Organizational Behavior

Chapter 1

1.1 The importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace:

Lack of interpersonal skills is the top reason why some employees fail to
advance
Companies that apply them, such as:
1. good place to work (Facebook, Qualcomm, etc.) generate superior financial
performance.
2. Developing managers interpersonal skills, keep high-performing employees,
which is hard to find and costly to replace
3. More quality workplace, relationships and job satisfaction, less stress and
turnovers.

1.2 Define Organizational Behavior:

Organizational Behavior is a field of study that investigates the behavior of the
persons that forms an organization with the purpose of improving
organization’s effectiveness.
 Managers: They make decisions, allocate resources and directs
activities to others in order to achieve a goal.
 Organization: A unit composed of two or more people who have the
same goal (companies, schools, hospitals, non-profits, etc.)
Managers don’t usually receive training. 25% admitted they were not ready
to lead others when they were given the role:

82% of the time, organizations choose the wrong candidate for manager
 There are 4 activities for a manager to be prepared better:

1. Planning:
 Define goals.
 Establish a strategy.
 Plan how to coordinate these activities.

2. Organizing:
 Determine what tasks are to be done.
 With which order task will be done.
 Who is to do each task.
 How task will be grouped.
 Who reports to whom.
 Where things are going to take place.

3. Leading:
 Motivate employees.
 Direct their activities.
 Select best way of communication.
 Avoid-resolve conflicts.

4. Controlling:
 Ensuring things are going as they should (not always as planned)
 Monitor organization’s performance and compare it with previous goals
 Correct any significant deviation

Management Roles:
Mintzberg concluded that managers perform 10 different roles:

Interpersonal
This role is about hiring, training, motivating and disciplining employees

Role: Description:
Figurehead Symbolic head, perform
number of routine duties.
Leader Motivates and directs the
employees.
Liaison (connection) Maintains outside network
that provides favors and info.
 Informational
This role is about collecting information from outside organizations by
scanning the news, the media, talking with other people to learn the trends,
about the competitors.
Monitor Receives much info, acts like
the data center between
internal and external
information.
Disseminator Transmits info received from
outsiders or other employees
to the organization.
Spokesperson Transmits info to outsiders
about org’s plans, policies,
action and results.

Decisional
There are 4 roles that require making choices.
Entrepreneur Initiate and searches new
projects and opportunities
that will improve org’s
performance.
Disturbance handlers Responsible for taking
corrective action when they
face important, unexpected
problems
Resource allocators Search for human, physical
and valuable resources
Negotiator Discuss issues and bargain
with other units to gain
advantages over their own.

Management Skills:
1. Technical Skills:
 The ability to apply specialized knowledge or experience.

2. Human Skills:
 The ability to understand, motivate, understand, support and
communicate with other people

3. Conceptual Skills:
 The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations.
  Decision making, develop alternative solutions and evaluate them.

Effective vs Successful Manager:

There are 4 managerial activities that are managers engage with:

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 outsiders.

Managers who explain their decisions and seek information from colleagues and em
ployees, even if the information turns out to be negative, are the most effective.
 Systemic Study

Behavior generally is predictable, and the systematic study of behavior is the

way to learn how to make reasonably accurate predictions
With systemic study we are looking into relationships and conclusions
based on scientific evidence

Evidence-based management (EBM) complements systemic study by

basing managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence.
1.3: Big Data
Big data is the data that helps us get a variety of information for the
customers or potential customers about their preferences, what they bought,
what they were looking at, how they navigate the site, by what they were
influenced, etc.
The challenge here is to identify which statistics are persistent and the ones
that gives steady results so we can predict our next move (there we add the
algorithms).

To categorize, we use big data to:

1. Predict events or malfunctions.
2. Detect how much risk is at stake any time.
3. Prevent catastrophes, like a plane crash or an overstock of a product.
4. Helps in decision making and informs our intuition so managers can
define objectives, develop theories

1.4 Behavioral Disciplines on the OB field

1. Psychology: Measures, explains and changes the behavior of others:

 Learning, Motivation, Personality, Emotions, Perception.

