On Nov. 11, 2016, specialty masters students at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business participated in a case competition at the Smith School in Van Munching Hall. Sixteen groups—89 students total—presented during this event, which was hosted by the Office of Career Services in collaboration with lead faculty judge Barney Corwin. Other judges included faculty from the accounting, finance, information systems, and supply chain management programs.
The competition focused on analysis and recommendations from the case entitled Performance Management at Vitality Health Enterprises, Inc., published by Harvard Business School. In this case, Vitality Health Enterprises, a large beauty products and nutraceuticals company, was seeking a system to motivate and retain its employees, with a focus on their highest-performing research and development staff.
Members of the winning team featured students from each of the five specialty masters programs and included Bharadwaj Chintalapati (supply chain), Hung Dao (information systems), Kuldeepak Sharma (information systems), Ying Wang (finance), Stephen Witkowski (marketing analytics), and Zixuan Wu (accounting). The winning team’s approach focused on conducting a SWOT analysis, which highlighted the key issues of internal parity, distribution of merit increases, and more meaningful performance rankings during performance assessments. The team’s recommendation included updates to Vitality’s performance assessment system that would combine managers’ individual performance ratings with peer review ratings. Additionally, the team proposed an annual non-monetary recognition award for the highest-performing individual and an award for the highest-performing team at Vitality.
“This Case Competition was quite effective at leveraging individual student skills and supporting collaboration, team work and analytic abilities—all of which will be useful skill sets as students embark upon the job search,” said Moneca Surida-Clyburn, assistant director of Master of Science Career Programming.
- Amy Swann, Masters Programs Office
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About the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business
The Robert H. Smith School of Business is an internationally recognized leader in management education and research. One of 12 colleges and schools at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Smith School offers undergraduate, full-time and flex MBA, executive MBA, online MBA, business master’s, PhD and executive education programs, as well as outreach services to the corporate community. The school offers its degree, custom and certification programs in learning locations in North America and Asia.