Organizational Behavior

Assignment # 01

Summaries of Chapters

Submitted To:

Mr. Muhammad Riaz Khan

Submitted By:

Osama Bin Shahid

(SP18-BBA-011)

DEPARTEMENT OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCE

COMSATS UNIVERSITY ISLAMABAD - ATTOCK CAMPUS

2/3/2020

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Lyft
Logan Green was faced by a problem of mixed public transportation in New York City and went
to Zimbabwe on a post-graduation trip, he got an idea from their transportation as it was far
better than the transportation system of New York. From which he stated Zimride, where people
can manage and find car rides.

Later John Zimmer found inspiration from Zimride and left his job to create a solid partnership
with Logan. Both of them together revolutionized transportation network and created LYFT,
which is valued at $5.5 billion. With exponential growth of both apps and networks, LYFT was
the main network to be used. As the employee grown they note that employee should feel they
have a hand in company’s success or things will slow down.

Lyft grow quickly thus zimrides employees left uncertain but the company didn’t left their
employees, 90 % of the employees were rehired in Lyft and zimride was sold to van pooling
business.

Importance of interpersonal skills

Up till 1980s the companies and business academics work only on the technical skills of
management, focused on economics, finance and quantitative analysis, while courses of human
behaviors were given less attention. But now it’s one the major concerns as in a survey many
CFOs say lack of interpersonal skills are the cause employees fail to advance.

Incorporating OB principles into workplace has many favorable outcomes, firstly, companies
who are seen as good place to work generate more financial performance, like Google etc.
Secondly, managers interpersonal skills will help generate good performers which are costly to
replace. Thirdly relationship between employee’s satisfaction and quality workplace relations is
significantly high. Forth, it’s created a strong awareness about social responsibilities. In today’s
world mangers can only succeed on technical skills they need to understand about good people
skills. So, managers and the potential mangers need to understand that they have to acquire
knowledge that understand human behaviors.

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Management and Organizational behavior
Manager is a person who gets things done from other people, manager is also called as an
administrator. While organization is a social unit which is there to achieve a common goal.so
organization hires employees to achieve its common goal. According to surveys the managers in
the organization are not ready to be a manger and neither have the received any training so
according to the reports 25% of manager reported they were not ready to lead and Gallup polls
suggested that 82% of the time organization chooses wrong candidate for the job.

The work of the manager is divided in to four major task planning, organizing leading and
controlling. Usually planning increase from lower to middle level managers. Organizing is done
to identify which task is going to be performed and who will do it. Leading is done by
motivating and directing the employee by effective communications. Controlling is done by
monitoring activities.

Management Roles
Mitzberg concluded 3 major roles which are further explained by 10 major roles of a manger.

Interpersonal Roles

Managers have to perform duties which are symbolic in nature so they are sort of a figure head.
They also have to work as external liaison (be a bridge with outside company) and internal
liaison (be a bridge with inside company). They are also there to lead and motivate their
employees.

Informational Roles

Managers gets lots of information so he review are monitors the information and spread it
accordingly. The also work as disseminator as they get information and then give it to
employees. Managers also are the spokesperson of the organization to the outsides world.

Decisional Roles

Managers also need to search organization and see opportunities and work on them. They also
need to resolve unexpected disturbances. And make and approve different organizational
decisions. And also act as negotiator.
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Management skills
Researchers have identified different type of skills for effective management.

Technical Skills

The ability to utilize specialized knowledge or expertise, they are learned through formal
education.

Human skills

The ability to understand and motivate other people and work with them, it includes
interpersonal skills.

Conceptual skills

The mental and analytical ability to diagnose complex problem

Effective versus Successful management

Luthans studied and found there are four managerial activities, Traditional, Communication, HR
management and Networking. Studies showed that an average employee, spent almost equal time
on the four major activities. The Successful manager spent half of the time in networking and
building relations. While the manager who creates results spent half of time in communication.

So OB is the field that study the impact of individuals groups and structure have on the behavior
within the organization, for purpose of applying knowledge for improving effective organization.
OB is related to employment related situations like job satisfaction turnover rates etc.

Intuition with Systematic Study

The manager should follow a systematic approach, by looking at the relationships and attempting
to find cause and affects. So management should be done by evidence based management as it is
based on scientific data.

These approaches will add to the intuitions, but managers should not only stay with the intuition
but decisions should be on the empirical evidence.

