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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Managing Social and Human Capital by University of Pennsylvania

4.6
stars
2,496 ratings

About the Course

People are the most valuable asset of any business, but they are also the most unpredictable, and the most difficult asset to manage. And although managing people well is critical to the health of any organization, most managers don't get the training they need to make good management decisions. Now, award-winning authors and renowned management Professors Mike Useem and Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School have designed this course to introduce you to the key elements of managing people. Based on their popular course at Wharton, this course will teach you how to motivate individual performance and design reward systems, how to design jobs and organize work for high performance, how to make good and timely management decisions, and how to design and change your organization’s architecture. By the end of this course, you'll have developed the skills you need to start motivating, organizing, and rewarding people in your organization so that you can thrive as a business and as a social organization....

Top reviews

DM

Oct 19, 2018

Excellent Course. Understanding human behavior is one of the most difficult challenges in an organization. This course describes the challenges well and offers approaches to tackling those challenges.

CE

Jan 12, 2022

Really enjoyed the cases studies throught the weeks and well having the pdfs for taking notes. The final notes on management and decision making will be on my note list for work reflection for sure.

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376 - 400 of 423 Reviews for Managing Social and Human Capital

By sohyla s m

Jun 1, 2020

very good

By Bryan H

Sep 12, 2017

V

By Maprang S

Jul 29, 2020

I do realize the usefulness of the contents of this course and how important the discussions around social and human capital are. A lot of companies tend to overlook this factor and pay more attention to other things such as operational management as it seems that that relates more to the increase of revenuere and efficiency. However, I only give this course 3 stars because I resent the final half of the course Week 3 and 4. The prof has a lot of interesting anecdotes but the way he presented all those just drag on so much that it's so hard to grasp the moral of the stories, the point at which a particular anecdote exemplifies. As a result some students including myself had failed to find the correct answers to the end of module quizzes and a lot of the answers were conveyed in indiscernible manner throughout the video lectures that we had to go back and forth multiple times to the videos trying to discern the information we need in order to pass the quizzes. In conclusion, it's an alright course but if anyone were to take only this course not interested in taking the whole specialization, then I'd suggest you buy books about business and people management and you would get much more values out of the books than this course.

By Clara E F

Apr 23, 2020

Although this topic is by far the one I am most interested in within the Business Specialization, I found the overall structure and content to be lacking. The videos were not at all engaging, it was just like listening to a lecture without much to look at. The intro and overview videos were repetitive and confusing rather than introducing the structure. The slides on the video for the whole first week were not very helpful since they included only a few terms and no explanations. I didn't even bother to download them. This improved once the second professor taught his section. In addition, the videos ended abruptly, and the slides included some typos. I found this course to be interesting, but way less structured and way easier than the prior two courses (Marketing and Accounting).

By Sebastian A M H

Jun 21, 2021

Bastante información, pone muchos puntos sobre la mesa a tener en cuenta: desde la motivación, el trabajo con tu equipo, hasta la estructura de las organizaciones y la gestión del cambio. Presenta una mirada amplia y superficial sobre todos estos puntos. Presenta varios ejemplos reales para lograr una mayor comprensión. Sin embargo, con tanta información es difícil interiorizar los puntos principales. Me quedo con que hay una gran variedad de temas a considerar al gestionar una organización y que pueden tener grandes impactos en los resultados finales, pero que probablemente necesitaré repasar el material de esta curso cuando tenga la necesidad/oportunidad para aplicarlo.

By José M A O

Apr 8, 2020

This is an important and useful topic, however, I feel professors could have gone much further. The content is scarce compared to other courses in the Business Foundations Program. Lecturers often digress and fill in case studies with unnecessary details. A broader scope with a more straight-to-the point approach would have been appreciated. Quizzes are not well designed, in the sense that many questions do not truly relate to the core concepts and are rather about specific examples presented throughout the lectures.

So far, the weakest course in the Business Foundations Program. Good topic but still lots of room for improvement.

By Daniele P

Jul 4, 2020

I come from the aviation industry so I am not new to human resources studies. I believe this course could use a bit more structure. I am a big believer in stating objectives of the lecture and content before diving in the content itself. Often I found myself at the end of the video before I was able to understand what the Professor was gettin at. A bit more structure could have made the course a little bit easier.

