Organizational Behavior and Change

Classes

OBC 505: Teaming and Organizing for Innovation

Department
Organizational Behavior and Change
Credits 3.0
How do we navigate complex human systems in organizations? How do we foster innovation within organizations? In this course, we explore the paradoxes, opportunities, and hidden systemic challenges that arise on teams and projects, and in working across networks and within innovative organizations. Students will learn to more deftly manage the inherent challenges and opportunities of cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary teams; work through or avoid dysfunctional team and organizational conflicts; wrestle with ambiguity and uncertainty; negotiate change by learning to work with networks of power and influence; and analyze the individual, group, organizational and contextual dynamics that enable and constrain productive and innovative work in organizations. (Students cannot get credit for OBC 505 and OBC 500)

OBC 506: Leadership

Department
Organizational Behavior and Change
Credits 3.0

How do we mobilize our own and others’ energy toward developing sustainable outcomes and meaningful change—when the path ahead is unclear, when our business environment is rapidly changing, when we do not have full authority over those involved? This course embraces a human-centered design approach to leading others with integrity, empathy, and curiosity—with a specific focus on the unique challenges and opportunities of working within project-based networks and Industry 4.0/STEM contexts. Students will build their capacity to navigate complex human and technical systems as they work in teams to develop and pilot a solution to a real-life organizational or social problem.

OBC 533: Negotiations

Department
Organizational Behavior and Change
Credits 3.0
This course focuses on improving the student1 s understanding of the negotiation process and effectiveness as a negotiator. Emphasizes issues related to negotiating within and on behalf of organizations, the role of third parties, the sources of power within negotiation, and the impact of gender, culture and other differences. Conducted in workshop format, combining theory and practice.

OBC 535: Managing Creativity in Knowledge Intensive Organizations

Department
Organizational Behavior and Change
Credits 3.0
This course considers creativity in its broadest sense from designing new products and processes to creating our own role and identity as managers and leaders in knowledge-intensive organizations. In this course we will look actively at our own creative process and how we might more fully realize our creative potential. At the same time we will build a conceptual understanding of creating, creativity, and knowledge based in the philosophic, academic, and practitioner literatures. We will critically apply this conceptual understanding to organizational examples of managing creativity in support of practical action.

OBC 536: Organizational Design

Department
Organizational Behavior and Change
Credits 3.0

A key role for organizational leaders is to design their organization to achieve their desired results. This course applies design thinking and methods to the practical problems of designing various sized organizations for optimal results in a complex environment. This is based on a foundation of organizational theory, design methodology, and organizational strategy.

OBC 537: Leading Change

Department
Organizational Behavior and Change
Credits 3.0

This course focuses on the role of leadership in the design and implementation of organizational change. Topics include visioning, communication, social influence, power, resiliency, and resistance to change. Teaching methods include classroom discussion of readings and cases, simulations, and experiential exercises.

OBC 538: Developing Managerial Talent

Department
Organizational Behavior and Change
Credits 3.0
Assessing and developing managerial talent in yourself and others is a key to professional success and can be a source of organizational competitive advantage. This course addresses the Globalizing World and You, and provides students access to the frameworks, tools, and practice necessary to engage in thoughtful self-assessment, constructive feedback acquisition and interpretation, and strategic development planning for themselves as well as for others on their teams and in their organizations. The goals of this course are: a) to help students assess their own managerial abilities, b) to develop plans for securing new knowledge, skills and abilities that will help them in their careers, c) to set goals and agendas for their own development and d) to consider ways to translate this development process to others.