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Chapter 1
What Is
Organizational
Behavior?
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Learning Objectives
1. Demonstrate the importance of interpersonal skills
in the workplace.
2. Define organizational behavior (OB).
3. Show the value to OB of systematic study.
4. Identify the major behavioral science
disciplines that contribute to OB.
5. Demonstrate why few absolutes apply to OB.
6. Identify managers' challenges and opportunities in
applying OB concepts.
7. Compare the three levels of analysis in this text's OB
model.
8. Describe the key employability skills gained from
studying OB applicable to other majors or future
careers.
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Demonstrate the Importance of Interpersonal

Skills in the Workplace

Interpersonal skills are important because…

• Good places to work have better financial
performance.
• Better interpersonal skills result in lower turnover
of quality employees and higher quality
applications for recruitment.
• There is a strong association between the
quality of workplace relationships and job
satisfaction, stress, and turnover.
• It fosters social responsibility awareness.
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Describe the Manager’s Functions, Roles,

and Skills (1 of 4)
• Manager: Someone who gets things done
through other people in organizations.
• 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.
– Planning, organizing, leading, and
controlling.
• Mintzberg concluded that managers perform
ten different, highly interrelated roles or sets
of behaviors attributable to their jobs.
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Describe the Manager’s Functions, Roles,

and Skills (2 of 4)
Exhibit 1-1 Minztberg's Managerial Roles
Role Description
Interpersonal
Symbolic head; required to perform a number of
Figurehead routine duties of a legal or social nature
Responsible for the motivation and direction of
Leader
employees
Maintains a network of outside contacts who
Liaison provide favors and information
Informational
Receives a wide variety of information; serves as nerve center of
Monitor internal and external information of the organization
Transmits information received from outsiders or from other
Disseminator employees to members of the organization
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Describe the Manager’s Functions, Roles,

and Skills (3 of 4)
[Exhibit 1-1 Continued]
Role Description
Transmits information to outsiders on organization's
Spokesperson plans, policies, actions, and results; serves as
expert on organization's industry
Searches organization and its environment for
Decisional opportunities and initiates projects to bring about
change
Responsible for corrective action when
Entrepreneur organization faces important, unexpected
disturbances
Makes or approves significant organizational
Resource allocator
decisions
Responsible for representing the
Negotiator
organization at major negotiations
Source: H. Mintzberg, The Nature of Managerial Work, 1st ed., © 1973, pp. 92–93.
Reprinted and electronically reproduced by permission of Pearson Education,
Inc., New York, NY.
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Describe the Manager’s Functions, Roles,

and Skills (4 of 4)

• Management Skills
– Technical Skills – the ability to apply specialized
knowledge or expertise. All jobs require some
specialized expertise, and many people develop
their technical skills on the job.
– Human Skills – the ability to work with,
understand, and motivate other people.
– Conceptual Skills – the mental ability to analyze
and diagnose complex situations.
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Effective Versus Successful Managerial

Activities (1 of 2)

• Luthans and his associates found that all

managers engage in four managerial
activities:
– Traditional management
– Communication
– Human resource management
– Networking
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Effective Versus Successful Managerial

Activities (2 of 2)
Exhibit 1-2 Allocation of Activities by Time

Source: Based on F. Luthans, R. M. Hodgetts, and S. A.

Rosenkrantz, Real Managers (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1988).
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Define Organizational Behavior

Organizational behavior (OB) is 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.
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Complementing Intuition with Systematic

