Health Management

(540163)
Lecture 5: Organizational Behavior
and Management thinking
 Objectives
• To Define Organizational behavior (OB) and
Management thinking (MTh)
• To understand to relation between them
• To understand how both influence leadership,
communication and problem solving

Dr. souad Belkebir

 Introduction
• One of main Healthcare system objectives is:
efficiency===== to reduce waste in human and
non human resources making the best use of
each element of the system
• Managers need technical and interpersonal
skills as well as leadership qualities.

Dr. souad Belkebir

 Introduction
• Knowledge about Human cognition = human
thinking and reasoning helps managers to
understand Organizational Behavior at work.
• At the same time, Behavior is influenced by
the system in which it occurs.
• Result:
Better work environment
Better outcomes for professionals and for patient
Efficiency of the system (sustainability)

Dr. souad Belkebir

“Human beings can be proactive and engaged
or, alternatively, passive and alienated, largely
as a function of the social conditions in which
they develop and function.”

Source: Ryan RM, Deci EL. Self-determination theory and the

facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being.
Am Psychol 2000;55: 68-78. [PubMed]

Dr. souad Belkebir

 Importance in healthcare
Patient safety
– Less medical errors
“[A]n unintended health care outcome caused by a defect in the delivery
of care to a patient.” National Patient Safety Foundation

“ a health care error is “a problem in the Process of care itself or failure

of a planned action to be completed as intended or the use of a wrong
plan to achieve an aim.” Institute of Medicine (IOM)

“any act, or failure to act, which results in harm to a patient, others refer
to medical error as any action within the process of care that may have
the potential to cause harm.”
Annals of Internal Medicine suggests as many as 17 separate individual errors may
occur before a patient is actually harmed.

Dr. souad Belkebir

 Organizational Behavior (OB)
• Area of management that studies how
individuals behave (act)in their organizations.
• Focuses on what people do, analyzes why they
do it, and then applies an evidence-based
intervention strategy to improve what people
do.
• Interdisciplinary field (anthropology,
psychology, sociology, communications….etc).

Dr. souad Belkebir

Dr. souad Belkebir
Organizational Behavior Management
• The application of behavior analysis to
organizational settings.
• Based on the term contingency, or “A-B-C
model” (i.e., Antecedent-Behavior-
Consequence)

Dr. souad Belkebir

Organizational Behavior Management
• An antecedent (A) is a stimulus that precedes a
behavior (B) and encourages performance of that
behavior, such as signs, reminder prompts, or even
noises that direct behavior.
• A consequence (C) is an event that follows a given
behavior and increases the probability the behavior
will recur such as behavioral feedback, monetary
rewards, or a supervisor’s praise for a job well done.
consequences motivate behavior, since we tend to
act in response to the consequences we expect to
receive.
Dr. souad Belkebir
Organizational Behavior levels

Commitment, learning,
decision making, power,
Organization-wide conflict
behavior
Communication, teamwork,
Group behavior satisfaction

Individual Perceptions, attitudes,

behavior personality, motivation

Dr. souad Belkebir

THINKING AND BEHAVIOR
RELATIONSHIP

Dr. souad Belkebir

The effect of thinking in organizational
behavior
• Human beings rely
on the three
capacities of affect,
behavior, and
cognition, which
work together to
help them create
successful social
interactions.

Dr. souad Belkebir

The effect of thinking in organizational
behavior
• Cognition = mental process involved in thinking (receiving
information, processing information, and ordering
information) to create meaning, which will lead to an action
(behavior).

Dr. souad Belkebir

Relevance of perceptions and patterns
of thinking in organizations
• Impact of Manager’s beliefs/behaves: Theory X &
Theory Y (Douglas McGregor,1976).
Perception
Cognitive biases Explain how people view
Expectancies a situation and how they
Expectancy theory react to it……….
Attribution theory Frame the
Organizational behavior
Schemas faming
Mental models
Sense making

Dr. souad Belkebir

 The effect of thinking in organizational
behavior
• Perception: how a person makes sense of a stimuli.
• Process of perceiving involves:

• Positive perception of physicians regarding their patients are

associated with positive behaviors such are eliciting
information, longer time visits, positive support…..
Dr. souad Belkebir
The effect of thinking in organizational
behavior
Cognitive biases: is a systematic error in thinking that affects
the decisions and judgments that people make. Judgment
short-circuits (heuristics) that affect the thinking negatively.
Examples:
Confirmation bias = a tendency to seek information that
confirms their existing beliefs which can prevent us from
looking at situations objectively.
The halo effect= our overall impression of a person influences
how we feel and think about his or her character. Essentially,
your overall impression of a person ("He is nice!") impacts
your evaluations of that person's specific traits ("He is also
smart!").