 Training, Leadership effectiveness, Job satisfaction, Work stress.
 Individual decision making, Performance appraisal, Work design.
 Employee selection, Attitude measurement.

2. Social psychology: With concepts from Psychology, it focuses on

people’s influence on each other, with focus on the change:

 Behavioral change, Attitude change, Communication.

 Group processes, Group decision making, conflicts.
 Power, Intergroup behavior.

3. Sociology: Focuses on how people react to their environment or culture

 Communication, Power, Conflicts, Intergroup behavior.

 Formal organization theory, Organizational technology, culture and
change.
 4. Anthropology: The study that learns about human beings and their
activities and differences on values, attitudes and behaviors among people
from different countries:

 Compares values, attitudes, cultures from different countries.

 Cross-cultural analysis, organizational culture and environment power.

1.5 Why few absolutes apply to OB

We are complex and different from each other creature so there aren’t many
things that can apply to a huge group, they are called contingency variables.
Not everyone likes complex and challenging work, some doesn’t motivate as
others from money, etc.

1.6 Challenges and Opportunities for OB

Economic Pressures:

1. In bad times, issues like stress, decision making and coping, come
forefront.
2. In tough economic times, effective management is an asset.
3. In good times, understanding how to reward and satisfy employees, is a
premium.

Globalization:

1. More and more foreign workplace:

 Different needs, aspirations and attitudes.

2. Working with people from different cultures:

 Different motivations, communication style, must understand what
cultures and backgrounds have shaped them.

3. Competition from countries with low-cost labor:

4. Adapting to different cultural laws and habits:

  Know the cultural norms of the workplace in each country they are doing
business. Some enjoy long holidays, some have different laws which
managers need to know very well to avoid conflicts.

Workforce Diversity:

Questions that come up:

1. How to leverage differences within groups for competitive advantage?
2. Should all employees treat alike?
3. Should recognize individual and cultural differences?
4. Does increasing diversity matter?

Customer Service:

1. Service employees have essential interaction with customers

2. Employee attitudes and behavior are associated with customer
satisfaction
3. Customer oriented culture.

Human Skills:

1. OB provides knowledge to predict employee behavior in some situations

 2. Managers need to, for example design motivating jobs, create more
effective teams, which all will improve the managerial effectiveness.

Networked Organizations:

Social Media: Impact of social media on employee well-being

Employee’s Well-Being at Work:

1. While communication technology allows to work wherever they want, many

feel like they are not part of a team.

2. Organizations are asking employees to work more hours, ¼ employees.

shows signs of burnout and 2/3 report high stress and fatigue.

3. The lifestyles of families have changed, since parents are always “on”.

4. Balancing work and life is more important than money or recognition.

5. Positive organizational scholarship focuses on how organizations

develop human strengths versus their limitations and unlock potentials by
sharing situations in which they performed at their personal best.

But what can employers do to help themselves for a better psychology?

1. Recognize the feelings like stress and extreme fatigue.

2. Identify your tendency for burnout.

3. Talk about your stressors with family or friends.

4. Build in high physical activity leads to less burnout and depression than
the ones that don’t engage in.

5. Take brief breaks through your day, like at least 2 minutes for every
hour, standing up, snack break or short naps.

6. Take your vacation, be physically away from work and don’t bother with
work-related duties.
 Ethical Behavior:

1. Ethical dilemmas and ethical choices are situations where must be defined
what’s wrong and right.

2. Good ethical behavior is not easy to define and differs from cultures and
countries.

3. Managers need to create an ethically healthy climate.

1.7 Developing an OB Model.

Outcome variables:

1. Attitudes and Stress.

2. Task Performance.
3. Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Employees who will do more than
their usual job duties (avoid conflicts, are flexible volunteer for extra work,
respect spirit.).
4. Withdrawal behavior: Quitting the job, turnovers, etc.
5. Group Cohesion (chemistry) and Functionality:
6. Productivity: Need Effectiveness and Efficiency.
7. Survival.