Study
• Systematic Study of Behavior
– Behavior generally is predictable if we know how
the person perceived the situation and what is
important to him or her.
• Evidence-Based Management (EBM)
– Complements systematic study.
– Argues for managers to make decisions based on
evidence.
• Intuition
– Systematic study and EBM add to intuition, or
those "gut feelings" about "why I do what I do“ and
"what makes others tick“.
– If we make all decisions with intuition or gut
instinct, we're likely working with incomplete
information.
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Big Data
• Background:
– The use of Big Data for managerial practices is a
relatively new area, but one that holds
convincing promise.
• Current Usage:
– The reasons for data analytics include
predicting any event, detecting how much
risk is incurred at any time, and preventing
catastrophes.
• New Trends:
– The use of Big Data for understanding,
helping, and managing people is relatively
new but holds promise.
• Limitations:
– Use evidence as much as possible to inform your
intuition and experience.
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Identify the Major Behavioral Science

Disciplines That Contribute to OB (1 of 3)
• Organizational behavior is an applied
behavioral science that is built upon
contributions from a number of
behavioral disciplines:
– Psychology
– Social psychology
– Sociology
– Anthropology
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Identify the Major Behavioral Science

Disciplines That Contribute to OB (2 of 3)

Exhibit 1-3
Toward an OB
Discipline
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Identify the Major Behavioral Science

Disciplines That Contribute to OB (3 of 3)

• Psychology
– seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes
change the behavior of humans and other
animals.
• Social psychology
– blends the concepts of psychology and
sociology.
• Sociology
– studies people in relation to their social
environment or culture.
• Anthropology
– is the study of societies to learn about human
beings and their activities.
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Demonstrate Why Few Absolutes Apply to

OB
• There are few, if any, simple and universal
principles that explain organizational
behavior.
– Contingency variables situational factors are
variables that moderate the relationship
between the independent and dependent
variables.
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Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of

OB Concepts (1 of 8)
Exhibit 1-4 Employment Options

Sources: Based on J. R. Anderson, E. Binney, N. M. Davis, G. Kraft, S. Miller, T. Minton-Eversole, . . . and A.

Wright,
<Action Items: 42 Trends Affecting Benefits, Compensation, Training, Staffing and Technology,= HR
Magazine (January 2013): 33; M. Dewhurst, B. Hancock, and D. Ellsworth, <Redesigning Knowledge
Work,= Harvard Business Review (January–February 2013): 58–64; E. Frauenheim, <Creating a New
Contingent Culture,= Workforce Management (August 2012): 34–39; N. Koeppen, <State Job Aid Takes
Pressure off Germany,= The Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2013, A8; and M. A. Shaffer, M. L. Kraimer, Y.-P.
Chen, and M. C. Bolino, <Choices, Challenges, and Career Consequences of Global Work Experiences: A
Review and Future Agenda,= Journal of Management (July 2012): 1282–1327.
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Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of

OB Concepts (2 of 8)
• Responding to economic pressure
– In tough economic times, effective management is
an asset.
– In good times, understanding how to reward,
satisfy, and retain employees is at a premium.
– In bad times, issues like stress, decision making,
and coping come to the forefront.
• Responding to globalization
– Increased foreign assignments.
– Working with people from different cultures.
– Overseeing movement of jobs to countries with low-
cost labor.
– Adapting to differing cultural and regulatory norms.
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Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of

OB Concepts (3 of 8)
OB POLL Percentage of Men and Women Working

Sources: Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, <Women in the Labor Force:
A Datebook,= 2014,
www.bls.gov/opub/reports/cps/women-in-the-labor-force-adatabook-2014.pdf;
and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Economic News Release,= 2013,
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.t02.htm.
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Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of

OB Concepts (4 of 8)
• Managing workforce diversity
– Workforce diversity – organizations are
becoming more heterogeneous in terms of
gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation,
and inclusion of Workforce other diverse groups.
• Improving customer service
– Service employees have substantial interaction
with customers.
– Employee attitudes and behavior are
associated with customer satisfaction.
– Need a customer-responsive culture.
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Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of

OB Concepts (5 of 8)
• Improving people skills
– People skills are essential to managerial
effectiveness.
– OB provides the concepts and theories that
allow managers to predict employee
behavior in given situations.
• Working in networked organizations
– Networked organizations are becoming
more pronounced.
– A managers job is fundamentally different in
networked organizations.
– Challenges of motivating and leading "online"
require different techniques.
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Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of

