PTMBA2027 Organizational Behavior: The People Side of Doing Business

Course Content

This course is about the people side of business - about you! People are an organization’s most valuable asset. But how to unfold people’s full potential? In this class, you will be learning the fundamentals of managing organizations from a people perspective. Thereby, we particularly address those people skills, that are key to your future career in a digitalized world. In this vein, we discuss how to manage relationships across hierarchies, how to communicate change, and how to survive organizational politics.
 In this class you will learn 6 key people skills enabling your career:

 1. Managing upwards: Capability to manage across hierarchies
 2. Surviving toxic leaders: Capability to strategically invest your energy
 3. Communicating change: Capability to win others for a change in an uncertain environment
 4. Managing change: Capability to successfully perform change
 5. Playing positive politics: Capability to reconcile conflicting ideas and opinions
 6. Defending against negative politics: Capability to create synergies across business partners with different agendas

Intended Learning Outcomes and Competencies

In this class, you will …

1. ... understand key issues and concepts of organizational behavior,

2. ... learn how to apply them in practice,

3.... experience the power of organizational behavior through experimental exercises,

4. ... reflect on your own experiences,

5. ... gain insights about hot behavioral topics in international top companies,

6. ... learn how top leaders pushed their careers by effectively managing people,

7. ... and ultimately, develop better people skills.

Instruction Type

In-class.

Form of Examination

You can obtain 100 points as part of this course. Your grade will be determined by:

1. Teamwork (30 points): There will be several cases that you will solve as teams and present your solutions in class. Grading will be based on the application of concepts learned in class and the quality of your argumentation, i.e. how do you interpret the facts of the case, are your arguments compelling, how stringent is your final take away?
2. Individual reflection notes during class (14 points): At times, I will ask you to reflect on your personal experiences relating to the class content. 
3. Quizzes (6 Points) To make sure you all familiarized yourself with the case work, I will run some short quizzes. 
4. Individual final reflection note (50 points): By the end of this class, you will be asked to reflect upon your key learnings from this class. In this vein, I will ask you to envisage specific, challenging people-situations and then to explain, how you would solve these situations based on the key learnings from this class. Grading will be based on the application of key concepts learned in class, and the quality of your argumentation. The final reflection note is an out-of-class exam and will be distributed in the aftermath of the course. 

Literature

As this class has been designed to specifically address the people skills relevant for pursuing a vivid career in a digitalized world, there is no general Organizational Behavior book used in this class. Rather, each section is based on up-to-date specialized literature from experts in academia and practice. Therefore, additional reading material for this class can be found directly within the citations at the bottom of the slides presented.

1. Managing Up: Cohen, & Bradford (2005) Influence without authority; Baldon (2010) Lead your boss
2. Toxic Leadership: Sutton (2010) The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't; Roter (2017) Understanding and Recognizing Dysfunctional Leadership: The Impact of Dysfunctional Leadership on Organizations and Followers
3. Positive Corporate Politics: Spector (2018) The Executive Arena: Mastering the Art of Corporate Politics, Perceptional Messaging, and Other Secrets to Success in Today's Corporate World; McIntyre (2005) Secrets to winning at office politics
4. Negative Corporate Politics: Brandon, & Seldman (2004) Survival of the savvy; Spears (2012) Navigating Corporate Politics
5. Change Communication: Guber (2012) Tell to win: Connect, persuade and triumph with the hidden power of stories; Harvard Business School Publishing (2013) On communication
6. Managing Change: Anand, N., & Barsoux, J.-L. 2017. What Everyone Gets Wrong About Change Management. Harvard Business Review, 95(6): 78-85; Hagl, C., Kanitz, R., Gonzalez, K., & Hoegl, M. 2024. Change Management Interventions: Taking Stock and Moving Forward. Human Resource Management Review, 34(1): 101000.