ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Group Assignment Week 1

Below our the answers to Critical Thinking Questions, book “Organizational Behavior 8th Ed”
by: Steven L. McShane and Mary Ann Von Glinow, chapter 1 page 27 and chapter 5 page 146
respectively.

Answer:

4. Evidence-based management is about making decisions through the conscientious, explicit, and
judicious use of the best available evidence from multiple source by asking, acquiring,
appraising, aggregating, applying, and assessing to increase the likelihood of a favorable
outcome. In other words, evidence-based is the practice of making decisions and taking actions
based on research evidence. Evidence-based practice seeks to improve the way decisions are
made. It is an approach to decision-making and day-today work practice that helps practitioners
to critically evaluate the extent to which they can trust the evidence they have at hand. It also
helps practitioners to identify, find and evaluate additional evidence relevant to their decisions.

Example of situation: For years, the US technology company Google believed that technical
expertise was the most important capability for their managers. They thought that the best
managers left their people alone as much as possible, focusing instead on helping them with
technical problems when people got stuck. When the company examined what employees valued
most in a manager, however, technical expertise ranked last among eight qualities. More crucial
were attributes like asking good questions, taking time to meet and caring about employees’
 careers and lives. Managers who did these things led top-performing teams and had happiest
employees and lowest turnover. These attributes of effective managers, however, also are well
established in scientific studies, so Google’s improvement efforts could have started years
earlier.

6. Every organization needs to run smoothly, and stay in the market. When we talk about business,
we also talk about assets. An Asset is something that provides flow of money and other benefits
to its owner. We can say that each type of industry has a different prioritize on their assets. As
we read about the comment of the mining executive who said that the physical capital and land
are more important than employee knowledge businesses such as software, it shows that the most
valuable mining assets are physical capital and land. Without obtaining those 2 assets first, other
knowledge businesses are almost worthless to the company. However to stay in the business,
they also need knowledgeable employees. As we know land, labour and capital are the major
factors of production, without any of those factors business will face challenges in staying in the
market. Land and capital are not only the important factors to run a business, they need qualified
workforce. Even if they had enough land and capital without the qualified workforce they could
not produce enough output and earn profit. When we manage a labour force they have different
thinking and mind-set, if the organization has better policies for managing their human resources
it will bring a good impact to the business.

9. Many will suggest that CSR has become more important because of global warming, loss of
habitat, and other highly visible indicators of problems. In addition, a few might argue that
increasing wealth allows society to raise the bar on companies by demanding that they contribute
more to society. A growing number of companies are equating social responsibility with
increased profitability. As a result, they are changing the way they do business. They reason that
CSR can be leveraged as a competitive advantage in the market.

Abiding by CSR standards does potentially cause companies to have conflicting objectives with
some stakeholders in some situations. However the company can’t satisfy all stakeholders
because there are limited resources and stakeholders have conflicting goals. But some corporate
leaders have suggested that there is less conflict than assumed. They particularly believe that
satisfying communities and the environment ultimately satisfies the needs of shareholders and
employees, as more and more people are realizing the importance of sustainable
relationship between organization and its environment.
 Answer:

1. The four-drives theory include Drive to Acquire, Drive to Bond, Drive to Learn, Drive to
Defend. We can map Maslow’s needs to the Four-Drive theory. While the Four-Drive theory
reinforces the view of Maslow that needs are part of human nature. It differs significantly in
some respects.

First, it avoids the assumption that everyone has the same needs hierarchy. It considers
how situational context, personal experience, and cultural values affect one’s intensity,
persistence and direction of effect.

Second, the Four-Drive theory clarifies the role of emotional intelligence with respect to
motivation and behavior. For example, employees with high emotional intelligence are more
sensitive to their own drives and are better able to avoid impulsive behavior.

Third, the Maslow’s Need Hierarchy shows that the emergence of someone’s motivation is
obtained when they fulfill their needs starting from the most basic level, namely Physiological
and up to the next Safety and so on up to the level of Self Actualization. So, these needs are
dependent with each other.

Whereas in the 4 Drive’s theory, the motivation of someone based on one or more types of
triggers arises. In other words, these drives are independent of each other.

If Maslow’s Need Hierarchy applied into the Four-Drives Theory it will be :

 ● Drive To Acquire : Need of Physiological, Need of Esteem, Need of Aesthetic Beauty
● Drive To Bond : Need of Belongingness, Need of Self Actualization
● Drive To Learn : Need To Know
● Drive To Defend : Need of Safety

2. Basically, people’s needs will never ends. They want more and more. They are not satisfied by
their demands. Their expectation is always more and more. Sometimes their needs lead to
strengthened and sometimes it makes them weakened. As we know that different people have
different priorities in their life and it really differs according to their personality, attitude, nature
and nurture, etc. Need for achievement is when people main priority is to achieve goals, in fact
they wants challenging goals to their best effort. McClelland developed training programs to
change need strength. One program increased achievement motivation by having participants
write achievement-oriented stories, practice achievement-oriented behaviors in business games,
and meet frequently with a reference group with other trainees to maintain newfound
achievement motivation. These training programs increased achievement motivation by altering
participants’ self-concept and reinforcing their achievement experience.

8. In this case we would recommend the middle managers try to get all the employees come to an
agreement that everyone feels like that is close to the equality. So basically we would tell them to
use distributive injustice but make sure that the employees agree as a whole and not to just settle
things where it would be over.