Organizational Behaviour Case Studies

This assignment delves into key concepts of Organizational Behaviour, utilizing case studies to analyze real-world scenarios. Students are tasked with responding to questions about conflict resolution, negotiation strategies, sustaining and disruptive innovations, and the impact of organizational culture on various aspects of workplace behaviour.

E-Learning Activities
Student Name: Student ID:
Subject Name: Organisational Behaviour Subject ID: HC1052G
Date Due: Professor Name:
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Week 5: Week 5 Activity Perception
I have recently watched the movie Inception, which is a movie released in the year 2010 is a science
fiction movie. It is a movie that is written, directed and co-produced by Christopher Nolan along with
Emma Thomas, co-producer. Leonardo DiCarpio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and other stars,
plays the film. I enjoyed the movie extremely as it is completely different compared to traditional
Hollywood movies. This movie focuses on professional thief who steals information by getting into
subconscious mind. The movie was of great success throughout the world due to its unique script and story
line.
The story starts off by showing a disturbed life frame of Leonardo DiCaprio, where his wife suicides
leaving him with two kids. He feels lonely and is unable to return home to his kids as he feels harassed by
thoughts of his wife who felt inception as being reality compared to real life. Then it goes on to showing
how he takes up his last task and then retiring. My close friend however did not like the movie and he
found it to be totally illogical. He found the plot to be increasingly uninteresting as he could not make
connection to real life. His perception regarding movies is separate compared to ways I perceive movies
thus, he did not appreciate it due to lack of entertainment in the movie.
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Week 6 - Motivation
Workplace related motivation can act as a great determining factor for productivity and motivation of
employees. UK’s 50 best places and Europe’s 100 workplaces to work for applies extensive motivational
strategies. These leading companies apply extensive employee engagement strategies for extending their
core competencies. They lay special focus on job designing for employees for generating their interests.
Increasing productivity of employees starts at recruitment stages where their human resource department
are able to match jobs to candidates. Then an interactive induction process is conducted that allows
integration of employees and their alignment to corporate objectives. These employees are trained and
developed to match corporate objectives related to their jobs.
In order to motivate employees, there are extensive engagement strategies in order to increase employee
retention and reduce absenteeism. Employees are provided intrinsic and extrinsic level of motivation. They
are taken well care off in order to increase their productivity. Motivation are set and designed according to
prevailing cultures hence it is crucial that human resource managers assigns particular trends that are in
accordance to them.
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Week 7 Activity (Group Behaviour and Team at Work)
Case Study: "Why don’t teams work like they’re supposed to?" p.263
Teams need to adhere certain parameters and ways such as to attain its objectives. For teams to be
successful for teamwork they should be small in number for better coordination amongst individuals and
reducing conflicts as well as politics. There are a number of crucial elements that Hackman identified to be
the key in building teams. Lack of consistent leadership allows coordination amongst team members for
their various activities. A good team leader has capability to understand attitude of individuals towards
authority and can handle individual responsibility in an efficient manner. Teams are often repeatedly
reconfigured without incorporation of trusts within them. Frequent changes within teams causes team
members to face challenges in regards to adjusting to each other. Strategic vision allows turbulence
tacking and enables teams to conform to their performance objectives. Lack of vision often leads team
members to strive for directional-less goals in an inefficient manner. A team comprises of individual tasks
taken together, hence collaborated efforts of team members are often ignored. Lack of group responsibility
and group rewards can lead to in efficiency in teams. Unresolved conflicts often leads to team members to
work for inputs without joint responsibility. A conducive environment promotes collaboration and
enhances performance of teams. Lack of team building activities for entire group can lead to
underperformance amongst team members. For greater stability and efficiency amongst team members,
there needs to be team cohesiveness, effective leader, problem and conflict resolution attitude, along with a
conducive environment to strive for.
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Week 8 Activity (Leadership)
Task
Watch the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKUPDUDOBVo (Ten Leadership Theories in 5 minutes)
Activity:
Answer the following questions:
1. What is the difference between trait and behaviour theories of leadership? are the theories
valid?
Theories of leadership can be trait theories or behavioral theories, which are dependent on certain
characteristics of leaders, followers or the situation. Trait theories of leadership consider trends as
social, personality, intellectual or physical in nature for differentiating between non-leaders to leaders.
