Teaching operations management to lawyers

Abstract

[EN] This paper deals with a problem present in most Master in Business Administration (MBA) classrooms. This problem is the heterogeneity of students and their backgrounds. Different backgrounds pose a challenge to teachers that require the use of quantitative techniques such as optimization within an Operations Management subject. Engineers and other students with mathematical training probably get bored if the level is too low. On the contrary, Lawyers and other students without technical background usually find contents cumbersome. This paper aims to find a compromise between the heterogeneity of backgrounds and the fulfilment of learning objectives for students of Operations Management in an MBA. To this end, we propose a methodology to support the selection of teaching methods from a multiobjective perspective. The results derived from this methodology enable professors to consider their particular preferences and to integrate important decision-making principles by selecting the appropriate distance function to an ideal point that acts as a reference.