CHAPTER
OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter students should be
able to:
1.
Define organizational behavior
(OB).
2.
Identify the primary
behavioral disciplines contributing to OB.
3.
Describe the three goals of OB.
4.
List the major challenges and
opportunities for managers to use OB concepts.
5.
Describe how OB
concepts can help make organizations more productive.
6.
Discuss why work force
diversity has become an important issue in management.
7.
Explain how managers and organizations
are responding to the problem of employee ethical dilemmas.
8.
Discuss how knowledge of OB can help managers stimulate organizational innovation
and change.
LECTURE
OUTLINE
I. THE FIELD OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
A.
Definition
1.
Organizational behavior is the
systematic study of the actions and attitudes that people exhibit within
organizations. (ppt 4)
2.
Key parts of the definition
a)
Systematic study (ppt 5)
(1)
The use of scientific evidence
gathered under controlled conditions and measured and interpreted in a
reasonably rigorous manner to attribute cause and effect. (ppt 6)
(2)
OB—its theories and conclusions—is based on a large number of
systematically designed research studies.
b)
Systematic study of actions
(or behaviors) and attitudes include three areas: productivity, absenteeism,
and turnover. (ppt 7)
(1)
Managers clearly are concerned
with the quantity and quality of output that each employee generates.
(2)
Absence and
turnover—particularly excessively high rates—can adversely affect this output.
(3)
Organizational citizenship—discretionary
behavior that is not part of an employee’s formal job requirements but promotes
effective organizational functioning—is a fourth type of behavior that has
recently been found to be important in determining employee performance. (ppt 8-9)
(4)
Organizational behavior is
also concerned with employee job satisfaction, which is an attitude. (ppt 10)
(5)
Job satisfaction is a concern
for three reasons.
(a)
There may be a link between
satisfaction and productivity.
(b)
Satisfaction appears to be
negatively related to absenteeism and turnover.
(c)
It can be argued that managers
have a humanistic responsibility to provide their employees with jobs that are
challenging, intrinsically rewarding, and satisfying.
c)
Systematic study of people
within an organization
(1)
OB is specifically concerned with work-related behavior.
(2)
An organization is a
consciously coordinated social unit, which comprises two or more people and
functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of
goals. (ppt 11)
(3)
OB is characterized by formal roles that define and shape the behavior of
its members.
B.
Contributing Disciplines (ppt
12)
1.
Organizational behavior is
applied behavioral science.
a)
The predominant contributing
disciplines are psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and
political science.
b)
Psychology contributes mainly
at the individual/micro level of analysis, whereas the latter disciplines
contribute on the group/macro level of analysis.
2.
Psychology is the science that
seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and
other animals.
a)
Psychologists concern
themselves with studying and attempting to understand individual behavior.
b)
Contributors are learning
theorists, personality theorists, counseling psychologists, and, most important,
industrial and organizational psychologists.
c)
Early industrial psychologists
concerned themselves with problems of fatigue, boredom, and any other factor
relevant to working conditions that could impede efficient work performance.
d)
More recently, their
contributions have been expanded to include learning, perception, personality,
emotions, training, leadership effectiveness, needs and motivational forces,
job satisfaction, decision-making processes, performance appraisals, attitude
measurement, employee-selection techniques, job design, and work stress.
3.
Sociology studies people in
relation to their fellow human beings.
a)
Greatest contribution has
resulted from their study of group behavior in organizations, particularly
formal and complex organizations.
b)
Areas of valuable input
include group dynamics, design of work teams, organizational culture, formal
organization theory and structure, bureaucracy, communications, status, power,
conflict, and work/life balance.
4.
Social psychology is an area
within psychology, blending concepts from psychology and sociology.
a)
It focuses on the influence of
people on one another.
b)
A major area of
concern—change—how to implement it and how to reduce barriers to its
acceptance.
c)
Areas of significant
contributions are in measuring, understanding, and changing attitudes,
communication patterns, the ways in which group activities can satisfy
individual needs, and group decision-making processes.
5.
Anthropology is the study of
societies to learn about human beings and their activities.
a)
It includes human physical
character, evolutionary history, geographic distribution, group relationships,
and cultural history and practices.
b)
This has helped us understand
differences in fundamental values, attitudes, and behavior between people in
different countries and within organizations.
6.
Political science, the study
of the behavior of individuals and groups within a political environment, is
frequently overlooked.
a)
Specific topics of concern to
political scientists include structuring of conflict, allocation of power, and
how people manipulate power for individual self-interest.
II. GOALS OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
A.
