MGMT90141 Business Analysis & Decision Making SUBJECT GUIDE Semester 2, 2020 Assessments in this subject have been amended from the 2020 Handbook (in accordance with the University's transition to full online delivery), as a result of changes made due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Prepared by Dr. Lusheng Shao
[email protected] Department of Management and Marketing Faculty of Business and Economics 2 Subject Outline Introduction Welcome to MGMT90141 Business Analysis and Decision Making. This subject will focus on developing students’ understanding of a wide variety of strategic and operational problems and decisions being faced by managers and decision makers in the fields of financial management, human resource management, marketing management, operations management, and international business management. Students will be shown how to use a range of quantitative approaches to analyzing business problems and, based on these analyses, make effective decisions. The subject will take descriptive analytic, predictive analytic, and prescriptive analytic approaches. Students will be expected to be able to calculate and manipulate data as well as interpret the results to derive and evaluate alternative solutions to typical business problems. The teaching team in this subject looks forward to working with you to ensure that your experience in this subject is an interesting, challenging, and rewarding one. Subject Overview and Aims The overall aim of this subject is to demonstrate how a series of business problems and decisions are analyzed and resolved through the application of quantitative approaches. Intended Learning Outcomes Learning Outcomes and Generic Skills To view the subject objectives and the generic skills you will develop through the successful completion of this subject, please see the University Handbook: https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/2020/subjects/mgmt90141 Awareness Issues At a broader level, studying this subject will increase your awareness of the role of and limits to quantitative approaches, under conditions of varying levels of uncertainty, in the decision making process. Eligibility and Requirements To view the eligibility and requirements, including prerequisites, corequisites, recommended background knowledge and core participation requirements for this subject, please see the University Handbook: https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/2020/subjects/mgmt90141/eligibility-and-requirements 3 Academic Staff Contact Details Please see the subject LMS site for the full contact details of the teaching staff in this subject. Subject Coordinator Contact Details Name: Dr Lusheng Shao Email:
[email protected] Phone: 83444558 (or 44558 if dialling from internal phones) Consultation Hours: Please refer to the LMS for consultation hours. Subject Lecturer Contact Details Name: Dr Buddhika Mannaperuma Mudiyanselage Email:
[email protected] Consultation Hours: Please refer to the LMS for consultation hours. Name: Mr Huashan Li Email:
[email protected] Consultation Hours: Please refer to the LMS for consultation hours. Email Protocol Please note that we are only able to respond to student emails coming from a University email address. Please do not use personal email addresses such as Gmail or even business email addresses. Emails from non-University email addresses may be filtered by the University’s spam filter, which means that we may not receive your email. All correspondence relating to this subject will only be sent to your University email address. Note that you must first activate your University email address before you can send or receive emails at that address. You can activate your email account at this link: http://accounts.unimelb.edu.au/. While academic staff endeavor to address queries received via email, it is more appropriate to resolve substantive questions during lectures and tutorials and during normal consultation hours. With this in mind, we encourage students to attend all lectures and tutorials and to familiarise themselves with the consultation hours offered by the lecturers and tutors in this subject. Lectures Each three-hour lecture is comprised of two components: lecture recordings, and an interactive tutorial. Students are required to watch lecture recordings prior to the interactive tutorial throughout the semester. You must only attend the registered stream. 4 Tutorial Times To be confirmed. Lecture Participation Requirements Students are required to watch all the lecture recordings during the semester. Prior to watching the lecture recordings, students are expected to read the equivalent chapters of the recommended textbooks and the lecture slides, and attempt the questions in the lecture slides to be able to satisfactorily participate and contribute to the discussions during the interactive tutorials. Lecture Schedule This section provides a timetable of lectures for the entire semester. Note that the non- teaching period is from Monday 5 October to Sunday 11 October 2020. Week Date Commencing Topic Reading 1 3 August Introduction to Business Decision Analysis and Linear Programming (LP) Anderson et al., 2019: Chapters 1 to 3 2 10 August LP Applications Anderson et al., 2019: Chapter 4 3 17 August LP Applications and Extensions Anderson et al., 2019: Chapter 6 4 24 August Integer Programming (IP) Applications Anderson et al., 2019: Chapter 7 5 31 August Decision Analysis with Perfect Information (Assignment 1 due) Anderson et al., 2019: Chapter 13 6 7 September Decision Analysis with Sample Information Anderson et al., 2019: Chapter 13 7 14 September Descriptive Statistics and Probability Basics Anderson et al., 2020: Chapters 3 and 4 8 21 September Probability Distributions Anderson