ARSI UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT
MBA PROGRAM

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR (MBA 713)

Instructor: Messele K. Aga (PhD)

 COURSE CONTENTS

UNIT-ONE: INTRODUCTION TO ORGANIZATIONAL

BEHAVIOR
UNIT-TWO: INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR IN
ORGANIZATIONS
UNIT-THREE: GROUP BEHAVIOR IN ORGANIZATIONS
UNIT-FOUR: ORGANIZATIONAL SYSTEM
UNIT-FIVE: ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS
 EVALUATION SCHEME
No Type Weight
.
1 Case Analysis/Article review 10%
2 Attendance and Class participation 10%
3 Project/Seminar in group 20%
4 Mid-exam 20%
5 Final exam 40%

Total 100%
 REFERENCES
 Robbins, S.P and Judge, A. (2019).Organizational
Behavior,18th ed., Prentice-Hall, Inc
 Kinicki, A and Kreitness, R. (2006)
Organizational Behavior: key concepts, skills and
best practices 2nd ed., McGraw Hill.
 Ivancevich, J., Konopaske, R., and Matteson,
M., (2005) Organizational Behavior and
Management,7th ed., McGraw Hill/Irwin,
New York.
 UNIT ONE
INTRODUC TION TO
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
 The Importance of Interpersonal Skills
• Until late 1980s, more emphasis was given for
technical aspect of management such as finance,
accounting, economics, quantitative techniques.
•Understanding OB helps determine manager
effectiveness
–Technical and quantitative skills important
–But leadership and communication skills are CRITICAL
•Organizational benefits of skilled managers;
–Lower turnover of quality employees
–Higher quality applications for recruitment
–Better financial performance
Discussions

What Managers Do?

 What Managers Do?
•They get things done through other people.
•Management Activities:
 Make decisions
Allocate resources
Direct activities of others to attain goals
•Work in an 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.
 Management Functions
In the early part of the 20th century, Henri Fayol
wrote that all managers perform five management
functions:
1) Planning
2) Organizing
3) Commanding
4) Coordinating
5) Controlling
Today, they are condensed to four: Planning,
organizing, leading, and controlling.
 Four Management Functions
1. PLAN
A process that includes defining goals, establishing strategy, and
developing plans to coordinate activities.
2. ORGANIZE
Determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how
the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where
decisions are to be made.
3. LEAD
A function that includes motivating employees, directing others,
selecting the most effective communication channels, and
resolving conflicts.
4. CONTROL
Monitoring performance, comparing actual performance with
previously set goals, and correcting any deviation.
 Management Roles
Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles
Mintzberg’s observation and subsequent
research indicate that diverse manager activities
can be organized into ten different, highly
interrelated roles or set of behaviors.

These ten roles are primarily :

1) Interpersonal
2) Informational
3) Decisional
 Your Reflections

What skills are critical for

managers?
 Management Skills
Managers need three critical skills
1.Technical Skills-the job specific knowledge and
techniques needed to proficiently perform specific
tasks.
It includes mastery of methods, techniques, and
equipment involved in specific functions such as
manufacturing, finance, engineering etc. Ex. first
line managers
All jobs require some specialized expertise, and
many people develop their technical skills on the
job.
 Management Skills…Continued
2. Human Skills- involve the ability to work well
with people both in individually and in a group.
It includes the ability to motivate, facilitate, lead,
communicate, and resolve conflicts.
This skills are equally important to all level of
management
3. Conceptual skills- visualize how the organization
fits into its broader environment.
Decision making, resource allocation, and
innovation require a broad view.
Most important to the top managers
 Conceptual Skills
 Managers must have the mental ability to
analyze and diagnose complex situations.
 These tasks require conceptual skills .
 Decision making, for instance, requires
managers to identify problems, develop
alternative solutions to correct those problems,
evaluate those alternative solutions, and select
the best one.
 •
Conceptual skill

Human skill

Top Managers
T/skill

Conceptual skill

Human skill

Middle
Managers
T/skill

C/skill

First-line Human skill

managers
Technical skill
Management skills…

C/skill

H/skill
Non-managers

Technical skill
 Organization
 Organization is consciously coordinated social
unit composed of two or more people’s that
functions on a relatively continuous basis to
achieve a common goal or set of goals.

