BUSMGT711 Managing People and Organisations
The Complete Study & Assessment Guide · Quarter 2, 2026BUSMGT711 Overview
- University of Auckland
- Quarter 2, 2026
- Postgraduate
- Weekly workshops
- MikesBikes team simulation
BUSMGT711 Managing People and Organisations is a postgraduate University of Auckland course, offered in Quarter 2 of 2026, built on the groundwork of organisational behaviour and on the challenges managers and leaders face when they manage people and organisations.
- Assessed by A 40% restricted book test, a 40% final team presentation, a progress talk and two simulation scores
- Hardest step Grounding every point in a named theory and a specific example within 500 words per answer
- How to prepare Draft timed PEER answers for Weeks 1 to 6 and keep a rollover meeting log for the presentation
What you get in the full BUSMGT711 Study & Assessment Guide
- 10 chapters, 48 pages — every assessed topic, week by week
- 26 original practice questions, each with a model answer
- 10 worked examples, solved the way BUSMGT711 marks
- 11 computed figures, redrawn from the course’s own numbers
- Before-you-submit checklist for the Restricted Book Mid-Term Test (40%) — what markers reward, what costs marks
Free on this page: assessment table, chapter map, one worked example, key terms, FAQ. The rest is in the full study & assessment guide.
How BUSMGT711 is assessed
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Single Player Shareholder Value (SHV) | 5% | Individual · invigilated MikesBikes task in your Week 2 workshop, up to five rollovers within 90 minutes |
| Team Progress Presentation | 10% | Group · eight-minute live presentation in Week 4; slides due Monday 19 October 2026 |
| Restricted Book Mid-Term Test | 40% | Individual · Friday 6 November 2026, 9.00am on campus via Inspera; 2 h 15 min; three written questions; one A4 page of notes |
| Final Group SHV | 5% | Group · scored on shareholder value after Rollover 5, due Thursday 26 November 2026 |
| Final Team Performance Insights Presentation - Group | 15% | Group · content of the team presentation in Week 10, 12 minutes in total; slides due Monday 30 November 2026 |
| Final Team Performance Insights Presentation - Individual | 25% | Individual · 7% presentation and communication skills plus 18% for two Q&A answers, Week 10 |
These weights come from the course's Week 1 assessment table and its assignment pages, and they total 100%; the Team Agreement due in Week 3 is compulsory but carries no marks.
What other students are asking about BUSMGT711
- Where can I find lecture notes or study guides for BUSMGT711 at Auckland?
- The BUSMGT711 study guide in AskSia Library covers Managing People and Organisations in 10 chapters, with the assessment table, a chapter-by-chapter topic map, key terms and a worked example, free to read on this page.
- Is there a final exam in BUSMGT711?
- No final exam is listed in the offering this AskSia Library guide is built from; BUSMGT711 is assessed by Single Player Shareholder Value (SHV) 5%, Team Progress Presentation 10%, Restricted Book Mid-Term Test 40%, Final Group SHV 5%, Final Team Performance Insights Presentation - Group 15%, Final Team Performance Insights P.
- What does BUSMGT711 cover on working in groups and teams?
- In AskSia Library's BUSMGT711 guide, the Working in Groups and Teams chapter explains team definition and size, generalists versus specialists, psychological safety, groupthink defences, Belbin roles and multicultural teams.
- What does BUSMGT711 cover on communication, perception and connectivity?
- In AskSia Library's BUSMGT711 guide, the Communication, Perception and Connectivity chapter explains barriers to communication, attribution errors and perceptual distortions, information overload, requisite connectivity and the right to disconnect.
- What does BUSMGT711 cover on management theories and their modern relevance?
- In AskSia Library's BUSMGT711 guide, the Management Theories and Their Modern Relevance chapter explains what a theory is, scientific management to lean and digital twins, bureaucracy and isomorphism, the human relations movement and contingency thinking.
