MGT5313 International Organizational Behaviour
The Complete Study & Assessment Guide · Sem A 2026-27MGT5313 Overview
- City University of Hong Kong
- Semester A, 2026/27
- Postgraduate taught course
- Department of Management
- Four assessed components
What this course is actually asking you to do
This is a postgraduate course in organizational behaviour taught through a cross cultural lens, and its published overview says so directly: it promises a comprehensive understanding of the key concepts of organizational behaviour within diverse societal cultures, covering the exercise of authority, managing relationships, self management, uncertainty management and time management, and it names cross cultural communication, motivation, leadership and negotiation as the management challenges you are expected to reason about.
- Assessed by A forty per cent group presentation on one organization, plus case discussion, class participation and two in class quizzes at twenty per cent each.
- The skill being tested Analysing one organization on the evidence available, then arguing whether the practice would carry to another country.
- Hardest step Writing a problem statement narrow enough that one recommendation can answer it and specific enough that evidence could show it was wrong.
- Where to confirm Weights, current dates, submission settings and any pass condition are controlled by the course site.
How MGT5313 is assessed
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Case Discussion | 20% | Group of six to eight leads the class through a set case in fifteen minutes; no write up required from the presenting group; slides submitted in hardcopy before presenting |
| Group Project | 40% | Twenty minute oral analysis of one chosen organization and its organizational behaviour issues in an international context; slides uploaded by the group coordinator before the presentation |
| Class Participation | 20% | Attendance at all classes and active contribution during class discussion |
| Quizzes, two of them | 20% | Two in class quizzes at ten per cent each, questions drawn from what the lecture slides covered, run through a locked down browser with webcam; no make up quizzes |
The published course outline and the separate published assessment details list these four components with identical weights, and they total 100%. Two points go with the table. Inside the forty per cent group project there is a further published split, which is background of the company five, review of concepts ten, analysis and discussion seventy, recommendations ten and conclusion five; those are shares of the presentation rather than of the course, so they are not added here. And the two documents differ on when the case discussions run: the assessment details say Week 4 to Week 10, while the teaching schedule places the first pair in Week 5 and the last pair in Week 10. Confirm the current dates, the submission settings and any condition on passing with the course site.
Assessment structure
Segment widths reproduce the published percentage weights and total 100%.
Current MGT5313 dates
| Date | Item | Control |
|---|---|---|
| 28 September 2026 | Case discussions 1 and 2 | Monday 14:00 section; the case discussion schedule circulated for that section. No dates are published for the Wednesday section. |
| 5 October 2026 | Case discussions 3 and 4 | Monday 14:00 section schedule. |
| 12 October 2026 | Case discussion 5 | Monday 14:00 section schedule. |
| 26 October 2026 | Case discussions 6 and 7 | Monday 14:00 section schedule. |
| 2 November 2026 | Case discussions 8 and 9 | Monday 14:00 section schedule; no dates are published for cases 10 to 12. |
Dates are as published in the case discussion schedule circulated for the Monday section of this offering. Confirm exact deadlines and submission settings in the live LMS.
What MGT5313 covers
Ten chapters follow the published teaching schedule from the foundations of organizational behaviour through culture, attitudes, diversity, leadership and teams to motivation, change and power.
Foundations of Organizational Behaviour
three levels of analysis · four effectiveness outcomes · scientific management and human relations · systems, situational and interactionalist readings02Organizational Culture and Its Components
seven primary characteristics · values, norms, artefacts, rites, stories, symbols · strong against weak · two typologies · the four factors that form a culture03Managing Attitudes, Values and Emotions
cognition, affect and intention · three work attitudes · cognitive dissonance and its three exits · emotional labour · six cultural dimensions04Personality and Diversity in the Workplace
four layers of diversity · a published workforce audit read for what it supports · social identity theory · audit method and its admitted gap05Organizational Leadership Styles
four style pairs · authentic leadership, empathy and trust as three construct sets · what each reading's method can support06Leading Culturally Diverse Teams
three design decisions in order · a published hybrid working design · in group bias, accepted inequality and tolerance for ambiguity07Motivation Within Organizations
four checks on a motivation study · intrinsic against extrinsic · an incentive inventory sorted by reach · reading a mean with its dispersion08Motivating People Around the World
a ranked national dataset of fourteen motivators · what an instrument exports and a ranking does not · self report and the decline in confidence09Organizational Change and Change Management
four levers at two speeds · three roles of a transforming leader · four published change accounts · adaptation against design10Power, Influence and Politics
property rights as a graded system · structure as a political fact · carriers of power a case analysis can observe · where a disagreement goesThe three intended learning outcomes are to demonstrate knowledge of the key concepts, to apply theoretical frameworks to evaluate cross cultural differences and their implications, and to conduct research on an organizational behaviour topic in a cross cultural setting and propose recommendations.
Every assessed component is a performance rather than a piece of recall, so the guide is built around the moves rather than around the summaries.
