Organizational Behavior Overview: Units, Characteristics & Development

An Over View Of
Organizational Behavior
Chapter 1
1
In this Chapter
• What is organizational behavior?
• The three basic units of analysis in OB
• The characteristics of OB
• The development of OB
• Contributing disciplines to OB
• Management and OB in the 21st century
• Organization as a system
2
What is Organization?
• A group of two or more people working
together to achieve some common
objectives.
• a collection of people working together
under a defined structure for the purpose of
achieving predetermined outcomes through
the use of financial, human, and material
resources.
3
What is Behavior ?
• Behavior is the way in which an animal or
person responds to a situation;
• Behavior refers to
– what people do in the organization,
– what their attitudes are,
– how they perform.
4
What is organizational behavior?
• is the study of behavior in organizations
• a field of study that investigates the impact
that individuals, groups and organizational
structure have on behavior within the
organization, for the purpose of applying
such knowledge towards improving an
organizational effectiveness”.
5
• Key Points
– first organizational behavior is an investigative
study of individuals and groups,
– second, the impact of organizational structure
on human behavior and
– third, the application of knowledge to achieve
organizational effectiveness.
6
• The study of organizational behavior
embraces an understanding of:
– The behavior of people;
– The process of management;
– The organizational context in which the process
of management takes place;
– Organizational processes and the execution of
work; and
– Interactions with the external environment of
which the organization is part.
7
• Generally, OB provides a set of tools that
allow:
– people to understand, analyze, and describe
behavior in organizations; and
– managers to improve, enhance, or change work
behaviors so that individuals, groups, and the
whole organization can achieve their goals.
8
The 3 basic units of analysis in OB
• the individual
• group behavior and
• organization structure and job design.
9
I. The Individual
– in order to understand organizations, it is
necessary to understand people, particularly
from the perspective of individual
organizational member.
– Much of what we know about individuals is
drawn from the discipline of psychology,
– Within this perspective, theories of motivation
and satisfaction are explored to assist in
understanding the behavior and performance of
individual organizational members. 10
II. Group Behavior
– A second level of analysis focus upon the interactions of
people as they work in committees, teams, groups, units,
or departments.
• How do people work together in groups?
• What factors determine whether a group will be cohesive and
productive, as opposed to fragmented and unproductive?
• How does leadership influence group members and their ability
to work together co-operatively and productively?
11
III. Organizational Structure and Job
Design
• The 3rd level of analysis has to do with the
way
– organizations are formally structured and
– in which jobs are designed.
12
III. Organizational Structure and Job Design
• Concern at this level of analysis is with the
relationship between two organization & its
environment,
• and emphasis is placed upon understanding how
organization structure & job design influence
effectiveness
• an understanding of organizational design must
characterize and influence organizational
behavior
13
Characteristics of OB
1. Organizations are composed of
individuals and groups
2. Organizations are oriented toward the
achievement of goals
3. Organizations need employees’
specialization and coordination in order
to accomplish their goals
14
The development of OB
• organizational behavior emerged as a
distinct field around 1940s.
• four significant Eras; have paved the way
for the field of organizational behavior.
– pre-scientific,
– classical,
– behavioral and
– modern
15
1 The pre-scientific Era (pre1000-1880)
• The practice of management can be traced
to ancient civilizations
• even though, managers during the pre-
scientific era did not have formal education
and training in proven management
methods, they accomplished amazing
things.
16
2) The classical Era(1880-1930)
• The classical management theory developed
during the Industrial Revolution when new
problems related to the factory system began to
appear.
• During this time, the first theory of management
began to evolve.
• Two major thrusts were
– administrative theory and
– scientific management.
17
• the classical scientific school, which focused on the
manufacturing environment and getting work
done on the factory floor.
• the classical administrative school, which
emphasized the flow of information and how
organizations should operate.
18
• scientific management is the kind of management
which conducts a business or affairs by standards
established by factors or truths gained through
systematic observation, experiment or reasoning.
• Productivity
• Fredrick Taylor created it … “father of scientific
management
• time and task study,
– standardization of tools and procedures,
– development of piece rate incentive schemes and
– systematic selection and training.
19
• Administrative theory: Also called the universal
process school of management.
• Henry Fayol the French industrialist.
• Fayol divided the manager’s job in to five
functions; planning, organizing, command,
coordination and control.
• He then recommended 14 universal principles of
management.
• Fayol viewed as potentially disruptive factor to be
closely controlled by management.
20
Fayol’s 14 Principles
1. Specialization of labor • Centralization
2. Authority • Scalar chain (line of
3. Discipline authority)
4. Unity of command • Order
5. Unity of direction • Equity
6. Subordination of • Personnel tenure
individual interests • Initiative
7. Remuneration • Esprit de corps
21
3) The behavioral or Neo-classical Era (1930-1960)
• A significant landmark in the evolution of
managing and understanding the behavior of
people in the behavioral Era was the outcomes of
the human relation movement during the 1930s.
• The term human-relation refers to the manner in
which managers interact with subordinates.
22
• A unique combination of factors fostered the
human relation movement during the 1930s.
– collective bargaining
– attention for the ‘human’ factors
23
4) The Modern Era (1960 onwards)
• Douglas McGregor,
• the total quality management movement, and
• the contingency approach to management
24
Contributing disciplines to OB
• OB is an applied behavioral science that is built
upon contributions from a number of behavioral
disciplines.
–  Psychology
–  Sociology
–  Political science
–  Social psychology
–  Anthropology
25
Psychology:
• is an applied science, which attempts to explain
human behavior in a particular situation and
predicts actions of individuals.
• Psychologists have been able to modify individual
behavior largely with the help of various studies.
26
Sociology:
• Science of Sociology studies the impact of culture
on group behavior and
• has contributed to a large extent to the field of
– group-dynamics,
– roles that individual plays in the organization,
communication,
– norms, status, power, conflict management,
– formal organization theory, group processes and
– group decision-making.
27
Political science:
• the branch of knowledge concerned with political
activity and behavior.
• Stability of government at national level is one
major factor for promotion of international
business, financial investments, expansion and
employment.
• Various government rules and regulations play a
very decisive role in growth of the organization.
• All organizations have to abide by the rules of the
government of the day.
28
Social psychology:
• Working organizations are formal assembly of
people who are assigned specific jobs and play a
