MIS 34185 Spring 2011 Astakhova

M&IS 34185 Section 001 Call 12000

Individual & Group Behavior in Organizations

Spring 2011

Class meeting:  Thursday, 5:30 pm - 8:15 pm, BSA 115

Instructor:  Marina Astakhova , Graduate Assistant, BSA A422,

E-mail mastakh1@kent.edu

Office Hours:  MW, 8:30 – 10:30 am; or by appointment

Required Reading

1.      Stephen P. Robbins, & Timothy A. Judge. 2011. Organizational Behavior (14^th edition). Pearson/Prentice Hall.

2.      Additional readings (journal articles and cases) will be assigned throughout the course as indicated in the class schedule below.

3.      For the “Get the Evidence” assignment and your own professional development, I encourage you to become familiar with other sources, especially those available electronically through GoogleScholar.com or KSU Electronic Library Database. Relevant social science journals include the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Organization Science and Personnel Psychology.

 Course Objectives

You have spent most of your life in organizations (schools, sports and/or community organizations, etc.). Your work life will involve working with, in, or for organizations, and, at some point, possibly creating your own business enterprise and/or a service organization to help your community. The purpose of this course is to help you understand how people and organizations function, based on the latest social science research on work, workers, and organizations. The goals of this course are:

1. to help you learn how to effectively manage your relationships with coworkers, managers, subordinates, clients and customers;

2. to begin acquainting you with the ever-growing body of evidence that will be available to you throughout your career regarding effective organizations and management practice;

3. so that you can ultimately become a literate, well-informed professional, able to make decisions that reflect best available evidence regarding effective practice.

Plan for the Course

The course will contain the following elements:

1.      “A question of the day.” For each class you will need to bring a question written on a separate piece of paper (with your name on it). Your questions should be related to the material covered in any of the previous classes/articles/book chapters. Your questions can reflect something you do not completely understand yourself, something which seems to be particularly important to you and/or the organization; something you would like to test you partner on, etc. Questions should be thoughtful and interesting. Your questions should require answers which can be completed in 5-10 minutes. In the beginning of the class you will discuss your questions in groups and will give me ONLY ONE QUESTION PER GROUP you think is the best.  Groups will then exchange the questions. You will have 10 minutes to answer the question you received (ONE ANSWER PER GROUP). The goal of the activity is twofold: 1) take attendance; 2) give you an opportunity to earn extra points. I will grade the quality of both answers and questions: a check mark will mean that you have been present in class and created a satisfactory question/answer; 1 point would mean that you have submitted an exceptionally good question/answer. Every 6 points will translate in 1 extra point added to your final course grade. Also, if no class was missed, then one extra point would be added to your final grade as well. Points will be given to each group member.      

2.      Skit Learning. A skit learning will follow “A question of the day.” Learning can be accomplished in many ways. Conducting simple skits can be fun and enlightening as others watch a team act out some core principles of Leadership topics and issues. The class will be divided in teams. Each team will choose a specific organization behavior topic (book chapters will be used as the topics to select from). The team is to create and choreograph a skit that will be portrayed with a narrator to guide the skit through its stages to ensure the viewers, the class, understand the concepts they are seeing played out before them. Creativity is at the core with costumes, accents, wigs, etc to drive home the key points of the assigned skit topics (15% of the grade).

3.      Traditional lectures. A lecture will follow “Skit Learning.” These lectures will be accompanied by PPT handouts posted on vista.kent.edu.

4.      Exercises.  There will be several exercises throughout the course.  They are meant to give brief hands-on exposure or practice in key topic areas.  Some may require advanced preparation, but most will be conducted during class (10% of the grade).