 Organization is a purposeful system with several

subsystems where individuals (people) and
activities (process) are organized to achieve
certain predetermined goals through division of
labour and coordination of activities
 Behavior
An organization comprises people with different
attitudes, cultures, beliefs, norms and values.

Behavior or is the range of actions and mannerisms

made by individuals, organisms, systems, or artificial
entities in conjunction with themselves or their
environment, which includes the other systems or
organisms around as well as the (inanimate) physical
environment.

It is the response of the system or organism to various

stimuli or inputs, whether internal or external,
conscious or subconscious, overt or covert, and
voluntary or involuntary.
 Organizational Behavior (OB)
Organizational Behavior is the study of human
behavior in organizational settings.

 OB is the study of people and what they think, feel,

and do within the organizations.

 Organizational behavior 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 organization’s effectiveness.

 Its chief goal is to apply that knowledge toward

improving an organization’s effectiveness.
 Why we study OB?
1) OB can help managers;
 Understand the complexity within
organizations,
 Identify problems,
 Determine the best ways to correct them,
and
 Establish whether changes would make a
significant difference
 Why Study OB…..Continued
2) most of us work in organizations, so we need to
understand, predict and influence the behavior of
others in organizational settings.

3) to address the people issues that we face when

trying to apply marketing, Human resource, computer
science and other ideas.

4) can provide important insights into helping you

better understand a work world of continual change,
how to overcome resistance to change, and how best
to create an organizational culture that thrives on
change.
 Goals of OB
Explain individual and group behavior
Predict certain behavioral response to change
Influence behavior
Six important variables (dependent variables)
Productivity...implies both efficiency and effectiveness
Popular measure of org. efficiency…ROI, profit, &output per hour of
labor
Absenteeism
Turnover
Organizational citizenship
Job satisfaction
Workplace misbehavior
 Focal Points of OB

 Jobs
 Work
 Absenteeism
 Employment turnover
 Productivity
 Human performance
 Management
 Characteristics of OB
Part of general management and not the whole of
management
Contains a body of theory, research and
application associated with a growing concern for
people at the work place
A human tool for human benefit
Interdisciplinary field of study.
Involves three levels of analysis: individual, group
and organization
An action-oriented and goal-directed discipline.
OB is both a science and an art.
 Basic Approaches to OB
1) Human resources approach
It is concerned with the growth and development of people
towards higher levels of competency, creativity, and
fulfillment.

2) Contingency Approach
The contingency approach to organizational behavior
means that different situations require different behavioral
practices for effectiveness.
3) Productivity Approach
It is a measure of how efficiently one produces whatever
output is desired
 OB relationships to other discipline

Micro: Psychology
The Individual
Social Psychology

Sociology

Macro: Anthropology
Groups &
Organizations
Political Sciences
 OB relationships to other discipline…Continued
1) Psychology is the science that seeks to
measure, explains, and sometimes changes the
behavior of humans and other animals.

Motivation
Personality
Perception
Psychology Leadership effectiveness
Individual
Job satisfaction
Individual decision
making
Performance appraisal
Work stress
.
.
 OB relationships…
2) Sociology is the study of people in relation to
their fellow human beings. Sociologists have
contributed to OB through their study of group
behaviors in organizations, particularly formal and
complex organizations.
Group dynamics
Groups
Communication
power
Sociology Conflict
Intergroup behavior

Organizational
Organizational change
Organizational culture
system
Formal org. theory
Organizational
technology
 OB relationships…
3) Social psychology an area within psychology that
blends concepts from psychology and sociology
and that focuses on the influence of people on one
another.

