MGMT591 Full Course (May 2019)

MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Week 1 Discussion

CHOOSING A LEADER

Choose a well-known and analyzed leader in business. This will be someone who has a substantial record of being analyzed through published material that can be located in the library or elsewhere. Examples are Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Jeff Bezos, Carly Fiorina, Howard Schultz, Larry Page, Indra Nooyi, Rupert Murdoch, Meg Whitman, Henry Ford, and Herb Kelleher. Throughout this course, this leader will be the subject of your weekly discussions, so chose a leader in an industry in which you currently or plan to work.

To begin this week’s discussion, imagine your job is to introduce your leader at a large, professional, industry-specific convention. Your chosen leader is the keynote speaker, and you’re responsible for outlining his or her career highlights, education, career trajectory, and future goals for the audience.

MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Week 2 Discussion

ANALYSIS OF YOUR LEADER

This week you will apply your knowledge of emotional intelligence to further assess your leader’s EQ. In this discussion, assess the “mood” of this leader and also assess the level of emotional intelligence of the leader by applying the analysis on pages 115 – 119 of the textbook. (Chapter 4)

MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Week 3 Discussion

YOUR LEADER IN THE CONTEXT OF MOTIVATIONAL THEORIES

This week you will examine the motivational concepts from Chapter 8 and show how your chosen leader either applied or missed applying these concepts.

Research a situation your leader faced while at the head of his or her current or previous organization. Using the concepts outlined in Chapter 8, analyze the leader’s actions through the lens of the motivational theories and argue that the leader’s actions were appropriate or inappropriate in the context of the theories.

MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Week 4 Discussion

YOUR LEADER AND TEAMWORK

This week you will further explore the effectiveness of your leader through an analysis of teamwork in his or her organization. Review this leader’s organization and assess what the group behavior was like under this leader (Chapter 9). How were teams implemented in the leader’s organization? Were they successful? What could have been done better? (Chapter 10)

MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Week 5 Discussion

YOUR LEADER AND COMMUNICATION AND CONFLICT

This week you explore the communication style of your leader and how your leader has used communication, among other tools, to manage conflict. Using Chapter 11, determine the primary means of communication used by your leader. Was your leader an effective communicator and mediator? Find an example of conflict (Chapter 14) your leader dealt with and use the course concepts to judge its results. Was your leader effective in conflict management? Explain your answer using concepts from this chapter.

Be sure to use actual examples from the literature and cite your sources appropriately. Be sure to include extensive research outside the textbook and also to cite the textbook correctly including page numbers. You are expected to use at least two academic or business sources other than your textbook each week.

Be sure your first post each week directly addresses the prompt above. Your remaining posts should continue to further the depth and breadth of the discussion by responding to your professor or classmates.

MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Week 6 Discussion

YOUR LEADER AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

This week, you will examine the organizational structure in which your leader currently operates or formerly operated. Using your research, apply applicable concepts from Chapter 15 and report on the organizational structure of your leader’s organization. Based on your research, use the tools in Chapter 16 to characterize the culture of the leader’s organization. What is your estimate on what kind of Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI) result this leader’s organization would see?

Be sure to use actual examples from the literature and cite your sources appropriately. Be sure to include extensive research outside the textbook and also to cite the textbook correctly including page numbers. You are expected to use at least two academic or business sources other than your textbook each week.

Be sure your first post each week directly addresses the prompt above. Your remaining posts should continue to further the depth and breadth of the discussion by responding to your professor or classmates.

MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Week 7 Discussion

FINAL ASSESSMENT OF YOUR LEADER

This week you will combine your research throughout the class to provide a final, academically-informed and industry-applicable assessment of your chosen leader. Using your research findings and citing proper sources, give a final and comprehensive analysis of your chosen leader.

Be sure to cover important topics such as: What are his or her most notable accomplishments? What is his or her “style” (in the context of motivational and management theories)? What was the greatest conflict your leader faced (Chapter 14)?

Be sure to use actual examples from the literature and cite your sources appropriately. Be sure to include extensive research outside the textbook and also to cite the textbook correctly including page numbers. You are expected to use at least two academic or business sources other than your textbook each week.

Be sure your first post each week directly addresses the prompt above. Your remaining posts should continue to further the depth and breadth of the discussion by responding to your professor or classmates.

MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Week 8 Discussion

REFLECTING UPON THE ANALYSIS OF YOUR LEADER

In Week 1, you provided an introduction of your leader. You highlighted career accomplishments, education, and other surface-level characteristics. Throughout the course, you have used sophisticated theories and concepts to guide your research to gain further insight into your leader and his or her style, EQ, organization, and other important aspects.

This week, provide some reflection on how your perspective of your leader changed as your analysis deepened and your exploration became more sophisticated.

 

 

MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Week 2 Assignment

LIFE STYLES INVENTORYâ„¢

Life Styles Inventory (LSI) Assignment Guidelines

Developing a willingness and ability to engage in self-reflection is a critical leadership skill that is not easily learned, yet which reaps many rewards. The Life Styles Inventory enables you to examine your unique way of thinking and how it influences your behavior.

Your Assignment

Complete (on your own) Life Styles Inventory (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site., so that you end up with your Life Styles Circumplex profile: 12 personal thinking style scores, with one score for each section of the circumplex. See the embedded link for additional information.

Write a three to five page paper examining and explaining your LSI results. Make sure to comply with the Grading Rubric (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. provided. The required page count does not include the title page or table of contents. Hint: The table of contents should include the four topics in the grading rubric.

LSI Style Interpretations

Go to the LSI1 Results page, find your circumplex profile, and click on the circumplex slice of one of the styles. The site will bring you to a customized interpretation of the style you clicked on. Click on each of the 12 slices to see all of the customized style description pages.

How to Use the Inventory

Complete the Life Styles Inventory (LSI) exercise (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. Follow the instructions given on the LSI website.

Section Points Description

Title Page Title of your applied research paper, your name, course number and title, name of professor, and date.

Personal Thinking Styles 25

Identify your primary and backup thinking styles: What are your “primary” (highest percentile score) and “backup” (second highest percentile) personal thinking styles as shown in your circumplex? Discuss how your primary and backup personal styles are manifested in your life and work (see the LSI Self Development Guide online). Using the style interpretations in the LSI Guide, describe the styles and give your perceptions about the results. Do you agree or disagree with them and why?

Identify your limiting style: Identify and illustrate one style you think might be working against you to reduce your overall effectiveness. Name the style you have chosen and make a few remarks about why you are choosing this style as limiting your professional effectiveness in organizations.

Select one behavior associated with this style that you think you would like to change and the difference it will make. Be sure to support your interpretation with examples, and so forth.

LSI style interpretations: Go to the LSI1 Results page, find your circumplex profile, and click on the circumplex slice of one of the styles. The site will bring you to a customized interpretation of the style you clicked on. Click on each of the 12 slices to see all of the customized style description pages.

Impact on Management Style 25

What impact do your personal styles have on your management style? Explore and assess the impact of your styles on your effectiveness as a manager in terms of the four functions of management, listed below.

Planning

Organizing

Leading

Controlling

If you are currently not a manager, assume you are and predict your effectiveness as such.

Genesis of Personal Style 25

Critically evaluate and explain how you developed the personal styles that were revealed in your LSI. What role, for example, did family relationships, school, organizational memberships, culture, and so forth, have in shaping your personal style?

Conclusion and Reflection 25

Think about your LSI results and your responses to the above questions. Summarize any concluding comments. Close your paper with a statement of at least one question or goal you hope your work in MGMT 591 will help you to address and comment with a few sentences to describe the value of this exercise to your personal and professional development.

Include a copy of your LSI Report. Either copy or paste it into this assignment or include it as a pdf.

Please note: The LSI Self-Development Guide is integrated into the LSI1 Participant account and is available after you complete the LSI Survey and have access to your results. In-depth and personalized style descriptions can be found by clicking on the style slices of the circumplex. For example, if you would like to learn more about the Humanistic-Encouraging style (Style 1), you simply click on the circumplex slice for that style. The same goes for the other 11 styles.

You can find the Challenge of Change and the Self-Improvement Plan information by using two of the additional links that become available in your LSI online account after the survey is complete. These links are The Challenge of Change and Your Self-Improvement Plan. Good luck with the exercise!

MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Week 2 Assignment

CAPSIM INTRODUCTION AND PRACTICE

Complete the training exercises on CapSim. You will be unable to use the simulation correctly without this preparation.

