Welcome to Project Renaissance!

Please enter this module on "Social Sciences" — whether you are an enrolled freshman or an online visitor. This page outlines the course, and is also our attempt to gather resources useful for our students as well as for students and practitioners elsewhere anywhere around the globe. Please make yourself at home, browse around as long as you like, and feel free to try anything you want to. We’re still developing this page and would certainly appreciate your feedback. (1997-1998)


Course Purpose

Renaissance is revival (literally, "to renew"). The historical Renaissance period was fueled by a unique combination of forces, including an explosion of discovery, exploration, and invention. It was also an extraordinary period of enlightenment that shattered long-held beliefs. Ideally, in the group of four course modules this year you will experience complete intellectual immersion unbounded by time, place, or convention. In this community, you are free to share your intellectual curiosity.

Each module satisfies a General Education requirement: Humanities & the Arts, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Cultural & Historical Perspectives. This particular module satisfies the "Social Sciences" component of the University at Albany’s General Education requirement. As such, we will examine businesses as institutions where many of you will be spending your careers. But even if you do not intend to pursue a "business career," businesses are economic, social, and political arrangements that influence us in many ways, and we will discuss just a handful of those impacts. A second purpose of this course is to satisfy the writing-intensive requirement for General Education. Please plan on devoting at least ten hours each week to write assignments for this course. Finally, you will master computer skills for communication and research, and interpersonal skills for team development and leadership.

Typically (but not exclusively) we will meet as a group every Tuesday and Thursday led by a "core faculty" member. We will meet in smaller groups on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday led by a "preceptor" responsible for recitation, facilitating, synthesizing, and feedback. We will also plan activities outside of class including library, computer, social, cultural, recreational, and team development skills as well as to conduct major projects. Throughout your experience, you will be helped by peer mentors and RAs.

Course Information References The Internet Community Service - Action Learning
Text: Frost, Mitchell, & Nord, Organizational Reality (Addison-Wesley 1997); Pierce & Newstrom, The Manager’s Bookshelf (HarperCollins 1996); Ray & Rinzler, The New Paradigm in Business (Putnam 1993); MLA Handbook

Project Renaissance Home Page

Business Periodicals: Business Week Forbes

Humor: The Dilbert Zone Editorial Cartoons

Evaluating Internet Resources Service-Learning
Session Topics/Examplar Organizations Cases/Self-Assessments/
Examplar Organizations
1: Historical Perspective and Paradigm Shifts Historical Perspective Exemplar New Paradigm Organizations: Calvert Group Ricardo Semler’s Transformation at Semco ABB the prototypical transnational company for the year 2000?
2: Conducting Research in Business References
Business Research
Corporate Data
Corporate annual reports for: 3Com Compaq IBM Intel Microsoft
3: Entrepreneurship: Individual Imagination, Invention, Innovation, and Initiative Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation Self-Assessment: Creativity
4: Corporate Membership: Cog in a Wheel? Antitrust and Competitor Relations
Consumerism
Employee Relations
Self-Assessment: Teams
5: Corporate Membership: Getting Ahead and Making a Contribution

Strategic Leadership
Team Building and Group Dynamics
Decision Making Behaviors

Self-Assessment: Leadership/CEO Personality
6: Large - Scale Organization Change Organization Learning
Quality and Re-Engineering
Strategic Change
Vision
Self-Assessment: Change Innovation

Exemplar New Paradigm Organizations: American Express parent of Amex Life Assurance DuPont General Motors Promon Tecnologia S.A.

7: The Virtual Organization Virtual Organization
Cooperative Strategies: Consortia and Alliances
Exemplar New Paradigm Industries: Electronic Banking Information Technology
8: Corporations and Technology Science and Technology Cases: "The Vasa Capsizes" "The Sandhogs" and "The Sandhogs continued"
9: Ecology and the Natural Environment Ecology and Environment Read: Daniel Quinns Ishmael

Self-Assessment: Ecology

10: The Virtuous Organization and "Business Ethics" Social, Political, and Ethical Dimensions of Business Self-Assessment: Values

Exemplar New Paradigm Organizations: Des Moines Water Works GE Plastics Wetherill Associates Working Assets

11: Corporations Across Cultures and Countries International Strategies
Global Trade: Cross-Cultural, Social-Political, Ethical
Read: Sun Tzu and the Art of Business

Self-Assessment: Cross-Cultural

Exemplar New Paradigm Organization: Levi Strauss & Co.

Rainbow

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