24445 - Organizational Psychology

Academic Year 2018/2019

  • Docente: Marco Depolo
  • Credits: 4
  • SSD: M-PSI/06
  • Language: English
  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Cesena
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Work, Organizational and Personnel Psychology (cod. 9236)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, students will know: - the main theories in Organizational Psychology; - the main principles of organizational structure and design - the main psychosocial processes related to organizational behavior; - the main goals of psychologists’ professional activity in such domains.

Course contents

Main content areas are as follows:

  1. The role of theory in organizational analysis
  2. Strategy, structure and organizational processes: A glossary
  3. Classical and contemporary theories in Organizational Psychology: A conceptual framework
  4. Organizational climate and culture

Readings/Bibliography

The course is designed in a very interactive mode between students and teacher (see "Teaching methods").

Consequently, readings will be suggested together with every activity, mainly as chapters of handbook and papers from scientific or professional journals.

However, the following items may be considered as relevant references:

  1. Hatch, M. J. (1999). Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic and Postmodern Perspectives, 1997, New York: Oxford University Press.
  2. Schneider, B., Ehrhart, M.G., MacEy, W.H. (2013). Organizational climate and culture. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 361-388.

Teaching methods

The course has been designed and is based on students’ active participation, so that students are requested to attend systematically all the planned units of the course. Units will be usually formed by a structured input (usually from the teacher), individual and/or work group by students, and presentation plus public discussion.

Exchange students, aiming to choose this course for their learning agreement, should carefully consider – in their own interest – that they are requested to take the full course. Please pay special attention to possible overlapping with other courses you want to follow.

Assessment methods

Since students are actively involved in the course, assessment will be conducted based on the outputs of different activities they will perform. This kind of formative assessment will help the learning process, allowing monitoring and re-adjustment on the way.

Summative assessment (useful for grading marks) will be completed by two structured assignments. Small groups of students (two or three persons max) will prepare:

  1. a reaction paper, about a topic indicated by the teacher, followed by public presentation and discussion;
  2. a discussion paper, about a case suggested by the teacher.

1. The reaction paper is formed by a short written summary (10-12’000 characters long), plus a public presentation (no less than 10’, no more than 15’), based on some slides (5-6).

The performance will be assessed against the following criteria:

  • Clear presentation of source data
  • Appropriate use of concepts presented and discussed
  • Logical relationship between data and conclusions
  • Good visual and oral presentation

This will account for 1/3 of the final mark.

 

2. The discussion paper is formed by a written text (min. 15’000, max. 20’000 characters, spaces included), expected to be concise in style, but exhaustive in content, plus a public presentation (no less than 10’, no more than 15’), based on some slides (suggested: 7-8).

The performance will be assessed against the following criteria:

 

  • Conceptual & methodological clarity
  • Evidence based references found and adequately used
  • Implications for practice are outlined
  • Good visual and oral presentation

This will account for 2/3 of the final mark.

Teaching tools

Lectures; Guided discussions; External experts; Movies

Office hours

See the website of Marco Depolo