What three goals does OB seek (ppt 13)
B.
Explanation
1.
Seek to answer why an
individual or a group of individuals did something.
2.
Explanation is the least
important of the three goals, from a management perspective, because it occurs
after the fact.
C.
Prediction
1.
The goal of prediction focuses
on future events to determine what outcomes will result from a given action.
2.
There are various ways to implement
a major change, so the manager is likely to assess employee responses to
several change interventions. Such information can be used in making the
decision as to which change effort to use.
D.
Control
1.
The most controversial goal is
to control behavior because most of us live in democratic societies, which are
built upon the concept of personal freedom.
2.
OB does offer technologies that facilitate the control of people.
a)
Whether those technologies
should be used in organizations becomes an ethical question.
III. CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR OB: A
MANAGERIAL PERSPECTIVE
A.
The ability to explain,
predict, and control organizational behavior has never been more important to
managers because of changing workforce demographics; global competition which
require flexibility, rapid change and innovation; and organizational commitment
and loyalty changes. (ppt 14-15)
B.
Increased Foreign Assignments
1.
Organizations are no longer
constrained by national borders, which means as a manager, you're increasingly
likely to find yourself in a foreign assignment.
C.
Working with People from
Different Cultures
1.
Globalization also means that
you will be working with bosses, peers, and other employees that were raised in
different cultures.
D.
Coping with Anti-Capitalism
Backlash
1.
Capitalism's focus on
efficiency and growth is not accepted worldwide.
E.
Overseeing Movement of Jobs to
Countries with Low-Cost Labor
1.
Management is under pressure
to keep labor costs down, yet moving jobs to lower labor cost countries also
gets criticized.
2.
Workforce diversity means that
organizations are becoming a more heterogeneous mix of people.
3.
Workforce diversity means that
organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, race, and
ethnicity.
a)
Encompasses anyone who varies
from the norm. In addition to the more obvious groups—women, African Americans,
Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans—it also includes the physically
disabled, homosexuals, and the elderly.
F.
Embracing Diversity (ppt
16-17)
1.
Traditional melting pot
approach to differences in organizations assumed that people who were different
would somehow automatically want to assimilate.
2.
Now the challenge for
organizations is to make themselves more accommodating to diverse groups.
G.
Changing U.S.
Demographics
1.
Diverse groups were such a
small percentage of the U.S.
workforce.
a)
The bulk of the pre-1980s
workforce was male Caucasians working full time to support a non-employed wife
and school-aged children.
b)
Currently, 46.6 percent of the
U.S.
labor force are women. Minorities and immigrants make up 23 percent.
2.
Workforce diversity has
important implications for management practice.
a)
Managers need to recognize
differences and respond to them.
(1)
Diversity, if positively
managed, can increase creativity and innovation in organizations as well as
improve decision making by providing different perspectives on problems.
H.
Improving Quality and
Productivity (ppt 18)
1.
Managers are facing constant
challenges to improve quality and productivity.
To do this, they are implementing programs such as quality management
and process reengineering, which require extensive employee involvement. (ppt
19-20)
a)
See Exhibit 1-3, What Is Total
Quality Management?
2.
Process reengineering asks
managers to reconsider how work would be done and how would their organization
be structured if they were to start over.
I.
Improving People Skills (ppt
21-22)
1.
People skills are critical to
managerial effectiveness.
2.
There are specific people
skills that managers can use on the job.
a)
The text will raise this as
you read.
J.
Improving Customer Service
1.
The majority of employees in
developed countries work in service jobs, which requires substantial
interaction with an organization's customers.
2.
OB can contribute to performance by showing how employee attitudes and
behavior are associated with customer satisfaction.
K.
Empowering People
1.
The reshaping of the
relationship between managers and those they are supposedly responsible for
managing.
a)
Decision-making is being
pushed down to the operating level.
b)
Managers are allowing employees
full control of their work.
c)
An increasing number of
organizations are using self-managed teams.
2.
Managers are empowering
employees.
3.
Managers are having to learn
how to give up control, and employees are having to learn how to take
responsibility for their work and make appropriate decisions.
L.
Working in Networked
Organizations
1.
Technology has allowed people
to communicate and work together even though they may be thousands of miles
apart.
M.
Stimulating Innovation and
Change
1.
Today’s successful organizations
must foster innovation and master the art of change or they will become
candidates for extinction.
2.
Victory will go to those
organizations that maintain their flexibility, continually improve their
quality, and beat their competition to the marketplace with a constant stream
of innovative products and services.
3.
