Course Plan of UKMM2023 Organisational Behaviour May 2020 Trimester

UNIVERSITI TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN

FACULTY OF ACCOUNTANCY AND MANAGEMENT

ACADEMIC YEAR 2020/2021

MAY TRIMESTER

BACHELOR OF INERNATIONAL BUSINESS (HONS)

BACHELOR OF ACCOUNTING (HONS)

UKMM2023 ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

TUTORIAL QUESTIONS

Week 1 - Tutorial 1 – Introduction to Organisational Behaviour

1. Ice-breaking session
2. Overview of the Course Plan
3. Expectations and participations in class
4. A brief on coursework
5. Team formation for group assignment

Discussion question.

1. Organisational behaviour courses are useful only to people who will enter
management careers. Discuss the accuracy of this statement.

Week 2 - Tutorial 2 - Topic 1 – Introduction to the Field of Organisational Behaviour

- Topic 2 – Individual Behaviour and Processes

1. The changing workforce is one of the emerging trends in organisational behaviour.

Describe how the workforce is changing and briefly identify two consequences of
these changes for organisations.

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2. A courier service lay off a large percentage of its production staff during last year's
recession. These low-skilled employees performed routine tasks filling orders. The
company now wants to rehire them. However, most of the unskilled employees have
since found employment in other companies and industries. Do you think the courier
company lost much intellectual capital in this situation? Explain your answer.

3. Store #34 of CDA Hardware Associates has had below average sales over the past
few years. As head of franchise operations, you are concerned with the continued low
sales volume. The store manager wants you to diagnose the problem and recommend
possible causes. Use the MARS model of individual behaviour and performance to
provide four different types of reasons why employees at Store #34 might be
performing below average. Provide one example for each type of explanation. 

4. As the district manager responsible for six stores in a large electronics retail chain,
you have had difficulty with the performance of some sales staff. Although they are
initially motivated and generally have good interpersonal skills, many have difficulty
with the complex knowledge of the diverse range of store products, ranging from
computers to high fidelity sound systems. Describe three strategies you might apply
to improve the match between the competencies of new sales staff and the job
requirement.

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Week 3 - Tutorial 3 – Topic 3 – Perception and Learning in Organisations

1. You are manager of a district that has just hired several recent university and
college graduates. Most of these people are starting their first full-time job,
though most of them have held part-time and summer positions in the past. They
have general knowledge of their particular skill area (accounting, engineering,
marketing, etc.) but know relatively little about specific business practices and
developments. Explain how you would nurture the self-concepts in these new
hires to strengthen their performance and maintain their psychological wellbeing.
Also explain how you might reconcile the tendency for self-enhancement while
preventing the new employees from forming a negative self-evaluation.

2. NuGas Corp. has just sent a dozen (mostly white male) managers from Germany
to its exploration site in a remote area of Indonesia. Few of these managers have
worked with Indonesian employees, so the company has asked you to design an
on-site one-day experiential training program to help these managers to minimize
perceptual problems that might otherwise occur. The program must be
experiential (i.e. participants interact with each other rather than attend an
awareness lecture) and the activities must help the managers to discover biases
that may be hidden or unknown to them. Describe the key features of this
training program and discuss its conceptual foundations. 

3. During a diversity management session, a manager suggests that stereotypes are

a necessary part of working with others. “I have to make assumptions about
what’s in the other person’s head, and stereotypes help me do that,” she explains.
“It’s better to rely on stereotypes than to enter a working relationship with
someone from another culture without any idea of what they believe in!” Discuss
the merits of and problems with the manager’s statement.

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Week 4 - Tutorial 4 – Topic 4 – Workplace Emotions, Attitudes and Stress

Case study 1 - Odd Couples

A 29-year old man and a 68 year old are paired together to learn from each other. How much could
they possibly have in common? At Randstad USA’s Manhattan office, such employee pairings are
common. Randstad Holding NV, a Dutch company, has used this pairing idea since its founding over
40 years ago. The founder’s motto was “Nobody should be alone.” The original intent was to boost
productivity by having sales agents share one job and trade off job responsibilities. Today, these
partners in the home office have an arrangement where one is in the office one week while the other
one is out making sales calls, then the next week, they switch.
Randstad executives figured that if they shared a job with someone whose own success depended on
theirs, they were certain to get all the nurturing they required.” The company looks for people who
will work well with others by conducting extensive interviews and requiring job applicants to shadow
a sales agent for half a day. “Everything about our organization is based on the team and group.” One
of the most interesting elements of Randstad’s program is that neither person is “the boss.”

a. What topics of individual behaviour do you see in this case? Explain.

b. What do you think about this pairing-up idea? Would you be comfortable with such an
arrangement? Why or why not?

c. What personality traits would be most needed for this type of work arrangement? Why?

d. What types of issues might a Gen Y employee and an older, more-experienced employee
face? How could two people in such a close-knit work arrangement deal with those issues?
That is, how could both make the adjustment easier?

