Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Organizational Behavior
Organizational Behavior
1
Reference:
Robbins, S.P. & Judge, T.A. (2007).
Organizational Behavior (12th Ed.). Prentice
Hall: New Jersey.
Chapter 1
Reserved copies under Psych 304 Notes
2
What Managers Do
Make decisions, allocate resources &
direct activities of others to attain goals
Work in an organization
Consciously coordinated social unit,
composed of 2 or more people, that
functions on a relatively continuous basis
to achieve a common goal or set of goals
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Management Functions
Planning: defining organizational goals &
establishing strategy for achieving them
Organizing: design organization’s structure
Leading: direct and coordinate employees
Controlling: ensure things are going as they
should
4
Management Roles
Henry Mintzberg’s (1960) study
Interpersonal
Informational
Decisional
Exhibit 1-1 (pp-6)
5
Management Skills
Robert Katz- 3 essential management
skills
Technical Skills: ability to apply
specialized knowledge or expertise
Human Skills: work with, understand,
motivate employees
Conceptual Skills: mental ability to
analyze & diagnose complex situations
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Organizational Behaviour (OB)
Studies 3 determinants of behaviour in
org. (individuals, groups & structure)
Apply this knowledge to improve org’s
effectiveness
The study of what people do in an
organization & how their behaviour
affects the organization’s performance
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Contributing Disciplines to OB field
Psychology: seeks to measure,
explain & sometimes change
behaviour
Learning & personality theorists,
counselling, Ind/Org Psych
Social psychology: people’s
influence on one another
Attitudes, communication patterns, group
behaviour & conflict
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Contributing Disciplines to OB field (cont…)
12
Implications
Improving quality & productivity
Industries suffer from excess supply
Translates into increased competition
Responding to labour shortage
Decline interest by older workers to stay in
workforce
Need for sophisticated recruitment &
retention strategies
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Improving customer service
Need for interaction with customers
? Please customers
Improving people skills
Empowering people
Decision making
Stimulating innovation & change
flexibility
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Coping with ‘temporaries’
Jobs are being subcontracted out
Job security?
Working in networked organizations
Networked organization
Helping people balance work & life
Gone are 8am to 4pm shifts
Creates personal conflicts & stress
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Improving ethical behaviour
Pressure on productivity & tough
competition
Break rules
Ethical dilemmas
Codes of ethics
Workshops/seminars to improve ethical
behaviour
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Coming Attractions: Developing an
OB model
A model is an abstraction of reality
A simplified representation of some real
world phenomenon
3 levels of analysis in OB
Individual
Group
Organizational system
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The Dependent Variables
A dependent variable: key factor to be
explained or predicted & is affected by
some other factors
Productivity: transferring inputs to outputs
at lowest cost
? Concern re: effectiveness & efficiency
Absenteeism: failure to report to work
Cost implications, delays decision
Are all absences bad?
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Turnover: voluntary/involuntary withdrawal
from an organization
Increased recruiting, selection & training costs
Can be positive
Deviant workplace behaviour
Voluntarily violating organizational norms
Understand why?
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Organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB)
Behaviour not part of formal job requirement,
but promotes effective functioning of the org.
Job satisfaction: positive feeling about
one’s job
Affects productivity
Jobs must be intrinsically challenging &
rewarding
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The Independent Variables
An independent variable cause some
change in/on/to the dependent variable
Individual-level variables: individual
characteristics that will influence behaviour
at work
Age, gender, marital status, values, attitudes,
perception, decision making, learning,
motivation
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Group-level variables: more than the sum
total of all individuals acting on their own
way
People behave differently in groups
Understand group influence on individuals
Degree to which group members are attracted
to each other
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Organizational systems level variables:
The design of the formal organization
Organization’s internal culture
Human resource policies & practices
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