LEE KONG CHIAN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Year 2006/7 Term 1 MGMT101: MANAGEMENT OF PEOPLE AT WORK Instructor: Wei HUA Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior Tel: Email: Office: 6828-0732 huawei@smu.edu.sg Room 5049 Lee Kong Chian School of Business Level 5 COURSE DESCRIPTION How do you manage your boss, your colleagues and of course, your subordinates in the organization you choose to work for? How should you expect to be managed? This course is designed to answer these questions. Managing people is both a skill and an art. I want you to leave this course understanding the complexity and ambiguity of management practice, with a better idea about what it depends on when you get the answer “well it depends.” REQUIRED TEXT AND READINGS 1. Psychological dimensions of organizational behavior, 3rd Edition, Barry M. Staw, Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-040654-6. 2. Course packet. ASSESSMENT METHOD Quiz: 30% Rob Parson Case Analysis Write-up and Presentation: 20% Term Paper or Final Exam: 25% Participation: 17% Feedback: 5% Research Participation: 3% 1 COURSE METHODS My teaching philosophy is that you learn what you want to learn in a way you find the most effective for you. Self discipline and motivation, rather than imposed monitoring from the instructor, determines what you gain from the time you invest in this class. I will provide some incentives and structures to facilitate your study. A variety of materials and methods are used in this course. Readings are drawn from scholarly, professional and business journals, reflecting a mix of disciplinary and issuebased perspectives. Several cases, drawn from various industry and organizational settings, are also used in the course. Emphasis will be placed on the application of concepts drawn from the readings or presented in class by the instructor to "real world" situations, including those contained in the cases. I believe that learning should be fun. We will have role play, video, group games, simulation, and other experiential activities. I have also arranged for a guest speaker from the “real world” to talk about leadership in this class. INSTRUCTIONS FOR YOUR ASSIGNMENTS Participation: 17% For the course to work well, you must actively participate in class sessions to facilitate peer learning. All readings and cases should be completed prior to the classes in which they will be discussed. We will use a lottery system to randomly assign you to one reading (either from the textbook or from the course packet), and you are responsible to deliver a 5 minute presentation which summarizes the reading in class. A 15-minute Question and Answer session follows the presentation, which is used to field questions/challenges from the instructor and the class. The presentation and Q&A session will be evaluated by the instructor and a randomly selected panel of your classmates on a 7 point scale and count for 7% of your course grade. The other 10% of your participation credit is subject to the instructor. I will evaluate your contribution by looking at your comments in class, your questions during the presentations, and the quality of the quiz questions you write, as detailed below. Quiz: 30% Each week an open-book online quiz on the readings in the same week will be scheduled first thing in the class—feel free to come in late, if you feel that you need less time than your classmates to finish the quiz. We will go over the answers to the quiz right after you submit your answers. The quiz will be conducted online through SMUVista, so please make sure you have your laptop with you. Each quiz will be evaluated on a percentage basis. The total grade will be weighed as 30% of your overall course grade. No make-up quiz available. 2 Term paper/Final Exam: 25% At the end of the term, a comprehensive and in-depth paper (double spaced with 12 points font face, 1 inch margin all around, and no more than 15 pages) should be completed individually or by a group of no more than four members to answer the three questions in the course description: • Why do people behave in certain ways in organizations? (Focus on 1 behavior that you are interested in.) • How do you manage your boss, or your colleagues, or your subordinates in the organization you choose to work for? (choose 1 from the three options) • How should you expect to be managed? Make sure that you refer explicitly to relevant concepts from your readings in your paper. Groups will be self selected, or you may choose to work alone. Those who think that they perform better in exams have the option to take an open book final exam rather than the term paper. I suggest that you keep a weekly journal with your answers to these three questions after each of our class discussion. Be ready to discuss your paper to the class upon request. Rob Parson Case Analysis Write-up and Presentation/Role Play: 20% Toward the end of the term, you are expected to apply what we have discussed in class to a Harvard Business School case (The Firmwide 360 Performance Evaluation Process at Morgan Stanley: #9-498-053 & Rob Parson at Morgan Stanley (A) #9-498-054 & (C) #9498-056). This is a group assignment and an opportunity to be creative in the presentation of your analysis. You may choose to analyze the case from the perspective of Rob Parson, or his boss, or his peers. You are also free to choose course concepts that you feel most relevant to the case scenario. Explicitly state your perspective and focus in the beginning of the paper. There are two deliverables for this assignment: a case analysis write-up (double spaced with 12 points font face, 1 inch margin all around, and no more than 6 pages) and a power point presentation (no longer than 15 minutes). You may want to include role play in your presentation of the case. The presentation will be peer evaluated on a 10 point scale, and the quality of the write-up counts for another 10 points. Feedback: 5% Feedback for your classmates (for their presentations) and for the instructor (about the course design and teaching style) is a required assignment. Specific examples and suggestions about how things could be improved are particularly helpful. 3 Research Participation: 3% Research participation is also required for this class, detailed as follows. As one of your requirements for this course, you are expected to participate in research studies being conducted by the Organizational Behavior faculty at SMU. Each student is expected to complete three units of research participation during the term; each unit typically involves one hour of participation. (Therefore, your total requirement is three hours for the term). Each unit of participation is worth 1 percentage point (or 3% for all three units) out of a possible 100% total in this course. Information regarding, and opportunity to sign up for, research studies will be provided throughout the term on the Business School’s online SPS at https://mercury.smu.edu.sg/PrjgSPS. Besides contributing to the specific research project, and ensuring that you receive your full participation credit points for MPW, there are several other benefits of participating in research studies. First, note that all the knowledge you will encounter in MPW is derived from research. By participating in research, you are able to contribute back to, and further build, that knowledge base. Second, by participating in research you gain insights into the nature of scientific investigation and the research process, which constitutes a valuable way of learning to improve organizational practices. And third, note that SMU aspires to excellence in teaching and research. For most of you, participating in research is one of the few opportunities you will have to contribute to the research mission of the university. If for any reason you do not wish to participate in research studies, you can write a short research paper instead. This involves obtaining 3 scientific articles related to organizational behavior and that are not related to your other projects in this course. These articles should not be completely opinion or discussion, but rather must be articles that describe scientific studies. After you obtain the articles, answer the following questions: What was the purpose of each study? What were the hypotheses? What was manipulated and/or measured? What were the results of this study? What are the implications of this study’s findings? Each paper (each of which reviews 3 research articles) completed is worth one unit. 4 CLASS SCHEDULE Week No. Topic 1 Introduction 2 Readings (tba) Readings from the supplemental readings packet Get into touch with your authentic self: Human “ Differences and Career Management 3 Why and how we work: Motivation, Satisfaction and Emotions at Work “ 4 Diversity & Cross-cultural Simulation: Bafa Bafa “ 5 Social Cognition “ 6 Group decision making: Cascade Survival Simulation “ 7 Organizational culture, power, influence and interpersonal attraction “ 8 Mid-term Break 9 Leadership & Feedback “ 10 Video case on group dynamics: 12 Angry Men “ 11 Interacting with others: Social and group processes “ 12-13 Integration: Case presentation and role play “ 14 Study week This class outline and description is subject to change. Changes will be announced in class. 5