The Course:
Business 333: Human Resource Management

With its lessons on employment law, hiring practices and job appraisal systems BUS333: Human Resources Management is an incredibly practical course for students preparing for the business world.

But with its group projects, exploration of current issues and opportunities for real-world role play, BUS333 is also an incredibly popular course among MC’s undergraduates.

“Even if students don’t plan to go into human resources management, it is a practical course for anyone who is going to be managing people,” said Dr. Jenifer Greene, assistant professor of management, who teaches the class. “It’s vital that these people know a great deal about employee selection, performance appraisals and how to raise the standard of performance in workers.”

Good human resources management is important because employees are key in the success or failure of a company.

“HR management has really come into its own in the last 20 years. The participative management move of the 1980s – that push to empower employees – has resulted in employers recognizing that human capital is a part of the strategic plan for companies.”

Beginning the course with a session entitled “The Wonderful World of HR,” Greene and students progress through legal and environmental contexts of HR, applicant recruitment and selection, interview techniques, employee training and development, performance appraisals and workplace laws. Taking the “Wonderful World of HR” literally, they also study human resources management from a global perspective and discuss how cultures greatly influence things like work ethic, work conditions and compensation.

Assignments include developing a selection and performance appraisal system for a job and company, analyzing case studies and reflecting on HR “best practices.” Students in BUS333 are also required to write two reaction papers. One such assignment has students reading a portion of former General Electric CEO Jack Welch’s autobiography, Jack: Straight from the Gut. Greene asks students to debate Welch’s controversial “Vitality Curve,” which ranks employees based on performance and then advocates that the bottom 10 percent of achievers – “nonproducers” – be terminated. (Students discuss a variety of performance appraisal systems and various dimensions of performance.)

Because it is an upper-level offering and because many of the students enrolled are upperclassmen, the professor said BUS333 is a good course to ask students to draw on what they’ve learned in other classes in the major and in the general education curriculum.

Greene asks students to reflect on the lessons of BUS305: Organizational Behavior while screening the film “Remember the Titans.” (Starring Denzel Washington as Coach Herman Boone, the film tells the true story of an African-American during his first year as the head coach of a newly (racially) integrated football team in 1971.)

“Human resources works with organizational behavior efforts,” Greene said. “The movie illustrates this realization by addressing such issues as teamwork and ‘person-job fit’ through the interactions of players and assignment of positions. Also, the main issue of diversity and racial discrimination allows for the discussion of anti-discriminatory legislation and how vital diversity efforts are for organizations in general.”

Greene said this course – like all courses in the business and organization management paradigm – supports the College’s mission in that students are asked to consider how individuals and businesses can make a difference in the world. One of the course goals is to “evaluate the relationship of HR practices to the internal and external communities and how concerned individuals and organizations can contribute to solving societal problems.”

“Corporations have social responsibilities,” the professor explained, pointing out that jobs and benefits can greatly improve people’s lives and that hiring practices and working conditions should be as fair as possible.

“What is the impact of downsizing? What if I’m the HR director of the only factory in town and it closes? Human resources certainly doesn’t make the decision about whether or not to close, but it should be concerned with what happens to the employees and families there.”