1.2 Pedagogical Features

Many textbooks often attempt to be all-inclusive. Students find these complex texts daunting, and instructors may find them confusing and time-dated. In designing the chapters for the book we paid attention to creating a good process that will encompass the needs of the field and that of past experiences from faculty who have taught organizational behavior or related courses:

1. We began by including topics that each co-author deemed essential.

2. We then surveyed students and consulted colleagues, asking them to rank topics from a large menu of possibilities. Topics that were repeatedly high-ranked or considered important were revisited and incorporated into the chapters. On occasion, when we decided that the topic did not deserve a chapter on its own, we incorporated it into a chapter that would fit well and to also not affect the flow of the chapters as we have designed them.

3. Finally,we were very sensitive to the debates and discussions in international conferences dealing with IOB issues and issues that were raised in classroom situations that we had to elaborate or relate to from our own work, consulting, training, and research experiences.

A Conscientious Blending at Various Levels