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INTRODUCTION TO
THE
FIRST YEAR
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR COURSE
The First Year
Organizational Behavior (FYOB) course is designed to introduce a series of
concepts and organizing frameworks that reinforce the mission of the Darden
School, namely to “better society by preparing leaders in the world of
practical affairs.” These frameworks
are organized into six basic groups: the leadership point of view, leading
others, leading teams, human resource management, organizational design, and
leading change. While the faculty
recognize that all of you have significant experience in managing relationships
and human behavior in organizations, we observe that what is common sense to
one is often thought folly by another. What may have worked quite well thus far
in life may or may not work so well as you assume larger and larger spheres of
influence in the business world. FYOB,
therefore, is designed to clarify and deepen your understanding of how humans
behave in organizations of varying sizes and of how you might increase your
influence with them. During the course,
you will be asked to learn and apply a variety of conceptual frameworks that
help to make sense of human behavior in organizations—all from a leader or
potential leader’s point of view.
Course Modules
The leadership point of view (LPV) we will develop revolves around a
central assumption of responsibility for one’s outcomes and consequences in
life--including participation in the Darden School and in one’s career choices
and future work. This leadership point
of view allows one to see or create worthwhile goals, to see what needs to be
done in order to achieve those goals, and to exert influence in order to
accomplish those goals. While “seeing”
or knowing is a beginning, it is the ability to realize what one sees that
denotes the effective leader.
Leadership and the leadership point of view is appropriate at the
individual (self), interpersonal, small group, large group, organizational, and
societal levels. LPV implies taking a
proactive stance toward the world and learning skills that will allow one to
carve out a niche in the world which, with six and a half billion people and
growing, is becoming increasingly difficult.
The LPV module will
introduce you to a framework for visualizing the key elements of leadership and
a framework for visualizing the key elements of understanding
organizations—organizations that you may work within and/or lead. As with the other frameworks to come in the
course, you will be expected
To “know” these frameworks (i.e., can you articulate
them to others),
To “understand” them (i.e., can you explain them,
their elements, and their interconnections to others),
To “apply” them (i.e., can you use them to diagnose
and clarify events in the world), and
To “learn” from them (i.e., can you identify things
that the frameworks do not explain and identify ways to begin finding answers
to those questions?).
These same four levels of learning will be expected
of you throughout the course with the frameworks that are introduced in each
module.
Further, we expect that you
be able to “incorporate” these frameworks in your thinking (i.e., Can you
relate various frameworks to each other and develop a personal set of
frameworks that relate to your work?).
It is important that you note that the incorporation we seek here is on
the OTHER side of learning these frameworks.
Some of you may seek to remain with the frameworks you now have on THIS
side of learning what the course has to present. However, the course will invite you and expect you to explore the
set of frameworks you now hold and have incorporated into your world view from
your past experience, to add new frameworks, and to develop a new set of
personal incorporations by the end of the year. In this sense, First Year Organizational Behavior is decidedly
much more than applying the “common sense” you have developed thus far in life.
Leadership eventually boils
down to influencing others. The Leading Others module will focus on the
dynamics and nature of interpersonal understanding and influence. Here, you will be introduced to a view on
why people behave the way they do, a way of seeing more clearly what’s
happening in relationships and interactions, and a framework for clarifying
individual behavior. The course recognizes
that there have been many models of human behavior that have come and
gone. Your challenge in the course will
be to examine your personal model of human behavior, to extend and amplify it
with the material presented in the course, and to try those extensions in your
various activities at the school—including your learning team relationships.
This module provides a basic
foundation for the required leadership elective program of the Second
Year. In this program, you must choose
one of the several electives on leadership currently approved by the faculty to
fulfill graduation requirements. FYOB
will only introduce concepts that will be developed and added to in the
leadership required-elective series.
The Leading Teams module focuses on the dynamics of small groups and
introduces a variety of concepts and frameworks designed to help you understand
how groups and teams develop and what you can do to be a team member more
effectively and to manage and lead them better. As the world continues rushing into the Information Age, the role
of team based organizations is growing.
In fact, we assert that organizations that develop the capacity to form,
produce from, and dissolve and reform effective work teams rapidly has a
distinct, strategic, and difficult to imitate competitive advantage in the
market place. This module will help you
see more clearly how groups form, how they develop over time, how common roles
emerge in group settings, and how to monitor various dimensions of group
activity. We will invite you to use
more vigorously your learning teams and other school related and assigned teams
as a real learning laboratory that can strengthen your personal ability to work
in and lead teams of varying sizes.
These first three modules,
Leadership Point of View, Leading Teams, and Leading Others, comprise the first
semester’s work in FYOB. The main
themes will be the leadership point of view, how you understand others’
behavior as well as your own, and how you work in, contribute to, and influence
your learning team and other teams.
Second
Semester
The last three modules of
the course, Managing Human Resources, Leading Organizational Design, and
Leading Change, are scheduled so as to coordinate with the activities and
concepts introduced in the First Year Strategy course. Strategic analysis helps you to understand
industries and the role individual firms play within those industries. The FYOB second semester modules are designed
to give you insight about how to implement those strategies through managing
human resources more effectively, through more appropriate organizational
designs, and through a comfort with and ability to lead the change process.
Every organization by
definition has people in it.
Understanding how to manage those humans in relatively large numbers is
the focus of the Human Resource
Management module of the course.
The module begins with a basic model of human resource flows into,
through and out of organizations.
