NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE
NUS Business School

Department of Management and Organisation

MNO3301 Organizational Behavior

Professor:

Dr. Matthias Spitzmuller / (expect responses in 24 hours after sending email; call 9836 0691 for more urgent matters)

Session: Semester 1, 2013/2014

Time and location to be confirmed

Course Objectives

This module is about the human side of enterprises. The intellectual roots are from the behavioral sciences of psychology, social psychology, sociology, and anthropology. In this module, participants explore current issues and challenges people face within organizations.

Aside from the theoretical knowledge, I would like participants do their own research on the techniques and processes that converts theory into practice. In other words, we will learn the theory together, and also look for ways to put theory to work. I am expecting everyone to do her/his part at contributing to our knowledge.

In this module, we will not be covering the following topics because they will be covered in detail in other core and elective module. These are organization and structure; management functions of planning, organizing, controlling, and directing.

This course is a LEARNING JOURNEY for us to find answers to issues in Organizational Behavior. Let’s examine the key word “learning.”

learn·ing [lur-ning]

  1. knowledge acquired by systematic study in any field of scholarly application.
  2. the act or process of acquiring knowledge or skill.
  3. Psychology. the modification of behavior through practice, training, or experience.

So true to definition, we will try to do all three as a course objective.

Expectations for Level-3 Participants

This is a level-3 module, and as such, I expect participants to co-educate all participants including your facilitator. Within broader topics, bring new and interesting information to us all. You will play a large part in the research for and presenting of the knowledge to fellow participants in class. Identifying issues, searching for information, and converting ideas into practical techniques and processes should be well within level-3 capabilities. We just need to focus, practice, and sharpen these skills.

The Challenge

Yes, this course is going to be challenging for all of us. However, ask yourself: if something is easy, is it worth pursuing? If it is easy, doesn’t that just mean that we are already competent at it? And if we are already competent, where is the learning? And if there isn’t any, why should we do it?

My role as facilitator is to challenge you and grow your capabilities. Learning something new involves moving out of our comfort zone. My role as facilitator also means that we will support your learning and growth, at the same time encouraging independence. Your role in class is to learn and help support the learning of others. This is a critical skill for excellent leaders and therefore you should seek earnestly to refine your skills.

Fairness

This course requires commitment, effort, and teamwork. To be fair, those who work harder and contribute more to the team (to task accomplishment and to relationship building) and to the class will receive more credit and those that contribute less should receive relatively fewer credits. Peer reviews will partly determine your grade. The group work grade will be adjusted to reflect your contributions to the team.

Assessment

100% continuous assessment.

Assessment
1.  4 MCQ / 40
2.  Discussion Leadership/
Team facilitation session / 15
3.  Team Project / 20
4.  Class contributions / 10
5.  Reflection Essays
(best 3 of 4 essays) / 15

Your Grade

Grading at this university uses forced ranking. Beyond attaining a good standard of work, your grade will reflects your efforts and the quality of your work relative to those of your classmates. Promotions, performance bonuses, and salary increases in the workplace is based on a forced ranking system. This system reflects the reality of the workplace. This system is used at the top universities in Singapore and also many top universities around the world for grading. Your grade reflects your performance relative to the rest of the class (make sure you understand what this means and make sure you keep track of the quality and effort of your classmates unless you want to be left behind). If you want an “A”, your work has to be in the top 15-20 percentile in terms of quality and effort.

Submitting of Assignments

As an adult, it is your responsibility to submit the assignments to the correct work-bin on IVLE. Make sure you have the correct filename and please include your full name. I will not be able to give credit for assignments that are found in the wrong work-bin or have incorrect filenames.

Teamwork

The class will be divided into 9-10 teams of students for the duration of the term. During the term, each team will be responsible for one in-class presentation and for one class discussion leadership/class facilitation. Dates for the team presentations and for the class facilitation sessions will be determined in class. Team members will work together and contribute meaningfully. Individuals in the team may be given a poor performance review or be “fired” by the team. If a team member gives 50% effort relative to other members, s/he will receive 50% of the team grade. If the team feels it fit to “fire” the team member, s/he will receive no marks. To sanction a member, all the team has to do is vote and agree on a resolution and the team may email or sms me their decision.

