Success in management requires an understanding of the factors that shape individual and group behaviors and attitudes. This course deals with the people part of management. We will develop a complex view of organizational behavior at the individual, interpersonal and group levels of analysis. We will examine topics such as social perception and interpersonal dynamics, motivation, influence and persuasion, group decision making, organizational culture and commitment.
The goal is to provide you with the tools and concepts to explore why people do what they do and, thus, prepare you for management challenges. The course is theory-based but practice oriented. It is firmly grounded in the disciplines of cognitive and social psychology and is designed to focus on the situational causes of behavior, including your own.
Classes consist of lectures, individual and group exercises, case discussions, and other activities that provide opportunities to apply analytical frameworks to concrete organizational problems.