vital role in formulating human behavior.
• It is a subject where concept of psychology and
sociology are blend to achieve better human
behavior in organization.
• The field has contributed to manage change,
group decision-making, communication and
ability of people in the organization, to maintain
social norms.
29
30
Anthropology:
• It is a field of study relating to human activities in various
cultural and environmental frameworks.
• It understands difference in behavior based on value
system of different cultures of various countries.
• The study is more relevant to organizational behavior
today due to globalization, mergers and acquisitions of
various industries.
• The advent of the 21st century has created a situation
wherein cross-cultural people will have to work in one
particular industry.
31
32
33
Management and OB in the 21st century
• Today’s workplace is indeed undergoing immense
and permanent changes.
• The 21st century environment requires new-taking
& new ways of managing.
• The nature of work is changing so rapidly that
rigid job structures impede the work to be done
now, and that may drastically change the
following year, month, or even week.
34
There is a revolution going on in the workplace such as
• Knowledge is replacing infrastructure.
• Values and Self-leadership are replacing direct
supervision i.e. command and control supervisions.
• Networks are replacing hierarchies.
• Virtual teams are replacing committees.
• Companies are looking for employees with emotional
intelligence, not just technical smarts.
• Globalization has become the mantra of corporate
survival.
35
The following areas are the area in which the managers’ of modern
organizations are being encountered challenges
•Improving Quality and Productivity
•Improving people skills
•Managing work force diversity
•Responding to globalization
•Empowering people
•Stimulating innovation and change
•Coping with “Temporariness” – today, change is an ongoing activity for most
managers. So, workers need to continually update their knowledge and skills
to perform new job requirements.
•Declining employee loyalty
•Improving ethical behavior
36
Thank You!
37
Foundation of Individual Behavior
and Learning in an Organization
Chapter 2
Perception
and Individual
Decision Making
What Is Perception?
• Perception is the process by which
individuals organize and interpret their
sensory impressions in order to give
meaning to their environment.
• Perception is like beauty that lies in the eyes
of beholder.
• Individual differs in the way they sees,
interprets and understands a particular
event.
What Is Perception?
• The study of perception is very important in
the organization because it is necessary for
the manager to perceive individuals
correctly irrespective of their status and
perceive each of the situations as close to the
real fact or as it exists by interpreting the
sensory reflects in correct way.
What Is Perception, and Why Is It
Important?
Perception • People’s behavior is
A process by which based on their
individuals organize and perception of what
interpret their sensory reality is, not on
impressions in order to reality itself.
give meaning to their
environment. • The world as it is
perceived is the world
that is behaviorally
important.
Factors that influence perception
• Perception is influenced by the perceiver
attitude, motive, interest, experience, and
expectation
– Attitude is a settled way of thinking or feeling
• It can be positive or negative
– Motive is a factor inducing a person to act in a
particular way
• Motive is nothing but unsatisfied needs
– Interest is the state of wanting to know about
something or someone
• A target’s characteristics can affect what is
perceived.
• Perception is influenced by the target novelty,
motion, sounds, size, Background, proximity.
– Novelty is a new or unfamiliar thing or experience
– Physical and time proximity
• Perception is influenced by the situation time,
work setting, and social setting
– Change in situation leads to incorrect perception
about a person.
Attribution Theory of Perception
• It has been seen that our perception about the people
is greatly influenced by the assumption we make
about a person and not by reality.
• There are two factors, which has an impact on human
behavior.
– First is internally caused behavior factors on which
individual has a full control,
– secondly the externally caused behavior refers to the
behavior which has been caused due to external factors and
that the individual has no control over it.
Attitudes
• Attitudes are positive or negative feelings
concerning objects, people, or events
• Attitudes are thus responses to situations.
• Attitude is a tendency or predisposition to evaluate
an object or symbol of that object in a certain way
• Components of attitude
– Cognitive component
– Affective component
– Behavioral component
Components of Attitude
• Cognitive component
– The opinion or belief segment of an attitude.
– It consists of belief, ideas, values and other
information that an individual may possess
or has faith in.
Components of Attitude
• Affective Component
– The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude.
– is related to person’s feelings about another
person, which may be positive, negative or
neutral..
– It is an expression of feelings about a person,
object or a situation.
• Behavioral Component
– An intention to behave in a certain way toward
someone or something.
Types of Attitudes
• A person can have thousands of attitudes, but
OB focuses our attention on a job-related
attitudes.
– Job satisfaction
– Job involvement
– Organizational commitment
Types of Attitudes
• Job Satisfaction
– A collection of positive and/or negative feelings
that an individual holds toward his or her job.
– An individual’s general attitude toward his or her
job.
– A person having a high level of satisfaction will
generally hold a positive attitude while dissatisfied
people will generally display negative attitude
towards life.
Types of Attitudes
• Job Involvement
– Identifying with the job, actively participating in it,
and considering performance important to self-
worth.
– Employees with a high level of job involvement
strongly identify with and really care about the
kind of work they do.
– High levels of job involvement have been found to
be related to fewer absences and lower resignation
rates (turnover).
Types of Attitudes
• Organizational Commitment
– Identifying with a particular organization and its
goals, and wishing to maintain membership in the
organization
• High organizational commitment
– Increase productivity and job satisfaction
– Minimize absenteeism and turnover
– Make better work place relation
Personality
• Why are some people quiet and passive, while
others are loud and aggressive?
– Personality
• Are certain personality types better adapted for
certain job types?
Personality
• It is the manner in which a person acts and
interacts
• It is the sum total of ways in which an
individual reacts and interacts with others;
• It is measurable traits a person exhibits
• It is the stable patterns of behavior and
consistent internal states that determine how
an individual reacts to and interacts with
others.
Principles about personality
1. Personality is an organized whole; otherwise,
– the individual would have no meaning.
2. Personality appears to be organized into
patterns that are to some degree observable
and measurable.
3. Although personality has a biological basis,
its specific development is also a product of
social and cultural environments.
Principles about personality
4. Personality has superficial aspects (such as
attitudes toward being a team leader) and a
deeper core (such as sentiments about
authority).
5. Personality involves both common and
unique characteristics. Every person is
different from every other person in some
respects while being similar to other persons
in other respects.
Personality Determinants
Why are some employees happy

