Pre-requisites

Organizational Behavior (OB) is an important field of study for anyone who plans to work in an organization at some point in his or her life.  Even if you don't plan to be a manager, understanding some key principles about how and why people behave as they do in organizations can help make you a more effective co-worker, team member, leader, and organizational citizen.  You should also be able to apply what you learn about and have the knowledge necessary to be cognizant of your own behaviors and actions in the workplace as well as being aware of the potential fundamental roots of the behaviors exhibited by others. 

This pre-MBA primer course will introduce you to a number of topics from the field of OB that you will need to be familiar with for your MBA module in Organizational Behavior and Performance Management.  

Many of you may initially find that some of the course concepts seem rather intuitive, or simply a matter of common sense.  While this can be true to some extent (i.e., you will have experienced many of the concepts we discuss), we will cover a number of specific theories that are the foundations of your experiences and are based on systematic research.  Often you will find in the end, these issues are not always consistent with intuitive thinking.  Thus, it is important to pay attention to these specific theories and research findings and integrate them with your experiences rather than relying solely on intuition.