Case 2:
Two college graduates recently joined the same major newspaper as journalists.
Both work long hours and have tight deadlines for completing their stories. They are
under constant pressure to scout out new leads and be the first to report new
controversies. One journalist is increasingly fatigued and despondent and has taken
several days of sick leave. The other is getting the work done and seems to enjoy the
challenges. Use your knowledge of stress to explain why these two journalists are
reacting differently to their jobs.

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Week 5 - Tutorial 5 – Topic 5 – Foundation of Employee Motivation

1. A large organization has hired you as a consultant to identify day-to-day

activities for middle managers to minimize distributive and procedural injustice.
The company explains that employees have complained about distributive injustice
because they have different opinions about what is fair (equity, equality, need) and
what outcomes and inputs have the greatest value. They also experience
procedural injustice due to misperceptions and differing expectations. Given these
ambiguities, what would you recommend to middle managers?

2. Your organisation wants to improve employee motivation. Employees already

have strong P-to-O expectancies and the outcome valences are quite favourable for
strong performance, but they seem to have a low E-to-P expectancy. Identify three
distinct types of strategies that would potentially increase employee motivation by
improving the E-to-P expectancy. 

3. Jack Smith and Sam Clemens are neighbours who work as purchasing managers
in different companies in the petrochemical industry. During one neighbourly
discussion, Jack learned that Sam's salary was nearly 15% higher than his even
though their job duties were similar. Other than this difference, both received
similar benefits and seemed to enjoy their jobs and colleagues. Jack was upset
about Sam's higher salary although he hid his emotions from Sam (after all, it
wasn't Sam's fault that they received different salary levels). Jack was frustrated
not only because Sam received a significantly higher salary, but also because
Jack was certain that he worked longer hours and was more productive than
Sam. According to Equity Theory research, what will Jack probably do to reduce
his upset feelings?

Week 6 - Tutorial 6 – Topic 6 – Decision Making and Creativity

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1. Ancient Book Company has a problem with new book projects. Even when
others are aware that a book is far behind schedule and may engender little
public interest, sponsoring editors are reluctant to terminate contracts with
authors whom they have signed. The result is that editors invest more time with
these projects than on more fruitful projects. As a form of escalation of
commitment, describe two methods that Ancient Book Company can use to
minimize this problem.

2. Creative Bench Strength Questions and Answers

1. There is one word in the English language that is always pronounced incorrectly.
What is it?

2. A man gave one son 10 cents and another son was given 15 cents. What time is it?
1:45. The man gave away a total of 25 cents. He divided it between two people.

3. A boat has a ladder that has six rungs, each rung is one foot apart. The bottom
rung is one foot from the water. The tide rises at 12 inches every 15 minutes. High
tide peaks in one hour. When the tide is at its highest, how many rungs are under
water?

4. Is half of two plus two equal to two or three? Three, if you follow the
mathematical orders of operation.

5. There is a room. The shutters are blowing in. There is broken glass on the floor.
There is water on the floor. You find Sloppy dead on the floor. How did Sloppy
die?

6. How much dirt would be in a hole 6 feet deep and 6 feet wide that has been dug
with a square edged shovel?

7. What is the significance of the following: The year is 1978, thirty-four minutes
past noon on May 6th.

8. What can go up a chimney down, but can't go down a chimney up?

9. If a farmer has 5 haystacks in one field and 4 haystacks in the other field, how
many haystacks would he have if he combined them all in the centre field?

10. What is it that goes up and goes down but does not move?

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Week 7 - Tutorial 7 – Topic 7 – Team Dynamics

1. One of the emerging concepts in team dynamics is ‘virtual teams’. Describe this
concept, give one explanation why these teams are possible and give one explanation
why these teams are increasingly necessary.

2. Bangalore Technologies wants to use brainstorming with its employees and

customers to dentify new uses for its technology. Advise Bangalore’s president about
the potential benefits of brainstorming, as well as its potential limitations.