Foundations of Organizational Behaviour
The opening chapter fixes the vocabulary the other nine borrow.
Organizational behaviour is defined as the study of three things at once, human behaviour in organizational settings, the interface between that behaviour and the organization, and the organization itself, and almost every question in this course turns on which of the three a problem belongs to.
The chapter separates productivity from performance and both from commitment, sets organizational citizenship against dysfunctional behaviour, and works through the systems, situational and interactionalist readings that the field kept.
Organizational Culture and Its Components
Culture is defined as a system of shared meaning that distinguishes one organization from others, and the second half of that definition does the work: a description that would fit any firm in the sector has not described a culture.
The chapter builds the seven primary characteristics, the components from values and norms through artefacts, rites, stories and symbols, the difference between strong and weak cultures and between a dominant culture and its subcultures, and two published typologies that share two cells and part company on the other two.
Managing Attitudes, Values and Emotions
Attitudes are built from cognition, affect and intention, and form in that order.
The chapter separates job satisfaction, organizational commitment and employee engagement, which point at three different objects and are routinely reported as one number, then works through cognitive dissonance and the three exits from it.
Emotional labour arrives with its own vocabulary: display rules, the two kinds of acting they force, and the strain left over, and the chapter closes on the six cultural dimensions with the published index values for several economies.
Personality and Diversity in the Workplace
Week four pairs a personality inventory exercise with diversity as an organizational property, and the four layer model supplies the join: personality sits at the centre, surrounded by internal, external and organizational dimensions.
The chapter reads a published workforce audit closely, and the reason is that the audit concludes something its own collected data cannot reach, which makes it the best available training in the difference between an evidenced finding and a reasonable belief.
Organizational Leadership Styles
Four opposed style pairs from the course material give a manager four independent readings rather than one label.
Three construct sets then arrive within a fortnight, authentic leadership with its four components, empathy graded from understanding through feeling to acting, and trust read as character plus competence.
The chapter also ranks the week's readings by what each one's method can actually support, which is the discipline the rest of the course depends on.
Leading Culturally Diverse Teams
Three design decisions taken in order: where the work happens, which decisions are made synchronously, and which of a team's norms are the organization's values rather than one site's habits.
A published account of a hybrid working design supplies the worked example, and two mechanisms explain most of the difficulty, the sorting of people into groups and the accepted distance between employees and superiors.
Silence is treated as the most over interpreted evidence in the course.
Motivation Within Organizations
This chapter is a reading procedure rather than a tour of theories, because the examinable weakness in this area is misreading survey means rather than ignorance.
Four checks are applied to the week's own reading: find the sample size, find the scale anchors, look for the dispersion and the test, and check the recommendation against what was measured.
An incentive inventory is then sorted by what each incentive reaches, since only one of the three tiers changes the work itself.
Motivating People Around the World
A published survey of one hundred and forty employees ranks fourteen motivators, and the chapter reads the flatness of the top group before the order of it.
The transfer question that the course attaches to every case finally has data on both sides, and the answer separates the ranking, which does not travel, from the instrument, which does. The chapter also works through what the survey's second table can and cannot support.
Organizational Change and Change Management
A culture is produced by four interacting factors and they do not move at the same speed.
People and ethics change over years; structure and property rights change with a decision.
The chapter reads four published corporate change accounts as four lever choices, sets an adaptation case against a firm designed around its model from the start, and argues for reversing the usual sequence so that the values statement comes last.
Power, Influence and Politics
The final taught chapter gives the vocabulary for what every earlier chapter was quietly describing.
Property rights are graded from shareholders to frontline employees, structure teaches people what behaviour is rewarded before anyone tells them, and politicised behaviour is treated as a routing problem: a disagreement always goes somewhere, and the senior person in the room sets the relative price of the two routes.
How to use this guide
Read the front matter first, then work one chapter at a time, and choose the organization for your group project while you are still in the first chapter.
Each chapter ends in practice items with full answers; write your own answer before reading them, because recognising a good answer and producing one in a fifteen minute discussion slot are different abilities and only the second is assessed.
The practice chapter plans a complete group project end to end on an organization invented for the purpose, and the closing chapter is a final pass for quiz day and presentation day.
Evidence and assessment control
Assessment labels and weights follow the published course outline and assessment details for this offering, which agree with each other and total one hundred per cent.
Teaching explanations, worked examples and practice items are independently authored and are not University assessment material; any marks shown on them are an AskSia study allocation.
No hurdle, pass mark or late penalty is stated anywhere in the course materials, which is an absence of a published rule rather than a published absence of one, so confirm those on the course site along with the current dates and submission settings.
Turn a complaint into a problem statement a recommendation can answer
- 3Rule out the explanation the numbers invite, and say why it does not fit.
- 4Apply a course concept that explains the split between centres.
- 3State the problem as a mechanism, an affected group and a controllable actor, and name the observation that would refute it.
Key terms
- Organizational Culture
- The shared meanings its members hold, which set one organization apart from the next, and a pattern made of values and norms, of beliefs, attitudes and assumptions, governing conduct and the way work actually gets done.
