Organizational Behavior and Leadership

Course No： E2800040 Program：Undergraduate

Credit： 3.00 Instructor：Mengzi JIN
Prerequisite： N/A Semester：2023 Spring

Instructor’s resume/brief introduction (Within 500 words)

Mengzi Jin received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources from Lee Kong Chian
School of Business at Singapore Management University and Bachelor’s from University of Minnesota-
Twin Cities in Psychology. Her research focused on employee creativity, organizational innovation, and
workplace diversity.

Instructor’s contact information

[email protected]

TA’s contact information

TBD

Office hour
By appointment

Course Overview
Students learn theoretical and conceptual foundations for understanding people, management, leadership,
groups, and organizations, as well as practical tools for accomplishing personal, group, and organizational
objectives. Topics include personality and individual differences, leadership, work values and attitudes, work
motivation, organizational trust and justice, emotions and stress management, organizational culture,
decision making, and power and conflict management among others.

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Define key organizational behaviour and leadership terms
• Identify organizational behaviour constructs in organizational settings
• Analyze organizational and leadership problems using major organizational behaviour theories
• Put organizational behaviour and leadership theories into practice to address organizational
problems
• Search OB-discipline specific databases to locate scholarly articles from key journals

References & Readings

Textbook:
Robbins, S. P. & Judge, A. T. 2017. Organizational Behavior. New York, NY: Pearson. ISBN:
9780134729329.
Readings may be modified at my discretion. Changes will be announced in class or via email
1. Pfeffer, J., & Sutton, R. I. (2006). Evidence-based management. Harvard Business Review, 84(1),
62-74.
2. Happier people work harder. New York Times, Sep 3, 2011.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/do-happier-people-work-harder.html)
3. Hurley, R. F. (2006). The decision to trust. Harvard Business Review, 84(9), 55-62.
4. Cialdini, B. R. (2001). Harnessing the science of persuasion. Harvard Business Review, October,
72-79.

Rules students must follow

1、 Abide by the academic ethics，prohibit deception and plagiarism
2、 If a student is absent from one course for more than one third of the semester, he/she cannot participate
in the final exam of this course, and the course score will be marked "0".

Teaching Methods

This course is a combination of lectures and case discussions. Students learn through a combination of
lectures, required readings, team project, interactive discussions, and a range of class activities, potentially
to include cases, video-based discussions, self-assessment, etc. You are expected to attend all class
meetings, to read the assigned readings in advance, and to participate in class activities, in addition to the
projects and exams.

Detailed Course Plan

Week Topics
1
Introduction to Organizational Behaviour & Leadership

2
Individual Differences in Organizations

3
Values, Attitudes, and Work Behaviors

4 Employee Perception and Attribution

5
Affect in the workplace

6
Theories and Practice of Motivation I

7
Theories and Practice of Motivation II

8
Managing Up and Down: Trust, Justice, and Network in Organizations

9
Decision Making

10
Break Labor Day
 11
Power and Influence

12
Leading groups and Teams in organization

13
The Art of Negotiation

14
Leading in diverse organizations

15
Leading Organizational Changes

16
Leading Innovation

Course Assessment
Attendance & Class participation 30%
Group project 10%
Individual field assignment 10%
Leadership Essay 10%
Final Case Analysis 40%

Attendance & Class participation 30%

Students are required to attend all class meetings. However, accidents, illness, and other misfortunes do
occur and are generally not predictable and are outside one’s control. As such, students will not be
penalized for missing classes under such reasons, subject to clear communication to the instructor
concerned. In-class participation is central to our class. Even with acceptable reasons, students are still
required to achieve 75% attendance (11 sessions).
In terms of participation, your contributions in terms of making insightful comments during case
discussion, active engagement in group activities, and timely completion of given assignments help your
classmates learn.

Group Project 10%

Please form your specific teams with minimum 3 students and maximum 8 students based on your cultural
and academic characteristics (the more diverse the better). Please pick three problems below using either
knowledge we learned in class or your own research to come up with creative solutions to the three chosen
problems. Please send us 1) the name of group members and 2) the 3 problems you discussed with your
group members as well as 3) the dates and length of your discussions by the last day of class, and we will
also discuss your group projects in class.

