B USINESS 8508 – M ANAGING S OCIAL E NTERPRISE : O PERATIONS M ANAGEMENT

( OR ABBREVIATED AS O PERATIONS M ANAGEMENT )

C OURSE O UTLINE – 2023 W INTER

1 Introduction

1.1 Course and Contact Information

Information
Course Contact
Course Name Operations Management Instructor Dr. Davoud Ghahremanlou
Course Section Business 8508 – 001 Email dghahremanlo@mun.ca
Class Days Mondays and Wednesdays Website Davoud Ghahremanlou
Class Time 2:00 – 4:45 pm Brightspace Course Mail dghahremanlo@online.mun.ca
Class Location BN – 4031

Email should be used for messages of a personal nature; general questions about the course
content should be asked in the class or sent to the Discussions forum on Brightspace. Attachments
for submissions are to be sent to the appropriate dropbox folder rather than an email address.

1.2 Course Overview

Managing Social Enterprise: Operations Management (or abbreviated as Operations Manage-

ment), Business 8508 – 001, is a course for the Master of Business Administration in Social
Enterprise and Entrepreneurship (MBA-SEE) program. This is the first MBA program in Canada
established to deliver business leaders with innovative and novel approaches – one that is based on
the three pillars of sustainability: economic, environmental, and social. This course targets core op-
erational decision concepts and techniques, and how to apply them to the social enterprise domain.
Topics covered include operations strategies, forecasting, inventory, quality, process, sourcing, risk
pooling, and supply chain management.

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2 Course Materials

1. You must have a computer with access to the internet. Also, it must be one to which software
such as Microsoft Office like Office 365 and MATLAB can be added (for further details and
how to download these software packages please click on Software for Students). Apple
Mac and the regular version of Microsoft Windows will work.

2. All submissions for this course are computer generated, and no handwritten submission
will be accepted. Submissions will be uploaded in the corresponding folder in Dropbox
on Brightspace, therefore, you will not need a printer. On a more general note, the univer-
sity has a Writing Centre, for details click here, and the Faculty of Engineering and Applied
Sciences has excellent technical communication resources (e.g., avoiding plagiarism, and
correct citation and reference), for details click here.

3. Although there are many textbooks for this course, I recommend Anupindi (2012) and Rother
and Shook (2003).

4. You will need to regularly, i.e., daily, visit the Brightspace website set up for this course.
There you will find the Discussions forum through which you can post your content related
questions, receive a response, and see new information posted.

Note that students cannot make a visual and/or audio recording or dissemination, openly or
surreptitiously, of any lectures and/or materials delivered for the course.

3 Assessment

All the assessment milestones will be administered through Brightspace, and can be done from
anywhere. By uploading any submission on Brightspace you unequivocally state that all work
is entirely your own and does not violate Memorial University’s Academic Integrity policy; if
anything in a submission is found to be in violation with the policy, the mark for the submission

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may be significantly reduced. You must type all your submissions and submit your answers in pdf
or word format; no handwritten/hand-plotted submission will be accepted.

Assessment Weight Deadline

Reflection 1 5% 11:59 PM on January 20, 2023
Reflection 2 5% 11:59 PM on January 27, 2023
Reflections Reflection 3 5% 11:59 PM on February 3, 2023
Reflection 4 5% 11:59 PM on February 10, 2023
Reflection 5 5% 11:59 PM on February 17, 2023
Participation 1 3% 11:59 PM on January 17 for Qs and January 19 for As, 2023
Participation 2 3% 11:59 PM on January 24 for Qs and January 26 for As, 2023
Participation Participation 3 3% 11:59 PM on January 31 for Qs and February 2 for As, 2023
Participation 4 3% 11:59 PM on February 7 for Qs and February 9 for As, 2023
Participation 5 3% 11:59 PM on February 14 for Qs and February 16 for As, 2023
Assignment 1 8% 11:59 PM on January 21, 2023
Assignment 2 8% 11:59 PM on January 23, 2023
Assignments Assignment 3 8% 11:59 PM on January 29, 2023
Assignment 4 8% 11:59 PM on February 5, 2023
Assignment 5 8% 11:59 PM on February 14, 2023
Presentation 20% 11:59 PM on January 22, 2023
Total 100%

