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Course 2021-2022 a.y.

30465 - ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

BESS-CLES
Department of Management and Technology

Course taught in English

Go to class group/s: 13

BESS-CLES (8 credits - I sem. - OB  |  SECS-P/08)
Course Director:
FRANCESCA PRANDSTRALLER

Classes: 13 (I sem.)
Instructors:
Class 13: FRANCESCA PRANDSTRALLER


Class-group lessons delivered  on campus

Suggested background knowledge

The content of course 30463 "Mind and Society" (Bess, second year) includes concepts and theories that can apply also to the field of Organizational Behavior.


Mission & Content Summary
MISSION

Although quantitative and analytical skills are crucial for your future job, in your careers you depend on people to accomplish tasks, goals, and projects; you will need to work for other people, with other people, and supervise other people. An understanding of the human side of management is an essential complement to the technical skills you are learning in other core courses. Although we focus on business organizations, you find that the course concepts have valuable applications to any kind of organizations (non-profits, athletic teams, social clubs, religious and political groups). This course provides you with an undergraduate-level introduction to organization behavior and design. The aim is to strength your analytical skills and enable you to assess people behavior in work environments, organizations’ forms and structures and the root causes of their performance. This is a highly useful skill to cultivate for a wide variety of managerial roles and positions and it is indispensable for working in a start-up or in family business, for managing a company, consulting, auditing, and even in investment banking.

CONTENT SUMMARY
  • Main organizational structures
  • Rewards and job design
  • Human behavior inside an organization.
  • Individual differences 
  • Groups and group dynamics. 
  • Power and leadership.
  • Conflict and negotiation 
  • Organizational and international Culture. 

 


Intended Learning Outcomes (ILO)
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
At the end of the course student will be able to...

The course is designed to accomplish three main goals:

  • Increase your knowledge of OB concepts so that you can understand and analyze how organizations and the people within them work.
  • Provide you with opportunities to apply OB concepts to real-world problems faced by managers.
  • Provide the ability to become knowledgeable organization members (development of attitudes).

To effectively work in an organization, you must be able to diagnose problems, communicate clearly, make effective decisions, motivate and influence  others, manage diversity, and understand organizational structure and change.

APPLYING KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
At the end of the course student will be able to...
  • Understand the functioning of an organizational system, the dimensions of individual and social behavior in an organization, the organizational structure and culture and the main human resource management practices.
  • Apply skills related to Individual Behavior and Group dynamics, effective communication and negotiation.

Teaching methods
  • Face-to-face lectures
  • Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
  • Case studies /Incidents (traditional, online)
  • Group assignments
  • Interactive class activities (role playing, business game, simulation, online forum, instant polls)
DETAILS
  • In-class exercises to understand the language and to apply models and theory.
  • Theories and/or case studies discussions (in-class).
  • Group assignments to learn how to apply theories to reality.
  • Interactive activities to learn and practice behavioral skills (communication, team work, negotiation).

Assessment methods
  Continuous assessment Partial exams General exam
  • Written individual exam (traditional/online)
  •   x x
  • Group assignment (report, exercise, presentation, project work etc.)
  •     x
  • Active class participation (virtual, attendance)
  • x    
    ATTENDING STUDENTS

    The assessment of attending students is divided in a midterm exam (30% of the final grade), a final exam (30% of the final grade) and a graded field group work (40% of the final grade).

    Midterm exam for attending students: October 20th 2021, h. 9.00 am

     

    ATTENTION:

    1)     Attending students who did not take the midterm or are not satisfied with their midterm grades, can refuse the midterm grade and take again the entire general exam at the end of the course (60% of the final grade).

    2)     Field Project grades will expire after the January session of 2021 meaning that it is possible to be considered attending only until the session of January included.

    3)     In order to pass the final exam the total of the midterm and the final individual exams must be graded at least 18, + the grade of the group field work.

    4)     Students who fail the attending exam MUST retake the exam as NON ATTENDING in the next exam sessions.

    The partial exam and final exam are composed of 2 parts, MCQ and mini case studies: 

    A part with closed questions (MCQ), which allows you to develop the organizational language and terminology and to verify the learning and understanding of the knowledge (concepts and theories) developed during the course regarding organizational behavior and structures . A second part with  2 mini-cases that enable problem-solving and decision-making skills on the same content.

    Part of the grade ( 40%)  is also referred to the Group Field Work developed by students during the course: the purpose of this assignment is to to use concepts from the course to identify, analyze, and develop a plan for solving a key problem which a real organization is facing. This task allows students to apply to real settings concepts and theories and propose solutions that can help solve an organizational problem. 

     

    NOT ATTENDING STUDENTS

    For non-attending students, the assessment is based exclusively on their performance in the final exam.

    • The final exam is a true/false and multiple-choice test (31 points), and is “closed-book”, “no-notes” (i.e. no materials can be used during the exam).
    • The exam consists of a mix of pure theoretical questions and applications of models and theoretical concepts and case studies from the two whole textbooks. 
    • The exam is graded with a range of 0 - 31 points, with a fixed grade distribution based on the standard Bocconi undergrad grading policy (from 0/31 to 17/31 the exam is failed) and no penalization for wrong answers.

     

    The use of true/false and MCQ aims at veryfing the understanding and knowledge of concept,  theories , models and examples from the books, which are the only source of learning for non attending students. 


    Teaching materials
    ATTENDING STUDENTS

    The material for this course is made of slides provided by the instructor, and research and practitioner papers, textbook.

    • MCSHANE, VON GLINOW, Organizational behavior, McGrawHill 2018, 9th edition. ISBN 9781260570656
    • In class, we use slides to present the main ideas and guide the discussion. The slides and the bibliography of the papers are posted on Bboard. Students can download copies of the slides, but they need to connect to the Bocconi Library to search and download the articles.
    • Note that for attending students this book is not a complete replacement for the assigned papers, lecture notes and slides, as they may follows a different organization: some issues that we cover in-depth in the course in class receive only a brief treatment in the book, and vice versa.
    NOT ATTENDING STUDENTS
    • MCSHANE, VON GLINOW, Organizational behavior, McGrawHill 2018, 9th edition. ISBN 9781260570656
    • STETTNER, Skills for new managers, McGraw-Hill 2014, 2nd Edition.

    The two entire textbook are  mandatory for non-attending students.

    Last change 02/02/2022 16:44