ORG 9403 Organisational Behavior and Leadership
ORG 9403 Organisational Behavior and Leadership
This course is a Norwegian version of the international business school subject "Organizational Behavior." The subject focuses on how individuals' characteristics, efforts, interactions, and leadership have a fundamental impact on organizations' effectiveness, profitability, and value. The course emphasizes human characteristics and processes.
The course covers the most central and research-based knowledge about human characteristics, processes, and interactions in a complex work environment. It also introduces organizational theory topics such as organizational culture and design. The organization is both a context and a tool where individuals with different characteristics interact to create value. Leadership is a central process in all of this, providing direction, mobilizing efforts, and contributing to the success of employees, groups, and organizations.
The course aims to cover topics such as learning, what motivates people, perception, how human characteristics can be characterized, and how such characteristics and processes can be linked to well-being, health, effort, and productivity. Furthermore, the course provides knowledge about groups and teams, work environment, characteristics of creativity, problem-solving, and decision-making. Special attention will be given to key aspects of management, including leadership during change processes and e-leadership.
The course provides a broad and fundamental introduction to how to facilitate the sustainable use of human resources.
Students will acquire fundamental psychological, leadership, and organizational theory knowledge that is relevant for the workplace and for further studies in other organizational and management subjects. This knowledge is organized at the individual, group, and organizational levels.
Examples of such knowledge include:
- How organizations can create favorable motivational conditions to maximize employee effort and performance.
- How to describe what effective leaders do in their role as leaders.
- How to improve opportunities for influencing others' viewpoints, such as in leadership and interactions with others.
- How to enhance personal effectiveness through self-leadership.
- The central role of research in generating reliable knowledge is an overarching theme in all parts of the course.
- Students should be able to explain key concepts, processes, and theories and how they relate to productivity, effectiveness, and value creation in organizations.
- This includes being able to provide examples of practical application of the course material or illustrate the material with examples from the workplace.
- It also requires students to explain concepts and theories in a precise manner, distinguishing different concepts and theories from each other.
Organizational behaviour and leadership is an important subject that, when applied effectively, can contribute to human productivity, well-being, and value creation in organizations. The rationale behind this is that good leadership and adequate organizational principles can explain performance, well-being, loyalty, and financial results. Many of the largest and most effective companies in the world systematically invest in developing their organizations based on the most central knowledge in this field. By applying knowledge of effective decision-making, learning, motivation, and communication processes, well-being and effort will increase.
Against this backdrop, students will develop an understanding that both psychological characteristics and processes, leadership processes, and organizational conditions have a significant impact on value creation in the workplace.
- The course covers various topics related to individuals in groups and organizations, including:
- Individual characteristics and productivity in organizations.
- Motivation, attitudes, and performance.
- Thinking at work: learning, problem-solving, decision-making, and creativity.
- Work in groups: interaction and work environment.
- Communication, information, power, and influence.
- Diversity in the workplace.
- Organizational theory topics such as:
- The purpose and existence of organizations.
- Organizational design
- Organizational structure
- Organizational culture
- Organizational change
- Third-party collaboration in the Norwegian workplace
- Leadership topics, including:
- What is leadership?
- Leadership traits, behaviour, and leader-member relationships
- Diversity in leadership
- Leadership and technology
- Destructive leadership
- Leadership and social responsibility
- Learning process. The course consists of 30 hours of lectures/synchronous activities. The lectures will focus on presenting key concepts and theories, but there will also be room for discussions, use of small cases as tools for concretization, and working on assignments, among other activities. Discussions about the practical relevance of the different topics are also essential.
- In addition to the required and recommended literature, digital learning resources will be provided. It is expected that students use these resources to prepare for lectures and exams. This corresponds to 12 hours of asynchronous material.
The course utilizes the ItsLearning platform. It is the students' responsibility to stay updated on the content posted on the course website.
Completion
The course is carried out very intensively over 3 - 4 weeks and ends with an exam shortly after the last lecture.
Re-sit exam
Students who do not pass the written exam, or wish to improve their grade, are offered a re-sit exam in spring 2025 and last time autumn 2025.
After autumn 2025 students who do not pass the written exam need to attend the course ORG 3403. This means they have to retake the entire course, including mandatory coursework.
Higher Education Entrance Qualification.
Disclaimer
Deviations in teaching and exams may occur if external conditions or unforeseen events call for this.
No specific prerequisites are required for this course.
| Assessments |
|---|
Exam category: School Exam Form of assessment: Written School Exam - digital Exam/hand-in semester: First Semester Weight: 100 Grouping: Individual Support materials:
Duration: 3 Hour(s) Exam code: ORG 94031 Grading scale: ECTS Resit: Examination every semester |
| Activity | Duration | Comment |
|---|---|---|
Teaching | 30 Hour(s) | |
Digital resources | 12 Hour(s) | |
Student's own work with learning resources | 113 Hour(s) | |
Group work / Assignments | 42 Hour(s) | |
Examination | 3 Hour(s) |
A course of 1 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of 26-30 hours. Therefore a course of 7,5 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of at least 200 hours.