Current BUSMGT711 dates
| Date | Item | Control |
|---|---|---|
| 6 Nov 2026 | Restricted Book Mid-Term Test | 9.00am on campus via Inspera; bring your own device |
| 26 Nov 2026 | Final Group SHV | Rollover 5 decisions entered by 23:59 |
| 30 Nov 2026 | Final presentation slides | One team member submits by 23:59 |
| 4 Dec 2026 | Final presentations and Q&A | Allocated slots from Tuesday 1 to Friday 4 December |
Dates are as published in the Quarter 2 course schedule. Confirm exact deadlines and submission settings in the live LMS.
What BUSMGT711 covers
Ten chapters follow the BUSMGT711 workshops from what managers do to culture and the future of work. Chapters 1 to 6 match the content of the restricted book mid-term test; chapters 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8 also supply the segments of the final team presentation, and Chapter 10 turns the MikesBikes simulation into evidence.
What Managers Do and Why Management Matters
Management myths, the Project Oxygen soft-skill evidence, good-manager habits and why bad management costs organisationsThe opening topic asks what managers contribute when wealth comes from knowledge rather than physical production.
- The changing sources of wealth and the future of work
- Why employees leave managers rather than jobs
- Three myths about what managers do
- Project Oxygen and the case for interpersonal skills
- Four observable habits of good managers
- What New Zealand job seekers value most
Working in Groups and Teams
Team definition and size, generalists versus specialists, psychological safety, groupthink defences, Belbin roles and multicultural teamsThis topic unpacks a working definition of a team phrase by phrase: a small number of people, skills that complement each other, mutual accountability, pursuing a common purpose through interdependent work.
- Why people both value and resent teamwork
- Team size, cohesion and the risk of cliques
- Generalists, T-shaped people and specialists
- Psychological safety versus safe spaces
- Mutual accountability and avoiding the blame game
- Groupthink and nine ways to resist it
Communication, Perception and Connectivity
Barriers to communication, attribution errors and perceptual distortions, information overload, requisite connectivity and the right to disconnectThis topic treats communication as both a core management activity and one of its hardest challenges.
- Six barriers to effective communication
- Attribution, the fundamental attribution error and self-serving bias
- Five perceptual distortions and the horns effect
- Information overload and attention as the scarce resource
- Hypo, dynamic and hyper connectors
- Hybrid work and the right to disconnect
Management Theories and Their Modern Relevance
What a theory is, scientific management to lean and digital twins, bureaucracy and isomorphism, the human relations movement and contingency thinkingWeek 4 asks whether management ideas from the early twentieth century still explain how organisations work.
- What a theory explains, predicts and assumes
- Webvan and Amazon as contrasting cases of theory in practice
- Scientific management: Taylor, the Gilbreths and the one best way
- Lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0 digital twins
- Bureaucracy and institutional isomorphism: regulatory, mimetic, normative
- Human relations: Hawthorne, Follett, Barnard and walking around
Motivation Theories and Motivating Others
Maslow and ERG, two-factor and acquired needs, equity, expectancy and goal setting, reinforcement, self-determination and meaningful workMotivation in this course means the inner forces that set how hard, in what direction and for how long a person works. Week 5 sorts the theories into three families.
- Defining motivation by level, direction and persistence
- Content theories: Maslow, ERG, Herzberg and acquired needs
- Extrinsic and intrinsic rewards
- Equity theory, procedural justice and pay transparency
- Expectancy, instrumentality and valence in a simulation team
- Goal setting: participation, acceptance, specificity, challenge, feedback
Decision-Making and Ethical Choices
Fast and slow thinking, bounded rationality and non-rational influences, intuition, rules and weighted criteria, value analysis and ethical decisionsWeek 6 starts from an uncomfortable finding: managers decide constantly yet humans are poor decision makers, as three simple puzzles demonstrate.
- Why people are poor decision makers: the three-puzzle evidence
- Fast and slow thinking and the layers of ignorance
- Non-rational influences and remote-work biases
- The pyramid of decision approaches: intuition, rules, methodologies
- Dictionary, threshold and industry-specific rules
- Weighted criteria, decision matrices and value analysis
Leadership Theories, Power and Influence
Leadership versus management, positional and personal power, trait, behavioural and contingency theories, transformational and authentic leadershipWeek 7 separates leading from managing: leadership is influence over a group's goals, while management relies on the authority of a formal rank.
