Chapter

ONE

What is Organizational Behavior?

OBJECTIVES

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Describe what managers do. 2. Define organizational behavior (OB). 3. Explain the value of the systematic study of OB. 4. Identify the contributions made by major behavioral science disciplines to OB.

LEARNING

5. List the major challenges and opportunities for managers to use OB concepts.

What Managers Do
Managers (or administrators)
Individuals who achieve goals through other people.

Managerial Activities Make decisions

Allocate resources
Direct activities of others to attain goals

Where Managers Work

Organization
A consciously coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals.

Management Functions
Planning Organizing

Management Functions
Controlling Leading

Management Functions (contd)

Planning
A process that includes defining goals, establishing strategy, and developing plans to coordinate activities.

Management Functions (contd)

Organizing
Determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made.

Management Functions (contd)

Leading
A function that includes motivating employees, directing others, selecting the most effective communication channels, and resolving conflicts.

Management Functions (contd)

Controlling
Monitoring activities to ensure they are being accomplished as planned and correcting any significant deviations.

Mintzbergs Managerial Roles

Source: Adapted from The Nature of Managerial Work by H. Mintzberg. Copyright 1973 by H. Mintzberg. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education.

E X H I B I T 11

Mintzbergs Managerial Roles (contd)

Source: Adapted from The Nature of Managerial Work by H. Mintzberg. Copyright 1973 by H. Mintzberg. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education.

E X H I B I T 11 (contd)

Mintzbergs Managerial Roles (contd)

Source: Adapted from The Nature of Managerial Work by H. Mintzberg. Copyright 1973 by H. Mintzberg. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education.

E X H I B I T 11 (contd)

Management Skills
Technical skills
The ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise.

Human skills
The ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually and in groups.

Conceptual Skills
The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations.

Effective Versus Successful Managerial Activities (Luthans)

1. Traditional management
Decision making, planning, and controlling

2. Communication
Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork

3. Human resource management

Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and training

4. Networking
Socializing, politicking, and interacting with others

Allocation of Activities by Time

Enter Organizational Behavior

Organizational behavior (OB)
A field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organizations effectiveness.

Complementing Intuition with Systematic Study

Intuition
Gut feelings about why I do what I do and what makes others tick.

Systematic study
Looking at relationships, attempting to attribute causes and effects, and drawing conclusions based on scientific evidence.

Provides a means to predict behaviors.

Psychology

Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field

The science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals.

E X H I B I T 13 (contd)

Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field (contd)

Sociology
The study of people in relation to their fellow human beings.

E X H I B I T 13 (contd)

Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field (contd)

Social Psychology
An area within psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology and that focuses on the influence of people on one another.

E X H I B I T 13 (contd)

Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field (contd)

Anthropology
The study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.

E X H I B I T 13 (contd)

There Are Few Absolutes in OB

Contingency variables: "It Depends!!!"
Situational factors that make the main relationship between two variables change--e.g., the relationship may hold for one condition but not another. In Country 1

x x

May be related to

y y

In Country 2

May NOT be related to

Challenges and Opportunities for OB

Responding to Globalization
Increased foreign assignments Working with people from different cultures Coping with anti-capitalism backlash Overseeing movement of jobs to countries with lowcost labor Managing people during the war on terror.

Managing Workforce Diversity

Embracing diversity Changing U.S. demographics Implications for managers
Recognizing and responding to differences

Major Workforce Diversity Categories

Gender
Disability Age Non-Christian Race Domestic Partners
E X H I B I T 14

National Origin

Challenges and Opportunities for OB (contd)

Improving Quality and Productivity
Quality management (QM) Process reengineering

Responding to the Labor Shortage

Changing work force demographics Fewer skilled laborers Early retirements and older workers

Improving Customer Service

Increased expectation of service quality Customer-responsive cultures

What Is Quality Management?

1. Intense focus on the customer. 2. Concern for continuous improvement.

3. Improvement in the quality of everything the organization does. 4. Accurate measurement.

5. Empowerment of employees.
E X H I B I T 16

Challenges and Opportunity for OB (contd)

Improving People Skills Empowering People Stimulating Innovation and Change Coping with Temporariness Working in Networked Organizations Helping Employees Balance Work/Life Conflicts Improving Ethical Behavior Managing People during the War on Terrorism

A Downside to Empowerment?

Basic OB Model, Stage I

Model
An abstraction of reality. A simplified representation of some real-world phenomenon.

E X H I B I T 1-6

The Dependent Variables

Dependent variable
A response that is affected by an independent variable (what organizational behavior researchers try to understand).

The Dependent Variables (contd)

Productivity A performance measure that includes effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness Achievement of goals.

Efficiency Meeting goals at a low cost.

The Dependent Variables (contd)

Absenteeism
The failure to report to work.

Turnover
The voluntary and involuntary permanent withdrawal from an organization.

The Dependent Variables (contd)

Deviant Workplace Behavior
Voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and thereby threatens the well-being of the organization and/or any of its members.

The Dependent Variables (contd)

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)
Discretionary behavior that is not part of an employees formal job requirements, but that nevertheless promotes the effective functioning of the organization.

The Dependent Variables (contd)

Job satisfaction
A general attitude (not a behavior) toward ones job; a positive feeling of one's job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics.

The Independent Variables

Independent variable
The presumed cause of some change in the dependent variable; major determinants of a dependent variable. Independent Variables Can Be

Individual-Level Variables

Group-Level Variables

Organization System-Level Variables

Basic OB Model, Stage II

E X H I B I T 1-7