Organizational Behavior

This course contributes to the general purposes of the MSc Management of human resources program by offering at the students theoretical and methodological tools to understand the impact that personal factors, group dynamics, and organizational characteristics have on human behavior at the workplace.
This course primarily focuses on the contributions of the psychological perspective to explain organizational behavior.
The first learning objective is to enhance knowledge of the main psycho-sociological theories that explain how people give meaning to their work environment and how the attributed meanings affect job attitudes and job performance both at individual and group levels. Therefore, it will be examined: how emotions, cognitive and social processes influence person perception and groups' decision-making; how personal and contextual resources enhance employee wellbeing and role performance; how workgroups function, and in which conditions their effectiveness can be improved or threatened, specifically within international contexts.
The second learning objective is to develop a critical understanding of the main strategies and methodologies of intervention that can promote employee engagement and create effective international teams.
The third learning objective is to increase the ability to base managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence on how people think, perceive, and behave as well as on reflective practices. During the lectures, some case studies will be introduced to exercise students in setting and solving management problems by applying theoretical and methodological knowledge.

At the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Describe the individual differences and explain their relationships with organizational behaviors.
- Explain the individual, social and organizational factors that can shape, and sometimes distort, perception, attribution of causes, judgment and decision making.
- Explain how the personal and situational factors can influence job attitudes and job performance.
- Analyze the structure and the properties of work groups and teams
- Explore the quality of the interaction and communication within groups (intragroup relationships) and between groups (intergroup relationships).
- Recognize the dynamics of international teams and plan strategies to promote collective work engagement.
- Mindfully apply theoretical and methodological models to evaluate the quality of working life, to formulate hypotheses on the antecedents of organizational problems (e.g. people disengagement, burnout, counterproductive behaviors, absenteeism) and to design action plans.
- Connect scientific evidence on Organizational Behavior with issues and decisions in HRM.
- Present their analysis in a proper format of a written report.