SEMESTER: Spring 2018

COURSE NUMBER:
EWMBA 254-1

COURSE TITLE: Power & Politics

UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 Units

INSTRUCTOR: Edward Kass

E-MAIL ADDRESS: drekass@berkeley.edu

PREREQUISITE(S): EWMBA205 Leading People

CLASS FORMAT: Cases, Exercises, Group Discussion, and Lecture.

REQUIRED READINGS: TBD

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Class Participation, Group Project, Individual Project, and Short Self-reflection Papers.

CAREER FIELD:  This course anyone whose performance depends on others' behaviors or buy-in. 

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

This course is designed to teach the art and science of influence in organizations. Many people are ambivalent, if not disdainful, of those who seek to wield power and influence at work. Organizations are, however, fundamentally political entities, where power and influence are key mechanisms by which things get done.

Jeff Pfeffer's WSJ article on the importance of office politics

For those considering careers in management, it is important to be able to diagnose organizational politics in order to form and implement new strategies. In addition, managers are usually on the receiving end of these processes. Astute managers know how to anticipate others’ moves and how to block or avoid them when they have undesirable consequences.

The course will provide you with a sense of  “political intelligence.” After taking this course, you will be able to: (1) diagnose the true distribution of power in organizations, (2) identify strategies for building sources of power, (3) develop techniques for influencing others, (4) understand the role of power in building cooperation and leading change in organizations, (5) make sense of others’ attempts to influence you, and  (6) The ways that power is often lost and can be recovered. These skills are essential for effective and satisfying career building.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:

Dr Kass is an award-winning professor and lecturer. He teaches, writes, and consults on power, team-dynamics, negotiation, and leadership issues. His consulting engagements range from personal coaching and designing and facilitating workshops to large scale organizational and team diagnosis and change. Recent engagements include developing the execution, persuasion, group-dynamics, and interpersonal skills of engineers in some of Silicon Valley’s best known organizations as well as rebuilding a top management IT team, developing their cooperation, performance and leadership.

He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Tulane University and B.A. in Psychology and also Economics, cum laude, from Brandeis University.   He has also taken advanced training at Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and Northwestern University’s Dispute Resolution Research Center.

His teaching includes Executives and MBAs at U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, The University of San Francisco, and NYU’s Stern School of Business as well as physicians at The University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine and Stanford Medical School. He has won awards for teaching and been a member of Haas’ club six designation for teaching excellence.