Allan R. Cohen

Influence without authority: The use of alliances, reciprocity, and exchange to accomplish work

53 ill Heatton is the director of research at a

Beyond Simulation: Treating the Classroom as an Organization

250 million division of a large West Coast company. The division manufactures exotic telecommunications components and has many technical advancements to its credit. During the past several years, however, the division’s performance has been spotty at best; multimillion dollar losses have been experienced in some years despite many efforts to make the division more profitable. Several 6 large contracts have resulted in major finang cial losses, and in each instance the various

Transformational Change at Babson College Notes From the Firing Line

parts of the division blamed the others for the ’ problems. Listen to Bill’s frustration as he g talks about his efforts to influence Ted, a colleague who is marketing director, and Roland, the program manager who reports to Ted.

A Dialogue On "Treating the Classroom as an Organization"

Whether or not the instructor chooses to make explicit the parallels between other organizations and the classroom, issues such as leadership, structure and control still must be handled and how they are handled will have great impact. Students probably learn as much from our classroom managerial behavior as they do from the content of our teaching. Because of the correspondence between what we teach and how we teach, we have a marvelous opportunity

Major Change at Babson College: Curricular and Administrative, Planned and Otherwise

This article describes the transformational change at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. By any measure, Babson College is a different and dramatically better place than it was 10 years ag...

Changing the Management Culture in a Public School System

I would like to share my experiences and learnings from my attempts at implementing Cohen’s model of the classroom as an organization (see The Teaching of Organization Behavior, Volume II, Number 1, March, 1976, p. 13). The course, Introduction to Organization Behavior, was at the undergraduate level and met twice a week for one-and-one-half hours for 13 weeks. Enrollment in sections ranged from 20 to 40 students, at least a third of whom were freshmen. 1. Disorientation of Students

Responding To Student Challenges

The problem and the solution.Making meaningful change in academic institutions is hard enough, but it often stops completely at radical curriculum reform. Babson College had external feedback that suggested change was needed. Three major initiatives at Babson—strategic planning including radical curriculum change, total quality, and reengineering—never formally utilized organization development (OD) but followed many of the practices and principles. Not only did the change processes lead to a transformation in the academic programs, but other major administrative changes were implemented. As a result, Babson was able to change tiers. Lessons about OD in academia are drawn including the need to manage the degree of participation rather than assume it is lacking. OD must be adapted to any organization, and in academia, that is especially true. Even the names of tools become critical. Sustaining change is always a challenge, as is the need to recruit people with the skills and attitudes that match the organization’s culture.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way from the Theater; an Involved Spectator's Notes on Teaching by Play-Going

Change in school systems often withers from lack of administrative support. The intervention described led to the creation of a new management structure for a public school system, with different decision-making processes, greater administrator involvement, and increased commitment to the total system. On the basis of this consulting experience, a number of propositions for change agents have been formulated, which are applicable to and can be tested in other settings.

The "Blue Collar Blues" Exercise

Organizational behavior, probably more than other areas, requires a positive classroom climate in order for learning to occur. This climate has to encourage a willingness on the part of the student to suspend initial judgment in considering the material as well as a willingness to get involved in classroom activities. No matter what teaching method is used, the subject matter of OB is potentially threatening, since it connects to so many student values and cherished notions about people. Furthermore, exercises and role-plays often directly attack students’ beliefs about their interpersonal competence. Even in lecture-discussion formats, students may fear the risk of §elf-exposure. Teachers often work hard to develop a favorable climate in their classes (see Athos, 1979, for one excel-

Putting a charge in leadership

To teach participant-observer skills first calls for a method of getting students to see differently. Their view of how people interact must be both expanded and focused.. They need to be able to watch several events at once, identify the recurring patterns which regulate behavior among those who work together, notice systemic inter-connections as well as individual self-expressions, and, most important, develop the empathic capacity to enter the world of the other. Clearly, even massive injections of theory do not guarantee such altered vision! Other ways are needed to help enlarge both the emotional range and intellectual processes of the observer.