Work and Organization Studies

Surveys individual and social psychology and organization theory interpreted in the context of the managerial environment. Laboratory involves projects of an applied nature in behavioral science. Emphasizes use of behavioral science research methods to test hypotheses concerning decision-making, group behavior, and organizational behavior. Instruction and practice in communication includes report writing, team projects, and oral and visual presentation. 12 units may be applied to the General Institute Laboratory Requirement. Shares lectures with 15.310.  

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• John Carroll
• Paul Osterman

Discusses how to map power and interest patterns in organizations, how to understand your own interests and objectives, and how to operate effectively in organizational environments. Provides frameworks as well as a range of practical tools to address these goals. Utilizes a wide range of material drawn from the business and public worlds.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Paul Osterman

Prepared and taught by veterans in various MIT Sloan programs, under the supervision of MIT Sloan faculty. Focuses on the nature of military leadership and its relevance to the civilian professional and organizational experience.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Deborah Ancona
• Leigh Hafrey

Surveys social psychology and organization theory as interpreted in the context of the managerial environment. Covers a number of diverse topics, including motivation and reward systems, social influence, groups and teams, leadership, power, organizational design and culture, and networks and communication patterns. Similar in content to 15.311; shares lectures with 15.301. Preference to non-Course 15 students.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Paul Osterman

Enhances students' ability to take effective action in complex organizational settings by providing the analytic tools needed to analyze, manage, and lead the organizations of the future. Emphasizes the importance of the organizational context in influencing which individual styles and skills are effective. Employs a wide variety of learning tools, from experiential learning to the more conventional discussion of written cases. Centers on three complementary perspectives on organizations: the strategic design, political, and cultural "lenses" on organizations. Major team project to analyze an actual organizational change, with oral and written reports. Restricted to first-year Sloan master's students. 

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Katherine Kellogg
• Erin Kelly

Develops appreciation for organizational dynamics and competence in navigating social networks, working in a team, demystifying rewards and incentives, leveraging the crowd, understanding change initiatives, and making sound decisions. Provides instruction and practice in written and oral communication through presentations, and interpersonal and group exercises.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Ray Reagans
• Lori Breslow

An intensive one-week introduction to leadership, teams, and learning communities. Introduction of concepts and use of a variety of experiential exercises to develop individual and team skills and develop supportive relationships within the Fellows class. Restricted to first-year Leaders for Global Operations students.     

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• John Carroll

Course spans the entire two-year Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program, with a focus on leadership that blends theory and practice. During their first summer in the program, students reflect on exemplary leaders' stories in cases, the arts, journalism, philosophy, and social science, and evaluate their own previous leadership experience. During the succeeding four semesters, they apply the lessons they have learned in class to their off-campus internship and other activities at Sloan, and intensively review that experience as they reach the end of the program. Classes take the form of moderated discussion, with the expectation that students will participate fully in each session; students also submit short, written deliverables throughout the program.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Leigh Hafrey

Provides the tools to better understand an individual's unique way of leading, i.e., one's leadership signature. Involves intensive self-assessment and interactive exercises aimed to identify the leadership patterns that help and hinder one's ability to make change happen. Focuses on identifying core leadership strengths and weaknesses, immunity to change, and developing one's leadership signature. Explores alternative leadership approaches in order to determine capabilities to emulate and plan changes in behavior moving forward. Readings from psychology, family systems, developmental psychology, and leadership literature augment analyses.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Deborah Ancona

Focuses on effective organizational design in both traditional and innovative organizations, with special emphasis on innovative organizational forms that can provide strategic advantage. Topics include when to use functional, divisional, or matrix organizations; how IT creates new organizational possibilities; examples of innovative organizational possibilities, such as democratic decision-making, crowd-based organizations, internal resource markets, and other forms of collective intelligence. Team projects include inventing new possibilities for real organizations.        