- Leadership as influence versus management as formal authority
- Reward, coercive and legitimate power compared with expert and referent power
- Trait theory and why no universal set of leader traits was found
- Task-centred and people-centred behaviour, and the Blake and Mouton grid
- Fiedler, cognitive resource theory and situational favourableness
- Hersey and Blanchard: matching Directing, Coaching, Supporting and Delegating to follower readiness
Organisational Culture
Schein's levels of culture, espoused and enacted values, strong and weak cultures, leaders shaping culture, changing culture and the Netflix principlesCulture is the shared set of values, norms and assumptions that steers how members behave and interpret their environment.
- Defining organisational culture as shared values, norms and assumptions
- Schein's levels: artefacts, values and basic assumptions
- Espoused versus enacted values and why consistency matters
- Strong versus weak cultures and the limits of strength
- Leadership levers for creating, maintaining and changing culture
- The dark side of culture, including nice cultures and us-versus-them dynamics
Technological and Societal Change at Work
AI and the progression of intelligences, the multi-generational workforce, diversity and inclusion, and retaining mature-age employeesWeek 9 examines how artificial intelligence and demographic change are reshaping the future of work and what that means for managing people.
- Four intelligences and the order in which AI replaces tasks
- Gains from AI in human resource management and the risks of monitoring
- Privacy duties and the role of data protection regulation
- Social impact of automation across regions and income levels
- Six generations in one workforce and their birth-year ranges
- Ageing workforces, myths about older workers and retention practices
The MikesBikes Simulation: Roles, SHV and Team Rules
Simulation roles and handovers, the rollover cycle and team agreement, shareholder value rubric bands and collusion rulesMikesBikes is the business simulation that runs through the whole quarter.
- The six director roles and what each one controls
- Handovers between Marketing, R&D, the COO and HR/CSR
- The weekly rollover rhythm and Thursday deadlines
- Using the Team Agreement to run meetings and settle conflict
- How the Single Player and Final Group SHV rubrics band the points
- Collusion, share limits and the bankruptcy rule
Its learning outcomes ask you to analyse individual and team behaviour from theoretical perspectives, apply more than one perspective to a management problem, contribute to a team that pursues an objective, reflect critically on your own self-management and communicate professionally in writing and in speech.
The weekly workshops move from why management matters, through working in groups and teams, communication and perception, and the history of management theory, to motivation, decision-making and ethics. The second half covers leadership, power and influence, organisational culture, and how artificial intelligence and a multi-generational, more diverse workforce are reshaping work.
Alongside the theory, you join a team of about six that runs a company in the MikesBikes business simulation, starting with two practice rollovers and then five competitive rounds, and that shared experience becomes the evidence for your presentations. Assessment combines individual and group work.
A restricted book mid-term test carries 40% and asks for three written answers justified with theory and examples; the Final Team Performance Insights Presentation carries another 40%, split between a group grade and an individual question-and-answer grade. A team progress presentation and two simulation scores make up the rest.
This guide follows the workshop order, models answers in the point, explanation, example and reiteration structure the course teaches, and shows how to turn team moments into grounded examples.
Worked example · free
Explain two outcomes of standardising a claims team
- +2Faster routine claims: scientific management seeks the one best way through systematic inquiry, data-based decisions, standard procedures and the removal of wasteful variation, so timing each step exposes duplicated checks.
- +1Its limit: the same logic treats variation as waste, yet complex claims need judgement, so a single standard fits them poorly.
- +2The resignations: the human relations movement, built on the Hawthorne finding that attention to people lifts performance more than physical conditions, predicts that staff who feel unheard withdraw, and here the most experienced left.
- +1Why both apply: contingency thinking holds that no single theory fits every setting, so routine and complex claims can be managed differently.
- +2Recommendation: keep timed standards for simple claims, give senior assessors discretion on complex ones, and have managers walk the floor to hear where the process is failing.
Key terms
- Organisational behaviour
- The study of how individuals and groups act within organisations and how managers can influence that behaviour.
