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Organizational Behavior: Course outline (MGT-521)

Course description

Organizational behaviour (OB) is an interdisciplinary field drawing from numerous disciplines including psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, organization theory, statistics, and many others. Effective management of human resources within organizations requires an understanding of various behaviour and processes. Managers need to know why people behave as they do in relation to their jobs, their work groups and their organizations. This knowledge of individuals' perceptions, motivational attitudes and behaviour will enable managers to not only understand themselves better, but also to adopt appropriate managerial policies and leadership styles to increase their effectiveness.

The focus of instruction will move progressively through the individual, group and organizational levels of behaviour and will examine the interrelationships of behavioural phenomena among these levels. Additionally, concepts such as motivation, communication and leadership and their relevance to organizational behaviour will be examined in detail. The course is also designed to help the students understand if Western Organizational Behavioural theories and practices have any relevance to the local settings. The course will also discuss the Islamic perspective of understanding and directing human behaviour in a specific direction.

Learning outcome

The prime objective of this course is to help the student understand individuals, teams, organizational cultures, and their influence on employee behaviours. It will be a highly interactive course where class participation will be highly encouraged; we will try to provide a seminal experience for future use in professional development.

  1. Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:
  2. Understand the components of individual behavior and group behaviors in the organizational context.
  3. Understand the relevance of the OB theories and practices, emphasized by Western texts, in local settings.
  4. Understand the Islamic perspective of understanding and directing human behaviour towards achievement of goals.
  5. Understand the causes of job dissatisfaction and stress as well as methods of improving job satisfaction and dealing with stress.
  6. Analyze the impact of individuals and team behavior on organizational productivity
  7. Evaluate the impact of organizational structure, design, culture and change
  8. Synthesize various theories of motivation and leadership and understand their application to workplace.

Recommended book

Course content

Week 01: What is Organizational Behaviour

Importance of organizational behaviour

Week 02: Foundations of Individual Behaviour:

Biographical Characteristics, Ability, Learning

Week 03: Organizational behaviour from Islamic and indigenous perspective

Understanding human psychology through the lenses of Quran and Sunnah

Week 04: Attitudes and Job Satisfaction

Types of attitudes

Types of behaviours

Week 05: Perception and Individual Decision Making

Why perception is important

Types of decision making

Biases and errors in decision making

Week 06: Motivation concept

Content theories of Motivational

Process theories of motivation

Week 07: Motivation: from concept to application

Applying motivation concepts for designing reward system

Emotions and Moods

Course content

Week 08: Foundations of Group Behaviour

Groups in organization

Week 09: Basic Approaches to Leadership

Trait theories

Behavioural theories

Week 10: Contemporary Issues in Leadership

Week 11: Power and politics

Types and sources of power

Politics in organizations

Week 12: Conflict and negotiation

Types of conflicts

Week 13: Functions of organization structure

Types of organizational structure

Organizational structure and its impact on individuals and groups

Week 14: Organizational culture

Organizational culture and individual behaviour

Week 15: Conclusion Session

Terminal Exam (to be announced by the University)

Related book