Important issues of managing careers in organizations, training and development,
developing reward systems, and how HRM can become a source of competitive
advantage will be introduced and explored.
Further, the module will explore issues of managing diversity in
organizations, difficulties in developing global human resource management
systems, and the formation and management of organizational cultures.
Organizations are the result
of a wide range and often long sequence of decisions made by people about how
members should work together. While you
may not be in the near term in a position to be making major organizational design decisions, with a
LPV you will be immediately in a position to influence those decisions. Leading from the middle or from the bottom
to influence organizational designs may seem unlikely and/or daunting, however,
you will have many opportunities to shape the way work is done in the
organizations in which you work. In a
real sense, organizational design decisions are powerful and pervasive. Consider the analogy of an ocean liner. While many might respond to the question,
“Who’s leading an ocean liner?” with the captain, the helmsman, the engineer,
the tour director, or others, in reality the ship’s designer made a series of
decisions that clearly enabled some activities and disabled others. No matter how hard the ship’s captain may
wish to turn sharply, if the design didn’t allow for it, it won’t happen. So, designing organizations that will
respond to the flurry of challenges presented by the global economy moving into
the Information Age is critical. This
module will explore issues of organizational structure, design of various
systems that work inside an organization, some new emerging organizational
forms, organizational culture, and the growing phenomenon of virtual
organizations.
Finally, the FYOB course
will focus on the issue of leading
change. One cannot lead without the
ability to understand and manage change—change in self, change in others,
change in groups, change in departments, change in the organization, change in
one’s industry, change in the world at large.
This module will introduce a general model of change and present a
series of change problems in various kinds of organizations. The module is designed to help you develop
your ability to see the need for change, to grow increasingly comfortable with
the change process, and to anticipate and manage resistance to change.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the FYOB course at Darden is about
preparing you to be an effective leader in the world of practical affairs. The First Year course is designed to build a
solid foundation of leadership principles and to introduce you to key concepts
from which you can build in your Second Year course work. The course, by nature, explores topics
around which most of you have already developed “good enough” operating
principles and personal frameworks. To
the extent you are willing to explore those historically developed principles
and frameworks, the course can add to your repertoire and ultimately to your
flexibility in understanding and leading human behavior in organizations.
We acknowledge that, in some
sense, every student in an OB class is an “expert,” you have, after all,
functioned quite well in organizations prior to Darden. In another sense, every student in an OB
class is a “novice.” Even the most
experienced scientists of human behavior find the topic perplexing and
constantly revealing. If you can bring
this sense of curiosity to the course and realize that most of your potential
success in your career will revolve around the way in which you deal with and
lead others, the course will be an exciting and discovery laden
experience. Each class, we intend, will
be challenging, rigorous, and value-adding.
Pedagogical Approach
FYOB will use a variety of teaching techniques to strive
to accomplish our objectives. While
most of the classes will revolve around case
discussions, we will also use
experiential exercises (in which the data to be considered and analyzed
will be generated real time as opposed to in the past as is the case with
cases), films (in which we
acknowledge the scripted nature of the medium but also its impact on learning),
reflections on past experiences, and role playing.
A word about the role
plays. Often a case situation invites
communication between people in the case around the objectives one or more have
set. When we feel it appropriate, we
will invite you to play roles designed to help clarify the specifics and
realities of trying to implement action plans articulated in class. In most of these role plays the general
guide line will be that you BE YOURSELF and behave as you would if you were in
the situation presented in the case.
That is, we are much less interested in how you think someone else
should act than we are about how you
would act in that setting.
Some of you may find this
pedagogical technique a bit intimidating.
We invite you to move past this feeling. Role playing is an excellent way of clarifying your own thinking,
of learning what works and what doesn’t work in a situation, and of practicing
your personal skills of conversation and persuasion. It’s one thing to talk about doing something, it’s quite another
to practice doing it—and we grant you, quite another to actually do it.
We’ve also scheduled four three-class days during the
course, two in the fall and two in the spring.
These classes in which OB will meet for the entire class period will be
a chance for us to use exercises, films, and other media to explore some topics
in greater depth than we could do in the usual 85 minute classes. Sometimes these exercises will take the
whole three periods, other times, we’ll mix a case discussion or personal
reflection discussion in with a two period activity that’s related. In addition, our use of the longer class
periods on two class days will help us develop more depth on key topics.
Grading
FYOB will rely heavily on
your contributions to the learning environment of the classroom; class
contributions will count 50% of your grade.
The faculty will review your contributions daily after each class. Your final exam or paper along with other
occasional short essays will contribute to the other 50% of your grade. We make this emphasis on contribution because
we believe that leading is mostly about influencing others. Each class period becomes a mini-lab in
which you can practice ideas, skills, concepts, and perspectives that we
introduce during the course.
In this environment,
shooting from the hip won’t get you very far.
We also recognize the so-called “chip shots” and problems of “air time
dominance” and note that whenever you speak, your comments could have a
positive or a negative influence on those around you, including the
faculty. Speaking could help your grade
or hurt it. We urge you not to worry
about this, rather to take the strategy of trying to be involved in every class
in an active and contributing way. If
you do this, you won’t have to worry about your class contribution grade.
FYOB Course Staffing
Course Head: Jim Clawson Room 277 924-7488
CV
Harquail Room
266 924-7554
Joe
Harder Room
179 924-4801
Martin
Davidson Room
185 924-4483
Course Secretary: Sherry Alston Room 264 924-7331
FIRST YEAR ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR SYLLABUS
Fall 1999
Current as of
October 22, 1999
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