- Psychological safety
- A team member's belief that taking an interpersonal risk, such as owning up to an error or asking a basic question, will not bring punishment or embarrassment.
- Groupthink
- A pattern in which the desire for agreement and acceptance leads a group to conform and make poorer, often riskier, decisions.
- Fundamental attribution error
- The tendency to overestimate internal causes and underestimate external causes when explaining another person's behaviour.
- Requisite connectivity
- The idea that people and organisations need enough connection to stay engaged, but not so much that it becomes dysfunctional.
- Scientific management
- Taylor's approach of finding the one best way to do work through systematic study, data-based decisions, standard procedures and less waste.
- Hawthorne effect
- The finding that attention paid to workers can improve performance more than changes to physical working conditions.
- Expectancy theory
- A process theory linking effort to motivation through expectancy, instrumentality and the valence of the outcome.
- Bounded rationality
- The limit on decision-making created by incomplete information, limited time and limited cognitive capacity.
- Situational leadership
- Hersey and Blanchard's contingency model in which the right leadership style depends on how ready followers are.
- Espoused values
- The values an organisation states explicitly, as distinct from the enacted values people actually display.
- Shareholder value
- The MikesBikes performance score tracked by the CEO; it grades the Single Player task, and the Final Group SHV uses it or the regional ranking, whichever scores higher.
BUSMGT711 FAQ
How is the grade made up in this course?
Five components total 100%. Individual work covers the Single Player SHV at 5% and the restricted book mid-term test at 40%. Group work covers the Team Progress Presentation at 10% and the Final Group SHV at 5%. The final Team Performance Insights Presentation carries 40%: 15% for the group's presentation content and 25% for each person, made of 7% presentation skills and 18% Q&A.
What does the restricted book mid-term test look like?
It runs on campus through Inspera on your own device, lasting 2 hours 15 minutes with the first 15 minutes for reading. You answer all three questions: two are marked out of 15 and one out of 10. Each answer is capped at 500 words, written in full sentences, and justified with readings, theory, class discussion or business examples.
What can I bring into the test?
One A4 page of notes, written or typed on both sides, in English, with your student number clearly shown. You hand it to the invigilators at the end. Blank paper and pens are available on request. Generative AI is not permitted, and once the test begins you cannot leave the room, even if you finish early.
Which weeks does the mid-term test draw on?
The course writing coach is built on content from Weeks 1 to 6, which spans management and why it matters, groups and teams, communication, management theories, motivation, and decision-making. The Week 6 pre-workshop page also confirms that decision-making is included. Leadership and culture arrive afterwards as required presentation segments, and Week 9 on technological change supports the final reflection.
Can I use generative AI for the presentations?
Yes, with conditions. AI may help with information, suggestions and language for the Team Progress Presentation and the final presentation, but its use must be acknowledged on the coversheet, and ideas it suggests should be checked against reliable sources before they appear in your slides. It is not allowed in the Single Player SHV or the mid-term test.
How is the final team presentation marked?
The group content grade awards 10 marks for depth and relevance, 3 for how well speakers build on their slides and 2 for formatting and APA referencing. Individually, 7% covers presentation skills, 4 marks for professional style and 3 for comprehensibility, and 18% covers the Q&A, with 9 marks for each of your two answers. Questions target a teammate's topic, not your own segment.
What happens if teams collude in MikesBikes?
Agreeing prices, product plans or market shares with another team is treated as unauthorised collaboration and academic misconduct. For the Final Group SHV, any involvement in price setting or collusion earns a grade of 0% for every member of the implicated team, and the rules also point to an academic integrity investigation.
Questions students ask in each BUSMGT711 chapter
- Why does a management course start with myths about managers?
- The myths explain why poor management persists. If people believe managing is easy, needs no real effort or only requires being pleasant, they stop developing the skills that matter. Clearing those beliefs away early makes room for the evidence on coaching, listening and fair allocation of work, which later topics on teams, motivation and leadership build on directly. Chapter 01 · What Managers Do and Why Management Matters
- What team size works best?
