2009 Edward Kass, Ph.D.

Organizational Life Video Project

Group Project:

The purpose of this assignment is to enable you to apply your classroom learning to a
real-world business situation in real time. In essence, the group project involves your
going out and collecting information about an organization and using the data to create a
new case of your own.

Because the models in this course are foundational to human interaction, they are useful.
However some models will more or less helpful than others in any given specific
organizational situation. The in-class cases are real-world situations that have been
specifically selected to reflect particular types of dynamics, those that match the readings
for that week. This makes them rather neat and simple in many ways. Life tends to be
messier. The ability to think in terms of the models, use them as lenses to make sense
of the world around you, and switch between them is a valuable skill. This assignment
provides you the opportunities to practice these skills.

Y should choose an organization and identify one or two individuals to interview. Your
initial interview should be relatively open ended. I am including instructions on open
ended interviewing below. If they allow you to do so, you should videotape and / or
audiotape the interview.

Each week, you should look at your interview through the lens of that weeks course
concepts to see whether and how that weeks course material helps make sense of the
interview data.

The end deliverable will be a case write up with teaching notes. You may think of this
project in either of two ways. Both approaches look the same to others. But, sometimes
one mental approach resonates more with students than another. You may think of it as
teaching the class material in which you use the case raw data as the examples. This is
how I like to organize the course; I try to model this. So, each class (particularly beyond
the first introductory session, provides examples of this in action.) Essentially, you will
be teaching a model, and then providing the raw material from the case as examples, and
applying the model to make sense of the case data.

The other approach is to think of it as writing a case. You will have a write up of the case
itself and guiding questions for the case. The answers to the questions involve making
sense of the case through one or two organizational lenses / models from class material.

It can be tempting to throw the kitchen sink into it and use many models. Please dont
do this. It is best to focus on 1 or 2 models and provide a more in-depth analysis than 10
models and provide one example of each principle in action.




2009 Edward Kass, Ph.D.
It is important to start the interview(s) early in the semester because:

1. If something goes wrong with your interview or you have difficult obtaining
one, starting early rather than late gives you time to recover.
2. Starting earlier means you have more time to think about the class material and
how it may apply to your case. This is a major way in which we learn. The act
of using the models to make sense of the world around us (whether or not it is
successful) is practice that helps people develop the habit of using the material
to analyze the world.
3. Usually, the initial interview(s) are sufficient for the project. But, if over the
course of the semester you decide you would like to ask follow up questions,
starting early means you are more likely to have time to do so.

One final note: Many classes ask students to choose a concept and then apply that
concept to make sense of an organization. This assignment is deliberately asking you to
collect open ended data first and then choose which assignment you believe is applicable.
This approach has at least two advantages to the alternative. 1) This is how real life ought
to work. It is true that many individuals and consulting firms have a handful of
solutions/models and they will apply the same model to every situation, whether it is
appropriate or not. The expression, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a
nail, has some truth in it. So, by focusing on obtaining real world information and then
doing a more unbiased diagnosis is what one ought to be doing in the real world to
maximize success. 2) By collecting the data first and then using the material each week to
make sense of it, you are likely to learn more through the process of applying new
material each week to your interview data. Therefore you are likely to learn more and
more effectively.

Form a Group:

The first thing students should do is divide into groups of four. Each group serves
as a team. Each person in the team is assigned certain duties. Two are assigned to record
the interview using different means of recording (e.g., digital camcorder and also audio-
tape). Two are assigned to conduct the interview, the ones asking the questions. It is
imperative that two people record the interview. Invariably something may break, be
forgotten, or go wrong. A backup is needed.

Get the interview:

Call and make an appointment for the interview. Many people feel uncomfortable
calling someone and asking for an interview. They may worry that the other person will
be angry, yell, say that it is none of your business. This generally does not happen.
Everybody has stories to tell. Most people are eager to talk and share them.

Explain the assignment. Tell the person that you are interested in organizational
life, what life is like inside an organization. You are in a course on Organizational
Behavior and their stories about organizational life can help you and your classmates

2009 Edward Kass, Ph.D.
understand what life is like in actual organizations. Ask them for about an hour of their
time. Most people dont cringe at the thought of only one hour. Set the day, time, and
place for the interview. Once the day, time and place are established, repeat this
information back to them aloud sot that there is no doubt about what you have agreed
upon. It is also important to make sure that you and the interviewee both know how to get
to the location for the interview. Repeat any driving/transportation directions out loud to
correct any mistakes. If you take the time to be careful, youll save time later on.

Know your recording equipment BEFORE you go to the interview. Test it.
Prepare a list of questions for the interview.

If the interview goes well, you dont have to stick to the hour deadline, but you do
have to ask politely for permission to exceed the deadline.

Dont be late for the interview. Be about 5 minutes early. You can wait for them
to be on time. But, you dont want to risk being late yourself. There are few things less
considerate and more disconcerting than being late for an interview. It gives the wrong
impression at the wrong time.

At the interview:

Interviewing someone is a responsibility not to be taken lightly. Be respectful.
Be comfortable with silence. The interviewee may pause and then pick up again.
If they pause, dont step on them in haste to ask another question. Give them some time
to pick up again.
Dont blindly follow the list of questions. If the opportunity demands, break from
the list and pursue questions out of order or ask follow up questions.
Dont interrupt UNLESS the interviewee is clearly getting off subject. You will
have to transcribe part or all of the interview. You will want to spend time transcribing
only relevant material.
Make eye contact with the interviewee.
The video cameras have a zoon feature. This affects the video only. The camera
will have to be relatively close to the person being interviewed in order for the
microphone to pick up their comments clearly. You may want to test out the video
equipment on yourselves as a practice run to see how close you need to be to take a good
recording.

Ending the interview:

End the interview by asking, is there a question you would like to answer or
something youd like to share that we did not ask? This gives the interviewee an
opportunity to make a point that might have eluded your earlier questions. It also gives
them the chance to summarize or make a conclusion about how they perceive life in
organizations.
When you finish the interview, dont just get up and leave immediately. Turn off
the recorder and just sit in pleasant conversation with the interviewee. Something

2009 Edward Kass, Ph.D.
interesting might come up. You can always ask to turn back on the equipment and ask
them to repeat or elaborate what they just said. And having some light conversation
afterwards also helps conclude the interview smoothly.

Class presentation:
Each group makes a presentation to the class. The students must explain what
concepts from class are illustrated in segments of the interview and show and relate those
segments of the interview. Remember the Dadetown clip of interviews.

Here is a list of suggested open-ended questions. It is not exhaustive nor is it necessary to
ask every single one.

Suggested open ended questions:

Tell me about your job?
What do you do in a typical day?
What is your goal each day?
Tell me about a great day youve had at work
Tell me about a bad day, youve had at work
What do you like best about your job?
What do you dislike the most about your job?
Tell me about your best work experience? Why?
Tell me about your worst work experience? Why?
Do you care about your boss? Your organization?
Does your boss care about your well-being? How about your organization?
Do you have much say in how you do your job or what your organization does?
How do people dress in your organization?
Does the way that people dress in your organization reflect anything about the
person?
What does it take to get ahead in your organization?
What do they tell you they want? What do they reward?
Do you have a lot of groups or committees at your job?
Why do you think that it is?
Does your organization make the world a better place?
Is your job important?
Overall, how do you feel about your job?
Are you thinking of leaving your job or looking elsewhere?
Is there anything particularly interesting going on at work right now?
This past year?
What makes that interesting?
What do you think will happen (or resulted)
Why do you think that?