Class Facilitation Session

Every week will have one team who will function as discussion leaders. Every team will hold the role of class discussion leader once in the semester. As class discussion leader, the team will give a 15-20 minute presentation on the topic of the day or subcomponents thereof. This presentation is supposed to be engaging and thought-provoking. In addition to this presentation, the discussion leaders are responsible for creating a stimulating learning atmosphere throughout the class by participating actively in class, by raising interesting questions, and by pointing out relevant practical examples, especially examples from an Asian context. To minimize redundancies with my lecture, all teams are advised to make an appointment with me at least one week prior to the lecture to determine the content of the team presentation and layout for the class.

Grade

70% of the grade for the class discussion leadership will be determined by the team presentation, 30% of the grade will be determined by the extent to which the team was able to contribute to a stimulating learning environment throughout the lecture. Please submit presentation slides at least one day prior to the lecture by 5pm.

Team Project

Presentation

Each team should select an organization (profit or non-profit) and identify an OB-related issue which the company is facing. To identify a company and topic, consult the popular business press (Financial Times Asia, Wall Street Journal Asia, Harvard Business Review, etc.). I encourage all teams to contact me in the early stages of the semester to determine whether the company/topic you are having in mind is an appropriate example to be discussed in class. Sometimes, solutions can be too obvious, thus preventing teams from developing creative solutions, other examples might be too complex to discuss them in a short 20 minutes presentation. All teams need to make sure that they identify enough background information on their respective company to develop an interesting presentation and to be able to answer questions from the audience and the instructor.

Your report will be as follows:

Length: One powerpoint presentation, to be submitted at least two days prior to presentation to the instructor (15-20 slides).

Grade

Team Project Presentation (10 marks)

The class mean grade will be dependent on how good your work is. The team grades will be dependent on each team’s relative contribution to the class effort. Thus, the team grade will have a distribution around the class mean. Wow everyone, think out of the box, be better than what the usual class presentations are.

Report (10 marks)

This is based on the relative quality of the teams from the 3 classes (15 teams).

Textbooks

  1. Robbins, S.P. & Judge, T.A. Organizational Behavior (14th edition). Pearson.

Tentative Course Outline

Week / Topic and Deliverables / Readings
Week 1 / Introduction to OB / Robbins & Judge Chapter 1
Week 2 / Individual Differences / Robbins & Judge Chapter 5
Week 3 / Diversity in Organizations
Deliverables:
Reflection Essay I based on previous class
Class Facilitation I / Robbins & Judge Chapter 2
Week 4 / Perception and Decision Making
Deliverables:
Reflection Essay II based on previous class
Class Facilitation II
MCQ 1 / Robbins & Judge Chapter 6
Week 5 / Emotions and Moods
Deliverable:
Class Facilitation III / Robbins & Judge Chapter 4
Week 6 / Work Motivation
Deliverable:
Class Facilitation IV / Robbins & Judge Chapter 7
Week 7 / Teams I
Deliverables:
Class Facilitation V & VI
MCQ 2 / Robbins & Judge Chapters 9-10 + selected articles
Week 8 / Teams II
Deliverables:
Class Facilitation VII
Reflection Essay III based on previous class / Robbins & Judge Chapters 9-10 + selected articles
Week 9 / Leadership I
Deliverables:
Class Facilitation VIII
MCQ 3 / Robbins & Judge Chapter 12
Week 10 / Leadership II
Deliverables:
Class Facilitation IX
Reflection Essay IV based on previous class / Robbins & Judge Chapter 12
Week 11 / OB – An Integrative and Applied Approach
Deliverable:
MCQ 4 / na
Tbd / Get Together/Dinner @Brotzeit / na

*Will have to schedule make-up class; date to be determined