North Pole Expedition: a Tale of Great Leadership

Organizational Development

Dr. Gomez

The Greatest Survival Story

Shirley Bocook

November 11, 2011

Regent University

School of Global Leadership and Entrepreneurship

Organizational behavior is the study and application of knowledge about people, individuals and groups in organizations. It interprets people-organization relationships in terms of the whole person, whole group, whole organization and whole social system. This paper will focus on teams, change, leadership and human behavior, and the dynamics they played in the movie, “Shackleton: The Greatest Survival Story of All Time.”

Culture is the conventional behavior of a society that encompasses beliefs, customs, knowledge, and practices. Culture influences human behavior, even though it seldom enters into our conscious thoughts. People depend on culture, as it gives them stability, security, understanding and the ability to respond to a given situation. This is why some people fear change. The fear the system will become unstable, their security will be lost, they will not understand the new process, and they will not know how to respond to new situations. Organizational development works to bring about planned change (Newstrom, Davis, 1993).

TO GO OR NOT TO GO, THAT IS THE QUESTION

With optimism and confidence, Shackleton took his positive organizational skills and focused on encouraging human capability during his journey. To understand organizational leadership from a Biblical worldview, we can take a look inside Ernest Shackleton’s world, and the scope of his legendary expedition to the South Pole. For two years, Shackleton attempted to raise the funds from the British government for his expedition to cross the Antarctic Continent. With a hand-picked crew of 27 men, these men set sail in the Endurance; some in search of world travel, others in search of adventure, and some just a “paying job.” Defining a sense of mission was not difficult for Shackleton. He had set...