Short Discussion-Organizational Politics in TV or Movies (MGT420)

For your SLP, you will be writing about a real-life example of organizational politics from your own work life. For the discussion, we will take a bit more lighthearted approach and look at some examples of how organizational politics is portrayed in movies or TV as well as video games.

Notable TV series that focus on workplace life include Suits, Mad Men, Silicon Valley, House of Lies, Ugly Betty, and The Office. You can probably think of few more recent ones. In terms of movies, Office Space, The Social Network, and Jobs are some examples of popular movies that revolved around corporate life.

For your first post in the first week of this module, try to find a good example of a recent TV series or movie that you watched that you thought was a good example of any of the concepts from this module. Give a short synopsis of the story involved and how it reflected concepts from the background readings. If you can find a YouTube clip from this show or movie, share the link with your classmates. Also, discuss how realistic the TV show or movie was—did it seem similar to what you might find in real life?

Just as office politics is a common theme in movies and TV, there are a surprising number of video games with an office politics theme. Do a search on “office politics games,” “office simulators” or similar searches and see if you find any games that look interesting or are relevant to this module. Some of these games are even available for free—special kudos to any of you who try the game out yourselves. But at least include a short description of the game you found and a link to a video or webpage that illustrates the game.