The Flight of the Phoenix

Abstract

Although many classroom exercises use movies to focus on management and organizational behavior issues, none of those do so in the context of project management. This article presents such an exercise using The Flight of the Phoenix, an incredibly rich story for any management class, which provides clear examples of organizational behavior issues such as forming teams and the inevitable interpersonal issues (conflict, group process, power) that arise. The movie also highlights the importance of technical issues in projects such as the controlling of budgets and understanding the trade-offs in the project management triangle, and the impact interpersonal issues have on them. Detailed examples from the movie are provided to illustrate key concepts.