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38001 Managing in Organizations
Autumn 2024
COURSE SYLLABUS
Success in management requires an understanding of the factors that shape individual and group behaviors and attitudes. This course deals with the people part of management; we will develop a complex view of organizational behavior at the individual, interpersonal, and group levels of analysis. We will examine topics such as motivation, social perception and interpersonal dynamics, influence and persuasion, group decision making, organizational culture and commitment.
The goal is to provide you the tools and concepts to explore why people do what they do and thus, prepare you for management challenges. The course is theory-based but practice oriented. It is firmly grounded in the discipline of social psychology and is designed to focus on the situational causes of behavior, including your own.
Classes consist of lecture, individual and group exercises, case discussion, and other activities that provide opportunities to apply analytical frameworks to concrete organizational problems.
Masking. I will be teaching my in-person sessions either masked or, more commonly, from behind the podium because Iam immunocompromised. While you do not have to wear a mask, unless university policy requires it, I ask that you give me a little space when we talk in the classroom, more so if you are sick with anything.
MATERIALS:
Course website:
I will post my syllabus, lecture notes and other relevant course information on the course website:https://canvas.uchicago.edu/
Required Readings:
1. Required cases and articles: All cases and articles are available through Canvas.
All readings are required, meaning that you are responsible to know the material in these readings even if they are not explicitly discussed in class. As a general rule, I assume you have read and fully understand the readings assigned for each week. I do not use the lectures to summarize or review the reading material but instead use the lectures togo beyond those readings and focus on new material.
2. Required books: There are two books assigned for the course:
a. Heath, Chip, & Heath, Dan (2007). Made to stick: Why some ideas survive and others die. Random House: New York. ISBN 978-1-4000-6428-1. [Required readings: Introduction, Chapters 1-5.]
b. Terkel, Studs (1974, with forward from 2004). Working. The New Press: New York.
ISBN 1-56584-342-8. Also highly recommended is:
c. Baron, James N. & Kreps, David M. (1999). Strategic Human Resources: Frameworks for General Managers. Wiley. ISBN-10: 04710725322.
We will read sections from all of these books, but I encourage you to read each in its entirety when you have the chance. Heath and Heath’s Made to Stick describes why some ideas succeed in the marketplace of ideas and others fail.
We will apply content from the book two points in the course. In the second week, we will apply context to understand what ideas catch on and how social filters influence and distort the kind of information managers are likely to receive about their employees and the mistaken impressions that are likely to result. Near the end of the course, we will discuss the book again as part of the session on persuasion. Terkel’s Working is a classic in business publications, is written by a Chicago icon, is enjoyable to read, gives valuable insights into people’s working lives , and provides an opportunity to consider similarities and differences in people’s underlying motivations and work in the many years since the book was originally published. Baron and Krep’s Strategic Human Resources (optional) is a comprehensive review of management science that combines research in psychology, economics, and sociology.
The one chapter that I do highlight from this book in week 4 is available on Canvas.
3. Lecture notes: I will post .pdf versions of the lecture slides on the course website after my final section on Wednesday evening. I appreciate that this policy is unpopular but taking notes is the most effective way to encode and remember course material. I encourage you to take good notes in class and then review them in tandem with the slides afterwards.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: Midterm Exam (30%):
The midterm exam, which is in week 6, provides you with the opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge of concepts covered in the first five weeks of the course. It is a closed- note, closed-book exam. The exam will be roughly ninety-minutes.
Sample exam questions are posted on Canvas.
The midterm is meant to distinguish the performance of students who have mastered the material from those who have acquired a superficial understanding. In prior years, the range of performance was very wide.
Good performance requires diligent study of the material.
The midterm will be administered remotely over Canvas. The exact dates will be posted later but I will provide a window of several days for you to write the exam. By using a remote exam, I am able align how the midterm is administered for the in-person and remote sections. In addition, in order to preserve the integrity of your remote exam environment (e.g., no notes, no help from LLMs), I am using software called Honorlock to support proctoring the exam. To use this software, it is a strict requirement for the exam that you have access to Google Chrome and are able to download the Honorlock extension. To ensure you are able to use both, I strongly recommend you take the 'Honorlock Practice Quiz'under Canvas Quizzes before the exam itself, which will replicate the process of starting and working on the exam.
If you have any issues with Honorlock during or after installation, the purple chat icon in the lower right hand corner will take you to live support 24/7. If you have any other issues, you can contactJason.quist@chicagobooth.eduwith questions or concerns.
Final Paper (30%):
In lieu of a final exam, I ask that you form a team of three to six members of the class and write a paper applying selected concepts and theories presented in this course to an actual, real-world situation of particular interest to you. One of goals of this course is to improve your team skills, thus I discourage individual and two-person projects. Special permission must be given for individual and two-person projects and there is a substantial grading penalty for producing such papers (even with permission). See the final paper instructions on Canvas. Papers should be no more than 10 double-spaced pages and will be due in week 10. More details will be given in class.
Thought papers (30%):
Seven 600-word (max) written assignments provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate that you have completed the readings and considered the personal impact/relevance of selected ideas. These assignments are due at the beginning of class sessions in Weeks 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9. The Canvas site shows a button that allows students to resubmit assignments, a feature we cannot turn off. However, do not interpret that button as indicating that you can resubmit a previously graded assignment.
Scores on the thought papers will be 0 (the paper was not submitted), 1 (the paper was superficial and/or seriously conceptually flawed, consistent with lack of engagement of the material), 3 (the paper reflected careful thought about the course material and how it might be applied), and 4 (the paper reflected deep understanding of the course material and the applications described were near perfect examples of the concepts). Note that we will not use a score of 2. Most papers will receive a score of three indicating good engagement with the course material.
This very blunt grading scheme reflects the purpose of these assignments, which is to encourage careful reflection on the course lectures and readings and to encourage you to think about how the course concepts play out in different contexts.
These assignments are not primarily intended to assess performance – that is the job of the midterm and final paper. Think of these assignments as akin to basketball practice. While you can be lazy at practice (a score of 1) or be particularly “on” (ascore of 4), mostly you goto practice to do drills intended to master skills (a score of 3) that will be of use in the actual game.
Please note that we will not give you detailed feedback about these thought papers each week. I encourage you to contact the course TA if you have submitted an unsatisfactory paper that received a score of 1.
Class Participation (10%):
Much of the knowledge you will gain in this class will come from other students —from hearing, evaluating, and discussing ideas presented in the thought papers or during class discussion online. Participation in class is therefore a key component of the learning experience in class, and I expect you to contribute to class discussion whenever you have something interesting and constructive to say. The critical factor, however, is attendance so you can participate in the breakout discussions and exercises.