical support person or “chauffeur.” GSS technology originated as a support for cooperative work in groups. The work of facilitators, who have traditionally supported group work both in terms of structure and process is changing. GSS involve a “mechanistic” approach, and, typically, in such GSS systems as MeetingWorks, a technical operator or chauffeur within the software environment will take over some of the facilitator functions. The facilitator can accommodate this in various ways. One approach is to develop a role relationship with the chauffeur, if possible, given the two seemingly distinct areas of expertise. This study attempts to address what form this relationship might take and how it might develop. We use an interpretivist framework and grounded theory methodology, together with focused interviews to investigate these questions from two selected case studies of a facilitator and chauffeur team who conducted GSS meetings with nine client groups. The study outcomes were the development of a descriptive model (EDASA) of the relationship development process between the team members and a description of alternative role relationships for facilitator and chauffeur.

Applying Group Support Systems in Social Work Education and Practice

SUMMARY This article describes an electronic tool or process called Meeting Works™, which supports and arguably improves human service staff meetings. Meeting Works™ has been shown to be effective with action planning, focus groups, project planning, quality initiatives, and a number of other activities associated with the human services.

Realtime: An Intergroup Problem-Solving Exercise

This article presents a practical exercise that demonstrates the complexity and richness of intra- and intergroup relations to students. In this exercise, students are divided into teams to solve a puzzle for which they lack full information. The teams are dependent on each other for information to complete their puzzles and are challenged with varying restrictions in interteam communications as they seek necessary information. Variations on the exercise and materials to run the exercise successfully are also presented.