It is not just knowledge that brings power, but the effective application of knowledge. If you want to strive in an organizational world, you must also be able to integrate your knowledge with other people's knowledge, convince team members of your ideas, offer them feedback, handle conflicts, deal with people who see the world differently than you do, and ultimately also lead others.

This course provides you with theoretical knowledge and practically applicable tools to handle these challenges. Stated more formally, Organizational Behavior (OB) is the study of individuals and groups within an organizational context. It focuses on attributes, processes, behaviors, and outcomes within and between individual, interpersonal / group, and organizational levels of analysis.

The objective of this course lies in equipping you with a basic understanding of fundamental principles of OB. It should prepare you for higher effectiveness in current roles (e.g., managing a student club) and future roles (e.g., managing working life) in which you need to work with individuals and groups in organizations.

The course gradually broadens the level of perspective, building on the individual level developed in the Psychology course and then proceeding to the dyadic / group level. Lastly, we will focus on leading others. To put it more bluntly: This course is about making you more effective in (1) managing yourself, (2) managing peers, and (3) managing your employees in work environments. We will devote 360 lecture minutes (= two sessions) to each of the three topic areas.

Content:

• Having an understanding of core concepts of OB related to self-management, peer management, and the management of employees at work.

Skills:

• Knowing how to use core concepts of OB to solve business problems about the management of work and people.
• Having acquired new business skills that are relevant to address business problems.

Attitude

• Being able and willing to critically reflect upon yourself, biases that you may have, and ways to become aware of / tackle them.
• Appreciating differences between individuals and using them as a source of inspiration rather than hindrance.

Many of the classes in this course rely on chapters from the book "Organizational Behavior" written by S. P. Robbins and T. A. Judge (published by Pearson). The relevant chapters are provided as a pdf via Moodle. These are from the 18th edition, published in 2019. You can use any edition after 2010; however, please make sure that the chapter refers to the relevant lecture topic (as the numbering of chapters is different between editions). The book is also available in the library.

Additionally, you will be provided with scientific or practitioner articles which shall help you to deepen your knowledge on the topics discussed in class. They will also be available on Moodle.

Interactive Lecture

Group Work

Case Studies

1) Exam (2/3 of the course grade, individual grades, maximum 60 points)

The closed-book exam will take 60 minutes. You will write the exam with no auxiliaries (notes, books, etc.). 2/3 of the exam grade comes from your correct answers to multiple choice questions. 1/3 of the exam grade comes from your correct answers to solving a case study (i.e., open questions).

(2) OB Application (1/3 of the course grade, team grades, maximum 30 points)

You will be randomly assigned to a team in the first lecture. Each team consists of five members) and will work on creating a movie (max. 4 minutes) plus flyer (summary; one page) that applies an OB theory / concept to a challenge of an organization / daily working life.

We currently plan to teach this course in a hybrid format (e.g., half of the class present in person, the other half participating online). This of course needs to be in line with the then valid Corona-guidelines and the management board decision. If we are not allowed to realize a hybrid format, we will teach the entire course online.

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