Organization Theory: PPA 660: Organizational Theory

PPA 660: Organizational Theory
PPA 660: Organization theory presented me an understanding of why organizations behave in a specific manner as well as why the individuals in those organization behave as they do. While some of the topics discussed in class seemed rudimentary at the time of lecture, such as Fayol’s principles of management and Gulick’s POSDCORB, ultimately I came to realize that this is only because these are the practices I am accustomed to observing. In hindsight, the concepts and ideas presented by Fayol and Gulick in their era were groundbreaking. At the end of the course, I was able to take away concepts of organizational culture, leadership, power, authority, motivation, group behavior and decision-making. The following are specific areas of organizational theory that I consider as my strengths of the topics discussed however, they do not represent my entire understanding of the subject matter.
Leadership. A leader in an organization can be described as an individual who influences and directs others to take specific actions in order to reach a goal. A leader is someone who possess integrity, fairness, a sense of humor, cares about people, etc. While leadership appears to be fluid and easy to express, there are multiple theories of leadership that are

One of the more interesting topics discussed in PPA 660 was group behavior. Group behavior by definition is the formal and information associations between two or more individuals. I found this as an interested topic for group behavior is a concept we are exposed to at a young age but not much thought or discussion is ever been presented. Through the professor’s lectures on group behavior, I learned about group attributes (roles, social identity, norms, conformity and cohesiveness), process of forming and socialization, group decision making, conflicts within group and different group dynamics. One of the more interesting group behavior topics discussed was the concept of