Introduction:

The field of study called Organisational Behaviour is often known by its abbreviation OB. It deals with how formal organisations work in order to achieve their goals. Organisations pursue their goals by means of appropriate structures and systems. The structures and systems are created and run by people, who work as individuals as well as in pairs and as members of a group. It is people who determine organisational performance.

In one of the foundation courses you took, you must have familiarised yourselves with the concept of formal organisation and studied some broad principles of management. In the present course of OB-1, you will learn about behaviour of people in formal organisations: why people behave the way they do. The course will initially focus on the individual and then proceed to deal with behaviour of people in interpersonal and group contexts. Further aspects of organisational behaviour, such as organisation theories of structure & design, management of human resources, human resource development, etc., will be addressed by the generically labelled courses of OB-II, OB-III, ... OB-n (which may have their specific titles) in subsequent trimesters.

Objective:

This course of OB-I on Individual and Group Behaviour (IGB, for short) aims at helping participants recognise the importance of, and difficulty in, understanding another person's point of view. In the process of doing so, the need for identifying one's own feelings, perceptions and assumptions that intervene in one's interaction with others will be made evident and attended to.

Requirement:

Given the nature of the subject, personal involvement is a must in order to benefit from the course. Besides regular attendance, therefore, students need to do every assignment with utmost honesty to themselves. Depending on the degree of involvement, the sessions will foster the requisite skills, by extending the acquired knowledge to real-life situations.

The broad topics covered in the course are: