10 Things I Learned from

Organizational Behavior

I learned that organizational culture is the shared values and beliefs that underlie a company’s identity. The organizational culture is passed through socialization to new employees and it influences how we behave at work.

• I learned that different types of organizations have different types of cultures. For example, Badger Mining Corporation uses a clan culture, which resembles a family-like structure and the effectiveness is achieved through collaboration of all the employees. Apple uses an adhocracy culture and encourages innovation and creativity.
• Carmakers KIA uses a market culture and promotes competition inside the organization with the purpose of increasing market share and being profitable. Tech company Dell has a hierarchy culture, which promotes their employees to be efficient and reduce cost.
• I learned that there are two types of conflicts in an organization, content or substantive based and personal or emotional based. The first one can be solved by using creativity and innovation and can benefit the organization. The second one harms people involved because of their egos.

I learned that sometimes conflicts benefit the involved parties. There are two ways of stimulating functional conflict:

by being the devil’s advocate

by using the dialectic method. The devil’s advocate works as a critic and tries to find flaws in the proposal and the dialectic method uses debate between proposals.

I learned that there are 5 was to resolve conflicts.  Competing is being assertive and not caring about other people’s concerns.  Accommodating is unassertive and cooperative, an individual neglects his own rights to satisfy the concerns of others. Avoiding is unassertive and uncooperative. When avoiding, an individual does not immediately pursue either his or her own concerns or those of the other person.  Collaborating is assertive and cooperative. When collaborating, an individual attempts to work with the other person to find a solution that fully satisfies the concerns of both.  Compromising is intermediate in both assertiveness and cooperativeness. When compromising the objective is to find an expedient, mutually acceptable solution that partially satisfies both parties.

I learned that I am more efficient when I work in teams. Throughout the semester we had to work in teams not only for our project but also in small class activities. I really enjoyed working with different people with different characteristics. I learned that most of the time I am intrinsically motivated. I am at one point of my life where money is not a problem. My family is able to support me while I live here in Boston and go to school. I realized that I do with passion the things that I love and that there are no external rewards that can change that.

I learned that my decision making style was both directive and analytical. I am a person that likes facts and makes decisions based on logic. I like analyzing all the possible aspects of a situation and all possible outcomes before making a decision but sometimes I tend to overanalyze a situation.  I learned how to be an effective team member. How to interact with my teammates and how to contribute with my ideas in order to be part of a successful team. 10. I learned that my learning style is being an accommodator because I am very open to new experiences and I learn from them based on trial and error.