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Thomas Malone

Designed to provide a practical understanding of the skills of improvisation and their application to leadership. Examines the essential elements of successful leadership, including creativity, emotional intelligence, adaptability, and the capacity to develop effective influence strategies and build strong teams. Cultivates students ability to respond to the unexpected with confidence and agility. Each class offers a highly experiential learning laboratory where students practice a wide variety of improvised business scenarios, interactive exercises, and simulations.                                                                

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Daena Giardella

Analyzes through lectures, discussions, and class exercises, the human processes underlying organizational behavior. Restricted to MIT Sloan Fellows in Innovation and Global Leadership.                                                 

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• John Van Maanen

Students and Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) alumni develop and present case studies that focus on the challenges and opportunities of leading from positions in the middle of an organization. Restricted to Leaders for Global Operations program students.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Leigh Hafrey

Strengthens leadership capacities through feedback, reflection, and practice. Students use readings, role plays, experiential exercises, self-reflection, and reviews of their own videos, as well as focused coaching and feedback, to optimize their own leadership capabilities. Focuses on individual leadership growth. Culminates with submission of a written summary of students reflections and experiences around leadership from throughout the term.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Pat Bentley

Provides students opportunities to meet senior executives of private and public institutions, and discuss key management issues from the perspective of top management.  Students prepare detailed briefings identifying and analyzing important management issues facing these organizations.  Restricted to MIT Sloan Fellows.

Continuation of subject 15.325 on the identification and analysis of important management issues. Students prepare briefings and meet with senior government and international leaders during field trips in selected international areas. Restricted to MIT Sloan Fellows in Innovation and Global Leadership.

Continuation of 15.325, providing students opportunities to meet senior executives of private and public institutions, including current or former policymakers, and discuss challenges associated with the management of country and global affairs. Restricted to MIT Sloan Fellows.

Focuses on the key leadership capabilities needed in today's increasingly decentralized organizations: sense-making, relating, visioning, and inventing. Through conceptual discussions, small group exercises, and self-reflection, helps students understand leadership capabilities, evaluate their leadership strengths and weaknesses, articulate their values and aspirations, and practice developing leadership skills in interaction with class members.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Deborah Ancona
• Thomas Malone
• Wanda Orlikowski

Covers classic and contemporary theories and research related to individuals, groups, and organizations. Designed primarily for doctoral students in the Sloan School of Management who wish to familiarize themselves with research by psychologists, sociologists, and management scholars in the area commonly known as micro organizational behavior. Topics may include motivation, decision making, negotiation, power, influence, group dynamics, and leadership.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Jared Curhan

Provides an introduction to research in "organizations and environments," an interdisciplinary domain of inquiry drawing primarily from sociology, and secondarily from economics, psychology, and political science. Seeks to understand organizational processes and outcomes in the surrounding economic, cultural, and institutional context in which they are situated. Also provides an introduction to the main groups that together form the Behavioral Policy Sciences (BPS) area of MIT/Sloan, including economic sociology, organization studies, work and employment, strategic management, global management, and technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Consists of four modules taught by faculty from each of the four BPS groups, as well as integrative sessions taught by the main instructor. Preference to first-year doctoral students in BPS.     

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Ray Reagans

A professional seminar for doctoral students to report on their research, work on their thesis proposals, and practice their job talks. Also addresses general professional issues such as publishing, searching for jobs, the academic career, etc.

Professor(s) who have recently taught this course:

• John Carroll

Introduces the process of social research, emphasizing the conceptualization of research choices to ensure validity, relevance, and discovery. Includes research design and techniques of data collection as well as issues in the understanding, analysis, and interpretation of data.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Emilio Castilla

Builds on 15.347 to examine contemporary social research methods in depth. Focuses on making students familiar with the most important quantitative methods (e.g., logit/probit models, models for ordinal and nominal outcomes, count models, event history models).

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Emilio Castilla

Training in the design and practice of qualitative research. Organized around illustrative texts, class exercises, and student projects. Topics include the process of gaining access to and participating in the social worlds of others; techniques of observation, field note-taking, researcher self-monitoring and reflection; methods of inductive analysis of qualitative data including conceptual coding, grounded theory, and narrative analysis. Discussion of research ethics, the politics of fieldwork, modes of validating researcher accounts, and styles of writing up qualitative field research.                             

