Tessa Recendes
Assistant Professor, Assistant Professor of Management and Organization
Department Management and Organization
Office Address 406 Business Building
Email Address
tqr5309@psu.edu
Tessa Recendes
Assistant Professor, Assistant Professor of Management and Organization
Department Management and Organization
Office Address 406 Business Building
Email Address
tqr5309@psu.edu
Tessa Recendes is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organization at Pennsylvania State University’s Smeal College of Business. She received her Ph.D. in Strategic Management from Oklahoma State University. Prior to attaining her Ph.D., Tessa worked for Major League Soccer Teams, FC Dallas and Colorado Rapids, as well as start-up ReachLocal.
Broadly, Tessa’s research explores the intersection of strategic leadership and social evaluations. Her work focuses on the socio-cognitive mechanisms that shape strategic decision making and external perceptions of firms. She uses a variety of methodological approaches in her research and her work has been published in the Strategic Management Journal and the Journal of Management. Her research has been featured in media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and FoxNews.com. Tessa serves as a Representative-at-Large of the Research Methods Community of the Strategic Management Society.
Education
Ph D, Strategic Management, Oklahoma State University, 2019
MBA, Strategic Management, The University of North Texas, 2013
BBA, Sports, Sponsorship, & Sales (Economics), Baylor University, 2009
Courses Taught
MGMT 215 – Entr Mindset (3)
This course provides the opportunity to learn to think like an entrepreneur in the broader context of social entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, creative problem solving, opportunity recognition, and innovation. MGMT 215 Entrepreneurial Mindset (3) An entrepreneurial mindset can be applied to different situations such as social entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, creative problem solving, opportunity recognition, technology management, innovation and career development, etc. The skills and attributes of an entrepreneurial mindset can be used to expand career options and career paths for students in any major. Students will develop self-efficacy, leadership, recognition of new opportunities, resourcefulness, creativity and comfort with ambiguity. Further, this course will help students develop an appreciation for mistakes and failure as valuable learning opportunities. Through experiential exercises and problem based learning the student will be afforded the opportunity to study, apply and absorb an entrepreneurial mindset as an approach to viewing the world, to recognizing opportunities and to developing novel solutions. After taking this course the student, regardless of a student's major or college, will have a greater understanding of how to apply entrepreneurial thinking to problems and adopt entrepreneurial solutions to those problems to transform them from problems into opportunities.
MGMT 427 – Managing A Startup (3)
Exploration of the tensions and experiences of starting and growing a new company. MGMT 427 Managing an Entrepreneurial Start-Up Company (3)Start-up companies have a high failure rate. Acquiring and balancing limited resources, changing direction quickly, building a coherent team, managing intellectual property, and creating new markets all test a wide range of managerial skills not usually demanded in one person within a larger organization. Whereas a large company has a strong and well-defined structure and ample resources to deal with unexpected challenges, a start-up usually has insufficient resources, or management experience and yet must deal with daily important and often unpredictable forces. It is the tenacity of an entrepreneur that can take a company through the valleys of despair to eventually succeed. Students will be exposed to these tensions and experience through problem-based learning methods what it is like to start and grow a new company. The course will provide students with knowledge and experience to increase the likelihood of success whether as a principal in a small company or an investor representative.
MGMT 590 – Colloquium (3)
MGMT 471 – Strategic Mgmt (3)
Issues that influence the competitive performance of the firm are identified and examined. MGMT 471 Strategic Management (3 )This course focuses on the management of the firm using a strategic perspective. The strategic perspective emphasizes the firm as the unit of analysis (e.g., analyzing how a firm competes in its industry), and it addresses key decisions that have a long-term impact on the structure and performance of the organization (e.g., diversifying into a new business or changing the company's strategy). The course draws heavily on prior business courses in accounting, marketing, finance, and international management. Key topics include industry analysis, competitor analysis, company analysis, corporate-level strategy, business-level strategy, strategy implementation, and firm performance. The course is normally taught using the case methods, but the course may include a computer simulation and/or oral group presentations.
MGMT 427W – MANAGING A STARTUP (3)
Start-up companies have a high failure rate. Acquiring and balancing limited resources, changing direction quickly, building a coherent team, developing an organization's culture from scratch, managing intellectual property, and creating new markets all test a wide range of managerial skills not usually demanded in one person within a larger organization. Whereas a large company has a strong and well-defined structure and ample resources to deal with unexpected challenges, a start-up usually has insufficient resources and/or management experience, yet it must deal on a daily basis with important and often unpredictable forces.Students will be exposed to these tensions and experience through problem-based learning methods that illustrate what it is like to start and grow a new company. The course will provide students with the knowledge and experience to increase their likelihood of success whether as a principal in a small company or an investor representative.Managing a Startup is a problem-based learning (PBL) course, where the learning is student-centered, with faculty acting primarily in the role of facilitators. Active learning happens in this course because students are engaged in the analysis of the complex situations that underlie startup companies. The course leverages the on-line course management system to define weekly learning objectives, support electronic delivery of assignments and provide robust video content from entrepreneurs, investors and key employees, who provide additional insights into the management decisions and ethical dilemmas the leader of a startup faces. Because the course is structured around the on-line course management system, it could be offered at any Penn State location with very little revision. The particular companies and cases that are the focus of the class are easily adapted by using different case studies, companies and course mentors.