Chapter 1 An overview Of • controlling
Organizational Behavior The process of monitoring and
correcting the actions of the
organizational behavior organization and its members to
keep them directed toward their
-The study of human behavior in
goals
organizational settings, the interface
between human behavior and the
organization, and the organization itself Critical Management Skills and
Organizational Behavior
-helps explain and predict how
people and groups interpret events, react,
• technical skills
and behave in organizations and describes
The skills necessary to accomplish
the role of organizational systems,
specific tasks within the organization
structures, and process in shaping behavior.
The Individual–Organization Interface • interpersonal skills
The ability to effectively
The Organization+ Human Behavior
communicate with, understand, and
in Organizational Settings
motivate individuals and groups
Basic Managerial Function
• conceptual skills
• planning
The ability to think in the abstract
The process of determining an
organization’s desired future
position and the best means of • diagnostic skills
getting there • The ability to understand cause-and-
effect relationships and to recognize
• Organizing the optimal solutions to problem
The process of designing jobs,
grouping jobs into units, and Organizational Behavior
establishing patterns of authority and Human
between jobs and units
Resource Management
• leading
The process of getting the • human resource management
organization’s members to work The set of organizational
together toward the organization’s activities directed at
goals attracting, developing, and
maintaining an effective operational excellence
workforce
Maximizing the efficiency of
the manufacturing or
• competitive advantage
product development
Anything that gives a firm an
process to minimize costs
edge over rivals in attracting
customers and defending • differentiation strategy
itself against competition Developing a product or service that
has unique characteristics valued by
customers
Business Strategies
want to emphasize exemplary
-Business strategy involves customer service
the challenges and opportunities
product innovation
associated with how to compete
with other firms, but also Developing new products or
encompasses: services
• The strategies of different
• specialization strategy
functional areas in the firm.
Focusing on a narrow market
• How changing industry
segment or niche and pursuing
conditions such as
either a differentiation or cost
deregulation, product market
leadership strategy within that
maturity, and changing
market segment.
customer demographics will
be addressed. requires employees with specialized
• How the firm as a whole skills and abilities
will address the range of customer intimacy Delivering
strategic issues and choices it unique and customizable
faces. products or services to meet
customers’ needs and
increase customer loyalty
three primary business strategies
• cost leadership strategy Growth Strategy
Striving to be the lowestcost
Another strategic choice is whether
producer for a particular level of
to expand the company and seek to
product quality
increase business.
-usually need to keep all of its
expenses as low as possible
Companies often pursue a growth Their ideas became known as scientific
strategy in response to investor management and are often considered the
preferences for rising earnings per beginning of the formal study of OB.
share, and the required business
scientific management Based on the belief
expansion
that productivity is maximized when
generally requires the acquisition of organizations are rationalized with precise
additional talent. sets of instructions based on time-and-
motion studies
Origins of Organizational
four principles of Taylor’s scientific
Behavior management are:
• OB dates back to prehistoric times, 1. Replace rule-of-thumb work
when people first started trying to methods with methods based on
understand, motivate, and lead scientifically studying the tasks using
others time-and-motion studies.
• Greek philosopher Plato 2. Scientifically select, train, and
contemplated the essence of develop all workers rather than
leadership and Aristotle discussed leaving them to passively train
persuasive communication themselves.
• foundation of organizational power 3. Managers provide detailed
and politics can be found in the instructions and supervision to
more than 2,300-year-old writings of workers to ensure that they are
Sun-Tzu and those of sixteenth- following the scientifically developed
century Italian philosopher methods.
Machiavelli 4. Divide work nearly equally between
• Charismatic leadership was later workers and managers. Managers
discussed by German sociologist should apply scientific management
Max Weber. principles to planning the work, and
• Formal study of OB began in the workers should actually perform the
1890s, following the industrial task
relations movement spawned by
After World War I, attention shifted to
Adam Smith’s introduction of the
understanding the role of human factors
division of labor.
and psychology in organizations
In the 1890s, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and
This interest was spawned by the discovery
Frederick Winslow Taylor identified the
of the Hawthorne effect in the 1920s and
positive effects of precise instructions, goal
1930s
setting, and rewards on motivation.
• Hawthorne effect organization One important behavior is
productivity
When people improve some aspect
of their behavior or performance simply another important individual-level outcome
because they are being assessed. variable, is a somewhat broader concept
and is made up of all work-related behaviors
systems perspective, or the
organizational citizenship
theory of systems
-The behavior of individuals that
- first developed in the physical sciences, makes a positive overall contribution
but it has also been extended to other areas to the organization
of study, such as management.
system dysfunctional behaviors
A set of interrelated elements - Those that detract from, rather than
functioning as a whole contribute to, organizational
• situational perspective performance
Suggests that in most organizations, Two of these that have interested managers
situations and outcomes are influenced for many years are absenteeism and
by other variables turnover.
• Interactionalism
is another useful perspective to help Absenteeism
better understand behavior in
organizational settings is a measure of attendance
Suggests that individuals and Turnover
situations interact continuously to occurs when a person leaves the
determine individuals’ behavior organization
implies that simple cause-and-effect
Understanding the quality of
descriptions of organizational
phenomena are not enough the information you use to
Enhancing Individual and Team make decisions
Performance Behaviors ➢ Intuition
First, several individual behaviors directly understanding of other people from
result from a person’s participation in an observing them all of their lives
➢ The Scientific Method research studies done in a variety of
organizations and for a variety of job
Method of knowledge generation
that relies on systematic studies that
identify and replicate a result using a
variety of methods, samples, and
settings
1. begins with theory
A collection of verbal and symbolic
assertions that specify how and why
variables are related, and the
conditions under which they should
and should not relate
2. second step in the scientific method
is the development of hypotheses,
Written predictions specifying
expected relationships between
certain variables
3. Data
independent variable
The variable that is predicted to affect
something else
dependent variable
The variable predicted to be affected by
something else
4. Verification
Correlation
Reflects the size and strength of the
statistical relationship between two
variables; ranges from −1 to +1
meta-analysis A statistical technique used to
combine the results of many different