Organizational Behavior

Summer

• Managing People
  This course will provide students with conceptual frameworks for increasing individual and team performance. Topics include: managing individual motivation, dealing with interpersonal relations, individual and group decision-making, designing and structuring teams, managing team dynamics, and how to build and leverage social networks.

Fall

• Leading Diverse Organizations
  Using insights from cutting-edge behavioral and psychological research, this course provides students with skills to identify and address issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within organizations. Students will develop an understanding of the barriers to DEI, such as systems of inequality, denial of privilege, biases that hinder support for DEI, and the many biases facing marginalized groups. Through lectures, in-class role-play exercises, and case discussions, students will also learn about how organizational characteristics (e.g., power hierarchies, social networks, work culture) impact the efficacy of DEI interventions. Finally, students will learn how to improve organizational DEI at the individual level (e.g., addressing bias, allyship, empathetic leadership, psychological safety) and at the organizational level (e.g., hiring practices and workplace policies that measurably improve DEI). By the end of this course, students will be adept at identifying and addressing sources of inequity, having difficult conversations, mitigating problems associated with stereotypes, and managing diverse, equitable, and inclusive environments. Importantly, this class teaches students how to advocate for DEI issues in organizational settings, equipping them with the necessary research, persuasion tactics, and analytical skills needed to be advocates, even in the face of resistance. This course fulfills the Ethics and Social Responsibility (ESR) requirement.

Winter

• Mentorship, Sponsorship and Other Developmental Relationships
  Mentoring has been connected to many different organizational and personal outcomes, including satisfaction, retention, salary, and advancement. While mentoring is often discussed and frequently suggested, there is not enough attention given to this critical topic. Mentoring, Sponsorship and Other Developmental Relationships (SP002) is a sprint course dedicated to learning from research, popular practice and personal experiences on mentoring. In this course, there is a commitment to understanding how accessing mentoring can strengthen a powerful competence that is beneficial for creating developmental relationships connected to both career enhancement and personal well‐being.
• Comparative Models of Leadership
  Tuck strives to teach students to become better leaders; yet leadership is a multi-facet and often controversial topic. The purpose of this minicourse is to give students a better understanding of leadership from multiple angles and perspectives. We will examine proven leaders like Margaret Thatcher, Orit Gadiesh, Coach Bobby Knight, Charlotte Beers, and the famed artic explorer Ernest Shackleton. The course will explore the different ways leadership has been studied and defined over the last century, the similarities and differences between the most common leadership theories, and the way leadership has been demonstrated in business, military and, athletic sectors. Students will read about leadership theory, read cases portraying leaders who exemplify these theories, benefit from visitors who are proven leaders, and explore through case studies, class discussions, written assignments, and role-plays the relevance of leadership theory to the work they will do as business leaders The first three class sessions will be devoted to a review of the history of leadership theory. Through case studies examining actual leaders, students will learn about the progression from Trait, Skill and Style Theories to Situational and Contingency Theory, to the more current theories that define leadership as a relationship. Two classes will be devoted to the study and discussion of leaders in the military and athletic arena. By reading about and discussing such leaders, students will gain an appreciation for the lessons they can learn that can be applied to leadership in a business or professional organization. Three classes will then cover a set of leadership tasks frequently encountered by all leaders. We will examine and discuss cases where individuals have to lead change efforts, manage employee performance, and deal with conflict. Students will analyze the actions of leaders in these situations, and pose and defend possible solutions. The last class will be devoted to a discussion of the leadership accomplishments of Earnest Shackleton. We will examine the ways in which Shackleton did (or did not) lead effectively using the theories developed throughout the course.
• Power and Influence
  The purpose of this elective is to give students a head start on building the power skills essential for a successful career. Managers who do not understand political dynamics in their organization will often fail, regardless of the quality of their initiatives. Indeed, many human resource professionals and talent officers inside companies say that power and influence issues are important causes of career derailment. Effective managers therefore need to be able to correctly diagnose the political landscape of the organizations in which they work and to develop and manage their own power. This course is designed so that students will learn concepts useful for understanding power and ways of analyzing power dynamics in organizations. Even more importantly, the course encourages students to think about and develop their own personal path to power. In addition to case discussions and role-plays, students will learn about how power concepts apply to their personal development through self-reflections and sharing of experiences with other students attending the course. After taking this course, students will be able to: (1) diagnose the distribution of power in organizations, (2) identify strategies for building sources of power, (3) develop techniques for influencing others, (4) understand the role of power in building cooperation and leading change in organizations, and (5) identify the particular approach to power and influence that represents the strongest fit for them.
• Women, Gender and Leadership in the New Workplace
  Over the past decades, women have steadily moved into higher levels of management and leadership where they now occupy key positions in the public and private sectors and have established themselves as a force in most workplaces. However, there are still challenges that they are facing. The work place experiences of women are informed by societal expectations that are deeply ingrained in how we show up – gender norms. In this course, we will focus on how gender norms have impacted women’s careers, as well as the ways that gender norms affect work, leadership, and professional success in general. We will delve into issues that are commonly included in discussions on women, gender, and leadership (i.e. work-life balance, networking, and bias). We will expand to more recent dimensions of the new workplace (i.e. the influence of technology, the different career experiences of women across the globe). Through the course, we will have a forum to identify, at interpersonal and organizational levels, the challenges that women have faced—and the strategies they have utilized—on their career path. We will also diagnose gender and power dynamics in the workplace and evaluate alterative reactions/responses to enhance individual and group effectiveness. With each of the topics, you will be encouraged to think of your role as leaders and how you can use those competencies to create and/or contribute to workplaces that are sensitive to the importance of gender equity. This course meets the Ethics & Social Responsibility (ESR) requirement.

