Organizational

Behavior

Securing
Competitive
Advantage
Thomson South-Western 1
Wagner & Hollenbeck 5e
 Chapter One

Organizational
Behavior

Thomson South-Western 2
Wagner & Hollenbeck 5e
 Chapter Overview
 This chapter examines the following topics:
– Defining Organizational Behavior
• Micro Organizational Behavior
• Meso Organizational Behavior
• Macro Organizational Behavior
– Contemporary Issues
• Workforce Diversity
• Team Productivity
• Organizational Adaptability
• International Growth and Development
– Putting Organizational Behavior Knowledge to Work
• Diagnosis
• Solution
• Action
• Evaluation
• Becoming an Active Problem Solver
– Overview of the Text 3
 Introduction
 Throughout the world, workplace productivity
has grown steadily for more than a decade,
allowing standards of living to rise significantly
without the threat of significant economic
inflation
 With recent technological advancements in such
areas as information systems, manufacturing
processes, inventory management, and service
delivery, the current trend of increasing
productivity ,may extend well into the future
 Nonetheless, individual companies sometimes
run into productivity problems 4
 Ford Motor Company Example
 This company currently faces problems as a
result of:
– Fierce competition in the automotive
manufacturing industry
• Aggressive discounting by domestic manufacturers
• Attractive pricing by international competitors
 CEO William Clay “Bill” Ford, Jr. faces the
undaunting tasks of:
– Cutting up to $4.5 billion in expenses
– Updating aging product lines
– Shoring up falling quality
5
 Ford Motor Company Example
What Would You Do If……
 …you were a manager in a
company like Ford Motor
Company?
 How would you improve
employee productivity in the face
of unacceptably high production
costs?
 …initial assessments indicate
that productivity lapses are due
to poor employee motivation,
what would you do to solve this
problem? 6
 The Ford Motor Company Case
Indicates…
 …the know-how needed to solve motivational
productivity problems can be found in the field
of organizational behavior
 The management of people through the
application of knowledge from the field of
organizational behavior is a primary means
through which competitive advantage can be
created and sustained

7
 Defining Organizational
Behavior
 Organizational  There are three important
behavior is a field of considerations underlying
this definition:
study that endeavors
– Organizational behavior focuses
to understand, on observable behaviors
explain, predict, and – Organizational behavior
change human involves the analysis of how
behavior as it occurs people behave both as
individuals and as members of
in the organizational groups and organizations
context – Organizational behavior
assesses the behavior of groups
and organizations per se
8
Defining Organizational
Behavior
 The field of organizational
behavior traces its roots back to
the late 1940s when researchers
in psychology, sociology, political
science, economics, and other
social sciences joined together in
an effort to develop a
comprehensive body of
organizational research
 It is now divided into three
distinct subfields

9
 Micro Organizational Behavior
 Micro organizational behavior is concerned
mainly with the behaviors of individuals
working alone
 Three subfields of psychology were the
principal contributors to the beginnings of
micro organizational behavior:
– Experimental psychology: provided theories of
learning, motivation, perception, and stress
– Clinical psychology: furnished models of personality
and human development
– Industrial psychology: offered theories of employee
selection, workplace attitudes, and performance
assessment 10
 Meso Organizational Behavior
 Meso organizational behavior is a middle
ground, bridging the other two subfields of
organizational behavior
 It focuses primarily on understanding the
behaviors of people working together in
teams or groups
 In addition to sharing the origins of the
other two subfields, meso organizational
behavior grew out of research in the fields
of communication, social psychology, and
interactionist sociology
11
 Macro Organizational Behavior
 Macro organizational behavior focuses on
understanding the behaviors of entire
organizations
 The origins of macro organizational behavior can
be traced to four disciplines:
– Sociology: provided theories of structure, social status,
and institutional relations
– Political science: offered theories of power, conflict,
bargaining, and control
– Anthropology: contributed theories of symbolism,
cultural influence, and comparative analysis
– Economics: furnished theories of competition and
efficiency

