People, Power, and Patterns

The final lecture of the course. Why do people in organisations behave the way they do, and what does that mean for anyone who wants to lead them?

Organisational Behaviour

We start with the question itself: why do we do what we do? After defining organisational behaviour, we work through the main explanations for motivation and behaviour at work, and what each of them can and cannot account for.

Power

Behaviour in organisations is shaped by power, so we ask where power comes from and which sources are available to people without a formal position. We then look at how teams develop, through the five stages a team typically passes on its way to working well, or failing to.

Leadership

We turn to the leadership style of Steve Jobs, admired and criticised in roughly equal measure, and use it to ask what leadership actually is. We classify followers, examine how engaged they are, and introduce situational leadership: the idea that the right style depends on the readiness of the people you lead. Then we return to the opening question. Was Steve Jobs a situational leader?

Exam Preparation

The lecture closes with the exam: what the digital test looks like, where it takes place, what a pass means, and worked examples of the three question types, remembering, applying, and analysing. We end with the checklist for completing the course.

Required Readings

• Laasch, O. (2024). Principles of Business & Management: Practicing Ethics, Responsibility, Sustainability (3rd ed.). Chapter 8: Folleading.
• Laasch, O. (2024). Chapter 7: Behaving.

About the Course

This lecture is part of Introduction to Responsible Organisation, a first-year course in the BSc in Business Administration at Radboud University. The course examines how organisations create social, environmental, and economic value, and introduces the three dimensions of professional management: ethics, responsibility, and sustainability.

Alongside the lectures, students work in teams on the Young Innovators Project with the regional network organisation Lifeport MKB: each team researches an organisation in the Nijmegen region, visits it, and reports on what it found.