The challenge for managers is
to stimulate employee creativity and tolerance for change.
a)
The field of OB
provides a wealth of ideas and techniques to aid in realizing these goals.
N.
Coping with “Temporariness”
1.
Managers have always been
concerned with change. What is different is the amount of time between change
implementations.
2.
Today, change is an ongoing
activity for most managers. The concept of continuous improvement, for
instance, implies constant change.
3.
Managing used to be
characterized by long periods of stability interrupted occasionally by short
periods of change.
a)
That is reversed today.
4.
Managers and employees face a
world of permanent “temporariness.”
a)
Workers need to continually update
their knowledge and skills to perform new job requirements.
b)
Work groups are also
increasingly in a state of flux. In the past employees were assigned to a
specific department, and that assignment was relatively permanent.
c)
Organizations themselves are
in a state of flux. They continually reorganize their various divisions, sell
off poorly performing businesses, downsize operations, and replace permanent employees
with temporaries.
5.
Today’s managers and employees
must learn to learn to live with flexibility, spontaneity, and
unpredictability.
I. Helping Employees Balance
Work/Life Conflicts
1.
The typical employee no longer
shows up Monday through Friday for an eight- or nine-hour shift.
2.
A number of forces have
contributed to the blurring of the line between work and nonwork time, thus,
creating personal conflicts and stress.
a) The creation
of global organizations means the work world never sleeps.
b) Communication
technology allows employees to do their work anywhere—at home, in their car, or
on the beach.
c) Organizations
are asking employees to put in longer hours.
d) Few families
have only a single breadwinner.
3.
Employees are not happy about
work squeezing out personal lives.
4.
Organizations that do not help
their people achieve work/life balance will find it increasingly hard to attach
and retain employees.
J. Declining Employee Loyalty
1. Corporate employees used to
believe that their employers would reward loyalty and good work with job
security, generous benefits, and steady pay increases.
2. That changed beginning in the
mid-1980s as corporations sought to become “lean and mean” by closing
factories, moving operations to lower-cost countries, selling off or closing
down less-profitable businesses, eliminating entire levels of management,
replacing permanent employees with temporaries, and substituting
performance-based pay systems for seniority-based programs.
3. European companies are also doing this.
4.
These changes have resulted in
a sharp decline in employee loyalty.
K. Improving Ethical Behavior
1.
In today’s organizational
world it is not surprising that many employees feel pressured to cut corners,
break rules, and engage in other forms of questionable practices.
2.
Members of organizations are
increasingly finding themselves facing ethical dilemmas, situations in which
they are required to define right and wrong conduct.
3.
Good ethical behavior has
never been clearly defined.
a)
In recent years the line
differentiating right from wrong has become even more blurred.
b)
All around them employees see
people—elected officials, successful executives, and employees in other
companies—engaging in unethical practices.
4. There are a variety of responses to this
problem.
a)
Write and distribute codes of
ethics to guide employees through ethical dilemmas.
b)
Offer seminars, workshops, and
similar training programs to try to improve ethical behaviors.
c)
Provide in-house advisors, who
can be contacted, in many cases anonymously, for assistance in dealing with
ethical issues.
d)
Create protection mechanisms
for employees who reveal internal unethical practices.
5. Today’s manager needs to create
an ethically healthful climate in which his or her employees can do their work
productively and confront a minimal degree of ambiguity regarding what
constitutes right and wrong behaviors.
IV. THE PLAN OF THIS BOOK
A.
The book uses a building block
approach. (ppt 23)
1.
See Exhibit 1-4.
2.
Chapters 2 through 6 deal with
the individual in the organization.
a)
The foundations of individual
behavior—values, attitudes, perception, and learning.
b)
The role of personality and
emotions in individual behavior.
c)
Conclude with motivation issues
and individual decision making.
3.
Chapters 7 through 12 address
group behavior.
a)
Introduce a group behavior
model.
b)
Discuss ways to make teams
more effective.
c)
Consider communication issues
and group decision-making.
d)
Investigate leadership and
the issues of trust, power, politics, and conflict and negotiation.
4.
Organizational behavior
reaches its highest level of sophistication when we add the formal organization
system to our knowledge of individual and group behavior. Chapters 13 through
16, discuss:
a)
How an organization’s
structure, work design, and technology affect behavior.
b)
The effect that an
organization’s human resource policies and practices have on people.
c)
How each organization has its
own culture that acts to shape the behavior of its members.
d)
The various organizational
change and development techniques that managers can use to affect behavior for
the organization’s benefit.
