Presented by

Kenneth G. Brown
Associate Professor of Management & Organisations and Tippie Research Fellow
Henry B. Tippie College of Business
University of Iowa

Abstract
Numerous scholars have raised concerns that organizational behavior (OB) – having originated from various disciplines such as industrial and organizational psychology, sociology, social psychology, communications, anthropology, and general management – has not yet coalesced into a coherent field. The present study seeks to examine how OB is construed by examining what is being taught in required OB classes in full-time MBA programs. Two hundred and forty-one OB and OB-related courses (e.g., leadership; management) from 333 accredited full-time MBA programs were coded for information about content coverage, readings, cases, and assessment. Inductive coding of syllabi was combined with archival data on institutional characteristics. Results reveal only a small core of content across all courses but four distinct types of courses showing greater homogeneity in content, assessment, and terminology. Among these four, leadership courses emerged as most distinct, suggesting an emerging “secondary” core in OB of leadership discussed prescriptively and assessed via writing assignments. Implications of these findings for the field of OB are discussed, along with suggestions for future research. This seminar is aimed at spawning a productive discussion of those teaching OB at Bond about subject content and methods.
 

When

27 February 2012
11:00 - 12:00pm

Where

Boardroom, Faculty of Business (BLD02_3_03)
Bond University

Contact Information

Catherine Smith
Database and Research Support
Faculty of Business
Telephone: +61 7 5595 55721