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Susan Silbey

Design and execution of human resource management strategies. Two central themes: How to think systematically and strategically about aspects of managing the organization's human assets, and what really needs to be done to implement these policies and to achieve competitive advantage. Adopts the perspective of a general manager and addresses human resource topics (including reward systems, performance management, high-performance human resource systems, training and development, recruitment, retention, equal employment opportunity laws, work-force diversity, and union-management relationships) from a strategic perspective.             

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Emilio Castilla

Designed to help students learn more about their strengths, and how they can utilize these strengths to manage their career. Draws on the latest research and practices, experiential exercises, and cases studies, and includes guest speakers. Covers the most important aspects of talent (and career) management.

Professor(s) who have recently taught this course:

• Emilio Castilla

Provides understanding of the theory and processes of negotiation as practiced in a variety of settings. Designed for relevance to the broad spectrum of bargaining problems faced by the manager and professional. Allows students an opportunity to develop negotiation skills experientially and to understand negotiation in useful analytical frameworks. Emphasizes simulations, exercises, role playing, and cases.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Jared Curhan

Explores decision making and leadership. Analyzes the dilemmas and decisions characters face in a selection of plays, stories, and films. Provokes reflection on what constitutes effective and moral reasoning in critical moments of both life and leadership. Restricted to Sloan Fellows.

Professor(s) who have recently taught this course:

• Cat Turco

Focuses on the strategies used to successfully design and implement people analytics in one's organization. Draws on the latest company practices, research projects, and case studies - all with the goal of helping students deepen their understanding of how people analytics can be applied in the real world. Covers the most important aspects of human resource management and people analytics. Demonstrates how to apply those basic tools and principles when hiring, evaluating and rewarding performance, managing careers, and implementing organizational change.

Professor(s) that have recently taught this course:

• Emilio Castilla

Group study of current topics related to industrial relations and human resource management.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Paul Osterman

Preparation for an organizational change project. Emphasis on applying tools of organizational, operational, and systems analysis in order to effect change. Includes a focus on the challenges and opportunities presented by issues of leadership and organizational behavior. Each student leads a change project in his or her own organization, focusing on fixing a broken or ineffective process. Examples of possible initiatives include a strategic reorientation, organizational restructuring, introduction of a new technology, a worker participation program, etc. Restricted to Executive MBA students.    

Promotes awareness of and ways to meet the challenges managers face today (and tomorrow). Acquaints students with some of the psychological and sociological dynamics that regularly operate in organizational settings - the less visible "forces" that influence employee and managerial behavior - and how these dynamics shape the way managers respond to a changing world. Restricted to Executive MBA students.

Designed to enhance students' ability to take effective action in complex organizational settings by providing the analytic tools needed to analyze, manage, and lead the organizations of the future. Emphasizes the importance of the organizational context in influencing which individual styles and skills are effective. Employs a wide variety of learning tools, from experiential learning to the more conventional discussion of written cases. Centers on three complementary perspectives on organizations: the strategic design, political, and cultural "lenses" on organizations. Restricted to Executive MBA students.  

Develops a pragmatic, action-oriented approach to sustainability: the alignment between healthy businesses, healthy environments, healthy societies, and an economy that meets human needs. In-class simulations and role-playing provide a robust foundation for understanding sustainability challenges. Cases analyze innovative strategies for sustainable businesses and organizations. Class discussions explore how sustainability is changing existing business models and market structures, how to develop sustainable management practices, and how firms can implement those practices successfully.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Jason Jay
• John Sterman

Provides students with the opportunity to apply the concepts, theories, and tools of sustainability by working with a host organization on a real management project during the semester. Classroom lectures and simulations complement project work to give greater depth in techniques for managing sustainability. Topics include start-up dynamics, certification programs, evaluating the environmental impact of products and services, and leveraging consumers to advance sustainability.

Professor(s) who recently taught this course:

• Jason Jay
• John Sterman