Spring

• Leadership Development: Self-Awareness, Skills and Strategies
  Effective leadership requires acquiring knowledge about how effective organizations function as well as knowledge about oneself. While the MBA curricula of top business schools offer countless opportunities to acquire knowledge about organizations, there are relatively fewer courses dedicated to acquiring and learning how to use knowledge about oneself. Yet knowledge about oneself is critical to leadership effectiveness because it enables leaders to choose the settings in which they can capitalize on their strengths and it helps them to identify areas of their leadership profile that require improvement. This course focuses on knowledge about oneself. Tuck offers several outstanding leadership electives. This course is different in two key ways: a. While other courses rely on self-reflection and the study of well-known leaders, in this course students gain a deeper understanding of who they are as leaders by relying on the evaluations of people who have had extensive interactions with them. This is important because our self-assessments are often inaccurate (see reading by Wilson and Dunn assigned for session 1). Especially early in one’s career, errors of self-assessment go in both directions: underestimation and overestimation of strengths. We will use 360-degree feedback collected before the course begins to identify each student’s unique strengths and opportunities to improve as a leader. The 360 tool we use is the Inventory of Leadership Styles (ILS). ILS is generally regarded as the tool appropriate for people leading teams, business units, and up to C-level positions. Taking this course will expose you to a leadership development tool that you may otherwise encounter five to ten years after the Tuck MBA. b. While other leadership courses help you reflect on how you carve your leadership journey over the course of your career or life, the temporal horizon of this course is narrower. The objective of the course is to help you become a better leader in the short term. Based on an analysis of your current strengths and weaknesses, you will formulate an action plan to help you become a more effective leader while you are completing your MBA and in preparation for your first job after Tuck. In formulating the action plan, you will learn about skills and strategies to maximize your chances of achieving personal change. In keeping with the emphasis on your short term leadership development needs, the theoretical framework underlying the 360-degree feedback highlights the relationship between leadership styles and the demands on leaders in different work settings. What is required to be an effective leader in a Wall Street firm likely differs from what it takes to be a leader in a consumer goods company or a start-up. Using this theoretical framework, we will assess how students’ unique leadership profiles match the demands of their jobs, focusing on both the jobs they held prior to joining Tuck and their likely jobs after they leave Tuck. Based on a gap analysis, we will identify development needs and actions for improvement. Students will discuss cases and will take part in structured role-play exercises that identify effective behavioral approaches to leading others. In addition, to create an environment conducive to learning and personal growth, we will use peer coaching for the analysis of 360-degree feedback and for action planning.
• Leadership Out of the Box
  Exceeding performance expectations is not enough in today's business climate if an executive is to succeed. Executives must find ways for developing their employees in order to get the very best productivity. Wise leaders recognize that people are a source of corporate wealth. A potent leader co-creates with his or her people to push the company ahead of the competition. But before a leader can assume this role and responsibility, they must be willing to engage in their own developmental journey. In this course, we take leadership out of the box by studying the lives of extraordinary leaders while engaging in our own self-exploration. Our intent is to appreciate the strengths and frailties all leaders possess, and to understand the learning edges we all experience. This course creates the space to study, reflect on and discuss principles of leadership, such as self-awareness, identity, faith, vision, courage, passion, mindfulness, and commitment. By studying the lives of others, we learn how the context shapes the experiences and choices of leaders over the course of their lives. We also recognize the power of the historical moment that enables certain men and women to come to the forefront at critical times.
• Negotiations
  Negotiation is the art and science of securing agreements between two or more interdependent parties. This course focuses on the theory and processes of negotiation as it is practiced in a variety of settings. It is designed to complement the technical and diagnostic skills learned in other Tuck courses. A basic premise of the course is that while wise, decisive leaders need strong analytical skills to better the world through business, negotiation skills are essential for today’s business leader to ensure adoption and implementation of proposals. This course will highlight the components of an effective negotiation and teach you to analyze your own behavior in negotiations. The course will be largely experiential, providing you with an opportunity to develop your skills by participating in role-play simulations and integrating your experiences with the principles presented in the lectures, course discussions, and assigned readings. Students may not take both Negotiations and the Negotiations Accelerated (NEGOX) minicourse course for credit.