et al., 2020: Chapters 5 and 6 9 28 September Linear Regression Anderson et al., 2020: Chapter 14 10 12 October Multiple Regression Anderson et al., 2020: Chapter 15 5 11 19 October Revision and Mock Examination (Assignment 2 due) 12 26 October Class presentations Lecture Slides / Materials Lecture slides will be placed on the LMS prior to each lecture. The lecture slides are located under the heading “Modules” and are organised week by week. Audio and video recordings of lectures delivered in this subject will be made available via LMS under the heading “Modules”. Private Tutoring Services Faculty has become increasingly concerned about the existence of a number of private tutoring services operating in Melbourne that heavily target University of Melbourne students enrolled in FBE subjects. Students are urged to show caution and exercise their judgement if they are considering using any of these services, and to please take note of the following: Any claim by any of these businesses that they have a “special” or “collaborative” or “partnership” style relationship with the University or Faculty is false and misleading. Any claim by a private tutoring service that they are in possession of, or can supply you with, forthcoming University exam or assignment questions or “insider” or “exclusive” information is also false and misleading. The University has no relationship whatsoever with any of these services and takes these claims very seriously as they threaten to damage the University’s reputation and undermine its independence. It is also not appropriate for students to provide course materials (including University curricula, reading materials, exam and assignment questions and answers) to operators of these businesses for the purposes of allowing them to conduct commercial tutoring activities. Doing so may amount to misconduct and will be taken seriously. Those materials contain intellectual property owned or controlled by the University. We encourage you to bring to the attention of Faculty staff any behaviour or activity that is not aligned with University expectations or policy as outlined above. Assessment Assessment Overview Assessments in this subject have been amended from the 2020 Handbook (in accordance with the University's transition to full online delivery), as a result of changes made due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 6 Your assessment for this subject comprises the following: Assessment Task Individual or Group Due Weighting Assignment 1 Group 5pm, 4 September 2020 15% Assignment 2 Group 5pm, 23 October 2020 30% Class presentation of assignment 2 Group Week c/o 26 October 2020 5% 3 hour online exam Hurdle requirement: To pass this subject students must pass the end of semester examination Individual During the exam period 50% Assignment 1 Specifications The assignment is designed to allow you to demonstrate that you can effectively collect, review, and analyze the relevant academic literatures on a particular topic, which is same as the topic for your assignment 2. Each group has to select a company (manufacturing-based OR service-based) with which you are familiar, select an optimization problem being faced by the company (e.g., media selection at Telstra, employee scheduling in HSBC, make-or- buy at Toyota, resource allocation at the University of Melbourne, distribution network design at Pickfords, etc.), and then collect and review 10 international journal articles, from the past ten years, applying mathematical modelling for the problem to be studied. You should analyze the strengths of these applications and their “value-add” to the decision making process, and also identify the knowledge gaps and limitations, if any, and suggest for improvements. 1. Group Formation: • Students must form their own group of four to five students in each group to work on and complete the assignment. • Students must form groups within the registered stream. No group can be formed across streams. 2. Marking Criteria: Criteria Possible Mark Identification and description of the problem to be analyzed 2 Collection and discussion of relevant academic literatures 3 Analysis of the strengths of these applications and their “value-add” 4 7 to the decision making process Identification of the knowledge gaps and limitations, if any, and suggestion for improvements 4 Structure and presentation. Use of appropriate language, spelling, grammar, and punctuation 2 Total 15 3. Expected Contents of Group Report: • Introduction – company background, description of the business optimization problem, justification of selection, identification of the company’s requirements or evaluation criteria, etc. • Methodology – description of the method used to collect the journal articles, such as databases, searching and filtering criteria, etc. • Strengths – analysis of the strengths of the articles with respect to the evaluation criteria. • Weaknesses – analysis of the weaknesses of the articles with respect to the evaluation criteria. • Discussions and Conclusions, including suggestions for improvement. • References • Appendices – including the minutes/notes of meetings. 4. Word Limits: • The total length of the group report is a maximum of 2,000 words (excluding figures, tables, references, and appendices). 5. Presentation: • It is important to give attention to spelling, grammar, and punctuation in order to avoid ambiguity and confusion. The assignment must be word processed in 12-point type and double-spaced. Please leave a margin of 3cm on both the left and right hand side for marker’s comments. • Students can include relevant graphs, tables, and other exhibits as appendices. They must be clearly labelled, and will not be included in the word count. However, your reasons for including these exhibits must be made clear in the main body of the assignment. 