Behavioral change
Social Attitudinal change Group
psychology Communication
Group process
Group decision making
 OB relationships…
4) Anthropology is the study of societies to learn
about human beings and their activities.
Anthropologists’ work on cultures and environments has helped us
understand differences in fundamental values, attitudes, and
behavior among people in different countries and within different
organizations.

Comparative values Group

Comparative attitudes
Anthropology Cross-cultural analysis

Organizational
system

Organizational culture
Organizational
environment
 OB relationships…
5) Political Science is the study of the behavior of
individuals and groups within a political systems
environment.

Political Conflict
science Intra organizational Organizational
politics system
power
 Basic OB Model
A model is an abstraction of reality: a simplified
representation of some real-world phenomenon.
Dependent Variables: this is the response to X (the
independent variable).It is what the OB researchers
want to predict or explain. The interesting variable!
It includes:
Productivity: A performance measure that
includes effectiveness and efficiency.
Effectiveness: Achievement of goals.
Efficiency: The ratio of effective output to the input
required to achieve it.
 Basic OB Model…Continued
Absenteeism: The failure to report to work.
Turnover: The voluntary and involuntary
permanent withdrawal from an organization.
Job satisfaction: A general attitude toward one’s
job, the difference between the amount of reward
workers receive and the amount they believe they
should receive.
Deviant Workplace Behavior: Voluntary behavior
that violates significant organizational norms and
thereby threatens the well-being of the
organization and/or any of its members.
 Basic OB Model…Continued
Independent Variables The presumed cause of
the change in the dependent variable (Y).
This is the variable that OB researchers
manipulate to observe the changes in Y.

Individual –Level Variables

Group –Level Variables
Organization System –Level Variables
 Basic OB Model…Continued
•Individual
–Biographical characteristics, personality and
emotions, values and attitudes, ability, perception,
motivation, individual learning and individual decision
making.
•Group
–Communication, group decision making, leadership
and trust, group structure, conflict, power and politics,
and work teams.
•Organization System
–Organizational culture, human resource policies and
practices, and organizational structure and design.
 A Basic OB Model
Inputs Processes
Individual level Individual level Outcomes
. Diversity . Emotions and moods Individual level
. Personality . Motivation . Attitudes & stress
. Values . Perception . Task performance
Group Level .Decision making . Citizenship behavior
. Group structure Group Level . Withdrawal behavior
. Group Roles . Communication Group Level
.Team . Leadership . Group cohesion
responsibilities . Power and Politics . Group functioning
Organizational . Conflict & negotiation Organizational Level
Level Organizational Level . Productivity
. Structure . HRM . Survival
. Culture . Change practices
 Challenges and Opportunities for OB
•Responding to Globalization
•Managing Workforce Diversity
•Improving Quality and Productivity
•Improving Customer Service
•Improving People Skills
•Stimulating Innovation and Change
•Coping with “Temporariness”
•Working in Networked Organizations
•Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts
•Creating a Positive Work Environment
•Improving Ethical Behavior
 Challenges and Opportunities for OB….
•Responding to Globalization
–Increased foreign assignments
–Working with people from different cultures
–Coping with anti-capitalism backlash
–Overseeing movement of jobs to countries with low-cost labor
–Managing people during the war on terror
•Managing Workforce Diversity
–The people in organizations are becoming more heterogeneous
demographically (disability, gender, age, national origin, non-
Christian, race, and domestic partners)
–Embracing diversity
–Management philosophy changes
–Recognizing and responding to differences
New Directions in OB (Reading Assignment)

 OB is ever changing field

 There are three things, which are
important:

1) Human and Social Capita

2) Positive OB
3) Impact of Internet
THE END OF THE FIRST CHAPTER!

Read more from

Organizational Behavior 18th ed., by Stephen P.

Robbins and Timothy A. Judge
Chapter One