The tests were pertinent and the lectures covered all subjects.

All in all not a bad introduction to the necessity to manage human factors.

By Ritesh G

Dec 16, 2021

Making good and timely management decisions is a perennial challenge for any organization. Prof Michael Useem and Peter Cappelli adequately described the subject. Though briefly stated, there is a clear emphasis on the role of 'motivation' in defining tasks, jobs, and systems of work. I value the cases presented, exemplifying the need to design changes in an organization's architecture. This course is an appreciable standard for case-based learning.

By Inés K

Jul 5, 2020

I found this course rather boring, too many common places, too many things that are obvious if you just give them a little thought. Going back to Taylor seems overdoing it, anybody with some knowledge of US history knows about Taylor. The examples seemed outdated (except for week 4, with Chuck). On the whole, not a course that made me gain new insights.

By K V

Nov 22, 2020

Some parts of the course were a bit boring. But there were really some good insights on the subject matter. However, not everything was really discussed, especially when you get to the exam part of the course. You will often wonder how, when, and which parts were certain questions discussed. Also, the transcription wasn't transcribed perfectly.

By Miguel R

Jun 19, 2018

I liked the first teacher. The second one, not so much. His slides were too information heavy and he just blazed through it without alluding to it. I know WE, the students, have the pause button. But come on, use your technology (example: the accounting professor Brain Bushee puts a little pause sign and lags a little before continuing).

By Waffa N

Apr 25, 2020

I have learn some interesting point. However, coming from a Psychology background, I've heard about a lot of what is mentioned in this course. The professors could be a little more engaging since a lot of subjects don't seem interesting and some examples are useless and not efficient.

By Vanessa A D S M

Sep 7, 2019

The overall course was informative however when talking about the cases/examples it became tedious and made the distraction more prevalent. It would be interesting to see if there can be a change in the structure of the course making it more dynamic/interactive for the learner.

By Aubrey B

May 8, 2018

The course was informative but shallow. I was hoping for a more in-depth review of the topics, and I felt that time was wasted on the professors' lengthy and mostly-irrelevant anecdotes that were hard to follow and harder to pull meaningful information out of.

By Trent B

Sep 2, 2017

You talked about Taylor without touching on Gilbreth. Both laid the foundation for our understanding of manufacturing and processes. Also, include a social capital portion on trust and managing that with public, customer and within the enterprise.

By Andrew B

Apr 18, 2019

The quality of this course compared to others in the Business Foundations specialization was disappointing. I did not feel that the professors took the same amount of time to create helpful visuals and presentations as they did in previous courses.

By Sri C

Aug 13, 2020

Professor Capelli was really amazing. He took the natural flow of explaining the subject slowly with pauses and expressions while Professor Mike's explanations were really hard to follow, dry and was hard to focus.

By Craig M

Feb 8, 2021

This was the most confusing, least clear of the courses so far. Professor Useem was especially difficult to follow. I'm quite sure he understands the material; but he did not present it in a cogent manner.

By Andreas K

May 24, 2018

A nice course with important concepts pointing out the importance of the subject Human and Social capital. On the other hand it scrapes only on the surface of this important area for a manager.

By Federico B

Dec 6, 2017

First two weeks were super interesting; the second two seemed a little "dispersive", lots of time focused on the details of the examples but not enough explaining on the core messages.

By Keiran H

Apr 16, 2020

Very much an introductory course with fairly slim content supported by a lot of examples. This felt a lot less substantial than the Intro to Marketing course in this specialisation.

By Amy T Z

Feb 13, 2020

I was hoping this course would go deeper into psychological managing. This course seems better suited to just learning the architecture of the building departments.

By Jonah R

Jul 1, 2020

Case studies were good but it was otherwise a very theoretical course and didn't often feel like it could be boiled down to everyday application.

By alessandro v

Dec 1, 2021

Long story telling with some case studies from real business world. Not so well and clearly structured in my view for long lasting takeaways.

By Rahul S

Jun 23, 2020

The notes from Mike were not very interactive. ALso the flow of Mike's presentation was not captivating