Submit an outline for the research project topic illustrated below.
Your outline should follow and expand on the basic Experiential Learning Model, i.e., contain a section for each of the following segments at the highest level of the outline:
Concrete Experience -> Reflective Observation -> Abstract Conceptualization -> Active Experimentation
Start with one personal experience from the workplace or researched experience from an organization that can be linked toOrganizational Behavior.
Your submission for this should consist of 2 to 3 pages (double spaced), and include an outline of your CONCRETE EXPERIENCE and an outline of some REFLECTIVE OBSERVATION based on that experience. Then discuss at least two related course content/topic areas that relate to the topic and experience in the ABSTRACT CONCEPTUALIZATION portion of the outline, and finish with an outline of possible learning you have realized, based on your analysis of theory applied to that experience in the ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION section of the outline.
Case Scenario:
Football Head Case
By Brian S. Curran
Organizational Behavior – Excelsior College
The problem that will be discussed is the epidemic of concussions and scientific research that has linked concussions in the NFL to significant health problems later in life for NFL players. Within the past three years the NFL has reached a settlement of over $750 million with former NFL players that have filed suit over their injuries suffered from the many years of NFL play.
The historical account of this problem is that historically, the NFL didn’t require players to leave the game if they felt they could still play after a concussion and/or had lax standards regarding NFL players and concussions wherein team doctors often didn’t protest a player that wanted to reenter a game after a concussion. Multiple concussions resulted in several weeks off but not much attention was given toward the subject for the majority of the NFL’s existence. This all changed when several prominent NFL players were found to have had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a crippling brain disease after autopsies conducted on their corpses. These players died at a very young age and some committed suicide.
This has become a major problem for the NFL and their previous course of action has been woefully ineffective. Even their current course of action, which is predicated upon denial of the significance of NFL’s contribution to brain injury in players, their action has been one of denial. This is based upon an organizational culture of denial within the league wherein the league refuses to acknowledge the negative impact that football in its current form has on player’s health. For over 20 years, the NFL has deceitfully concealed the link between traumatic brain injuries and football, and with the current settlement admitted culpability on behalf of the NFL to causing the brain injuries of players. Despite reaching an agreement on a proposed $765 million settlement in the lawsuit, the current NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell emphasized to CBS News how the NFL gave no admission of guilt and did not recognize any culpability on behalf of football.
In the early 1990s, the NFL’s retirement board awarded disability to at least three former players after concluding that football caused their brain injuries, which conclusively proves that the NFL knew about the danger posed to its players. This organizational culture of denial hasn’t changed in over 20 years and is beginning to affect how parents view football in regard to allowing their children to play a sport beginning in peewee leagues that causing irreparable brain damage. If more parents begin to realize the NFL doesn’t want to change its organization’s response to this serious problem, more may begin to stop allowing their children to play football as the NFL influences all other lower leagues from peewee to college. The NFL must change its organizational response to this serious problem or risk facing obscurity if more potential players aren’t beginning football in earlier ages because of the potential damage to their brains from concussions.
References:
Harrison, Walter T., Charles T. Horngren, and William C. Thomas. Financial Accounting. 9th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2013.
Three Former NFL Stars Diagnosed With Telltale Signs of CTE
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sports/league-of-denial/three-former-nfl-stars-diagnosed-with-telltale-signs-of-cte/ by Jason M. Breslow 2013