Dr. souad Belkebir

The effect of thinking in organizational
behavior
Expectancy: the prior experience or knowledge tends to make us
perceive what we expect to perceive.

Expectancy theory:
Focuses on how workers make choices among alternative
behaviors and level of efforts, how they decide which specific
behaviors to perform and how much effort to exert.

Dr. souad Belkebir

The effect of thinking in organizational
behavior
Based on it, there are three key concepts or components in
Expectancy theory: valence, instrumentality and expectancy.

Dr. souad Belkebir

The effect of thinking in organizational
behavior
Attribution theory: people naturally tend to explain own or
others behavior, not necessarily accurate.
The process by which individuals explain the causes of
behavior and events.
Example:

Dr. souad Belkebir

The effect of thinking in organizational
behavior
Schemas (Piaget in 1926, Frederic Bartlett (1932): mental
structures that an individual uses to organize knowledge and
guide cognitive processes and behaviour. Allow one to
perceive the whole picture of an event or object based on
partial information structures.
Example, we may have “schemas” for a good teacher and bad
teacher. When we see behavior similar to our schema of a
good teacher we may then label the teacher as a good
teacher.

Expectancies and schemas deal with how we receive and store

information
Dr. souad Belkebir
The effect of thinking in organizational
behavior
Mental models:
A kind of internal symbol or representation of external reality,
hypothesized to play a major role in cognition, reasoning and
decision-making. Kenneth Craik suggested in 1943 that the
mind constructs "small-scale models" of reality that it uses to
anticipate events.
• They represent deeply ingrained assumptions or
generalizations that influence how we understand the world
and how we take action.

Dr. souad Belkebir

The effect of thinking in organizational
behavior
Mental models:
Great leadership requires that leaders challenge their own
mental models, and that is the assumptions, beliefs, values
and perceptions because both, our decision making and
actions are determined and guided by our mental models.

Also, great leaders understand that their mental models have

much more influence over the outcomes than their actions or
decisions being made.

Mental models deal with how we use the information stored in

reasoning.
Dr. souad Belkebir
The effect of thinking in organizational
behavior
Mental models:
• Since mental models represent the assumptions held by
organizations and individuals which determine how an
organization thinks and acts, they can be a barrier for
organizational learning.
• Affecting both, decision making and implementing strategic
orientation, mental models can damage overall organizational
development.

Dr. souad Belkebir

The effect of thinking in organizational
behavior
Sensemaking in Organization:
• Is the process through which people work to understand
issues or events that are novel, ambiguous, confusing, or in
some other way violate expectations.
• Dealing with ambiguity becomes more challenging as the
number of individuals increases in the organization.
• Source of learning, innovation and change opportunities.
• Uses for managers: determining what is important in a
situation/ retrospective insight of events/ information is
organized for learning

Managers should address individual perceptions and collective

sensemaking.
Dr. souad Belkebir
To sum up
• Perception and thinking of individuals are complex
processes.
• Knowledge of: biases, fundamental attribution error,
mental models and sensemaking are organizational
barriers and challenges for manageres.
• A critical managerial task is: to be aware of own and
people thinking processes, and to create common
understanding among individuals of the organization

Elaboration of common mental

frameworks, common identity, shared
vision of the future and team learning.
Dr. souad Belkebir
 Elaboration of common mental
frameworks, common identity, shared HOW
vision of the future and team learning.

• Communication • Problem solving

“the creation or Capacity of the manager
exchange of to handle complex,
understanding between ambiguous problems
sender(s) and and for which opinions
receiver(s). vary on the nature of
Used to share a the problem and
common focus by possible solutions.
managers. Involves: (1) recognizing
Only successful when and identifying the
preconceptions, biases problem and (2)
and assumptions are assessing options for
removed. possible solution and (3)
decision making.
Dr. souad Belkebir