3. You have been assigned to a class project with five other students, none of whom you
have met before. To what extent would team cohesion improve your team’s
performance on this project? What actions wouldyou recommend to build team
cohesion among student team members in this situation?

Week 8 - Tutorial 8 – Topic 8 – Communicating in Team and Organisations

Case Study 2 - The Business of Blogs

As of July 2005 there were 9 million blogs on the Internet, with, estimates say, 40,000 new
blogs appearing each day. What are blogs? Blogs are short for “Web logs” You can think of
them as online diaries. The content of blogs ranges from daily business happenings and news
events to a recap of the homerun that someone’s niece hit during a softball game—in other

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words anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can post a blog. Blogs can include
photos, audio clips, and video clips. And blogs are dynamic in nature, changing each day with
every additional posting (For example, check out one popular blogging site,
www.blogger.com).

Some analysts believe that blogs are the biggest innovation in communication since the
Internet itself in that they are taking power away from the mass media, which traditionally has
decided on what news is worthy of reporting. However, a Pew Research Centre survey
suggests that many people have yet to catch on—only 27 percent of Internet users in America
read blogs—though this number is expected to increase dramatically. The implications of
blogs for businesses are numerous. On the positive side, corporations such as IBM can
monitor blogs to see what people are saying about the company. Such blogs can be posted by
employees, customers, or the general public. Movie studios can track blogs to determine
which films are generating positive public opinion and which are not. And advertisers can use
blogs to evaluate the success of advertising campaigns. Says Jeff Weiner, senior vice
president of Yahoo!, “I’m amazed people don’t get it yet. Never in the history of market
research has there been a tool like this.” Blogs present an unobtrusive and inexpensive means
of collecting data. By simply monitoring blogs, companies can determine what products
people are talking about. Blogs are a valuable business tool, but they have their downsides.
Many employees use blogs to post proprietary company information or to complain about
company practices. Hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals external to the company can
read private company information on a blog if it is divulged, regardless of whether the
information is credible.

But companies are fighting back. Mark Jen, once a programmer at Google, found this out. In
January of 2005, Jen posted a blog complaining that Google’s health plan was worse than that
of Microsoft’s, his former employer. He also wrote that one of Google’s touted perks, free
dinner prepared daily by an in-house chef, was a Google ploy to get its employees to work
past dinner. Google fired Jen shortly after reading his blog. A barrage of blogs in response to
Jen’s firing led Google to publicly comment on its blogging policy. A spokesperson for the
company stated that if the information is such that you wouldn’t e-mail it to strangers, don’t
blog it. Jen says that he understands Google’s decision and should have been more sensitive
to the company’s goals. Fortunately for Jen, his 15 minutes of fame landed him a job at Plaxo,
an Internet contact management company. His job at Plaxo? Coordinating blogging efforts to
promote the company. Blogs are likely to change the way that business information, as well
as information in general, is gathered and disseminated. In contrast to the contents of chat
rooms and e-mails, which tend to be temporary, a blog can last for as long as the person who
posted it desires. Those that blast a company for mistreatment may spread like a wildfire,
which leaves companies in a sticky position. What once was thought to be private information
may not be so private anymore.

a) What aspects of the communication process are blogs most likely to influence and
how?

b) Although the grapevine typically is thought of as occurring within a given

organization, blogging is a form of gossip that can reach beyond an organization’s
borders. How might blogging change the way that companies are affected by gossip?
What can companies do to guard against this?

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c) Although companies would prefer to reduce blogs that speak negatively about them,
what about blogs that detail mistreatment of employees or illegal work practices by
upper management? Should employees post these types of blogs even though they
may be reprimanded or terminated as a result?

d) Is it ethical for companies to actively monitor blogs to gain marketing information?

In other words, is the monitoring of blogs an invasion of privacy, or are bloggers
inviting corporations to gather information because of the public nature of the
postings?

Week 9 - Tutorial 9 – Topic 9 – Power and Influence in the Workplace

Discussion question.

1. You have just been hired as a brand manager of toothpaste for a large consumer
products company. Your job mainly involves encouraging the advertising and
production groups to promote and manufacture your product more effectively.
These departments are not under your direct authority, although company
procedures indicate that they must complete certain tasks requested by brand
managers. Name and describe the sources of power you can use to ensure that the
advertising and production departments will help you make and sell toothpaste more
effectively. 