1. Bullies in the workplace

2. Ideas of yours being stolen by coworker
3. Being passed over for promotion
4. Glass ceiling
5. Pigeon-Holed
6. Workplace gossips
7. Drinking outside work culture
8. Old boys’ clubs
9. Blurred boundary between work and life because of Wechat/Whatsapp

Individual Field Assignment 10%

The purpose of the field assignment is to apply your knowledge and gain real-world experience in one of
the topics we discuss in class, negotiations. One reason why people often fail to negotiate is because they
are inexperienced, shy, or don’t think something is negotiable. The best way to overcome these anxieties is
to go out and negotiate! For this assignment, you should aim to engage in 2 real-world negotiations. You
can negotiate anything you like. Be creative. Your negotiations could involve a good or service from a
merchant, a salary or bonus with an employer, a discount from a service provider, or anything else. Also,
note that you do not have to buy anything to complete this assignment. Similarly, your negotiations do not
need to be a success – often, we learn as much from negotiations that fail as from those that succeed. Note
that you cannot tell the person you are negotiating with that this is for a class project
until the negotiation is over.
After you have completed the negotiation, write a short report (a maximum of 2 pages, Times New Roman
12, single-spaced, excluding cover page and references) in which you describe and analyze your
experiences.
The report should describe the key learning points from your negotiations. The report should not be a
detailed description of everything that happened – instead you should try to analyze the factors influencing
the negotiation process. Provide only brief details of the negotiations themselves and give examples as
illustrations of your points. The paper should be mostly about broad-level analysis and insights, and
address issues such as:
a) Which critical factors affected the negotiation outcomes?
b) What have you learned about yourself as a negotiator from these experiences (e.g., what are
your strengths and weaknesses)?
c) What have you learned about the behaviors of others in negotiations?
d) What were some of your successes and failures and how will you approach similar negotiations
situations in the future?
e) What are the similarities and differences between your negotiation outside of class compared to
those negotiations you did inside of class?
f) Explicitly link these insights to concepts and principles from class and the readings.

A high-quality analysis steps back from the negotiations and looks at the ‘bigger picture’, indicates how
the negotiation exercises will help you become a better negotiator in the future, uses course concepts to
help structure the analysis, and is well written. Do not just list the events as they happened; instead, write
more like a ‘critical commentator’ who provides an in-depth analysis of why things happened, what you
learned about yourself and other negotiators, how this knowledge will impact your future negotiations, and
how these experiences relate to what you learned in class. There will be no individual feedback on your
short report.

Leadership Essay 10%

The goal of the Leadership Essay is to reflect on and deepen the lessons learned regarding leadership in the
workplace. For this assignment, you should
(a) identify an inspiring leader,
(b) discuss the leadership qualities and/or leadership styles that make that person an effective leader, and
 (c) analyze a particular incident that illustrates the leadership quality and/or style of that person. You are
encouraged to incorporate class concepts and/or draw parallels to leadership examples discussed in class.
The essay should be between 1-2 pages (single-spaced, excluding title page and references).
The assignment will be graded on the following
• Leadership quality or style defined: Clear definition of the leadership quality and/or leadership
style. Draws from relevant theoretical research and/or class concepts to illustrate the quality
and/or style.
• Leadership incident: Clear elaboration of the incident and link to the leadership quality/style
defined.
• Writing and organization: Clear writing and good organization.

Final Case analysis 40%

You will be given a case to analyze during the Final Week. Your responses to this case will give me a
window to assess the extent to which you have learned the key concepts and framework in this course.

Read the case carefully and answer the two questions that follow. Typically, the first question will ask you
to provide an analysis of the situation that the protagonist is facing. The second question asks you for a
recommended course of action. To the extent that it is relevant, you should use ideas, concepts, and
frameworks discussed or assigned as readings in this course to derive your analysis and recommendations.

Please work individually and do not consult or discuss with others. The maximum page limit for this
written assignment is 3 pages (single-space, Times New Roman 12, excluding references). Be sure to
devote sufficient attention to both analysis and recommendations.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
All acts of academic dishonesty (including, but not limited to, plagiarism, cheating, fabrication, facilitation of
acts of academic dishonesty by others, unauthorized possession of exam questions, or tampering with the
academic work of other students) are serious offences.

All work (whether oral or written) submitted for purposes of assessment must be the student’s own
work. Penalties for violation of the policy range from zero marks for the component assessment to expulsion,
depending on the nature of the offence.

When in doubt, students should consult the course instructor.