This theory focuses on basic personality characteristics or trends that set leaders from their followers.
Traits of leadership includes responsibility, intelligence, capability to motivate, trustworthy, self-
confidence, assertive, flexible and so on. In behavioral theories for leadership there are specific
behaviours that are used in differentiating leaders from non-leaders. Behavioral theories are concerned
with inborn nature or characteristics.
2.How can organisations select and develop effective leaders? provide 1 example.
Organisations need to select and implement specific leadership for effectively coordinating amongst
their employees. In order to develop effective leader, it needs to conduct a thorough analysis of various
factors such as organisational climate that are conducive in creating effective leaders. Though leaders are
not made, they are rather born effective leaders can be made by way of providing appropriate
organisational climate and enabling a situation of freedom to exhibit skills.
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Week 9 (Power & Politics)
Please read the following case study from your prescribed textbook and answer the 4 questions at
the end:
Case Study: Delegate power or keep it close?" p.360
Question 1
It is not easy to hold responsibilities of being Sparks Samantha Parks who is the CEO. If I would have
been in that position then I would look at the entire team’s strengths and weaknesses prior to assigning
them various projects. Like he I would limit impression management for micromanaging groups that had
been set by her. The free time would then should be utilized for improving her powerbase.
Question 2
Generally speaking people who are creative are lenient which made her to select employees first.
If I would have been in such a position I would have made use of rewards along with necessary
freedom to employees for accomplishing their tasks.
Question 3
Management with charge of the organisation should not indulge in projects or take advantages of
their monitoring or control. As Park claims that she controls and monitors projects for efficient
delivery of projects, it can be utilized by company for building a strong reputation.
Question 4
Senior management levels should not indulge themselves in delegation of responsibilities. Often
top management are incapable in efficient allocation of resources.
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Week 10 (Conflict & Negotiations)
Please read the following case study from your prescribed textbook and answer the 3 questions at
the end:
Case study: "Choosing your battles?"p.391
Question 1
Often there are large number of conflicts within organisations where there are clashes in thought
process. In case I faced similar situation of conflicts I would observe situation and then narrow
down to possibilities that led to such conflicts. I would apply root cause analysis for the problem
for arriving at the solution. In every case I would maintain steady communications with all
parties involved in the conflicting process.
Question 2
Negotiation is a process for resolving conflicts. It is often referred to as conflict managing procedure
where there is a discussion pertaining to the problem to resolve the same. Each party needs to be provided
goal for conflict resolution.
Question 3
I had faced conflicts many a time in my family as well as amongst my peer group. In a case of conflict
with one of my peers, he challenged me over a management issue for resolving it. It was a case study
though I felt that his point of view could not be ignored, my point of view could not be invalidated either.
In every case I felt the need to ascertain my points which led to creation of mental distance from him.
Later I felt that such conflict could be easily resolved using negotiation procedure and communication
techniques.
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Week 11 (Organisational Change)
Answers the following questions:
1. Identify three to five sustaining innovations that have affected you over the past year.
Innovations has become the way of life especially in domain of technological advancements. The
five sustaining innovations that has affected me are Facebook, Twitter, Smart Phones, Mobile
interactive games, ecommerce portals as Amazon. These technological innovation has rapidly altered
my ways of life.
2. Identify three to five disruptive innovations that have affected you. Did you welcome these
innovations because they were Beneficial’s, or did you have cause to complain?
The major disruptive innovation that has affected me in recent past are robots as coworkers,
implantables, bots usurp Apps, Self driven automobiles. All the innovations were useful and were
welcomed in my life.
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Week 12 (Cultures)
Based on your studies of Organisational Behaviour in the past 11 weeks, explain whether
interpersonal skills, motivation, group behaviour, leadership style, conflict management, structure,
predominant leadership style, training and HRM practices are all culturally relative.
Organisational Behaviour is a dynamic domain of study that encompasses varied concepts and
theories. Organisational culture encompasses a large domain that includes varied behavioral
trends, which are in turn adopted for better organisational practices. It does include interpersonal
skills, motivation, group behaviour, leadership style, conflict management, structure,
predominant leadership style, training and HRM practices. It is a whole domain of practices that
includes various practices with human resources. A dominant culture allows development of all
relevant aspects as discussed above in connection to specific culture. All these factors are
determined in accordance to culture hence it can be said that they does have a crucial connection.
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