- Research cited in the course links roughly six to twelve members with cohesion, because people can share a space, align schedules and still reach agreement. Beyond about twelve, groups tend to split into sub-groups or cliques. Simulation teams average around six players, so they start inside the cohesive range, although size alone never guarantees good teamwork. Chapter 02 · Working in Groups and Teams
- What are the main barriers to effective communication?
- The course lists noise, choosing the wrong channel, jargon, non-verbal signals that contradict the spoken message, physical distractions and filtering. Each can distort or block a message even when the sender means well. In a team setting, the wrong channel and filtering are common culprits, for example burying an urgent decision in a long group chat thread. Chapter 03 · Communication, Perception and Connectivity
- Are traditional management theories still relevant today?
- Yes, and the course shows how. The four principles of scientific management reappear in lean production and in digital twins that monitor production lines in real time, while human relations ideas live on in agile teams and management by walking around. The useful skill is showing where an old principle still explains a current practice and where it no longer fits. Chapter 04 · Management Theories and Their Modern Relevance
- What is the difference between content and process theories of motivation?
- Content theories identify the needs people bring to work, such as Maslow's hierarchy, ERG, Herzberg's factors and the need for achievement, power or affiliation. Process theories explain how people interpret rewards and decide how much effort to give, through fairness comparisons, expectancy beliefs or goals. A good answer names the family before the theory. Chapter 05 · Motivation Theories and Motivating Others
- Why does the course say people are bad at making decisions?
- Three short puzzles with tempting wrong answers were set, untimed, for 3,235 Ivy League students; only 17% solved all three and 32% got all three wrong. Kahneman's explanation is that people rely almost always on fast, biased thinking rather than slow, logical reasoning, which makes structured methods worth learning. Chapter 06 · Decision-Making and Ethical Choices
- How does leadership differ from management?
- Management relies on authority attached to a formal rank to obtain compliance. Leadership is influence that moves a group towards its goals and can come from anyone. A simulation CEO holds the managerial title by appointment, yet another member with expert or referent power may be the person the team actually follows. Strong answers show both and explain which mattered more. Chapter 07 · Leadership Theories, Power and Influence
- What are the three levels of organisational culture?
- Schein's model separates artefacts, values and basic assumptions. Artefacts are visible, such as rituals, language and dress. Values may be espoused, meaning stated, or enacted, meaning displayed. Basic assumptions sit deepest, are often unconscious and are the hardest level to change. A good analysis moves from an observed artefact down to the assumption it reveals. Chapter 08 · Organisational Culture
- Is Week 9 content assessed in the mid-term test?
- The mid-term test draws on Weeks 1 to 6, so Week 9 material sits outside it. It remains valuable for the final team presentation, especially its concluding reflection and the individual questions, where linking your team's experience to diversity, inclusion or technology shows a broader understanding of how managing people is changing. Chapter 09 · Technological and Societal Change at Work
- How is the Final Group SHV scored?
- Points come from whichever is higher: the team's shareholder value after Rollover 5 or its ranking within the region. For example, $130 or more, or first place, earns all five points. This higher-of rule allows for regions where fierce competition keeps every company's value low, so a strong ranking can still earn a good score. Chapter 10 · The MikesBikes Simulation: Roles, SHV and Team Rules
How to prepare for the assessments
Treat the quarter as two linked projects. For the mid-term test, rebuild each Week 1 to 6 topic as a short written argument: a definition you can state precisely, the theory that explains it, and one business or team example that shows the link.
The teaching team's half-point pattern, recognising the factor, grounding it in theory and illustrating it with an example, is the clearest guide to where credit sits, and there are always more relevant factors than marks, so choose three you can develop well.
Write practice answers against the clock in full sentences, stop at 500 words, and practise unpacking prompts into instruction, content and limiting words before you plan. Use your single A4 page for theory skeletons and examples, not copied slides. For the presentation, keep a brief log after every rollover meeting: what was decided, how, who led, and how people felt.
Those notes become the specific examples the rubric rewards for communication, motivation, decision-making, leadership and culture. Finally, rehearse a teammate's segment aloud, because the individual questions are deliberately set on topics other than your own.
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