Recent Courses at the University of Pittsburgh

Undergraduate Organizational Behavior (BUSORG1020)

Organizations are central features of our everyday lives. Today, most individuals spend the majority of their waking hours in work settings. As digital technology increasingly automates routine tasks, work is becoming more knowledge-intensive and constitutes a core determinant of success for all types of organizations, from companies to non-profits. Beyond work, we fill our lives with time in organizational settings: non-profits, civic associations, sports teams, and religious institutions, to name a few. Thus, we can all benefit from a better understanding of organizational dynamics and an increased ability to problem solve within organizations. This course will introduce you to Organizational Behavior (OB), the subfield within business academia that studies individual behavior and inter-personal dynamics within organizations.

This course is an introduction to basic topics and concepts in OB. We will study concepts and phenomena at three levels: individual, interpersonal, and organizational. At the individual level, we will study motivation, personality, attitudes, decision-making, and career trajectories. At the interpersonal level, we will study power, influence, negotiations, and group dynamics. Finally, we will move to the organizational level and study teams, organizational culture, and organizational structure.

Doctoral Seminar in Organizational Theory (BOAH 2019)

Organizations are the fundamental social building blocks that enable large-scale planning and coordination in modern societies. This PhD seminar will introduce students to the major theoretical approaches and ongoing debates in organizational theory, an inter-disciplinary subject area that explains the origins, persistence, and internal dynamics of organizations. The primary goal of this course is to introduce you to the major theoretical traditions and perspectives of organizational theory. For each area of scholarship, we will read both classic works and more recent contributions, but the common theme is that these readings will have a strong theoretical element. Though it is not the primary focus of the course, we will also consider the empirical strategies, settings, and research designs that scholars have used to both deductively test and inductively elaborate extensions of these theoretical traditions. After an introduction to the field in the first week, we will spend the following three weeks exploring “rational systems” theories of organization, including bureaucracy, the behavioral theory of the firm, and contingency theory. Next, we will turn to “natural systems” theories: culture, exploitation and consent, sensemaking, and social networks. Finally, we will turn to “open systems” theories, including resource dependence, population ecology, and institutional theory. In the final two weeks, we will explore two contemporary phenomenon-driven areas of scholarship: social enterprise and decentralized organizations.