2. What role does countervailing power play in the power relationship? Give an
example of one of your own encounters with countervailing power at school or work.

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3. In the mid-1990s, the CEO of Apple Computer invited the late Steve Jobs (who was
not associated with the company at the time) to serve as a special adviser and raise
morale among Apple employees and customers. While doing so, Jobs spent more time
advising the CEO on how to cut costs, redraw the organization chart, and hire new
people. Before long, most of the top people at Apple were Jobs’ colleagues, who began
to systematically evaluate and weed out teams of Apple employees. While publicly
supporting Apple’s CEO, Jobs privately criticized him and, in a show of
nonconfidence, sold the 1.5 million shares of Apple stock he had received. This action
caught the attention of Apple’s board of directors, who soon after decided to replace
the CEO with Steve Jobs. The CEO claimed Jobs was a conniving back-stabber who
used political tactics to get his way. Others suggest that Apple would be out of
business today if he hadn’t taken over the company. In your opinion, were Steve
Jobs’ actions examples of organizational politics? Justify your answer.

Week 10 - Tutorial 10 – Topic10 – Conflict and Negotiation in the Workplace

1. The chief executive officer of Creative Toys, Inc., read about cooperation in
Japanese companies and vowed to bring this same philosophy to the company.
The goal is to avoid all conflict, so that employees would work cooperatively
and be happier at Creative Toys. Discuss the merits and limitations of the
CEO’s policy.

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2. Conflict among managers emerged soon after a French company acquired a

Swedish firm. The Swedes perceived the French management as hierarchical
and arrogant, whereas the French thought the Swedes were naive, cautious,
and lacking an achievement orientation. Identify the source(s) of conflict that
best explain this conflict, and describe ways to reduce dysfunctional conflict in
this situation.

3. You have just been transferred from one unit of the organization to another
unit. On the last day of work in the first unit, your current manager calls your
new manager, informing her that you are a tough candidate and that you
possess an attitude. The would-be manager calls you, providing you with the
information, and expresses apprehension. How would you resolve this conflict?

Week 11 - Tutorial 11 – Topic11 – Leadership in Organisational Setting

1. Your employees are skilled and experienced customer service representatives

who perform nonroutine tasks, such as solving unique customer problems or
meeting special needs with the company’s equipment. Use pathgoal theory to
identify the most appropriate leadership style(s) you should use in this situation.
Be sure to fully explain your answer, and discuss why other styles are
inappropriate.

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2. Identify a current political leader (e.g., president, governor, mayor) and his or
her recent accomplishments. Now, using the implicit leadership perspective,
think of ways that these accomplishments of the leader may be overstated. In
other words, explain why they may be due to factors other than the leader.

3. You hear two people debating the merits of women as leaders. One person claims
that women make better leaders than do men because women are more sensitive
to their employees’ needs and involve them in organizational decisions. The other
person counters that though these leadership styles may be increasingly
important, most women have trouble gaining acceptance as leaders when they
face tough situations in which a more autocratic style is required. Discuss the
accuracy of the comments made in this discussion.

Week 12 - Tutorial 12 – Topic12 - Organisational Structure

Group Presentation and/or Discussion Questions

1. From an employee perspective, what are the advantages and disadvantages of working
in a matrix structure?

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2. Explain 2 benefits and 2 limitations of a network structure.

Week 13 - Tutorial 13 – Topic13 - Organisational Culture

1. Describe four types of artifacts on how corporate culture is deciphered.

2. Organisation used different strategies for merging or acquiring another company

which are having different organisational culture. Explain FOUR (4) types of
merging strategies and when it work best.

3. Describe the three stages of socialisation.

4. Is it possible to have a knowledge of what an organisational culture is before you

become a part of the organisation? How important is it for you to align yourself
with your organisational culture?

5. Suppose you are asked by senior officers of a city government to identify ways to
reinforce a new culture of teamwork and collaboration. The senior executive
group clearly supports these values, but it wants everyone in the organisation to
embrace them. Identify four types of activities that would strengthen these
cultural values.

Week 14 - Tutorial 14 – Topic14 - Organisational Change

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1. Employee resistance is a symptom, not a problem, in the change process. What are
some of the real problems that may underlie employee resistance?

2. Explain how communication and involvement are used to minimise resistance to

change.

3. Organisational change also requires driving forces. Explain.

4. According to the force field analysis model, what is the best strategy to move the
status quo to a desired state?

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