and easygoing and others intense
and critical?
• Personality is now generally considered to be
made up of both hereditary and environmental
factors, moderated by situational conditions.
– Hereditary
– Environment
– Situation
Learning
•What is learning?
Learning
• Learning
– Any relatively permanent change in
behavior that occurs as a result of
experience.
• Involves change
• Is relatively permanent
• Is acquired through experience
Learning
• Learning brings relatively permanent change in
human behavior that occurs as a result of
experience.
• All complex behavior is a learned behavior.
• If we want to predict and explain behavior, we
must understand how people learn.
• It is continuous process, which occurs all the time.
• We cannot see learning but we can see changed
behavior as a consequence of learning.
Theories of Learning
• Classical conditioning,
• Operant conditioning,
• Cognitive Theory, and
• Social learning
1. Classical Conditioning– behaviorist theory
– Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiment using dogs …..
• most famous study ever conducted in the behavioral sciences.
• First he presented meat to the dog …unconditioned
stimulus the dog salivated…. unconditioned response
• Then he rang a bell (neutral stimulus), the dog did not salivate
• Next he provide meat to the dog after ringing of the bell.
• After doing this a number of times Pavlov rang the bell
without presenting the meat. This time, the dog salivated to the
bell alone.
• The dog had become classically conditioned to
salivate (conditioned response) to the sound of the
bell (conditioned stimulus).
• Thus, classical conditioning can be defined as a
process in which a formerly neutral stimulus, when
paired with an unconditioned stimulus, becomes a
conditioned stimulus that elicits a conditioned
response; in other words, the S-R (i.e., bell-saliva)
connection is learned.
• A type of conditioning in which an individual
responds to some stimulus that would not
ordinarily produce such a response.
Key Concepts
• Unconditioned stimulus
• Unconditioned response
• Conditioned stimulus
• Conditioned response
68
2. Operant Conditioning
• The concept was originated by B.F. Skinner
• A type of conditioning in which desired voluntary
behavior leads to a reward or prevents a
punishment.
• It argues that behavior is a function of its
consequences.
– People learn to behave to get something they want or to
avoid something they don’t want.
• Operant behavior means voluntary or learned
behavior in contrast to reflexive or unlearned
behavior.
• Operant Conditioning
Key Concepts
• Reflexive (unlearned) behavior
• Conditioned (learned) behavior
• Reinforcement
•Operant conditioning deals with Response—
Stimulus (R-S) connection
•In Operant Conditioning, we learn to associate
responses with their consequences. (Events that
follow a target response).
Examples of Operant Conditioning
• if you give your child a treat (reinforcer) after he sits
quietly at the table (the desired response or target
behavior), he is likely to sit quietly at the table again
next time.
• if you praise (reinforcer) your employee after he did a
good job with the project (the desired response or
target behavior), he is likely to do a good job on the
next project.
Classical vs Operant conditioning
Classical Operant
conditioning conditioning
Nature of Involuntary Voluntary (usually) but