Walking around case study (MBWA)

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Although it created and increase communication but it also cause certain limitations like,
available hours as the manager has more work than just to walk around, his focus is also
distracted an it will cause to reduce the efficiency

Data Anaylsis
Although the big data cause the research to advance and the accuracy of the data relevancy is
increased and as Amazon emerged it created and generated a vast amount of data about
customers’ preferences. The current usage of big data is very large, Netflix and Uber are
collecting large amount of data from customers and new trends are there which are causing large
amount data influx in the businesses to guide business in real time to make accurate decisions.

Limitations

One of the major concerns with big data is privacy as with Google and other systems the privacy
of the customers is disturbed and it can’t be resolved because in the end source of big data are
the customers.

Disciplines that contribute to OB

There are four major fields of study which contribute to OB which are,

Psychology

The science that seeks to measure and explain the behavior of humans and other animals. So
organizational study the problem of boredom and working conditions.

Social Psychology

It blends the concepts from psychology and sociology to focus on the influence of people on one
and another. It describes the changing attitudes etc.

Sociology

It is the study people and their relation of social environment, it includes formal organizational
theory.

Anthropology
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The study of societies to learn about humans, it includes organizational culture and climate etc.

Few absolutes in OB
OB is applying general concepts to particular situation or person while humans are different from
one and other so the OB scholar never say absolutes because every person thinks different and
want different things.

Challenges and Opportunities

Today’s challenges create opportunities for managers to use OB concepts.

Economic pressure

Since the recession in 2008, the management good and bad performance showed profit of loss
difference and in the end survival and failure of the business.

Globalization

When the business stop constraining themselves to national borders, it has increased foreign
assignments, thus understating culture difference was a major problem. And how to work with
difference cultures should be understood. Similarly the labor jobs were shifted from America to
countries where labor was cheap to low the cost of production. The companies needed to
understand and adapt the local cultures.

Workforce Demographics

People have change and so is the demographics of the people working in the organizations and
so the organizations need to adapt according by the help of OB which will understand the effect
of those behavior. Longevity has also effected dynamics in organization. Socioeconomics shifts
has also effected demographics.

Diversity

The organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, age and other
characteristics.

Customer Service and people skills

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The customer’s satisfaction and how to deal with people is understood by the manager if
understands behaviors of humans and can react to them accordingly. It will also help managers
creating jobs which are self-motivating thus increasing efficiency.

Networked Organization

With the advent of internet it has made easier to communicate and work together though they are
1000s miles apart, so manager’s job has also changed with networked organizations.

Social Media

It has help organization as HR managers can see the fb profile and understand what the person is
like and is he suitable for us.

Employee well-being

The sense of belonging for the virtual employees is one of the biggest concerns, so is asking
employees put long hours. So manager has the increased responsibility to see the stress level and
well-being of employees.

Positive Work Environment

It deals with how a persons can develop his own strengths and be reflective best-self. So
managers need to understand that.

Ethical Choice
The situations where a person need to see what is right or wrong.

Development of OB Model
A model is an illusion or imagination of reality and it simplifies some real world phenomena.
Inputs are variables like personalities, group roles and culture etc. Processes are the actions that
are performed by individuals, groups or organizations that lead to certain outcomes. Outcomes
are the things affected by other variables like attitudes and stress.

Attitudes and stress

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A process that occur in response of environmental pressures is stress. These are the outcomes of
external environment.

Task performance

It is the combination of effectiveness and efficiency.

Organizational citizenship behavior

The behavior that contributes to the social environment of the organization.

Withdrawal behavior

The set of action the employees take to separate themselves from the organization it include
turnover rate.

Group cohesion

The extent to which the group member support and validate each other work. As it is strong in
organization it will work harder.

Group Functioning

The quality and quantity of the group’s work output.

Productivity

It is both effectiveness (degree to which organization meets the need of clients) and efficiency
(degree to which an organization achieve at low cost).

Survival

Degree to which organization is able to survive and grow in long term.

Employability skills
The skills that make an individual more employable than others are;-

Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration, Knowledge application, Social responsibility.

You can see these factor in ESM, employability skills matrix.

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Battle of texts
There is point that books of management maybe fun read but that don’t explain the realities of
the management while counter point is that empirical research studies not only help academics
but real life practical management.

Ethical Dilemma
In 202 drones are also being used in office environment thought it is efficient in transferring data
and utilities but the surveillance may affect the privacy and work of employees. To those drones
are very impressive but they are costly too.

Apple Goes Global

Apple has gone to China for cheap labor thought it is good thing for apple many American labor
as lost its job.

And the company managers are vocal that the labor in China is more effective and productive
that American labor. So American labor need to see the reality and be more technical.

Data for Dummies

Though data is collected but how to analyze and interpret that data, so the data mining and data
analyses should be done suitably. For that companies need to look for the strong educational
background in statistics, have experience in related industry, strong communication skills etc.

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