MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 1 Discussion Case Study: Arctic Mining Consultants The Case Study: Arctic Mining Consultants is located in the Additional Cases section in the back of the textbook. After reading the case study in the textbook, answer the following questions for your initial post for this week. What course of action would you recommend? Why? How are you or an appropriate organization going to implement changes? MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 2 Discussion Emotional Intelligence Consider an organization that you have some familiarity with. This may be an organization where you currently work. Or, it may be one where you have worked in the past. Use this week’s threaded discussion to evaluate the impact of emotional intelligence on organizational behavior and workplace effectiveness in your selected organization. Here are a couple of questions to help get you started. What is the impact of one’s emotional intelligence on how they make decisions in an organizational setting? Why is this important to consider and discuss? Based on your analysis of emotional intelligence, assess the likely outcomes of organizational behavior as compared to workplace effectiveness. Why are these two ideas important to consider and discuss? MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 3 Discussion Employee Motivation & Performance Practices Four-drive theory recommends that companies must keep fulfillment of the four drives in balance. What is this “balance” and why is it important? Give an example (real or hypothetical) of how a company maintains balanced drive fulfillment. Also describe a company that does not provide this balance, including the consequences of this imbalance on employees’ attitudes and behavior. MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 4 Discussion Team Effectiveness in the Workplace Teams and their use in organizations seem to have varying degrees of success. We all know what a successful athletic team looks like. Managers often times try to translate that structure and in turn success back to the organization by organizing their employees in teams. But, what starts out as a really great idea ends up being a total disaster, at least operationally. And inevitably, you have the one individual on a team who takes the approach of, “Get out of my way and let me do this!” And, the more shy and reticent team members naturally ever so gently “fade” into the background and let the superhero try and run with the project. For this weekly discussion, evaluate the effectiveness of teams in the workplace. Especially consider the unique challenges that teams face when trying to work effectively remotely. Here are a couple of questions to help you get started. Assess the effectiveness of team members in working in a virtual-only environment. Which individual behaviors seem to be beneficial to the overall team process? How can you tell? Which ones are deleterious? How can you tell? Consider the following. Emotions are running wild during a current team meeting that you are attending. There are five people on this team. What would you do during the meeting to try and calm emotions and get back to team problem-solving? Why? MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 5 Discussion Case Study: Simmons Laboratories The Case Study: Simmons Laboratories is located in the Additional Cases section at the back of the textbook. After reading the case study in the textbook, answer the following questions for your initial post for this week. What course of action would you recommend? Why? How are you or an appropriate organization going to implement changes? MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 6 Discussion Organizational Culture Take a moment and reflect on the organization that you selected and are researching and writing about for your Course Project. Based on your research thus far, appraise the strength of your selected organization’s culture. Use the following questions to help you get started in this week’s discussion. To what extent has your organization been able to adapt to the changing business conditions. How can you tell? How has the culture adapted? How has your selected organization’s leadership team adapted? How can you tell? MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 7 Discussion Describe your Experience Please write one paragraph to describe how this course helped you. State at least ONE thing you liked about Leadership. Feel free to share anything you think is important about the course and your professor. Make sure to post your response at the latest by Wednesday and comment on at least one of your classmates’ posts. MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 8 Discussion Career Assignment – Your Skills … Their Business Need Your Skills … Their Business Need Identify one employer in your area that you could see yourself working for. This should be a new employer that you haven’t worked for in the past nor are you currently working for. Write a brief summary overview of your selected employer. Questions to answer in your first response: What does the company produce? Or what service/services do they provide? What is the main source of their revenue? Who are their competitors? Is your selected company leading in their target market? Are they considered established or new? What does their vision / mission statement include? What do you think that employer needs to do in order to be successful or remain successful? What are some activities that they should be doing to stay relevant or to become more relevant within their target market? In your second post, write a brief summary of your strengths and skills and explain how they align with the company’s direction. What business need do you solve? How do you solve it? What skills do you have or need to have to be of value? Why should they hire you? MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 2 Assignment Harvard Business Publishing – Organizational Behavior Simulation: Judgment in a Crisis This is the week you will complete a scenario in the Harvard Business Publishing – Organizational Behavior Simulation: Judgment in a Crisis You