5.      Best Self Exercise. This exercise, inspired by (i.e. shamelessly copied from the syllabus of Professor  Denise M. Rousseau) is designed to reveal your unique competencies and skills, that is, the special capabilities you bring to your work and others. You will seek input from other people who know you in order to more deeply understand your personal, interpersonal, and managerial strengths (15% of the grade).

a.       Identify 15-20 People Who Know You Well. These may be coworkers or fellow students (former or current), friends (old or recent), professors, or anyone else who has had extended contact with you. The more diverse this list is the better. Since people are often busy and this assignment is due early in the course, note that everyone may not respond in time. A minimum of 10 respondents is needed to complete the assignment. It is important to choose people who will give you an honest opinion.

b.      Create a Feedback Request Form and email it to the 10-20 people you selected in step Although this request may feel awkward or difficult, many people have participated in this exercise previously and found it a profound learning experience, and one that significant others are quite willing to assist with.

c.       Interpret Your Feedback, by reading it all and making notes on the key insights you develop. Look for common ideas across the responses you received and create themes that you can illustrate with several examples.

d.      Compose the Reflected Best-Self Portrait by writing a description of your BEST SELF (1-2 pg) that reflects the insights you acquired from the feedback, appending copies of the emails to the portrait you turn in (are not included in 1-2 pg count). For example, a self portrait might indicate what you do when you are at your best, how you solve problems or communicate with others effectively, and the ways in which you help other people.

Sample:

“I am outgoing and enthusiastic, which leads me to connect with many different kinds of people. This helps me build good collaborations, something that other people appreciate because it helps them work better with others.

People know that I am open to a lot of ideas and encourage them to speak their minds. By being very interested in what others have to say and positive about the contributions they make, I encourage creativity and tolerance. I am able to deal with people from many different backgrounds.

By recognizing the good intentions and ideas that other people have I am able to help manage conflict between people. I also build confidence in others that they have something to contribute… etc.”

In class we will discuss the implications of these best-self portraits for the development of managerial competencies, effective rewards and motivating work experiences.

To find more about the purpose of the exercise please read the article of Roberts et al., “Composing best-self portrait…” Academy of Management Review, 2005.

6.      Discussion of organizational behavior-related articles. During the course period there will be 3 in-class discussions of organization-behavior-related articles. You will read a number of journal articles for this course (the information about the articles will be posted on Vista). These articles must be read by a certain date, and all students will be accountable for questions asked in class about these articles. Come to class with main points identified for each article (15% of the grade).

7.      Get the Evidence: Throughout your career you will face tough, challenging decisions regarding how to deal with individuals, work groups, or your organization generally. Making important decisions takes time because it is worthwhile to obtain the best evidence in determining the proper course of action to produce a quality result. I will give you a managerial challenge and it is your task (as a group of 4-5 people) to evaluate relevant and best available social science research and to identify the best approach based upon that evidence. The criterion for grading this assignment is how effectively your marshal the best evidence from the array of relevant research. You will need to defend your solution in class. Descriptions of challenges will be given a week before they are due (3 times during the course). Best evidence refers to evidence-based research, including:

• Meta-analyses of research studies (Highest Quality)

• Systematic reviews of research articles

• Randomized controlled intervention studies

• Quasi-experimental

• Outcomes studies

• Non-experimental & Qualitative (Lowest Quality)

The final deliverable should include a 1-2 page report which will support your response to the challenge and at least 3-4 sources cited (see the suggested list of journals). You will need to hand in the report in class on the due date. We will have a discussion in class (15% of the grade – 5% each).

8.      Exam. There will be ONE discussion-type examination. This will be a TEAM project (can be individual per your request). The teams can use any reference materials they wish to support the answers but all sources should be documented and properly credited. The examination will be emailed to each student one week prior to the due date for the examination turn in. The exam will be turned in hard copy. Effective writing skills are a vital component of our journey so I expect your work to be professionally submitted in spelling, grammar, sentence structure and referencing any sources you might choose to utilize. The examination is to be turned in on the scheduled class indicated in the syllabus. If not turned in the test score will be reduced by ten points for each late class period leading up to the actual submission. In class we will have a discussion of the examination questions (15% of the grade).

9.      Persuasive Paper/Presentation--Using the evidence to persuade somebody else (group work): You are to prepare a short (1-2 pages) persuasive paper in which you attempt to convince your (hypothetical or real) manager to take a particular action related to an organizational behavior topic. Your paper will be related to issues we discuss in class (or it can be related to another interest you have pertinent to OB if you consult with me first). Sample topics include: why team-based rewards should be used instead of individual rewards, or why workplace diversity requires a change in the way the company socializes newcomers. You will also need to present your persuasive paper to class. Presentation should take 7-10 minutes, use of PowerPoint is mandatory, all group members should present (15% of the grade).

