BMGT10170 Inside Organisations

Academic Year 2023/2024

This module is about the human side of organisations, with a focus on groups and active learning. People’s behaviour is often curious and always interesting. Taking a close look at behaviour inside organisations (starting with your own) will prove useful to you not just when you enter the workplace, but right now, in college. This is a module designed to develop your knowledge and insight relating to Organisational Behaviour (theories), observe and develop your OB skills though experience (application), and enhance your capacity for reflective, informed analysis (evaluation).

To help you achieve all this, for a significant part of the module you will be working collaboratively in teams to create, learn and deliver a real time project involving research, content development and creative communication.

There are four specific learning goals:
1. Knowledge: Learning about a range of individual, group and organisational behaviour (OB) topics including personality, motivation, culture, and particularly communication.
2. Skills: Getting to grips with groups: developing insight into group dynamics and practical collaboration skills - including virtual teamwork.
3. Application: Building awareness of and reflection about contemporary working lives, organisation practices, and the future of work.
4. Mindset: Developing your self-awareness, psychological mindedness and sociological imagination.

A key intention of this module is to lay a foundation of vocabulary and insights concerning human behaviour in organisations that will be revisited throughout many of your future modules in the College of Business.

All students taking this module should be aware that a high degree of personal participation in teamwork is required to support our focus on collaborative and communication skills. This spans the full trimester incorporating both individual and group components.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

1. Build a vocabulary and conceptual framework to help you think about life inside organisations

2. Describe, apply and reflect on some key concepts in Organisational Behaviour (OB) relating to the individual, the group, and the organisation/workplace.

3. Collaborate as a team to create and deliver real outcomes

4. Use the experience of working in a group to observe, reflect and learn about group dynamics and develop your skills for effective collaboration

6. Relate these ideas to the world of work and the changing workplace, demonstrating an ability to think critically and sociologically about the human dimension of organisations and how work is organised and managed.

Indicative Module Content:

Foundations of OB - and the sociological imagination
Inside Organisational Culture and LIFTing leadership together
Individual Difference: Personality, Perception and Emotion, Motivation and what makes us tick
Getting to Grips with Groups: Collaboration, Teamwork and Exploring Group Dynamics
Hearing and Being Heard: Interpersonal and intercultural communication
Beneath the Surface: Power, Politics and Conflict, the Unconscious Organisation
Work, Working lives and the Changing World of Work

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Specified Learning Activities

24
Autonomous Student Learning

48
Lectures

24
Seminar (or Webinar)

24
Total

120
Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
This module will be delivered through a combination of lectures and highly collaborative peer to peer learning and group project assignments throughout the trimester. Lectures will follow a scheduled weekly timetable. The collaborative element - entitled OBLive - is scheduled weekly from the second week of the module. You will be assigned to a team, and will work together. This takes one of two formats - a weekly programme of meetings to work together on leadership and skills (LIFT)- or a self directed project to devise, manage (OBLive).

All students taking this module should be aware that a high degree of teamwork is required throughout the full trimester incorporating both individual and group components. Each team will and work together to build, plan, do and review this work. Project deliverables and final individual grades will be highly dependent on your active participation and require collaboration during and beyond scheduled class time.



 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Incompatibles:
BMGT10100 - Intro to Org Behaviour, NMHS20060 - Interpersonal&Teamwork Skills


 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Group Project: Highly Collaborative Group Project Throughout the Trimester n/a Graded No

25
Oral Examination: Team Review Varies over the Trimester n/a Graded No

25
Continuous Assessment: Individual coursework Throughout the Trimester n/a Graded No

50

Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 
Remediation Type Remediation Timing
In-Module Resit Prior to relevant Programme Exam Board
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Group/class feedback, post-assessment
• Peer review activities
• Self-assessment activities

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Group discussion and feedback, peer and personal reflective review, feedforward learning.

If you are someone who finds following a text book helpful, the text and content that we follow most closely is: Andrzej Huczynski and David Buchanan (2019 10th or any previous edition) Organizational Behaviour, London, UK: Prentice Hall.

You do not need to purchase this text, but it helpful to have access to an OB text book to help you build your TAE insights. There are lots of different OB texts in the library, short loan and long loan at classmarks 302.34 and 658.4. I encourage you to look around, leaf through several to choose one that you like. Second hand copies are also widely available in the case of older books. For example, some text books we have used previously

Alternative/Related Texts:
Christine Cross and Ronan Carberry (2016) Organisational Behaviour: An Introduction, London: Palgrave. There are multiple copies in the library short loan collection and the text has a useful companion website on https://he.palgrave.com/companion/Cross-Organisational-Behaviour/index/
Bratton , J. 2015. Introduction to Work and Organizational Behaviour (Third Edition), London, New York, Palgrave Macmillan (earlier editions also fine and useful companion website at http://www.palgrave.com/companion/Bratton-Work-And-Organizational-Behaviour3/


The key message here is that reading further is more important than which text. Each varies in depth and style, but most address our main topics so do browse through them and choose an OB text you can get along well with.

Treat text books as a resource. Before you delve into a chapter, ask yourself: what do you already know or believe about this topic? What are you curious about in relation to it? Don’t forget to check out the chapter intros and summaries, and while you should follow your curiosity, do be sure to focus on the key concepts we emphasise in class. Our classes together will help you put those concepts into context, and do raise any questions you still have, in class.


I recommend reading the business press, management and business magazines such as Harvard Business Review, Management Today, Fast Company and radio shows/podcasts such as RTE The Business and Dear HBR. I have created a FlipBoard of some relevant papers to help you think about OB in practice, and we’ll add to that from time to time during the module. You can join on https://flipboard.com/@maevehoulihan/inside-organisations-lb9319fpz

I also encourage you to browse the business book shelves and investigate further reading on your own initiative.
Name Role
Dr Brona Russell Lecturer / Co-Lecturer
Dr Dolores Smith Heffernan Lecturer / Co-Lecturer
Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.
 
Autumn
      
Lecture Offering 2 Week(s) - Autumn: Weeks 2-12 Thurs 11:00 - 12:50
Lecture Offering 3 Week(s) - Autumn: Weeks 2-12 Thurs 13:00 - 14:50
Seminar Offering 1 Week(s) - 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Wed 13:00 - 13:50
Seminar Offering 2 Week(s) - 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Wed 13:00 - 13:50
Autumn