OB Concepts (6 of 8)
• Using social media at work
– Policies on accessing social media at work.
 When, where, and for what purpose.
– Impact of social media on employee well-being.
• Enhancing employee well-being at work
– The creation of the global workforce means
work no longer sleeps.
– Communication technology has provided a
vehicle for working at any time or any place.
– Employees are working longer hours per week.
– The lifestyles of families have changed
creating conflict.
– Balancing work and life demands now surpasses
job security as an employee priority.
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Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of

OB Concepts (7 of 8)
• Creating a positive work environment
– Positive organizational scholarship is
concerned with how organizations develop
human strength, foster vitality and
resilience, and unlock potential.
– This field of study focuses on employees
strengths versus their limitations, as
employees share situations in which they
performed at their personal best.
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Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of

OB Concepts (8 of 8)

• Improving ethical behavior

– Ethical dilemmas and ethical choices are
situations in which an individual is required
to define right and wrong conduct.
– Good ethical behavior is not so easily
defined.
– Organizations distribute codes of ethics
to guide employees through ethical
dilemmas.
– Managers need to create an ethically
healthy climate.
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Three Levels of Analysis in This

Text’s OB Model
Exhibit 1-5 A Basic OB Model
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Three Levels of Analysis in This Book’s OB

Model (1 of 3)

• Inputs
– Variables like
personality, group
structure, and
organizational culture
that lead to processes.
– Group structure, roles,
and team responsibilities
are typically assigned
immediately before or
after a group is formed.
– Organizational structure
and culture change over
time.
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Three Levels of Analysis in This Book’s OB

Model (2 of 3)
• Processes
– If inputs are like the
nouns in
organizational
behavior, processes
are like verbs.
– Defined as actions
that individuals,
groups, and
organizations engage
in as a result of
inputs, and that lead
to certain outcomes.
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Three Levels of Analysis in This Book’s OB

Model (3 of 3)
• Outcomes
– Key variables that
you want to
explain or predict,
and that are
affected by some
other variables.
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Outcome Variables (1 of 3)
• Attitudes and stress
– Employee attitudes are the evaluations
employees make, ranging from positive to
negative, about objects, people, or events.
– Stress is an unpleasant psychological process
that occurs in response to environmental
pressures.
• Task performance
– The combination of effectiveness and efficiency
at doing your core job tasks is a reflection of
your level of task performance.
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Outcome Variables (2 of 3)
• Organizational citizenship behavior
– The discretionary behavior that is not part of an
employee's formal job requirements, and that
contributes to the psychological and social
environment of the workplace, is called
organizational citizenship behavior.
• Withdrawal behavior
– Withdrawal behavior is the set of actions that
employees take to separate themselves from the
organization.
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Outcome Variables (3 of 3)
• Group cohesion
– Group cohesion is the extent to which members of a
group support and validate one another at work.
• Group functioning
– Group functioning refers to the quantity and quality
of a groups work output.
• Productivity
– An organization is productive if it achieves its goals by
transforming inputs into outputs at the lowest cost.
This requires both effectiveness and efficiency.
• Survival
– The final outcome is organizational survival, which is
simply evidence that the organization is able to exist
and grow over the long term.
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The Plan of the Text

Exhibit 1-6 The Plan of the Text
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Implications for Managers (1 of 2)

• Resist the inclination to rely on

generalizations; some provide valid
insights into human behavior, but many
are erroneous.
• Use metrics and situational variables
rather than
"hunches" to explain cause-and-effect
relationships.
• Work on your interpersonal skills to
increase your leadership potential.
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Implications for Managers (2 of 2)

• Improve your technical skills and conceptual
skills through training and staying current with
OB trends like big data and fast data.
• OB can improve your employees' work quality
and productivity by showing you how to
empower your employees, design &
implement change programs, improve
customer service, & help your employees
balance work-life conflicts.