• Equity Analytics in Organizations
  To have a competitive advantage in business, organizations need to leverage the full talents of an increasingly diverse population. Yet, many managers lack the analytical skills to identify whether their business practices create disparities in opportunity and/or outcomes for their workers. In this seminar, students will learn different ways to use data to identify and measure inequity in organizations that affect diversity goals, broadly defined, including but not limited to gender, race, social class, age, veteran status, parental status, and sexual orientation. Students will also learn methodological strategies for designing and testing solutions (e.g., longitudinal interventions, randomized field experiments) in real-world contexts (e.g., investment banking, high-tech, biotech, law firms). Course materials will include academic articles from management, sociology, social psychology, and economics to learn the analytical rigor required to make data-driven managerial decisions. The papers we read will leverage data to develop theory and offer empirical evidence to address questions such as: • How can managers use data to identify and measure social factors that lead to inequity in hiring, compensation, and performance evaluations? • How does work-family conflict negatively affect both men and women employees? • How can managers design and test interventions that reduce bias and drive positive organizational change for all employees? • How can employers assess if certain groups of workers are more (dis)advantaged by remote work? What types of interventions help remote workers maintain and develop “soft skills”? • In what ways might artificial intelligence be used to overcome hiring biases, rather than promote them? By the end of this course, students will have learned analytical techniques to (a) identify inequity using data from various contexts (e.g., hiring evaluations, employee performance reviews, MBA starting salaries); (b) infer plausible causes of such inequities; and (c) design and test interventions to reduce observed inequities. Students will engage in active learning by co-leading class discussions of the papers each week and completing both a mid-term and final project that involve using real-world data to perform a detailed analysis of inequity. This course meets the Ethics & Social Responsibility (ESR) requirement.
• Leading Disruptive Change
  Leading Disruptive Change describes a set of lenses, tools, and mindsets to navigate through today’s world of predictable unpredictability. Technologies are advancing exponentially, lines between industries are blurring, expectations of consumers, employees, and stakeholders are shifting, and global shocks are happening with increased frequency. The forever normal of constant change places leaders in a thick fog. Data to justify making a decision comes in when it is too late to make a decision. Yesterday’s strengths become tomorrow’s weaknesses. In the fog, leaders must confront adaptive issues that are complicated, interdependent, and require multidisciplinary approaches. Conflicting demands feel paralyzing. Pursue purpose by embracing sustainability and maximize profits by extracting and exploiting resources. Protect the present and create the future. Enable empowerment and autonomy and decisively lead in new directions. Build a high-performance meritocracy and provide equitable opportunities and outcomes. Resting at the unique intersection of the disciplines of strategy, innovation, leadership, behavioral psychology, and systems psychodynamics, Leading Disruptive Change integrates academic research and practitioner-oriented tools and frameworks to give students practical ways to act wisely and decisively through the fog of disruptive change. We will go through seven core tenets: 1. You need to lead through fog 2. You need to understand the particular nature of adaptive challenges 3. Technical solutions are necessary but not sufficient to solve adaptive challenges 4. Solving adaptive challenges requires intentionally inducing and managing discomfort. 5. Go deep to find the real problem. 6. Both/and it with a paradox mindset. 7. Follow paradoxical practices to lead disruptive change.
• Social Networks in Organizations
  “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” This old adage may be an overstatement, but few people who have worked in organizations need to be convinced that social relations are important for getting things done in firms. And yet, beyond the basic intuition that networks matter, most of us give little thought to exactly how, why or for what networks matter for our work and professional advancement. This seminar examines scholarly research about social networks in organizations. The research papers develop theory and empirical evidence to address questions such as: How and why do social networks matter? How do networks take shape and evolve in organizations and careers? What can managers to do influence the formation and dissolution of networks? How and why do different people network (or benefit from their networks) differently? How does hybrid/remote work affect network dynamics? How do personality and, even more fundamentally, brain structure and function, affect our networking behaviors? How and why does networking differ across cultures? And how can we use this knowledge to maximize network advantage? Intense student involvement in both the presentation and the class discussion of the scientific papers is required. Like all RTP seminars, there will be a focus on using academic research to help you learn the analytical rigor to be an effective manager in an increasingly complex world.