Journey towards

Organizational
Behavior
our JOURNEY
 Formal definition of organizational
behavior
OB helps the employees navigate a A multidisciplinary field that seeks to understand,
business’ culture and helps managers predict and manage behavior in organization at the
understand how that culture helps or individual, group and organizational level of analyses.
hinders employee productivity and
retention.

Study of what people do in an

organization and how their behavior
affects the organization’s performance.

Organizational Behavior
 ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR HISTORY

Formal study of OB began in the 1890’s. During that

time Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and Frederick
Winslow Taylor identified positive effects of precise
instructions, goal setting, and rewards on motivation.
In 1911 Taylor published his work “Principles of
Scientific Management”. Henry Ford applied
Taylor’s theories in Ford Motor Company in
producing the Ford Model T automobile reducing
assembly time and price of the car.

Time & Motion Study = Frederick Taylor

 ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR HISTORY

Scientific management increased the monotony of work.

After WW1 attention shifted to understanding the role of human factors and
psychology in the organization. This interest was spawned by the Hawthorne
Experiment. The Hawthorne experiment was conducted by Elton Mayo at Western
Electric’s Hawthorne plant.

The original purpose of the study was to examine how different aspects of the work
environment such as lighting, timing of breaks, and the length of workday had on
worker productivity.

Mayo stated that the reason workers are more strongly motivated by informal things is
that individuals have a deep psychological need to believe that their organization cares
about them.
 Lilian Gilbreth wrote a thesis
on the psychology of
management and her first
notable publication,
“Psychology in the
Workplace” was serialized in
the journal of the Society of
Industrial Engineers.

An American engineer, consultant and author Lilian Evelyn Moller Gilbreth

know as scientific management, father & central Wife of Frank Gilbreth, an American
figure of “Cheaper by the Dozen psychologist, consultant, industrial
engineer and educator who was an
early pioneer in applying psychology
in time and motion studies.
 Frederick Taylor,
Created the Gantt Chart
George Elton Mayo
Founder- Scientific Management Hawthorne Experiment
Theory
 Taylor’s Theory:
1) Physical work could be scientifically studied to determine the optimal
method of performing a job.
2) Workers could there after be made more efficient by being given
prescriptions for how they were to do their jobs.
3) Workers would be willing to adhere to these prescriptions if paid on
"differential piece work" basis.

Taylor's four principles of scientific management are summarized here: -

• Scientifically study each part of a task and develop the best method for performing the task.
• Carefully select workers and train them to perform the task by using the scientifically developed
method.
• Cooperate fully with workers to ensure that they use the proper method.
• Divide work and responsibility so that management is responsible for planning work methods
using scientific principles and workers are responsible for executing the work accordingly.
• Taylor's ideas on time study, standardization of work practices, goal setting, money as a motivator,
scientific selection of workers and rest pauses have all proved to be successful techniques of
management today. 
In the late 1980’s business school curricula emphasized the technical aspects of management, including:
•Economics
•Accounting
•Finance
•Quantitative Techniques

Incorporating OB principles into the workplace, many important organizational outcomes has come out,
such as:
•Being known as good places to work
•Attract and keep high-performing employees
•Strong associations are made between quality of workplace relationships and employee job satisfaction,
stress, and turnover. Positive social relationships were also associated with lower stress at work and lower
intentions to quit.
•Increasing the OB element in organizations fosters social responsibility awareness.
 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Corporate group behavior – by Elliot Jacques (1951 book The Changing Culture of a
Factory)
Corporate personality – Flamhotz and Randle (2011)
Organizational culture influences the way people interact, the context within which knowledge is created, the
resistance they will have towards certain changes, ultimately the way the share or not share knowledge.

Organizational culture represents the collective values, beliefs and principles of the organizational members. It may
also be influence by such factors as history, type of product, market, technology, strategy, type of employees,
management style, and national culture. It includes the organization’s vision, values, norms, systems, symbols,
language, assumptions, environment, location, beliefs and habits.
 Basic Management Functions

Planning
Leading

Organizing Controlling

What do managers do?

They plan, organize, lead and control.
They are individuals who achieve goals through other people.
 MANAGEMENT ROLES
Interpersonal Roles – ceremonial and basic in nature
Figurehead – symbolic head, required to perform a number of routing duties of a legal nature
Leader - motivation and direction of employees
Liaison – maintains a network of outside contacts who provide favors and information
Informational
Monitor – receives wide variety of info.; serves as nerve center of internal and external info.
Disseminator –transmits information received to members of the organization
Spokesperson – transmits information to outsiders on organization’s plans, policies, actions and results
Decisional
Entrepreneur – searches organizations and its environment for opportunities and initiative projects to bring about change
Disturbance handler –responsible for corrective action when organization faces important unexpected disturbances
Resource allocator – make or approve significant organizational decisions
Negotiator – representing the organization at major negotiations
 MANAGEMENT SKILLS

Technical skills – ability to apply technical knowledge or expertise

Human skills –ability to work with, understand and motivate other people both individually and its groups.
Many people are technically proficient but not interpersonally competent. (poor listeners, inability to handle
conflict, etc.)
Conceptual skills – have the mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations like decision making, etc.
 EFFECTIVE VS. SUCCESSFUL
MANAGERIAL ACTIVITIES
Traditional management – decision making, planning and controlling
Communication –Exchanging routing information and processing paper work
Human resource management – Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing and training.
Networking – Socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders.
MANAGERIAL AND STRATEGIC CONTEXT OF
OB
Managerial And Strategic Context of Organizational Behaviour
(coggle.it)

Source: Illustration of Natasha

Mansor and Muhammad
Casim– in coggle
 Diversity is defined as the differences between people.
These differences can include race, gender, sexual
orientation, religion, background, socioeconomic status,
and much more. 
Diversity, when talking about it from the human
resource management (HRM) perspective, tends to focus
more on a set of policies to meet compliance standards.

diversity focuses on the “otherness” or

differences between individuals and has a goal
of making sure, through policies, that everyone
is treated the same. While this is the legal and
Diversity
the right thing to do,
 Multiculturalism goes deeper than diversity by focusing on
inclusiveness, understanding, and respect, and also by looking
at unequal power in society.
Multiculturalism looks at a system of advantages based
on race, gender, and sexual orientation called power and
privilege. In this system, the advantages are based on a
system in which one race, gender, and sexual orientation
is predominant in setting societal rules and norms.
Examples are:
a) Race privilege
b) Social class privilege
c) Gender privilege
Multiculturalism
d) Sexual orientation privilege
Organizational Behavior
Assignment per group: to be presented on sept 16,
a) 1 company per group- present an organizational culture of the company you or your parents or siblings are
working.
b) The different diverse group categories in the company your parents/siblings are working: age --- how old is the
majority, the oldest and youngest, gender, nationality/race? Ethnicity? Region?
Individual assignment:
c) Based on the discussion, can you now site the role of organizational behavior in managing effectiveness?