Critical reflection on the management course essay

I came in to this course(management studies) with a very simplistic perception of it, I thought it to be easy as I was from a science back ground having had this opinion all my life. This may have been very shallow of me or maybe to some extent it is true but I cannot change what I believed. Initially I started off with subjects that were not too difficult for me as I had done a few of them at some point in my high school but as time went on I discovered the importance of “ out of the box “ thinking which was something that the science areas did not really use.Initially I had not a very great opinion about the module as it did not seem to have a clear point but the day Professor Macdonald came in and said things like” managers have not always been taught , one correct method” and statements like “the best methods are discovered through experience, “ was the day that got my mind thinking totally differently.

“Qualifications show mastering of a science, not an art. These quotes, the first two ,extracted from lecture three and the latter,five initiated my understand that management studies is infact just giving us simple clues of how to do things but the real methods depend from situation to situation in the real world out there. The course trains our minds in to thinking on the right trail but there are in reality many different paths that can be chosen in order to reach our destination. “ Training does not stimulate ideas, education does”. Our professor said.

His lectures taught me that everything cannot be learnt from books and that your own opinion and judgement can actually win you lots of marks in the case of an examination and are also very vital in a real world situation. The course has been structured with many different modules, some initially I wondered about as I did not see them relevant but in the end everything somehow fits in to place like a jigsaw puzzle. They all give you some hints to guide you towards the way one should be thinking when training in this course.The trick I discovered was to use all the modules as integrated units and solve the case studies using aspects from all modules. This is exactly what I expect in the future when I become a manager, in a particular situation one cannot simply think “ well this, I learnt, in my first year in the MGT 123 course, so here is the correct answer. ” That is perhaps how I would have challenged the situation before starting this course but this is absolutely not how I, personally, will tackle the situation now.If this was a reaI organization, one could probably say that my “management method” has changed.

I have realised that the art is putting all that you have learnt together, alongside your own judgement, beliefs and opinions, in to the situation. I can prove furthermore how I learnt that our own opinons count from our MGT 131 weekly exercises. The first exercise was a simple one, asking us to write down a scam. I got one mark out of a possible three.

After reading this grade I was shocked as I wondered where I went wrong, I had read the question and submitted exactly what the question has asked for but obviously the tutor had wanted more. I admit it took me quite long to finally realise that the extra mark that I’d been missing was from NOT giving in abit of our own opinion. We were all thinking “ in the box” and had totally missed out on the point that the module was trying to put across, which was critical thinking.Plagiarism in week five has got to be the most popular and talked about lecture ever. We were being taught how to do something the University looks down upon. I reckon the point of that lecture was to face the reality ,that plagiarism is how people really move ahead in life.

One man uses another’s idea, expands on it and becomes a millionaire. It is really just being practical and was abit of a warning for us. Speaking about warnings the first lecture on scams over the internet was another one and once again, a very practical lecture.

These scams do occur these days and as managers we should be able to recognize the difference between an opportunity and a scam. I believe that any internet user should know this fact let alone managers. The course had a lecture on lying for the organization which was quite an eye opener. If anyone ever thought that lying was only a lawyer’s job, well they were deeply wrong. Managers have their fair share of hidden truths and this I really only discovered now. This lecture taught me that in most cases a manager has got to do, what he has got to do.

With this sentence I mean, lie for an organization despite knowing that they are in the wrong or are going through a tough phase and hiding it from the public. Lecture nine asked us if there is really room for failure being a manager? One may say that there is more to be learnt from failure or perhaps this was a line our mums used, to console us, when we did fail. There seems to be no room for failure, out there, according to me and generally any manager who has failed or made a wrong decision somewhere, would know better than to admit it.The conclusive lecture somehow was not my favourite as it managed to do what I was hoping the module would not end up doing which was to slightly de-motivate me. At one point I found myself thinking why am I doing such a pathetic course and what am I really to gain from doing it? I know quite a few people who thought the same. The sentence “managers are like rats, you find them in every corner” was one that made me wonder am I one of those common rats,with nothing different to the next one?Well at least I can start using another form of language if nothing else,to distinguish myself, as lecture four was quite a funny one stating that manager’s have their own form of dialect that only they seem to comprehend.

Call it being simply naive or just not having done enough research in to this career but I reckon this module is the best possible way to see what we are really getting ourselves in to. A simple prospectus has nothing but the straight up definition of a manager ‘s roles as to what the career is really about, probably googled If you ask me, but this module has shown me the utmost reality.