Saint Vincent College Faculty Blog

My field of study is organizational behavior. Even though my field is not education, researchers in my field still explore concepts related to learning, especially in studies that examine knowledge transfer and knowledge management at work (Nonaka, 2005). People learn differently. How people learn depends in part on the type of knowledge that they receive, but it also depends on personal trends on how individuals experience information.

Let’s face it – 2020 has been a tough year for many people. And so, I’m sure that many people are looking forward to 2021 and hoping that this coming year is better.

In my December 2019 blog, I discussed how Santa Claus uses the management style of operational excellence to travel around the world on Christmas Eve. In keeping with the holiday theme for my December 2020 blog, I will talk about a businessperson who manages an organization and who is often associated with this season: Ebenezer Scrooge.

It is obvious that there have been a lot of challenges confronting people around the world during the pandemic. One specific challenge of COVID that impacts many people is a decreased ability to communicate.

Since it’s the month of Halloween, I thought I would present some eerie myths of Saint Vincent in this installment of my blog. I recall hearing a lot of legends and ghost stories surrounding Saint Vincent College when I was a student here many years ago. In fact, one rumor that spread around my friends stated that SVC was the third most haunted college campus in America. This seems like a very specific number for an attribute that I don’t think can possibly be measured accurately, but this was a story going around at that time.

Operational Excellence (OE) is a management philosophy that focuses on improvement, problem solving, and waste reduction in organizations. A strong focus on this philosophy is not too common at many academic institutions and so Saint Vincent is lucky to offer this unique perspective at the undergraduate (minor) and graduate (OE emphasis in the MS in Management) levels. Those schools that do focus on OE tend to have programs in the engineering departments. At Saint Vincent, ours resides in the business department. A reason for this difference is that our program is more focused on people and culture as well as implications of OE throughout an organization.

In a blog that I wrote in September 2016, I discussed why fall is my favorite season. Reflecting on my sentiments from four years ago and thinking about this upcoming semester at Saint Vincent, fall still remains my favorite time of the year though this semester will definitely feel different than prior years for a variety of reasons.

Some people seem to naturally elicit trust in others. If you do a search on the internet for trustworthy famous people, for example, you will find lists that include the likes of Morgan Freeman, Tom Hanks, Betty White and James Earl Jones. Locally in Latrobe, hometown heroes Arnold Palmer and Fred Rogers are viewed as exemplars of trustworthiness. On the other hand, there are also many examples of people that some individuals might consider to be non-trustworthy, but I will not mention them here in order to focus more on the positive.

While at home during the pandemic, I have been fortunate to be able to work on a few big projects related to the academic study of leadership (I am excited to share details of these projects soon). As I have been digging into the research on leadership, I have been thinking a lot about what makes a good leader.

I’ve had the privilege of directing Saint Vincent College’s Master of Science in Management: Operational Excellence (MSMOE) program for nearly seven years. I want to share with you why I think now is a great time to pursue this degree.