Portfolio Project and Presentation

*This project was built from the works of past OB instructors, and was further developed and written by Catherine Fitzgerald to be aligned with the Wiley OB textbook content. The evaluation criteria was written by Catherine Fitzgerald. Permission to use is requested. Copy right 2020. Not for classroom use or distribution to students.

Overview

The workforce is more diverse than ever before, and new technologies (i.e. social media, artificial intelligence) are reshaping job demands, organizational systems, and the way work gets done. You will be entering the workforce at a time when persistent and complicated tensions exist around topics such as work-life balance, sustainability, a multigenerational workforce, climate change, and global economic and political turmoil, just to name a few. It's a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world. You will need to recognize the interdependent nature of individual, cultural, and organizational factors that affect human behaviour. To thrive in the future, you will need a practical understanding of human behaviour in organizational systems and the ability to influence, persuade, and motivate others. Regardless of a your career aspirations, you will surely benefit from a deep understanding of human behaviour and skills that enhance motivation, encouragement, communication, decision-making, leadership, and negotiations.

Everywhere around you are stories and examples of the behaviour of individuals, groups, and organizations. Now that you are learning about organizational behaviour (OB) theory and concepts, you are better positioned to interpret and understand these stories and examples in a more informed manner. Your success in business is largely impacted by your ability to recognize, understand, appropriately react to, and positively influence the behaviours of individuals, groups, and organizations. This project will provide you with an opportunity to explore some of the changes experienced by organizations and assess the implications (both positive and negative) of these changes for organizations in the future.

Objectives

1. To provide you an opportunity to review many forms of media and apply the concepts you learn in this course to relevant items.
2. To apply critical thinking and personal reflection as a way to seek clarity, consider contingencies, challenge your own assumptions, and recognize bias in how information is presented and described.
3. To heighten your awareness of the many changes (positive and negative) that are affecting workplaces and workforces.
4. To provide an opportunity to show your creativity in the production of a portfolio of OB-related learning.
5. To recognize the interdependent nature of individual, cultural, and organizational factors that affect human behaviour.
6. Have fun doing, presenting and discussing your project with the class and to create a lasting memory of this course.

Instructions

There are two parts to this assignment, 1) creating and presenting your portfolio and 2) discussing your portfolio and other portfolios in a week long online discussion forum.

Creating and Presenting Your Portfolio (18% of your grade)

Your portfolio project will consist of media items that illustrate OB concepts you have identified, as learned throughout the course. During the full term, over three months, you will be searching all forms of media (popular print such as news articles, online business magazines, recent movies, news documentaries, scholarly articles, academic journals, company information, blogs, etc.). Your deliverable will be a collection of media items combined into one well-designed portfolio along with analysis of how these items reflect organizational behaviour in the changing (VUCA) workplace. Your portfolio will demonstrate your knowledge of OB theory via the appropriate identification, accurate explanation, and thoughtful judgement of the relevance and significance of your selected media items.

The portfolio project must contain (at a minimum) the following six elements:

• Five cartoons, (representing at least three different cartoon strips) and your summary and analysis on each;
• The web addresses and your best description of the organizational cultures of three Canadian companies with interesting cultures. Be specific about what makes them interesting, and comment if you would want to work for this company, and why or why not;
• References to two movies with your commentary/analysis;
• Two summaries of scholarly articles that relate to concepts covered in class. Be sure to include the web link.
• Three popular business magazine articles with your commentary and analysis on each; be sure to include either the web link or the actual article.
• Links to two blog sites whose focus is solely on business issues; include your summary and analysis on each blog site; be sure to include the www links.

For each of the above areas, you need to identify the OB concepts or theories which apply to the chosen item, and explain how they connect. Then you are to judge the significance of the item (i.e. Why is it important? Does it align with theory or run counter to the theoretical ideal?). Apply the critical thinking process described in you textbook. Reflect on what you have learned about yourself through this activity. Think of the three following questions in your analysis. Marks will be provided for correct identification, quality explanation, and critique/judgement of each item (see details outlined in evaluation criteria):

• What does this item tell you about organizational behaviour?
• How does it apply to what you have learned throughout the course?
• How much does it seem to follow/refute the theoretical ideal?

The key outcome of this assignment is to provide an analysis as to how these items (or groups of items) reflect the material we have discussed throughout the course. Remember, your overall goal in this assignment is to showcase OB in Action in a creative way through a portfolio medium. You can prepare it like a report, or a scrapbook, or other. You have creative latitude here so consider presenting your portfolio on other ways beyond a written report such as videos, e-magazines. I am looking for creative output and engaging the class in interesting ways.

You could also consider other

You will post in the week 12 discussion forum titled Portfolio Project and Presentation Discussion Forum' The key is that the topics of discussion are clearly labelled and the analysis is succinct and well supported.

Discussing Your Portfolio and Other Portfolios in a Week Long Online Discussion Forum (5% of your grade)

This is a student lead discussion forum.You will share your portfolio project with the class in an engaging way that stimulates discussion. This could simply be introducing or explaining one key point or essential idea, posing a critical thinking question, highlighting a critical thinking feature/element in your portfolio that challenges students to see a different perspective, posing a debate question related to your portfolio that challenges students assumptions, sharing a controversial issues from a real life element in your portfolio, posing a situation or dilemma and ask students to answer an ethical related question, sharing something worth considering or something best avoided, summarizing a recent trend or decision from practice with pro and con aspects that can be analyzed from an OB perspective, and asking students to take a position on its efficacy, or simply drawing your classmates attention to an aspect of your portfolio. The textbook chapter features or learning accents including Be a Critical Thinker, Bringing OB to Life, Checking Ethics in OB, OB in the Office, Research Insight, and Worth Considering or Best Avoided?, may help you pose a question or point for the class to discuss. Completion of your portfolio project and presentation is worth 28% of your final course mark. There are no extensions, so your portfolio and responses to other students portfolios (minimum 3) discussion must be completed during the scheduled week (week 12).

Timeframe

Your portfolio project and presentation is to be worked on all term and delivered during week 12. You are to post your portfolio for other students in an engaging creative way that enhances all student learning during the scheduled seven day period. Your portfolio project and presentation should be posted in the Portfolio Project and Presentation Discussion Forum area under week 12, as a file attached to the message with your question and or activity (posed to the class for further discussion) written in the main message. Your portfolio project and presentation can be posted any time from Monday of week 12 to Sunday of week 12 but it is important to post it early so that students have a chance to comment on it before the end of the week (Sunday midnight) which is the formal assignment completion date. For example, posting on the Sunday of week 12, does not allow much time for students to respond to your portfolio, which would impact your grade (refer to evaluation criteria). You will also want to review and respond to other students portfolio projects and presentations during this week (7 days). Note: Your portfolio project and presentation mark may be adjusted upwards or downwards based on participation in other students portfolio project presentations weeks 12. Students will want to post a response to a minimum of three portfolio project presentations, although more is encouraged (refer to evaluation criteria). In your response to another students portfolio you will want to ensure you support your response with OB concepts, theories, practices and or terms from your textbook. Your response must reflect your understanding of OB course content. The length of your response will vary depending on the portfolio but generally .5-1 page (double spaced) will suffice. Be careful, your response must build and contribute to the presentation and discussion using specific course content, not broad comments.

APA Format

To show your application of key OB concepts throughout your portfolio, and also to recognize where your materials have been retrieved from, you must show proper APA referencing throughout your portfolio. This means including in-text citations as well as a reference list at the end of your portfolio. The library has excellent resources to help you with proper APA format for references.