Here is what each milestone covers:

• Reflections – 5 events (i.e. visits/guest speakers) and for each event 5 marks are considered.
To receive your reflection mark you must submit a one-page report which includes event
information, whom you met during each event (full name of all the persons you meet along
with their positions), what you learned from each person and the acknowledgment of the peo-
ple and individuals made the event possible. It is your responsibility to make sure you have
at least one take away from each person during each event as these professionals have years
of experience and would be available to share their knowledge and experience with you; if
you do not ask questions they would not know what you are exactly interested in learning.
Instead of each one-page event report, you can submit your corresponding LinkedIn post
screenshot, which includes the report contents just mentioned in this paragraph. You need to
submit your 5 reflections to their corresponding folders named “Reflection 1” to “Reflection
5” in the Dropbox (which can be found in Assignments under Assessment) by the deadlines

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 mentioned in the table in this section.

• Participation – This is calculated based the questions (Qs) and answers (As) posted on the
Discussions forum on D2L for each event. As is mentioned in the former paragraph, there
are 5 events considered for this course, and for each event you need to write 3 high quality
questions on the Discussions forum before the event, following deadlines in the table in
this section. Each question is worth half a mark. Following the event and deadlines in the
table in this section, you must prepare and post on the Discussions forum 3 answers to your
questions. Each of these answers is worth a half mark; for a total of three marks for both
three Questions and Answers. Since questions are posted on the Discussions forum, you will
be able to read each others questions and answers, which will be a nice learning method, and
this would avoid writing repetitive questions (when you want to write your questions you
need to make sure your colleagues/classmates have not already written the same questions).

• Assignments – There are 5 assignments considered for this course and each one is assigned
8 marks. The details of each assignment is in the attached file. You need to submit your 5
assignments to their corresponding folders named “Assignment 1” to “Assignment 5” in the
dropbox (which can be found in Assignments under Assessment) by the deadlines mentioned
in the table in this section.

• Presentation – This milestone requires each student to perform two activities: (1) prepar-
ing a professional slide presentation (for example, assume you are preparing the slides for a
presentation in an international conference) about the processes you have plotted the value
stream map (in Assignment 1) using any software you are comfortable with (e.g., Power-
Point Presentation and Beamer which is a LaTeX document class) and (2) preparing a video
(a recording of your own presentation) based on your slide presentation and value stream
map. You need to submit your video recording to the folder named “Presentation” in the
dropbox (which can be found in Assignments under Assessment) by 11:59 PM on January
22, 2023. Maximum file size is 2 GB, but I suggest you aim for a much smaller size so that

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 the uploading process becomes easier. For further information please click on help 1 and
help 2. The length of the video should be less than 10 minutes, for any minute above this
range one percent (out of 20%) will be deducted from your mark.

In the business world the ability to meet deadlines is critical. You are responsible for your
time management, and submissions must take place by the deadlines indicated in the table in this
Section. I suggest you always plan to hand in your submissions a couple of hours before the
deadline to avoid any last moment issues. Late submissions will receive a penalty in terms of
reduced grade:

• 10% reduction if submitted within 24 hours after the deadline;

• an additional 10% reduction for each additional calendar day thereafter.

Note: (1) any concern regarding the marks record (posted on D2L) should be brought to the
instructor’s attention no later than one week after the posting date, and (2) as you are aware, winter
adds to the uncertainties and may result in changes in the course outline; if any changes in this
course outline occur they will be communicated before implementation.

4 Schedule

Dates Activities
January 9, 2023 Course Outline and Teaching
January 11, 2023 Teaching
January 16, 2023 Teaching
January 18, 2023 Event 1
January 23, 2023 Teaching
January 25, 2023 Event 2
January 30, 2023 Teaching
February 1, 2023 Event 3
February 6, 2023 Teaching
February 8, 2023 Event 4
February 13, 2023 Teaching
February 15, 2023 Event 5

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References

Anupindi, R. (2012). Managing Business Process Flows: Principles of Operations Management

(Third ed.). Prentice Hall.

Rother, M. and J. Shook (2003). Learning to see: value stream mapping to add value and eliminate
MUDA. Lean Enterprise Institute.