will need to log into the Harvard Business Publishing – Organizational Behavior Simulation: Judgement in Crisis simulation environment and review the instructions on how to participate. Students play the role of a product manager at Matterhorn Health, a medical device manufacturer. The company recently launched the GlucoGauge blood glucose monitor, the company’s most expensive product development effort to date. In spite of vigorous pre-release testing, there are problems reported by customers almost immediately after launch. Throughout the simulation, students will use a series of desktop applications to receive communications from their colleagues about the problem at hand. They will receive a barrage of information through various channels – email, video messages, voicemail messages, and instant message chats – requesting that they determine the root cause of the issue and make recommendations on how Matterhorn can get ahead of this problem. Although there is no wrong way to complete the simulation, be sure to follow all of the instructions. Once you completed the simulation, please answer the following questions in a word document and submit your document for grading: What are the decisions you made? Why did you make each of your decisions? What have you learned from this simulation? Completed Simulation with Press Release: 50 Points. Questions Rubric – 25 points. The total assignment is 75 points. MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 3 Assignment Keeping Suzanne Chalmers The Case Study: Keeping Suzanne Chalmers is located in the Additional Cases section in the back of the textbook. After reading the case study in the textbook, answer the following questions for your initial post for this week. What course of action would you recommend? Why? How would your recommended course of action impact the leadership of this organization? What kind of motivational theory is displayed in this case? MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 4 Assignment Organizational Culture Analysis Paper Research and find any free organizational culture quiz. Some free quiz sites are provided below, but feel free to search and use your own quiz. Culture Quiz (Links to an external site.) What’s Your Organizational Culture? (Links to an external site.) Take the quiz and then copy/paste your results into a Word document. In a one to two page document, answer the following questions: Discuss your learning experience impacted by the organizational culture quiz. Please specifically discuss/assess what you see as an ideal culture or a culture that is ideal for rapid change. Discuss how continuous improvement is impacting healthcare, banking, retail and/or government (choose one area). Merger of Lean and Six Sigma are interesting topics you can explore here. MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 2 Course Project Objective Research shows that people learn effectively when working on real problems grounded in their work experience. To this end, the Individual Course Project is designed to incorporate students’ work experience into the learning process in this course. The project is an opportunity to explore, in-depth, a topic related to the course objectives (COs) that are of significance to your organization (current or former). You will be required to prepare 7 to 8 pages applied research paper excluding the cover page, table of contents, and appendices, on a specific issue related to leadership or organizational behavior. This research paper is to be individually completed. Guidelines Topic Selection (Due in Week 2) Select a specific organization of interest to you and identify a problem at the firm related to organizational behavior (OB). This maybe an organization where you currently serve or one where you have served. Think of yourself as an organizational consultant. Assume that a key manager has requested a thorough analysis and recommended course of action to resolve an actual organizational problem. Your goal is to develop recommendations that will make a positive difference to the performance of the organization. Your research paper should address the following three-course objectives, at a minimum: Course Objective A – Evaluate how organizational theories and practices can improve organizational operations. Course Objective B – Analyze how values, attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and personality influence decision-making in the workplace. Course Objective C – Analyze the impact of different structures and lines of authority on organizational strategy and culture. Requirements APA Format & PaperCourse Project Papers (Due in Weeks 5, 6, and 8)Course Project Rubric Paper Format All papers should be double spaced, using an 11- or 12-point font. Refer to the APA Style Sheet for additional information. The length of the paper is to be between 7 to 8 pages, not counting the cover page, table of contents, nor appendices. The first page should include the title of the work, student name, course number and title, date, and professor name. The second page should be a table of contents. It should, at a minimum, reflect the seven items listed in the Grading Rubric. Follow APA style for general format and citations (see the APA Guidelines Tutorial in the Syllabus). The paper sections must adhere to the guidelines below, and each section must be labeled in the text. The language should be clear, concise, and precise. The tone should be professional, consistent, and not filled with jargon. Grammar and syntax (sentence structure) must be correct. The report must be free of misspellings and typos. Table and Figures All figures and tables must be referred to in your text before they appear on the page. Figures and tables should appear on the same page as, or the page after, the text that refers to them. All figures and tables need captions. Captions go below figures and above tables. Quotations and Citations Quotations and citations are crucial components of a research paper and must be present. Failure to properly cite research sources and borrowed ideas is plagiarism. Refer to the APA style guide for assistance with properly citing quoted or borrowed materials and ideas. Turnitin (see Turnitin.com) is used on all reports and projects. A report can be obtained for your review prior to submitting your final work. Make sure that you are in compliance with the University’s 20/80 rule. MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 5 Course Project Literature Review / How Organizational Theories Improve Operations You will conduct a literature review on your topic which includes a minimum of eight scholarly resources for the project. In order to achieve a final list of eight scholarly sources in your paper, consider researching at least twenty to thirty relevant articles. Be sure and access the DeVry academic library at library.devry.edu. Additionally, you will answer the following question How organizational theories improve operations? Be sure to carefully consider your research question. Reflect on further defining your research problem (the problem you identified in your selected company.) As well, consider as a part of answering the question, whatever preliminary suggestions that seem relevant as solutions to your stated research question. This section should be +-3 pages (double-spaced). Please use APA format when writing this assignment. Submit your completed paper. MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 6 Course Project Influential Decision Making / Structures and Lines of Authority In this week’s milestone, you will address two questions regarding your chosen organization. How do values and attitudes influence decision-making? How do values and attitudes influence the various structures and lines of authority? Be sure to carefully consider your research question. Reflect on further defining your research problem (the problem you identified in your selected company.) As well, consider as a part of answering the question, whatever preliminary suggestions that seem relevant as solutions to your stated research question. This section should be up to 3 pages (double-spaced). Please use APA format when writing this assignment. Submit your completed paper. MGMT591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior Week 8 Course Project Objective Research shows that people learn effectively when working on real problems grounded in their work experience. To this end, the Individual Course Project is designed to incorporate students’ work experience into the learning process in this course. The project is an opportunity to explore, in-depth, a topic related to the course objectives (COs) that are of significance to your organization (current or former). You will be required to prepare 7 to 8 pages applied research paper excluding the cover page, table of contents, and appendices, on a specific issue related to leadership or organizational behavior. This research paper is to be individually completed. Guidelines Topic Selection (Due in Week 2) Select a specific organization of interest to you and identify a problem at the firm related to organizational behavior (OB). This maybe an organization where you currently serve or one where you have served. Think of yourself as an organizational consultant. Assume that a key manager has requested a thorough analysis and recommended course of action to resolve an actual organizational problem. Your goal is to develop recommendations that will make a positive difference to the performance of the organization. Your research paper should address the following three-course objectives, at a minimum: Course Objective A – Evaluate how organizational theories and practices can improve organizational operations. Course Objective B – Analyze how values, attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and personality influence decision-making in the workplace. Course Objective C – Analyze the impact of different structures and lines of authority on organizational strategy and culture. Requirements APA Format & PaperCourse Project Papers (Due in Weeks 5, 6, and 8)Course Project Rubric Framework papers are research papers that are typically used as a basis for additional exploration of specific topics in a larger study. A framework paper introduces and further explains a specific aspect of the study while also furthering an explanation of the main research question. During week’s 4, 5 and 6, you will be assigned specific topics to continue your research and to further explore. Your individual weekly papers should demonstrate an understanding of the background theories and concepts from within our course that is relevant to your topic. How to get started? Research your topic – Research it a great deal using the DeVry Library and/or any other academic library. Further, review all of the course material as well as the relevant research (typically journal articles) that help explore and study the organizational research problem you are studying. What is the overall purpose of a framework paper? Essentially, the purpose of a framework paper should be to explain the meaning and the challenges of the organizational problem as well as continue building on the body of knowledge as the beginning of plausible (and possible) solutions to ultimately help benefit the organization being studied. Steps to consider when drafting your Framework Paper: Review your (preliminary) research paper title and your research question. Review all research articles and information that you have found, so far. Review the course information paying particular attention to the relevant theories that address the week’s topic/question. Discuss and present the assumptions that relate to the theory or theories. Include the relevance to your research and topic. Be sure to explain why and how this is important to consider and discuss. For each weekly Framework Paper, include the following sections. Introduction Preliminary statement of the problem A detailed explanation of how this helps answer the stated research question Discuss and present the assumptions that relate to the theory or theories. Include the relevance to your research and topic. Be sure to explain why and how this is important to consider and discuss. What additional research is suggested by this information? Which solutions are suggested? Why? Do they appear valid? Relevant? How can you tell?