Confirm that you can connect to CapSim’s CapSimCore simulation for the course. You should be assigned to a team. If not, contact your professor.

Complete training exercises and tutorial videos as specified below.

Beginner training

Intermediate training

Advanced training

Enter and save decisions for your company for each of the two practice rounds scheduled this week.

Review the simulation report before making decisions for each round.

Review the simulation report after each round has processed. What went well? What didn’t? What can you do to improve your company’s position next round? Post in the next week’s discussion.

Complete practice rounds 1 and 2 as scheduled by your professor.

MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Week 3 Assignment

CAPSIM SIMULATION – COMPETITION

Round 1 and Round 2 decisions

Team Course Project Milestone

 

MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Week 6 Assignment

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE INVENTORY (OCI)

Go to the OCI (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. and follow the instructions on the site.

Submit your OCI results for this week (pdf or copy/paste into Word).

Add three to five paragraphs about your learning experience impacted by the Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI). Please specifically discuss/assess what you see as an ideal culture or a culture that is ideal for rapid change.

In two to three paragraphs, discuss how Continuous Improvement is impacting healthcare, banking, retail and/or government (choose one area). Merger of Lean and Six Sigma are interesting topics you can explore here.

Submit your assignment.

MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Course Project

Leadership and Organizational Behavior in Action

Objective

Research shows that people learn effectively when working on real problems grounded in their work experience. To this end, the Collaborative Course Project is designed to incorporate students’ work experience into the learning process in this course.

The project is an opportunity to explore, in-depth, a topic related to the course objectives (COs) that is of significance to one ore more of your team member’s organization (current or former).

Summary

Each team is required to prepare an applied research paper, with a minimum of 15 pages but not to exceed 20 pages in length (excluding cover page, table of contents and appendices), on a specific issue related to leadership or organizational behavior.

Guidelines

Topic Selection

Select a specific organization of interest to the team members and identify a problem at the firm related to organizational behavior (OB).

Think of your team as a group of organizational consultants. Assume that a key manager has requested a thorough analysis and recommended course of action to resolve an actual organizational problem. The team’s goal is develop recommendations that will make a positive difference to the performance of the organization.

Your team’s paper should address the following three course objectives, at minimum:

Course Objective A – Evaluate how organizational theories and practices can improve organizational operations.

Course Objective B – Analyze how values, attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and personality influence decision making in the workplace.

Course Objective F – Analyze the impact of different structures and lines of authority on organizational strategy and culture.

Research Sources

All papers must have a minimum of eight scholarly sources cited within the text of the paper and identified in the references section.

Additional research sources can be attached in a bibliography.

For more information on how to access and use EBSCOhost contact the Library at 800.293.3044Call: 800.293.3044 or library.devry.edu (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. and click Ask A Librarian.

Paper Format

All papers should be double-spaced, using an 11- or 12-point font.

The length of the paper is to be between 10 and 15 pages, not counting the cover page, table of contents, nor appendices.

The first page should include the title of the work, student name, course number and title, date, and professor name.

The second page should be a table of contents. It should, at a minimum, reflect the seven items listed in the Grading Rubric.

Follow APA style for general format and citations (see the APA Guidelines Tutorial in the Syllabus).

The paper sections must adhere to the guidelines below, and each section must be labeled in the text.

The language should be clear, concise, and precise.

The tone should be professional, consistent, and not filled with jargon.

Grammar and syntax (sentence structure) must be correct.

The report must be free of misspellings and typos.

Tables and Figures

All figures and tables must be referred to in your text before they appear on the page.

Figures and tables should appear on the same page as, or the page after, the text that refers to them.

All figures and tables need captions. Captions go below figures and above tables.

Quotations and Citations

Quotations and citations are crucial components of a research paper and must be present.

Failure to properly cite research sources and borrowed ideas is plagiarism.

Refer to the APA style guide for assistance with properly citing quoted or borrowed materials and ideas.

Turnitin is used on all reports and projects. A report can be obtained for your review prior to submitting your final work. Make sure that you are in compliance with the University’s 20/80 rule.

Milestones

Week Action Required

Familiarize yourself with course content and select an organization and problem area to research.

Submit the Team Contract.

