MANAGING REWARDS SYSTEMS
Tentative Syllabus
Professor: SUSAN E. JACKSON
COURSE # 38:533:635, Spring 2012
Contact Information for Professor Jackson
E-mail: sjackson[at]smlr.rutgers.edu
Office: Room 216 Janice Levin Bldg.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The course website will be your official and definitive source for all
information about assignments, due dates, and specific class activitites. This syllabus provides you
with general guidance, to help you get started. Details of the course are likely to change to reflect
the interest of students, ongoing current events, and so on. Therefore, after the semester begins, you
must use only the course website as your source for all assignments and course requirements.
COURSE OVERVIEW
In this course, you will develop a detailed understanding of the many choices employers make when
deciding how to compensate employees, and the consequences of those choices. By the end of this
course, you should be able to think systematically about how the combination of external
environmental conditions and internal organizational considerations shape the design of an
organizations compensation system.
This course also provides you with an opportunity to develop a compensation plan for a specific
organization using a simulation and software package. The simulation is a semester-long
assignment that takes you through all of the major steps required to design a pay structure. Student
teams will act as consultants whose job is to develop a compensation system for a company called
Sonic Records. The project includes four major steps:
Conduct a strategic analysis
Develop a pay structure to achieve internal consistency
Establish pay levels that are competitive in the external labor market
Create a means for recognizing individual performance achievements
The course requires you to be actively engaged during each class and also between class meetings.
In all of our interactions, everyone should strive to behave in...