12:00 pm Late Fall Management

Why blog here? Because your grade depends on it! Seriously, though, there are good reasons for us to be writing a blog rather than keeping all our interaction within the classroom. For one thing, without the internet we wouldn’t have easy access to projects like Kiva. But just as technology lets us keep up with the work of these entrepreneurs from across the world, it also lets us interact with one another. Blogging about this project and its connection to the material we read about in our textbooks and discuss in class gives blogging students a chance to reinterpret what we’ve studied and see how it applies to real-world applications. It also connects students to me as their teacher/co-blogger and to each other in a place to share thoughts and ideas outside the space and time we share in the classroom. Having a public forum encourages all of us to write clearly and thoughtfully, while having the feedback we get from comments to our posts also lets us further clarify our points or even change our minds! And if, like me, you find this project exciting, you have this blog as a website you can share with friends or family members who might be interested in Kiva or the thoughts you’ve shared here.

Each group will be given $50 from Cincinnati State’s chapter of SIFE – Students in Free Enterprise to become microfinance lenders through Kiva. The class will get updates from the Kiva program as the entrepreneurs in the developing world use the money they’ve been lent. When the loans are repaid, the money will be returned to SIFE to be used in future Management classes.

Each group will write an initial blog post explaining why they made the choice of loan recipients they did, what impressed or intrigued or inspired them. Then each group member will be responsible for writing one blog post over the course of the term explaining how the management topics discussed in the current chapter can be applied to the case of their loan recipient. Each student will be expected to leave blog comments on posts at least five times during the term, replying either to the post or to other comments on it. Interaction beyond the minimum is welcome and encouraged!

Why is a management class in Cincinnati, Ohio focusing on management issues in developing nations? There are a lot of reasons! Microlending is important enough that Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi banker and economist who implemented solidarity lending to the poor through his Grameen Bank, received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

Our involvement lets us put our money where our mouths are and practice active management skills while also helping people out of poverty. Each group will take on the role of manager in choosing to lend $50 to one entrepreneur via Kiva. Then group members will use this blog to analyze from their borrower’s profile how he or she seems to be implementing management skills discussed in the text.

In discussing the principles of management, we’re talking about issues that are relevant to Fortune 500 CEOs as well as the head of a small family business or even the decision-maker(s) in a family. Sometimes it can be hard to imagine how to make decisions about allocating millions of dollars or having to cut hundreds from a workforce, but a blog also isn’t the best place to air your family’s dirty laundry or talk about real-life problems you might have faced at work. Instead, our microlending project lets us get the best of both worlds, looking at decisions that involve relatively small amounts of money but have a big impact, in many cases the difference between poverty and self-sufficiency. The project also lets us learn about people whose lives are very different from ours and perhaps learn more about ourselves in the process.

Welcome to the blog for our Management I class. I’m looking forward to spending the term blogging together. Once you’ve signed up for a wordpress account as described in the handout, comment on this post to let me and your classmates know you’re here!