Submit a written Brief Proposal of Research containing the following:

A brief overview of the chosen organization and your team’s role in it.

A preliminary problem statement in the form of a researchable question.

A brief narrative description of the organizational problem that you would like the team to research and resolve.

Conduct library research on your topic.

Identify a minimum of eight scholarly resources for the project.

All resources for the paper must come from Library and must be of scholarly quality.

Use the librarians for assistance in accessing materials.

Review the Using EBSCO tutorial.

Please Note: Articles found online (many on consulting company websites, Internet magazines, or other blogs) will not be considered an acceptable scholarly resource. Conduct your research through a library where you can be assured that the sources are of scholarly quality.

Submit a written Expanded Research Proposal containing the following:

Title page and Table of Contents.

Documentation of at least four initial scholarly sources from the library.

Expanded introduction to the organization.

Expanded description of the chosen problem.

Preliminary solution options (can be bullet points).

Preliminary analysis of leadership and organizational behavior concepts addressed in the paper.

Continue to work on the class project; seek professor help as required.

Submit the completed project.

Team Files

Here are the files that you will need for your team project.

Team Name and Contract (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Peer Review (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Project Outline

Your paper must include the following sections.

Section Points Description

Title Page

Title of the team’s applied research paper, course number and title, professor, and date.

Introduction

Provide an overview of the organization and your team’s role in it. Give enough information about the firm to acquaint an unfamiliar person (no matter how famous the company). Identify name, location, size, market segment (business line), and a brief history. Identify the essential issues, events, or actions to help frame the problem and subsequent discussion points.

Problem Statement

Identify and clearly state the problem (the leadership or organizational behavior issue that you have selected to research). The problem statement should be phrased in terms of a researchable question. For example, if a work group is not performing effectively, an effective problem statement might be “How can group performance be improved?”

A well-formed problem statement has the following.

Focus: The problem should be well-defined and specific enough for the reader to gain a clear idea of the OB topic area and the direction of your study and research.

Structure: If the problem statement is sufficiently focused, it will provide a basis for decisions about which information to include and which to exclude from the paper.

Literature Review

5

Your team must address at least eight scholarly resources in this section. Approach this section as a mini book report on each of the reference sources that significantly informed your analysis and proposed solutions. Give the reader an encapsulated review of what information you found most relevant to your research. You may have found conflicting opinions or theories related to your topic area. Identify and discuss any such contrasts or describe in detail significant agreement among your sources. Your literature review should be separate and distinct from your analysis section; it is a summation of your research. The goal should be a paragraph containing a minimum of three to five sentences per review.

Analysis

50

Explore the problem in depth and with scholarly rigor.

Provide an identification and description of the root causes of the problem or issue. Be sure not to address only symptoms of your problem. Diagnose the problem and its origins.

A critical element of this section is to apply leadership and organization concepts and models from our text, from class discussions, and from the team’s literature review. Discuss the concepts, ideas, or insights that are most valuable in helping you make sense of the causes of the problem. Support your analysis with reference to appropriate research material.

Solutions

40

Identify at least three potential workable solutions to your problem and identify the pros and cons of each alternative solution and its high-level implementation steps.

Identify your preferred solution and describe exactly what should be done and how it should be done, including by whom, with whom, and in what sequence. Always explain your thinking behind your final solution set. It’s important to be clear about why a particular alternative (solution) was chosen, as opposed to others.

Reflection

10

Think about this assignment and write a well-thought-out reflective statement about how this assignment influenced the team members’ personal, academic, and professional leadership and managerial development.

References

10

You must use no fewer than eight library resources outside of your textbook.

All references must be cited in two places—within the body of your paper and on a separate reference list. Choose references judiciously and cite them accurately. Cite all sources using APA format.

Please note that citing an author’s work within your text documents your research, identifies the source for readers, and enables readers to locate the source of information in the alphabetical reference list at the end of the paper. To use the ideas or words of another person without crediting the source is plagiarism. Plagiarism in its purest form involves copying passages either verbatim or nearly verbatim, with no direct acknowledgment of the source. The most common form of plagiarism is to paraphrase information from your source material. Paraphrasing does not relieve you of the obligation to provide proper identification of source data. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to make sure all quotes, ideas, or conclusions that not your own are given proper acknowledgment in your text.