12
Contemporary Issues

 The three subfields of

organizational behavior offers
valuable information, insight,
and advice to managers facing
the challenge of understanding
and reacting to a broad range
of contemporary management
issues
 Today’s managers find four of
these issues especially
important
13
 Contemporary Issues:
Workforce Diversity
 Within the societal cultures of the United States and
Canada, subcultural differences once ignored by
many managers now command significant attention
and sensitivity
 Historically, the North American workforce has
consisted primarily of white males; however today
white males make up only about 15% of business new
hires in the U.S., whereas women, African American,
Hispanic, and Asian men account for increasingly
large segments of the U.S. workforce
 Knowledge about the workplace consequences of these
differences, drawn from the subfield of micro
organizational behavior, can provide managers with
help in this regard 14
 Contemporary Issues: Team
Productivity
 Management is becoming less of a process relying
on top-down command and control
 For various reasons organizations now use greater
amounts of empowerment
 Often empowerment is accomplished by grouping
employees into teams, then giving those teams
responsibility for self-management activities
 Guidance from the meso organizational behavior
precepts can help managers establish realistic
expectations about the implementation difficulties
and probable effects of team-based empowerment
15
 Contemporary Issues:
Organizational Adaptability
 In today’s business world, emphasis is shifting from
mass production of low-cost, interchangeable
commodities to the production of high-quality goods
and services, made individually or in small batches
and geared to meet the specific demands of small
groups of consumers
 Companies are reacting by implementing programs
that require new ways of dividing an organization’s
work into jobs and coordinating the efforts of many
employees
 Implementations of this sort benefit from insights
derived from macro organizational behavior
16
 Contemporary Issues: International
Growth and Development
 Fewer firms today limit their operations to a
single national or cultural region than was
once the case
 Multinationalism or even statelessness has
become the norm
 The resulting globalization is changing the
way business is conducted and it promises to
continue to do so at an increasing pace
 All three subfields of organizational behavior
have valuable advice to offer managers
confronted with this challenge 17
Putting Organizational Behavior
Knowledge to Work
 Putting theoretical knowledge
from the field of organizational
behavior to practical use
requires that managers develop
skills in using such knowledge
to identify and solve problems
in an effective manner
 The process of problem solving
can be simplified and made
more effective by breaking it
into four stages 18
 Putting Organizational Behavior
Knowledge to Work: Diagnosis and
Solution
 Problem solving begins with
 Solution is the process of
diagnosis, a procedure in which
identifying ways to resolve
managers gather information about
the problem identified
a troublesome situation and try to
during the diagnosis phase
summarize it in a problem
statement  Managers prescribing
 Information gathering may require solutions must resist the
direct observation of events in and urge to satisfice – choosing
around an organization the first alternative that
seems workable- and must
 Summarizing information in a
problem statement requires that instead push themselves to
managers use the mix of theories, consider several potential
experience, and intuition they have solutions and choose the
amassed to construct a statement of best available alternative
19
what is wrong
 Putting Organizational Behavior
Knowledge to Work:Action and
Evaluation
 Action is setting a proposed
solution into motion
 Mangers must first stipulate the
specific activities they believe
are needed to solve a particular
problem, then oversee the
implementation of these
activities
 Sometimes it is possible to
implement a step-by-step
program that was developed
earlier to solve a similar
problem encountered previously
or in another organization
 Problem solving concludes
with evaluation, the process
of determining whether
actions taken to solve the
problem had the intended
effect
 Managers must identify in
advance the indicators they
will use to measure success
and collect measures of these
indicators as the action stage
proceeds
 The evaluation process
highlights any differences
between the intended results
of a particular solution and
the actual results 20
 Becoming an Active Problem
Solver
 To sharpen your skills as a problem
solver, study each theory presented in
this book to develop a basic
understanding of the variables and
relationships it describes
 You should practice following the
theories applied during problem
definition to their logical conclusions
 You should also practice specifying the
actions required to implement and assess
your proposed solution

21
 Overview of the Text

 This textbook focuses on providing

conceptual frameworks that will prove
helpful in the future as you solve
problems and manage behaviors in
organizations
 What you learn now will serve later as a
valuable source of competitive
advantage for you and your firm

22