31 - 40 of 61 results for: OB

How do some people turn ideas into enterprises that endure? Why do some people succeed why so many others fail? Based on more than 200 interviews with leading entrepreneurs conducted over the past five years by Amy Wilkinson, this course will focus on the six skills of successful entrepreneurs. The class will include brief lectures and class discussions with a set of the successful entrepreneurs featured in a recent book authored by the instructor, "The Creator's Code." The class is designed to help students integrate these skills into their own future ventures.

Our personal and professional lives are made up of a series of moments. Some of these moments present great opportunity, with the prospect of personal change and even transformative growth. Other moments contain the seeds of setback and even derailment of our most coveted plans. Some of life's moments are planned, while others catch us completely by surprise. Whatever moments we are afforded, we must make the most of them. This new seminar will explore what we know about the psychology of "optimal experience." We will examine how and why some individuals harvest so much joy, zest and sense of attainment from their moments, while others squander their moments or dig themselves into deeper holes when trying to respond to them. We will also examine how and why some people respond brilliantly to adversity, mastering even the most tragic moments that life presents, while others flounder and fold. To inform our thinking on this vital topic, the seminar will include a series of rich and provocative readings from psychology, behavioral economics, organizational theory and philosophy. Additionally, the seminar will include a series of compelling video cases illustrating both optimal and suboptimal responses to experience. To make the seminar more personally involving and useful to you, you will also engage in a series of reflective writing and experiential exercises. Whenever I offer a new course, I make a promise to the students who take it. For this course I promise you an intellectually deep and personally meaningful exploration of what it means to "use up" your life well. Put another way, I promise you some great educational moments in your GSB life!

This class will explore the properties shared by ideas that stick with people and change the way they think and act. The course is based on the framework in the book Made to Stick and focuses on hands-on exercises that will teach you how to transform your messages to make them stick: How do you get attention for your idea in a crowded marketplace of ideas? How can you convey complex information quickly? How do you make a broad, abstract idea concrete and tangible enough for people to understand? How do you provide credibility for your idea without resorting to dry statistics? Although the exercises in this course are fun and generally short, students in the past have said that they do require a lot of thinking time outside of class in order to apply the course principles to a specific message. This is particularly true of the final project which involves improving the message of a specific live client (e.g., a friend with a start-up business, the recruiting materials of a former employer). This course will be especially useful for entrepreneurs who must pitch their ideas to customers, investors, and potential employees and for students in the nonprofit sector where resources for spreading ideas are often thin.

This course will provide students with the theoretical background and practical skills necessary to design and deliver a psychological test. We will cover the basic principles of psychological testing (validity, reliability, standardization, and freedom of bias) and introduce the methods and tools used in test development and scoring. In an extensive hands-on part of the course, students will design and deliver an online test. The course will also briefly introduce advanced assessment methods, including Item Response Theory and Computerized Adaptive Testing. Finally, we will cover ethical and legal issues associated with administering tests and interpreting their results.

The course is based on the premise that diversity can present unique challenges and opportunities thereby compelling students to expand their sensitivity and develop a wider repertoire of skills, many of which are relevant across a variety of situations. The course is intended for students who plan to work in culturally diverse groups or organizations and will be equally relevant to those who work in the not-for-profit, public, and for-profit sectors.nnThrough the presentation of new concepts, participation in experiential group activities, and faculty facilitated debriefing, students are expect to improve their ability to better assess and intentionally influence and to be influenced inclusive of five fundamental differences presented by peers - social identity, values, power roles, cognitive styles, emotional literacy. Students will be taught how to practice 'authentic discourse' during regular faculty facilitated small task group debriefings. 'Authentic discourse' is a skill stressed in Interpersonal Dynamics ( OB374).

This course is designed to improve students' skills in all phases of a negotiation: understanding prescriptive and descriptive negotiation theory as it applies to dyadic and multiparty negotiations, to buyer-seller transactions and the resolution of disputes, to the development of negotiation strategy and to the management of integrative and distributive aspects of the negotiation process. The course is based on a series of simulated negotiations in a variety of contexts including one-on-one, multi-party, and team negotiations. When playing a role in a simulated conflict, you will be free to try out tactics that might feel uncomfortable in a real one. You will get feedback from your classmates about how you come across. You will have an opportunity to reflect on your experience in your negotiation paper. In sum, you can use this course to expand your repertoire of conflict management and negotiation skills, to hone your skills, and to become more adept in choosing when to apply each skill. nnnThis course represents a shorter, more intense version of OB 381-Conflict Management and Negotiations. Students should not take both courses, as there is considerable overlap in course content. Attendance and participation in the negotiation exercises is mandatory.

This seminar examines theoretical and methodological issues in the study of the ecology of organizations. Particular attention is given to the dynamics that characterize the interface between organizational populations and their audiences.

This course provides coverage of both introductory and intermediate topics in social network analysis with a primary focus on recent developments in theory, methods and substantive applications. We will begin the course with a brief overview of introductory themes and concepts from various disciplines that have contributed to social network theory, including sociology, anthropology, social psychology, and organizations. Introductory topics to be included: centrality, cliques, structural and regular equivalence and cognitive social structures. The primary topics to be covered in this course include the application of network theory to the study of careers, competition, innovation, inequality/stratification, and recent research on IT mediated networks, as well as an examination of network formation and dynamics. The course will also provide hands-on experience applying social network methods in empirical research. Students will have an opportunity to learn some modern network analysis methods and apply them to network data using the R programming language. No prior experience with social network analysis or software is required.

As a field, economic sociology has had little to say about economic development. Much of this quietude stems from the latter's identification with "backward," "poor" or "developing" economies, and the former's interest in many of the advanced features of the richer economies. This state of affairs not only sets up a false dichotomy but also makes it difficult by construction to theorize or research the issue of economic decline, seemingly a necessary piece of any coherent theory of development.nnnThe (admittedly ambitious) goal of this seminar is to move toward a better theory of economic development. We will review several of the more common strands of thought on development in related literatures and then consider some alternative perspectives that might bridge this research and contemporary sociology. No guarantees are made that we will have a full-fledged theory by the end of the quarter, but with luck we will have breathed some new life into an often marginalized but critically important strain of social thought and research.nnnThe class will be a seminar based around the readings. Grading will be a combination of class participation, a take-home midterm and a final paper.