1. Module 1 Getting Started

2. Table of Contents Introductions Course’s objectives & content
Assignments & grading
Basic concepts:
What is Organizational behavior (OB)?
What is an organization?
Organization as a system to ensure continuity & regularity of collective action

3. Intstructor

4. Course Objectives
This course introduces the attributes associated with the design and management of the human activity system that is responsible for operating an organization
It is built on a fundamental that the successful development of an organizational system is directly contingent on the human system.
As Engineers you will quite likely work for an organization, perhaps a large company or a small start-up. Quite likely you will end up working in a company where technology matters and many of you will be involved in technical problem solving. If you decide to pursue an entrepreneurial career at some point in your life you will have to design the organization of the new venture from scratch.
In all of these examples you will experience that there is a complex and interesting interplay between the development of new products or technologies and the ways people actually work together to accomplish these objectives and make their organizations more competitive.
Give a look at this video

5. Course Objectives Organizations as Socio-Technical Systems workplace
People
In the so called socio-technical perspective, organizations can be seen as socio-technical systems, i.e. systems in which there is an interaction between the human/social system and the technological system in a wider context with its own ecology. The assembly line we have seen in Modern Times is an example of a socio-technical system. In that example, how is the interaction designed? Who comes first, the human beings or the technology?
Technology

6. Course Objectives • Provide a background on Organizational Behavior
• Apply OB concepts and theories to corporate and business management through methodologies for organizational analysis
• Analyze organizations with a special focus on the management of singularities and crises, including accidents and creation of breakthrough innovations

7. Organizational factors (structure, culture, change)
Course Contents
Organizational factors
(structure, culture, change)
Organizational success
Productivity & satisfaction of individuals and groups
Individual
factors
(learning, personality, motivation, …)
Group
factors
(leadership, communication, decision making, teamwork, politics & conflict …)
(adapted from Hitt, Colella and Miller., 2009)

8. Assignments (see canvas site for the full breakdown)
Grades will be based on:
Attendance: listening to podcast and lecture materials views points (10 %) - assigned at the end of the course
Online discussions and other activities: 200 points (20%)
Team Project work: 400 points (40 %)
Exam (week 13): 300 points (30 %)
Team assignment: 3-4 members Teams proposed to the instructor (deadline as specified in the schedule)

9. Textbooks and readings
Hitt, M.A., Miller, C.C., Collela, A. (2013) Organizational Behavior - (4th Edition), John Wiley and sons
Reason, J. (1997). Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. ISBN:
Additional readings as specified in the syllabus

10. Textbooks
Selected chapters for the project work (see project guidelines)

11. Basic concepts of Organizational behavior
Organizational Behavior is…

12. Basic concepts of Organizational behavior
Organizational Behavior science is about investigating how individuals and groups behave in organizations
The purpose is applying this science to improve organizational design & effectiveness
Management of OB is ultimately about implementing actions focused on acquiring, developing and applying the knowledge and skills of people (associates)

13. Basic elements: what is an organization?
The ways in which the division of labor is broken down into distinct tasks and the coordination of these tasks (Mintzberg, 1979).
The number of roles that single employees have to play and the relationships between them whose coordination will permit the achievement of company goals (Aldrich, 1979).
The rational coordination of activities of a certain number of people in order to reach a common and explicit goal through the division of labor and through the creation of a hierarchy (Schein, 1985).
A social entity guided by objectives and planned as a system of activities that are deliberately structured and coordinated to interact with the external environment (Daft, 2001).
Ask students to suggest a visual image for each definition

14. Basic elements: what is an organization?
Assembly line
The ways in which the division of labor is broken down into distinct tasks and the coordination of these tasks (Mintzberg, 1979).
The number of roles that single employees have to play and the relationships between them whose coordination will permit the achievement of company goals (Aldrich, 1979).
The rational coordination of activities of a certain number of people in order to reach a common and explicit goal through the division of labor and through the creation of a hierarchy (Schein, 1985).
A social entity guided by objectives and planned as a system of activities that are deliberately structured and coordinated to interact with the external environment (Daft, 2001).
drama
Army
Ask students to suggest a visual image for each definition
Organism

15. Basic elements: what is an organization?
Your textbook definition:
A collection of individuals forming a coordinated system of specialized activities for the purpose of achieving certain goals over an extended period of time

16. Basic elements: what is an organization?
A definition of organization as an emergent system (inspired to Systems Science and Complexity theories):
An organization is a system for the composition and integration of individual actions into collective action
All the various definitions actually underline the idea that organizations are systems designed to enable collective action, they just differ in the way this can be accomplished
Use animations to discuss with the students:
What the definitions have in common? O as systems for collective actions
What type of CA? What are the attributes of the CA enabled by Os?
where are the differences? In the way the various schools of thought follow to achieve integration (Hard via structure and formal rules, Soft via socialization, Emergent via cooperation)
… in a way that collective action has continuity and regularity

17. Continuity and regularity of collective action
Stability and regularity of Collective action should not be taken for granted. They require needs maintenance
Machine metaphor
Predictability and composability of Collective Action
Tell Penelope’s story
What is maintenance all about? Reinforcement!

18. How Continuity and regularity of collective action can be achieved?
The Hard way
(engineering)
The Soft way
(psychology)
Focus: rules & formal descriptions of people’s job (what people are supposed to do)
OB must be constrained through
Structure
Process
metrics
Focus: people & interpersonal relationships (what people are supposed to be like)
OB must be solicited by
Training/developing
Socialization
Well-being/welfare
(Morieaux and Tollman, 2014)

19. Hard VS Soft approaches to OB
Run the video from minute 2:55 for 3 minutes max

20. Hard VS Soft approaches to OB
Frederick Taylor
Sigmund Freud
Just a little bit of history
Elton Mayo
Henry Ford
Max Weber
Karl Marx

21. Continuity and regularity of collective action
Hard VS soft VS … the emergent nature of cooperation
An organization’s performance is nothing more than collective action, the combined effect of people’s behavior, their action, decisions, and interactions
Hard approaches discount cooperation because they engineer the way people work by setting formal rules: emergent behavior is undesired
Hard approaches increases organizational complexity because they tend to add layers and bureaucracy
Soft approaches in principle promote cooperation through socialization, but the actual aim of socialization is promoting good relationships, not cooperation. When the primary objective of people is to preserve good relationships, they are not willing to cooperate because cooperation force them to question the status quo, cooperation can strain relationships, can require to loose power or control (usually those who not cooperate is because they can afford not to)
A second problem with soft approaches is that by focusing too much on individual and group well being they tend to discard the analysis of interdependencies and incentives
Even empowering someone does not translate into effective performance if there are organizational constraints that the nidividual can not act upon.
(Morieaux and Tollman, 2014)

22. When Continuity and Regularity of Collective actions are questioned or broken
To understand how Organizations work we will study cases in which they crash (organizational accidents)

23. Wrap up
Course objectives and structure (get familiar with schedule, syllabus, and assignments)
Definition of OB and of Organizations
Collective Action
How to ensure Stability and Regularity of Collective action: Hard VS soft Approach VS emergent cooperation
Project work on the analysis of Organizational Accidents

24. Due Next class
See announcement on canvas (or sent by the instructor) - weekly