The purpose of this article is to present an instructional innovation called the Structure-Culture Alignment Activity, which leads students through the process of aligning cultural values pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusiveness (DEI) to two important structural elements, formalization and centralization. Using decision making, team…

Having received the 2017 "Lasting Impact Award" for "Women's Experiences and Ways of Knowing: Implications for Teaching and Learning in the Organizational Behavior Classroom," author Joan V. Gallos describes the experience as "delightfully sweet and timely." The article was written early in her academic career at…

Business students typically do not read James Madison's "Federalist #10", a seminal work in political theory on the causes of and remedies for factions. I make the case that they should and offer suggestions for teaching and assessment. Factions are a subset of stakeholders that have interests "adverse" to the…

How can managers prepare for extreme but exceptional events and for the challenge of managing complexity and uncertainty in their daily business? Confronted with the challenge of achieving high and reliable performance in risk-prone, fast-paced, and unpredictable environments, managers and management scholars can learn a lot from the organizing…

This article reports the qualitative analysis of the use of highly emotive documentaries of the Holocaust in a graduate-level organizational theory class. Specifically, the article looks at student reactions and impacts on learning. Student-produced work captured a broad range of reactions that led to increased insights about organizations (the…

In this article, the authors present a retrospective analysis of an instructor's multiyear redesign of a course on organization theory into what is called a hybrid Classroom-as-Organization model. It is suggested that this new course design served to apprentice students to function in quasi-real organizational structures. The authors further argue…

The authors believe the development, peer review, and sharing of course portfolios can significantly improve the scholarship and teaching of management. To make this case, they provide background information about course portfolios, including origins, defining features, purposes, and potential benefits. They then identify actual portfolio projects…

This article describes a role-playing simulation that demonstrates how organizational structure is influenced by organizational and departmental technologies. Students act as employees of firms that must manufacture either a range of innovative products or a large number of standardized products. The simulation can be used in organizational…

Metaphors were used to teach systems thinking and to clarify concepts of organizational theory in an introductory MBA management course. Gareth Morgan's metaphors of organization were read by students and applied as frames to analyze a business case. In addition, personal metaphors were written by individual students in order to describe the…

Identifies four postmodern themes: complicated identities, the demise of the individual as expert, constraints on individual actions, and postmodern organizations as dream and nightmare. Outlines management-class exercises that illustrate ambiguities and paradoxes in the themes. (SK)

Management and organizational behavior students are often overwhelmed by the plethora of motivation theories they must master at the undergraduate level. This article offers a teaching module geared toward helping students understand how two major process theories of motivation, equity and expectancy theories and theories of organizational…

Describes a class on organizational theory that uses the documentaries of Frederick Wiseman as the primary text. Includes a list of the films and the issues and principles they address. (JOW)

The resource-based view is a strategic framework for understanding why some firms outperform others. Its importance is reflected in its wide inclusion in strategy texts as a tool for assessing a firm's internal strengths and weaknesses. This article outlines an experiential exercise that demonstrates how different bundles of resources and…

In 1961, Fritz Roethlisberger, coauthor of the landmark Hawthorne studies, wrote a memorandum sketching his understanding of the nascent field of organizational behavior. The memo's purpose was to discuss the relationships of theory and practice in the field, identifying in particular some of the tensions and contradictions that the field poses…

Management educators teaching topics such as motivation and leadership face the challenge of clearly explaining why so many diverse theories exist and why each represents a useful tool worth learning. The large number of "core" theories in these and other management domains often frustrates students, who see the lack of a single, comprehensive…