response (reflexive) can be both – Vol &
Involuntary
Timing of Precedes the After the desired
Stimulus response response
Timing of After the stimulus Before the

Response stimulus
Role of learner
Passive Active
• Cognitive Theory –Edward Tolman
• The theory consists of relationship between
environmental (cognitive) cues and expectations.
• He used white rat in his psychological experiment
of Cognitive theory.
• He found that the rat could run through critical
path with particular intention of getting food
(goal/objective).
• In the experiment, Tolman established certain choice points
where expectations were established. The rat learned
cognitive cues at various choice points, which would raise
its expectation to move forward to the objective (food).
• Thus the rat turned to acquire food, based on relationship
of Cues/signals and Reward or expectations.
• This theory was later applied on human resources where
incentives were related to higher performance.
• Tolman observed that at each choice point in the
maze, expectations were established. In other
words, the rat learned to expect that certain
cognitive cues associated with the choice point
might eventually lead to food.
• If the rat actually received the food, the association
between the cue and the expectancy was
strengthened, and learning occurred.
• In contrast to the S-R and R-S learning in the
classical and operant approaches, Tolman’s
approach could be depicted as S-S (stimulus-
• Programs were designed to strengthen the
relationship between cognitive cues (supervisory,
organizational, and job procedures) and worker
expectations (incentive payments for good
performance).
• The theory was that the worker would learn to be
more productive by building an association
between taking orders or following directions and
expectancies of monetary reward for this effort.
• The same is true for the creativity, problem-solving
groups that have been so popular over the years;
Social-Learning Theory
•Social learning approach is a behavioral approach.
• The approach basically deals with learning process
based on direct observation and the experience.
• It is achieved while interacting with individuals.
• In social learning people observe, alter and even
construct a particular environment to fit in the social
behavioral pattern.
• Individuals learn a great deal from watching
attractive models and they copy their behavior and
display the same.
• Social-Learning Theory
• It was the first to combine and integrate both behaviorist
and cognitive concepts and emphasized the interactive,
reciprocal nature of cognitive, behavioral, and
environmental determinants.
• It recognizes and draws from the principles of classical and
operant conditioning. But it went beyond classical and
operant theory by recognizing that there is more to learning
than direct learning via antecedent stimuli and contingent
consequences.
Social-Learning Theory
•It posits that learning can also take place via
• vicarious (experienced in the imagination through
the feelings or actions of another person), or
• modeling, and
• self-control processes.
•It agrees with classical and operant conditioning
processes, but says they are too limiting and adds
vicarious, modeling, and self-control processes.
• Shaping Behavior
• Systematically reinforcing each successive step
that moves an individual closer to the desired
response.
Key Concepts
• Reinforcement is required to change behavior.
• Some rewards are more effective than others.
• The timing of reinforcement affects learning speed
and permanence.
Methods Of Shaping Behavior
• Positive reinforcement
• Providing a reward for a desired behavior.
• Negative reinforcement
• Removing an unpleasant consequence when the desired
behavior occurs.
• Punishment
• Applying an undesirable condition to eliminate an
undesirable behavior.
• Extinction
• Withholding reinforcement of a behavior to cause its
cessation.
Thank You!

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An Over View Of

Why are some employees happy

Nature of Involuntary Voluntary (usually) but

Timing of After the stimulus Before the

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