66418 - Joint Intensive Learning Unit (Winter School) - I

Learning outcomes

At the end of this course, students, will have developed their skills in order to design organizational interventions. To this goal, they will know that interventions are based on a good literature review on the methods to run an intervention, that the intervention has to be guided by equity and fairness principles. They will also learn about one specific method aimed to obtain an organizational change. Special attention will be devoted to learning the design methodology in order to design an intervention.

Course contents

This Unit (reserved to Erasmus Mundus Master WOP-P students) consists of:

a) a preparation phase (from November to February);

b) an intensive work phase (between February and March);

c) an assignment phase (after March).

Main topics will be:

- State-of-the-art in WOP-P (e.g.: literature review on new forms of organizing and their consequences for organizational behaviour);

- Organizational planning and Intervention;

- New trends in organizational consulting;

- Competences and Knowledge management in organizations;

- Ethics in intervention.

 

Readings/Bibliography

Paper and material will be suggested during the initial phase of the didactical activity. The teaching platform of the University of Valencia will be used in order to share, download materials and upload  assignments.

As preliminary reading:

- Briner, R.B. & Denyer, D. (2012). Systematic review and evidence synthesis as a practice and scholarship tool.  In D. Rousseau (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Evidence-Based Management. New York: Oxford University Press.

- Briner, R.B., Denyer, D., & Rousseau, D.M. (2009). Evidence-based management: Construct clean-up Time? Academy of Management Perspectives, 23, 4, 19-32.

- Egan, M., Bambra, C., Thomas, S., Petticrew, M., Whitehead, M., & Thomson, H. (2007). The psychosocial and health effects of workplace reorganisation 1: A systematic review of organisational-level interventions that aim to increase employee control. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 61, 945-954.

- Härenstam, A., Bejerot, E., Leijon, O., Schéele, P. & Waldenström, K. (The MOA Research Group) (2004) Multilevel analyses of organizational change and working conditions in public and private sector. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 13, 3, 305 - 343

- Parker, S.K. & Wall , T.D. (1998) Managing the Change Process In Sharon K. Parker & Toby D. Wall Job and Work Design Organizing Work to Promote Well-Being and Effectiveness. Advanced Topics in Organizational Behavior, vol 4

- Salas, E., Stagl, K. C., & Burke, C. S. (2004). 25 years of team effectiveness in organizations:Research themes and emerging needs. In C. L. Cooper & I. T. Robertson (Eds.), International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology ,19, pp. 47-91).Chichester, U.K.: John Wiley.

Teaching methods

The following teaching methods will be used:

• Reading documents (papers, reviews, ...);
• Case studies and crticial analysis odf methods and interventions;
• Teamwork to develop a plan for research or intervention;
• Writing assignments

Assessment methods

During the preparatory phase students will have to read and write some assignments.

During the in-residence phase they will have to present the work and papers done before, integrate the results of their paper with those of the other groups; they will also work in developing an intervention in a complex organization.

During the final assignment phase, they will have to do an homework and prepare a paper (max. 1400 words).

 

In particular, during the preparatory and in-residence phases, students will be supported by appropriate technology for distance learning and, working in virtual teams composed by one member for each partner University of the consortium, will

a)      develop insights on the contextual factors that impact Organizational or Personnel Psychology at the national and international level. They will basically look at scientific and non-scientific literature (i.e. newspapers like Financial Times, and other scientific journals) and each team member will collect at least ten articles. Then each student will bring the identified articles in the group (in each group at least 50 articles are collected) and the group will have to organize and structure these 50 or more contextual factors in a meaningful way, and writing a 15-20 pages paper. Each team will focus on a different country (e.g. Brasil, China, Norway, South-Africa, and so on), describing political , economic, educational, and so on factors that may impact organizational and employees work-life. This paper will be delivered to the professor during the preparatory phase, and presented during the in-residence phase. During the in-residence phase students will be asked to reflect on the impact and relevance of the different factors, preparing another short paper.

b)      prepare a literature review on the state of the art on one intervention method or topic in the field of Organizational or Personnel Psychology, of about 20 pages. This paper will be delivered to the professor and presented during the in-phase residence.

c)      learn the principles of design methodology by reading some basic texts. In the in-residence phase the students will work on a specific design/intervention problem (case study), in the area of OP or PP applying the methodology and starting from the problem description, and taking into account the contextual factors that they have identified and that will have been presented in the lectures. They will develop a group project that will be presented in the last day of the in-residence phase at the stakeholders.

d)     read some journal articles and prepare a short exercise on ethic and organizational justice that will be presented during in-residence phase they will present the work done

 

The final assignment of the Joint Intensive Learning Unit will consist in the following work:

a)      each student will choose one issue from the topic his/her team has reviewed in the “state of the art (SOA)” assignment. This issue should lead to a professional intervention, and then

b)      write a report about how a Work and Organizational Psychologist could contribute to improve the situation on this issue through professional intervention.

In order to do so, it is important to use the relevant information produced and presented during the in-residence phase.

This individual report will be of maximum 1400 words, and will describe the chosen intervention and show how this professional intervention produces benefits for employees, companies and/or society. This report should be accompanied by a 200 word press release.

 

 

Teaching tools

Overhead projector, powerpoint, hand-pencil, web-sites search, group-work, instruments.

Teaching material will be downloaded from the web page of the WOP-P master.

Office hours

See the website of Salvatore Zappalà