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Conversing in Cyberspace: Students and Alumni Talk Management
Does a new general manager who delegates decisions run the risk of appearing indecisive? Is an "open-door" policy a good way for a general manager to get information, or a terrible waste of time? What happens when a manager asks employees for suggestions on how the company needs to change, only to find that the boss isn't interested in their suggestions?
These are very real questions for anyone making the transition from functional to general manager. Last October, in Professor David A. Garvin's elective course General Management: Processes and Action, students had the opportunity to pose such questions to people with some real answers - HBS alumni who have made the transition themselves. Making innovative use of technology to involve HBS graduates in the classroom, Garvin conducted a pilot program on the World Wide Web in which students and alumni discussed the day-to-day work of a general manager.
The project came about after Garvin's search for teaching materials on the distinction between the job of a general manager and that of a senior functional manager yielded "next to nothing." Acting on a suggestion from the research staff at Baker Library, Garvin decided to go to alumni for information. "The whole point of this segment of the course was to say: 'Let's come down from the mountaintop and talk about how real managers get the work of the organization done,'" says Garvin, who decided that for this exercise the computer would be the best way to get students together with practitioners.
In a mass e-mailing to HBS alumni this past fall, Garvin asked for volunteers for a Web-based dialogue with his students. Forty-three alumni participated in a cyberspace discussion that took place from October 15 to October 25; thirteen of those participants also came to campus for the class on October 25. Garvin structured the dialogue by creating alumni-student groups, posing a series of guiding questions, and instructing participants in their roles. Support came from several quarters: Information Technology staffers at the School designed the Web page for the discussion and provided technical assistance to alumni participants; and HBS alumni club liaison T.C. Haldi managed the logistical challenge of coordinating the alumni-student exchanges and contributed many creative, substantive suggestions.
Tamara Simpkins, a second-year MBA student and one of the most active participants in the Web discussion, found the cyberspace experiment not only novel but useful. "You can ask a question in class and get the perspective of one professor," she observes, "but to be able to put a question out on the Web and get immediate responses from people of all different ages, in all kinds of industries, and with all kinds of different experiences was amazing."
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the dialogue, given the Internet's reputation for superficial communication, was what Simpkins, Garvin, and others describe as the depth and thoughtfulness of the exchanges. Richard D. Fiorentino (MBA '79), vice president and treasurer of the Massachusetts-based Marathon Technologies Corporation, was one of a number of enthusiastic alumni participants who were impressed with the pedagogical potential of the electronic medium. Fiorentino volunteered for the online discussion, because he liked the idea of "getting alumni and students together in an interactive forum." He hopes to see this kind of exercise at HBS enriched and expanded. "As the Internet technology goes further," he suggests, "there could be direct voice-to-voice or even videophone communication, so that we can get right into the classroom. That would be an extraordinary piece of teaching technology."
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