Keep in mind that many bosses, yours included, may have little professional management training and even less knowledge of social science. Criteria for evaluating your paper will be based on 1) how effectively you marshal the best evidence to make your case, 2) the extent you have made your case in a strong, truthful, and convincing manner, and 3) how well you use facts about the particular organization (again, real or hypothetical) to help you make your case.

You will then evaluate presentations by voting. The group which will receive the most number of votes will get an extra point towards the final grade.

10. Evaluations. I will ask for mid-semester and final self-evaluations for your class preparation/participation.  Please keep track of how frequently you come to class prepared, the number of classes you miss, and have a good idea of how frequently you participate in class, as well as the quality of your participation.  Failure to submit these forms on time will result in a 10 point subtraction from your earned class participation/preparation grade.

Your will also need to summit a group member evaluation form after you have completed a pervasive paper group project (there will be two group projects during the semester). 

11. Opportunity Shop for Extra Points

During the semester you can earn extra points which will be added to your final grade. Below are the options of how extra points can be earned. You can take an advantage of any or all of the options:

Grading

The grading scale is predetermined to ensure that you always know your grade in the class.  Grades will be based on the absolute standard below, and will not be curved. Extra points (if any) will be applied to the final grade. Grading will be based on the following factors and weighting:

-          Skit Learning                                                              15%

-          Exercises                                                                     10%

-          Best Self Exercise                                                       15%

-          Discussion of OB-Related Articles                            15%

-          Get the Evidence                                                        15%

-          Exam                                                                           15%

-          Persuasive Paper/Presentation                         15%

-          Extra Points           

            100%+

Scale for final letter: A (93-100); A- (90-92); B+ (87-89); B (83-86); B- (80-82); C+ (77-79); C (73-76); C- (70-72); D+ (67-69); D (63-66); D- (60-62); and F (Below 60).

Course Withdrawal Deadline

The course withdrawal deadline is Sunday, March 20, 2011.

Registration

Students have responsibility to ensure they are properly enrolled in classes.  You are advised to review your official class schedule (using Student Tools on FlashLine) during the first two weeks of the semester to ensure you are properly enrolled in this class and section.  Should you find an error in your class schedule, you have until January 23, 2011 to correct the error.  If registration errors are not corrected by this date and you continue to attend and participate in classes for which you are not officially enrolled, you are advised now that you will not receive a grade at the conclusion of the semester for any class in which you are not properly registered. 

Academic Honesty

Cheating means to misrepresent the source, nature, or other conditions of your academic work (e.g., tests, papers, projects, assignments) so as to get undeserved credit.   In addition, it is considered to be cheating when one cooperates with someone else in any such misrepresentation.  The use of the intellectual property of others without giving them appropriate credit is a serious academic offense.  It is the University's policy that cheating or plagiarism result in receiving a failing grade for the work or course.  Repeat offenses result in dismissal from the University.

Students with Disabilities

University policy 3342-3-01.3 requires that students with disabilities be provided reasonable accommodations to ensure their equal access to course content. If you have a documented disability and require accommodations, please contact the instructor at the beginning of the semester to make arrangements for necessary classroom adjustments. Please note, you must first verify your eligibility for these through Student Accessibility Services (contact 330-672-3391 or visit www.kent.edu/sas <http://www.registrars.kent.edu/disability/> for more information on registration procedures). 

Graduation Information

It is your responsibility to apply for graduation before the set deadline. If you apply after the deadline you will be assessed a $200 late fee. Please see your academic advisor as soon as possible if you are uncertain as to your progress toward graduation.  The graduation application deadlines are follows:

 Graduation Application Deadlines:

May Graduation: Apply before September 15th

August Graduation: Apply before December 15th

December Graduation: Apply before March 15th

To apply for graduation complete the following steps:

1.       Log onto your Flashline account

2.       Click on the Student Tools tab

3.       Look in the Graduation Planning Tool Box

4.       Click on Application for Graduation

**If an error message appears, you must contact your advisor.

Course Outline*

 * I reserve the right to modify this schedule according to the needs and progress of the class.