UltraTapirMaster792
The theories and concepts taught in this course will only…
The theories and concepts taught in this course will only contribute to your personal and professional growth if you learn to apply what you have learned in the classroom to everyday life. The objective of the real world papers is to give you some practice in looking at the world through an organizational behavior lens. need to choose a “real-world” example of people management dynamics and analyze it in terms of the concepts and theories from the class materials. This assignment is designed to meet the following two learning objectives of our course:
Identify the conditions that foster individual, team and organizational effectiveness and the disruptive forces that can derail them.
Analyze and evaluate evidence related to managing people and develop evidence-based solutions to people management problems.
For this real world paper, please use the course materials that have been covered in the first five modules.
Content:
Your job is to identify a “real world” event or problem that deals with some of the course concepts or theories that were covered in class (i.e., in any class materials and discussions). The example you choose can be drawn from your personal experience (a problem that you are currently struggling with or have struggled with), media coverage of a current event, or a book, television program, or movie (or anywhere else you can think of). It does not need to be something that actually happened in reality, as long as it’s portrayed in some media outlet (e.g., movie clips of fictional events are fine – this is why I put “real world” in quotes).
In your reflection, you will briefly describe the event or situation. Then, discuss how applying course concepts or theories might be useful (i.e., did the person suffer from not understanding a fundamental organizational behavior theory? Is a company succeeding because of an insightful application of a specific organizational behavior topic? Did using a technique we cover in class help you to achieve a goal or solve a personal problem?). You also want to engage in thoughtful reflection by discussing the implications of the situation you describe for the future (i.e., What do you think the person should be doing next? What should the company be considering in terms of future practices and policies? etc.).
Your main objective in conducting this reflection is to convince me that you understand the chosen organizational behavior concepts/theories and how to apply them to a real, dynamic situation. Therefore, I’d encourage you to be as specific and explicit as possible in mentioning how you recognized the course concepts or theories in a real life situation, and how applying the concepts or theories helped (a) deepen your understanding of organizational behavior theory and (b) helped (or could help) the situation you describe.
Some Tips:
Use more than one course concept/theory. The best papers demonstrate that you are able to integrate course materials, either within or – better yet – across different modules. You should use more than one course concept or theory in your analysis to be able to demonstrate your integrative skills.
At the same time, don’t go overboard with the number of course concepts/theories. It is totally possible to write an excellent paper using only two or three course concepts or theories. Using too many may dilute your message. What ultimately makes sense for your paper depends on the situation you choose to analyze and also on the complexity of your chosen course concepts. The more complex your course concepts, the more likely you are able to rely on fewer course concepts.
Balance simplicity and complexity in choosing your course concepts or theories. Do not choose course concepts that are overly simplistic such as simply providing an example of a team you have worked on in the past to apply the term “team” to a real-life scenario.
You need to choose a different scenario/real world event for each reflection paper.
Show me that you know you are applying a concept: This can be as simple as bolding/underlining/italicizing specific organizational behavior terms, theory names or concepts, but it also includes the diligent use of in-text citations as per APA format (see Writing Assignments).
Be brief: You do not have a lot of time or space to elaborate or to describe your real world event. This assignment is challenging you to keep your arguments succinct, yet compelling.
Use your personal life: This assignment will be most meaningful to you if you draw from your personal experiences to show how understanding class concepts can really improve your life. This is not a requirement, but I do believe this assignment will be more of a learning experience when you use our class materials to make sense of personal experiences. When I say personal experiences, I mean your personal experiences in a management/work/business/team setting. I am not as interested in you analyzing a truly personal experience via the class concepts. For example, while the stress and emotions chapter might help you in analyzing a conflict in a relationship with a family member, this situation does not capture a management situation in the way we have been talking about management in this class.
Some taboos: Please do not use real world events that are discussed in class or in any of the course materials. For example, the stress and emotions chapter has a case study on SpaceX and Elon Musk. I would therefore discourage you from choosing the same theme for your paper.