8 Assignment 2 Specifications The assignment is designed to allow you to demonstrate that you can effectively analyze the business optimization problems, apply the mathematical modelling approaches such as LP and IP to formulate the problems, use the Excel Solver to obtain the optimal solutions, generate the sensitivity analysis report, and suggest courses of action to the focal company. Each group has to base on the same company and optimization problem selected for Assignment 1, and then apply the LP or IP to formulate the optimization problem with original or hypothetical data. 1. Group Formation: • Students must work with the same group for assignments 1 and 2 throughout the semester. 2. Marking Criteria: Criteria Possible Mark Identification and description of the problem to be analyzed 3 Summary of literature review 2 Description and application of the mathematical modelling approach to analyze and solve the problem 16 Suggestions for courses of action to the company, and critical evaluation of the mathematical modelling approach 7 Structure and presentation. Use of appropriate language, spelling, grammar, and punctuation 2 Oral presentation 5 Total 35 3. Expected Contents of Group Report: • Introduction – company background, description of the business optimization problem, justification of selection, etc. • Literature review – summary of the findings from the assignment 1. • Methodology – description and illustration of the mathematical modelling approach for the problem. • Implementation – formulation of the problem by using the mathematical modelling approach, application of the Excel Solver to optimize the mathematical model, and execution of the sensitivity analysis. 9 • Discussions and Conclusions – suggestions for courses of action to the selected company as well as the evaluation of the mathematical modelling approach. • References • Appendices – including the minutes/notes of meetings. 4. Word Limits: • The total length of the group report is a maximum of 4,000 words (excluding figures, tables, references, and appendices). 5. Presentation: • It is the same as that for assignment 1. Assignment Submission Assignment submission is via the LMS Assignment Submission link for all written assignments. Please note that you are required to keep a copy of your assignment after it has been submitted as you must be able to produce a copy of your assignment at the request of teaching staff at any time after the submission due date. Penalties for Late Submission and Exceeding Word Limits In order to ensure equity for all students, assignments must be completed within specified time limits. Late submissions will attract a marking penalty where approval for late submission has not been given. The mark awarded will be reduced by 10% for each day the work is late. Assignments submitted later than 5 working days after the due date will not be marked and will receive no marks. Assignments that exceed the word limits by up to 10%, inclusive of footnotes, will attract a marking penalty of 10% of the marks that would otherwise have been awarded. Assignments that exceed the word limits by more than 10% will attract a penalty of 50%. Group Work Working in groups can sometimes be more difficult than working individually. However, team-work and organizational skills associated with group work are highly valued by employers. With careful management and ongoing communication, you can have a successful and rewarding experience working in a team. You should exchange names, phone numbers, and email addresses with your group members straight away. If you have difficulty with a member of your group, you should contact your lecturer as soon as possible. Do not leave issues unresolved until just before or after your group assignment is due. All students within your group will be given the same mark unless you have raised an 10 issue during the assignment period. Students who do not contribute to a group assignment may be allocated a lower mark or assigned a mark of zero. Subject Resources Prescribed References 1. Essential Reading: • Anderson DR, Sweeney DJ, Williams TA, Camm JD & Martin K (2019), An Introduction to Management Science: Quantitative Approaches to Decision Making, 15th Edition, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning. (Note that the older versions are acceptable for this subject. However, the equivalent chapter for each week may vary.) • Anderson DR, Sweeney DJ, Williams TA, Camm JD & Cochran JJ. (2020), Statistics for Business and Economics, 14th Edition, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning. 2. Supplementary Reading: Supplementary readings will be provided in particular weeks, as appropriate. Academic Integrity Academic Honesty The University maintains high academic standards in its courses and subjects and expects students to conduct themselves in a manner which is fair, honest and consistent with the principles of academic integrity, particularly when undertaking assessment and research. http://academicintegrity.unimelb.edu.au/ Referencing All sources used for a written piece of assessment must be referenced. This is to acknowledge that your material is not based entirely on your own ideas, but is based, in part, on the ideas, information, and evidence of others. This is desirable as you are attending University in order to learn from others. You will be required to use the APA or Harvard System of referencing. The library has prepared a website to help students correctly reference: http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/recite/citations/harvard/generalNotes.html It is important that all material you present for assessment is referenced correctly. Material that has not