What students think about, when they think about organisations
I wrapped up teaching of my first-year’ Management in Context’ module at Keele recently with a final review of student essays.
Student’s ideas about the main challenges facing businesses are pretty revealing and provide insight into the world of business that many of them think they’ll be heading into.
On the whole, I’ve been really impressed with the student’s appetite to explore what’s current in the Business press; lots of stories about the transition to online retailing, Brexit induced uncertainty and traditional favourite topics around leadership.
I asked my students to reflect on a specific organisation of their choice to highlight a challenge the business faced. The most popular firms this year were Amazon (11), follower by Uber (10), Tesco (9) HMV (9) and Jaguar Land Rover (7).
It was good to see that of those that looked at Amazon and Uber focused upon the logistics warehousing operation and the experience of Uber drivers respectively.
Tutorials this year included reading on both companies with great pieces from @sarahoconnor_ ‘when your boss is an algorithm’ from 2016 and @jodikantor & @DavidStreitfeld ’Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace’ from 2015.
One of my favourite essays, about local to Keele, ceramics manufacturer @SteeliteEMEA explored the links and challenges faced by domestic manufacturing in a hyper-competitive global market without ignoring the skilled folk who make who turn out little masterpieces like the Spyro range for the worldwide hospitality industry.
Essays that focused on SMEs, Local Government and the Public Sector more generally were pretty absent and given that many studnets have family and are likely themsevles to work in these sectors I found that pretty superising. Its made me think perhaps these sectors need to feature more havily in the course material and reading for next year.
