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Organizational Behavior

The organizational behavior group is dedicated to advancing research, teaching, and practice regarding the management of organizations.

The group’s faculty members research fundamental questions in organizational behavior, from both a social psychological and a sociological perspective, and publish their research in books and in the top management and social science journals.

MBA courses in organizational behavior help students to understand behavior at both the individual and organization levels. Topics at the individual or “micro” level include individual motivation and behavior, decision-making, interpersonal communication and influence, small group behavior, and individual, dyadic, and intergroup conflict and cooperation. At the organization or “macro” level, topics include organizational growth, organizational change, organizational learning, organizations and leadership, power, social networks, and social responsibility.

More generally, the organizational behavior curriculum helps prepare students for their managerial careers, providing them with frameworks for diagnosing and dealing with the problems and opportunities that typically arise in organizational settings.

Recent Journal Articles in Organizational Behavior

Anticipating Divine Protection? Reminders of God Can Increase Nonmoral Risk Taking

Moral Suspicion Trickles Down

Threats to Social Identity Can Trigger Social Deviance

A Sense of Powerlessness Fosters System Justification: Implications for the Legitimation of Authority, Hierarchy, and Government

Conflict Templates in Negotiations, Disputes, Joint Decisions, and Tournaments

Bounded benefits of representative cooperativeness in intergroup negotiations

Infectious Diseases, Contamination Rumors, and Ethnic Violence: Regimental Mutinies in the Bengal Native Army in 1985

Peers and Network Growth: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

The Persistence of Lenient Market Categories

A review of perceived diversity in teams: Does how members perceive their team's compostition impact team processes and outcomes?

A Relationship with God? Connecting with the Divine to Assuage Fears of Interpersonal Rejection

Hierarchy, leadership, and construal fit

Religion and Punishment: Opposing Influences of Orthopraxy and Orthodoxy on Reactions to Unintentional Acts

Issue Bricolage: Explaining the Configuration of the Social Movement Sector, 1960-1995

Neither Ideologues, nor Agnostics: Alternative Voters’ Belief System in an Age of Partisan Politics

Conflicting Social Codes and Organizations: Hygiene and Authenticity in Consumer Evaluations of Restaurants

Parsing organizational culture: How the norm for adaptability influences the relationship between culture consensus and financial performance in high tech firms

How decisions happen: Focal points and blind spots in interdependent decision making

A Functional Basis for Structure-Seeking: Exposure to Structure Promotes Willingness to Engage in Motivated Action

An Ecology of Social Categories