- Dominant Culture
- The values most members hold in common, which give the organization its own recognisable personality. It coexists with subcultures rather than replacing them.
- Subculture
- A set of values and norms that grows up in one department or site around the problems that group keeps meeting. Most large organizations carry several.
- Property Rights
- The rights an organization gives its members to receive and use its resources, graded from shareholders through top and middle managers to frontline employees. Different rights systems produce different cultures because they shape what people expect from their own actions.
- Organizational Citizenship
- Behaviour that adds to the organization on balance while falling outside what the job strictly requires, such as covering for a colleague or helping a new starter.
- Dysfunctional Behaviour
- Behaviour that detracts from rather than contributes to organizational performance. The published list runs from absenteeism, turnover and theft through harassment and bullying to politicised behaviour such as spreading rumours, and rudeness.
- Cognitive Dissonance
- The anxiety a person experiences when their behaviour contradicts their attitudes, or when they hold two contradictory attitudes at once. It is reduced by changing the attitude, changing the behaviour, or finding information that reprices the two.
- Emotional Dissonance
- The strain produced when what a worker feels and what they are required to show come apart. It is the cost side of a display rule.
- Display Rules
- The organization's standing rules about which feelings may be shown at work, a policy requiring staff to serve with a smile being the standard example. They are met either by surface acting or by deep acting.
- Power Distance
- How far a population accepts that power inside its institutions is unequally held, read as the felt distance between staff and the people above them. High scores go with acceptance of hierarchical structures.
- Uncertainty Avoidance
- How threatening a population finds ambiguity and unstructured situations, and how hard it works to steer clear of them. Weak avoidance is associated in the course material with greater tolerance for deviant thinking.
MGT5313 FAQ
How is this course assessed?
Four components carry the whole mark, and the published structure contains no end of semester written paper: the group project at forty per cent, and case discussion, class participation and two in class quizzes at twenty per cent each. Both university documents for this offering publish the same four weights and they total one hundred.
The quizzes are the only timed assessment named anywhere in the course materials, and anything not listed in that table should be confirmed on the course site rather than assumed.
What does the group project actually require?
Groups of six to eight choose one real organization, identify and analyse its organizational behaviour issues in an international context, and deliver a twenty minute oral presentation with recommendations. The slides are uploaded by the group coordinator before presenting, the front cover lists every member's full name, and the file name states the course and group number. Detailed explanation may sit in the slide notes.
Where do the marks sit inside the group project?
A proposed presentation structure is published with its own shares: background of the company five, review of concepts ten, analysis and discussion seventy, recommendations ten and conclusion five. Seventy per cent of the project mark therefore sits in a single section, which in a twenty minute slot is roughly fourteen minutes. Groups that spend a third of their time on company history have inverted the scheme.
How does the case discussion work?
From the middle of the term, a group of six to eight leads the class through one of the twelve set cases for fifteen minutes, presenting the background and answering the two questions attached to that case. No write up is required from the presenting group, and the coordinator hands over hardcopy slides before starting.
The assessment details say this runs from Week 4 to Week 10 while the teaching schedule places the pairs from Week 5, so check which applies to your section.
What should I expect in the two quizzes?
Each is worth ten per cent and the questions are drawn from what the lecture slides covered. They run through a locked down browser that keeps only the quiz window open and uses your webcam, so a working camera is needed, and a practice run is scheduled early in the term so the software is set up in advance. Nothing is published about length or question format, and there are no make up sittings.
Is there a hurdle, a pass mark or a late penalty?
None is stated anywhere in the course outline or the assessment details. That is silence rather than a published rule, so do not assume there is no such condition; confirm it on the course site. What the materials do state is that students are expected to attend all classes, with no numeric threshold and no stated consequence, and that quizzes cannot be made up.
How do I use the cultural dimensions without slipping into stereotype?
Quote the dimension and its direction rather than a country label, use at least two dimensions at once because profiles that match on one diverge on the next, and say what observation would count against your reading. A published index value describes a population, so applying it to predict one colleague's behaviour is a level error the first chapter warns about.
The set cases vary a lot in quality. How should I handle that?
Say so explicitly, because appraising a source is part of what the rubric calls original and integrative thinking. One reading is a survey with a stated sample and full tables, one codes published interviews, several are review articles assembling statistics from consultancies and the press, one is a practitioner case study with no numbers at all, and one is editorial commentary.
Use each for what its method can support, and name the intermediary whenever you quote a borrowed figure.
How to prepare for the assessments
Choose the organization for your group project in the first week and carry it through every chapter, answering each chapter's question about that firm before you read the chapter's own answer.
Then rehearse the one move the whole course assesses: state the construct you are using, state what the evidence in front of you establishes and what it does not, and state the condition under which the practice would carry to another setting.
Twenty minutes of that on paper is worth more than a second pass over a reading, because it is the only exercise that rehearses what the case discussion, the quizzes and the project all ask for.
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