Objectives

Teams play a crucial role in today’s organizations. The same is true for our personal lives, where groups often shape our actions, thoughts, and emotions. Effective team functioning is a key factor in organizational success. This course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the nature of groups and teams, how teams function and the various ways team-based and contextual factors interact to impact individual and group behavior and performance.

Contents

Defining and describing groups/teams; understanding and evaluating team performance; internal dynamics (e.g., conformity, norms, conflict, influence); diversity; developing and coaching teams.

We provide a general basis of the important issues in the domain of group processes during roughly half of the course. For this part, we present the theoretical basis and empirical studies. Whenever possible, course content is further explored in practical exercises in class.

Additionally, students (in groups) specialize in one of the key content areas of the team functioning. They can choose the topic they are most interested in.

In this topic area, they do a group project that will allow them to apply concepts seen in class to practice, explore additional questions and reflect more deeply and critically on them. The project consists of literature studying, developing of a concrete research question and conducting an empirical study to test concrete hypotheses and provide an answer to the resarch question. During the last quarter of the semester, groups will present their project in class, and submit a report, at the end of the semester.

Work on the group projects roughly fills the second half of each session, throughout the semester.

References

Hackman, R. (2002). Leading teams: Setting the stage for great performance. Harvard Business School Publishing Cooperation.

Pre-requisites

Evaluation

First attempt

Exam:

Written 1h30 hours

Documentation:

Allowed

Calculator:

Allowed

Evaluation:

The final grade consists of two components: the grade for the group project (group-based grade; 60%) and the grade (individual grade; 40%) obtained at a written exam (1.5h: open-book).

Retake

Exam:

Written 1h30 hours

Documentation:

Allowed

Calculator:

Allowed

Evaluation:

same as above.