Case Study:
Organizational management
The setup Have you ever heard of Richard Feynmann? He was the subject of a biography a few years back called "Genius." And apparently that's what he was. Doctorate from MIT in physics, spent his career at Caltech, and became eminently well-known from his contributions to the Los Alamos project. Not long before his death in 1988, he was the guy who gave the compelling testimony before the Congressional committee investigating the Challenger disaster. It was Feynmann who, in a few simple words, persuaded the scientific community to look at the O-rings, which were ultimately found to have contributed directly to the tragedy. If you have a chance to read anything about him, or by him (you can still get audiotapes and transcripts of his lectures, packaged as "Five Easy Pieces"), you should give it a try because you'll probably enjoy it. He was a real hoot and he lived life to the fullest, shall we say. I was a little surprised that he wasn't referenced in "A Beautiful Mind." Remember that? Same caliber of intellect.
Feynmann was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965. The story is told that a reporter from Time magazine approached Feynmann and said, "Dr. Feynmann, can you explain to our readers in five minutes what it is that you did that earned the Nobel Prize?" Feynmann supposedly said, "Well, if I could tell you in five minutes, it wouldn't be worth the Nobel Prize, now would it?"
Let's consider the same for organization theory and management behavior. Your authors this semester have tried the same thing. Of management theory and management behavior, one of your journal authors wrote:
An organization is a group of people who work together to pursue a goal. They do so by attaining resources from their environment. They seek to transform those resources by accomplishing tasks and applying technologies to achieve effective performance of their goal, thereby attaining additional resources. They deal with the many uncertainties and vagaries associated with these processes by organizing their activities. Organizing involves leadership processes, through which leaders guide the development of strategies for achieving goals and the establishment of structures and processes to support those strategies.
The same author then spent a book explaining that point of view.
Morgan also tried to define organization theory and management behavior in this way:
All organization theory and management practice is based on images, or metaphors, that lead us to understand situations in powerful yet partial ways. To achieve greater effectiveness, managers must become skilled in identifying and using different approaches to organization and management.
Then the rest of his book explored different metaphors and how managers could best lead organizations based on those terms.
So you can think of your final exam in the same light. I'm going to regard you as one who's conversant in organizational behavior. I'm going to ask you an impossibly detailed question and you're going to have to answer in a ridiculously short timeframe.
The Question: We will have spent this entire semester discussing various topics associated with organization theory and management behavior. We've looked at issues, theories, and motivation. We've fabricated a product in an organization of sorts. Together, we've focused on the conflict, communications, change, and organizational effectiveness. So now, after all this time, all our class meetings, presentations, readings, articles, questioning and answering, and your own thinking, we come to this one final question, drawn from the course objectives:
What is your understanding of organizational behavior?
The Process: In a well-constructed essay, please address the above question.By "well-constructed," your essay should contain a key opinion or a thesis statement. You may choose to defend one of the authors' opinions cited above, or attack it, or disagree with it, or generate your own characterization.
The balance of your response should support your opinion by bringing in any resource at your disposal. You may use the readings, the texts, your class notes, or any other reference you think is useful. The key idea is to express what you think and then support your opinion. This approach will require you to not just cite references, but to analyze across them.
There are no requirements or suggestions regarding the length of the final exam, as long as you're satisfied that you've addressed the question.
You should take no more than three hours to complete your exam, just as if we were in the classroom. But it will probably take more than five minutes.