been referenced correctly may be considered to be plagiarised, and as such may be penalised. We will also look for evidence that material included in the bibliography has been used in the assignment. Including references that have not been used may also result in your assignment being penalised 11 The Academic Skills Unit has produced resources to assist students with referencing https://services.unimelb.edu.au/academicskills/undergrads/top_resources The Library also provides advice on referencing: http://library.unimelb.edu.au/cite University Services Timetable MyTimetable is a class timetabling system that creates individual timetables for students based on submitted class preferences, ensuring everyone has an equitable opportunity of getting their preferred class timetable. You will use this system to create your class timetable prior to each study period. By following a preference-based model, students who have other commitments, such as employment or carer responsibilities, or who are returning or living overseas during the timetabling period, aren’t disadvantaged by their limited availability. When allocating class timetables, MyTimetable also takes into consideration factors such as class size limits and potential clashes to ensure all students are equally accommodated. Further information is available on the web at https://students.unimelb.edu.au/admin/class-timetable Stop 1: Connecting Students and Services Stop 1 is here to provide you with a range of support services throughout your university degree, from help with enrolment, administration and wellbeing to advice on building your skills and experiences. https://students.unimelb.edu.au/stop1 Academic Skills Academic Skills offers a range of workshops and resources to help you with study skills including researching, writing and referencing, presentation skills and preparing for exams. Visit their website via http://services.unimelb.edu.au/academicskills. Service Finder The University of Melbourne offers one of the most comprehensive student support networks in Australia. Use this site to locate a wide range of services http://services.unimelb.edu.au/finder Student Counselling Students attend counselling to talk about personal, emotional, or mental health issues which might be affecting their study and life. The University’s Counselling and Psychological Services (CAPS) provides free, confidential, short-term professional counselling to currently enrolled students and staff. https://services.unimelb.edu.au/counsel/individual Student Equity and Disability Support Student Equity and Disability Support provides services for students who need ongoing support with their studies. They understand that adjustments to learning and assessment are sometimes required to allow all students to reach their full potential. Learn more about 12 the services provided, how to find support and how to register for assistance. http://services.unimelb.edu.au/student-equity University of Melbourne Library Services As well as holding an extensive collection of books, ebooks, digital media and periodicals, library staff provide research guidance and support for students. http://library.unimelb.edu.au/ These Business and Economics Library Guides have been designed specifically for Faculty of Business and Economics staff and students. http://unimelb.libguides.com/sb.php?subject_id=80310 Policy Alternative Exam Arrangements (AEA) The definition of and eligibility requirements for alternative exam arrangements (AEA) can be found via http://students.unimelb.edu.au/admin/alternate . Assessment and Results Policy The University’s assessment policy provides a framework for the design, delivery and implementation of assessment of students in award and non-award courses and subjects. Assessment is designed to contribute to high quality learning by students, and to allow for quality assurance and the maintenance of high academic standards. https://policy.unimelb.edu.au/MPF1326 Assignment Extension Requests for an assignment extension should be submitted here: http://go.unimelb.edu.au/yh9n. Before completing this form, please read the Assignment Extension Policy, which can be found at: http://policy.unimelb.edu.au/MPF1326#section-4.37 Exam Policy The University requires that you are available for the entire examination period. Please see the University's Principal Dates via http://www.unimelb.edu.au/dates#2018 for the full annual calendar. Supplementary exams will not be provided in cases of absence during the examination period unless the absence is due to serious illness or other serious circumstances and a Special Consideration application is submitted and approved. Information on Calculators in Examinations Effective from 1 January 2017, the approved calculator for all subjects is the Casio FX82 (any suffix). No equivalent models of calculators will be permitted in exams. 13 You are required to purchase your own calculator and are responsible for ensuring your calculator is in good working order with fresh batteries. Plagiarism and Collusion Plagiarism (failure to cite your sources correctly and completely) and collusion (unauthorised collaboration with another person to prepare an assessment task) are considered academic misconduct and attract severe penalties. More information is available on the University’s Academic Integrity website via http://go.unimelb.edu.au/rha6. Special Consideration As a student, you may experience extraordinary or unusual circumstances, or ongoing circumstances that adversely affect your academic performance. The University has policies in place to support students who are experiencing academic disadvantage. For more information, visit http://students.unimelb.edu.au/admin/special.
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