SUMMARY
(ppt 24-25)
1.
Organizational behavior (OB) is the systematic study of the actions and attitudes
that people exhibit within organizations.
2.
Organizational behavior is
applied behavioral science. The predominant contributing disciplines are psychology,
sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and political science.
3.
The three primary goals of OB are to explain why an individual or a group of
individuals do something; to predict future events—to determine what outcomes
will result from a given action; and to control behavior, the most
controversial goal of the three. OB does offer
technologies that facilitate the control of people. Whether those technologies
should be used in organizations becomes an ethical question.
4.
The major challenges and
opportunities for managers to use OB concepts occur in the areas of customer
service, improving quality and productivity through the use of quality
management, reengineering and other techniques; improving people skills;
managing workforce diversity—a key challenge since organizations are becoming
more heterogeneous in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity; responding to
globalization; empowering people by the reshaping of the relationship between
managers and those they’re supposedly responsible for managing; stimulating
innovation and change; coping with temporariness as the workforce becomes more
part time and contingency based; dealing with declining employee loyalty; and
improving ethical behavior.
5.
The plan of the book is built
on a building-block approach. Chapters 2 through 6 deal with the individual in
the organization. Chapters 7 through 12 address group behavior. Chapters 13
through 16, discuss how an organization’s structure, work design, and
technology affect behavior, the effect that an organization’s human resource
management policies and practices have on people, how each organization has
its own culture that acts to shape the behavior of its members, and the various
organizational change and development techniques that managers can use to
affect behavior for the organization’s benefit.
DISCUSSION
QUESTIONS
1.
Define organizational behavior
(OB).
Answer - Organizational behavior
is the systematic study of the actions and attitudes that people exhibit
within organizations. There are three key parts. Systematic study is the use of
scientific evidence gathered under controlled conditions and measured and
interpreted in a reasonably rigorous manner to attribute cause and effect.
Systematic study of actions (or behaviors) and attitudes occurs in three areas:
productivity, absenteeism, and turnover. Systematic study within an
organization—OB is specifically concerned with
work-related behavior—and that takes place in organizations. A fourth type of
behavior, organizational citizenship, has been added as a determiner of
organizational effectiveness.
2.
Identify the primary
behavioral disciplines contributing to OB.
Answer - Organizational behavior
is applied behavioral science. Psychology is the science that seeks to measure,
explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals.
Sociology studies people in relation to their fellow human beings. Greatest
contribution was through their study of group behavior in organizations,
particularly formal and complex organizations. Social Psychology is an area
within psychology, blending concepts from psychology and sociology. It focuses
on the influence of people on one another. Anthropology is the study of
societies to learn about human beings and their activities. This has helped us
understand differences in fundamental values, attitudes, and behavior between
people in different countries and within organizations. Political science, the
study of the behavior of individuals and groups within a political environment,
is frequently overlooked.
3.
Describe the three goals of OB.
Answer – Explanation, which
seeks to answer why an individual or a group of individuals did something. It
is the least important of the three goals, from a management perspective,
because it occurs after the fact. Prediction focuses on future events to
determine what outcomes will result from a given action. Control is the most
controversial goal because most of us live in democratic societies, which are
built upon the concept of personal freedom. OB
does offer technologies that facilitate the control of people. Whether those
technologies should be used in organizations becomes an ethical question.
4.
List the major challenges and
opportunities for managers to use OB concepts.
Answer - Improving quality,
customer service, and productivity through the use of quality management,
reengineering and other techniques; improving people skills; managing workforce
diversity—a key challenge since organizations are becoming more heterogeneous
in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity; responding to globalization;
empowering people by the reshaping of the relationship between managers and
those they are supposedly responsible for managing; stimulating innovation and
change; coping with temporariness as the workforce becomes more part time and
contingency based; dealing with declining employee loyalty; and improving
ethical behavior.
5.
Explain the key elements in
quality management.
Answer - See Exhibit 1-3, What
Is Quality Management?
6.
Discuss why workforce
diversity has become an important issue in management.
Answer - Workforce diversity
means that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender,
race, and ethnicity. It encompasses anyone who varies from the norm. In
addition to the more obvious groups—women, African Americans, Hispanic
Americans, and Asian Americans—it also includes the physically disabled, the
elderly, and so on. Traditional melting pot approach to differences in
organizations assumed that people who were different would somehow
automatically want to assimilate. Traditionally, diverse groups were such a
small percentage of the U.S.
workforce. Currently, 46 percent of the U.S. labor force are women.
Minorities and immigrants make up 23 percent.
