Organizational Behaviour Course: Understanding Human Behaviour in Organizations

Course Description: This course provides an overview on the study of human behaviour in organizational settings using three lenses: 1) Individuals in organizations (e.g. perceptions, personality, emotions), 2) Groups and teams (e.g. cohesion, groupthink, etc) and 3) How organizations behave (e.g. org. culture, ethics, corporate social responsibility). The students are expected to not only understand the key variables in each level of analysis but also critically analyze and reflect on the key organizational issues

Learning Goals: When a group of people interacts in an organizational setting, it creates complexities that need to be understood and managed in order to optimize the organization’s full potential. To this end, this course will introduce basic factors at each level of the organization and discuss systematic attempts to study their roles. The focus of the course will also include an overview of the principles of organizational change in orderto develop the knowledge skills and abilities to design and/or oversee basic change efforts and understand the change process along with the tools to conduct basic change efforts. The ability to change is essentialfor health individual and organizational growth and development; but change is often resisted for a varietyof reasons. Innovation, technology, and downsizing are three examples of changes that impact an organization. The change process involves a series of steps that focuses on the vision, implementation, change agents, and other components. This course provides insight into types of changes impacting on organizations and possible strategies to address those changes. This course uses assigned readings, lecture, discussion, exams and individual/team projects where you are given a chance to apply course concepts and strategies.

After taking this class, you should understand the complexities involved in the “human aspect” of business through three lenses: individual, group and organization. In each level of analysis, you should be able to identify and understand key variables (e.g. perceptions, emotions, motivation, cultural diversity, ethics, leadership, etc), their roles in organizational context and how they relate to each other.

Next, based on your understanding, you should be able to critically reflect on important issues in organizational behaviour (OB) by 1) gathering and researching relevant information, 2) analyzing and assessing the problem using the theories and principles covered in class and 3) drawing rational conclusions through deliberate considerations and, 4) communicating your analysis and findings in an effective manner.

•Understand the role of OB and how it applies to management and the business setting.

•Why do you think the subject of OB might be criticized as being “only common sense,” when we would rarely hear such a criticism of a course in physics or statistics? Do you think this criticism of OB is fair? Analyze how perceptual errors can affect individual and group decisions in an organizational setting

• Analyze how personality traits like Big Five and MBTI relate to other important organizational factors like leadership and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB)..

• What, if anything, can managers do to manage employees’ emotions? Are there ethical implications in any of these actions? If so, what?