Organisational
Behaviour
Chapter 1:
Foundations of organisational behaviour and research
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Why OB is important?
• OB is about the people in ‘people management’
• Job security
• Careful hiring
• Power to people
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• Pay for performance
• Training
• Away from status
• Towards trust
• Remember: Talk is not a substitute for action
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OB and many strands of theory
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The rational-system view of organisation
FREDERICK TAYLOR
• Scientific Management: a scientific approach to
management in which all tasks in organisations
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are in-depth analysed, routinised, divided and
standardised, instead of using rules-of thumb.
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Rational-systems
HENRI FAYOL’sprinciples:
• Planning
• Organising
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• Leading
• Co-ordinating
• Controlling
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Rational-systems view
CHESTER BARNARD
• 3 necessary elements for co-operative actions
• Willingness to co-operate
• A common purpose
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• Communication)
• Other elements
• Specialisation
• Incentives
• Authority
• Decision making) 6
Rational-systems view
HERBERT SIMON
• An organisation is characterised by its
communication, relations, decision-making
• 3 ways to motivate employees to work in the
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organisation
• Loyalty of the employee
• Training
• Coercion (authority, advisory and information)
• Do people always make decisions in rational way?
• No 🡪 bounded rationality (physiological and social 7
limitations)
Alternative views
• Symbolic Interactionism (Karl Weick):
subjective interpretation of the world
around us through interacting in this world
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• Postmodernism: a very subjective and
situational view on the world around us
making it impossible to develop general
applicable theories of this world.
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Alternative views
• Conflict theory: social structures and relationships
in organisations are based on conflicts between
groups and social classes
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• Critical theory: critics to the rational,
functionalistic, managerial and capitalistic views on
organisatons
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The Human Relations Movement
• ELTON MAYO and the Hawthorne Studies: Basic principle:
giving attention to employees
• Lighting improves productivity (different factors influence worker
output)
• The employees were interviewed (new factors: special status,
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participation, type of supervision, support, mutual dependence
within their working group)
• Output of the interviews used to improve work conditions,
supervisory techniques and employee relations.
• Goal: social organisaton of employees. 14 employees were divided
in 3 formal groups. (🡪 2/3 become informal; informal groups
develop own rules, norms and behaviour).
• Workers were more responsive to social forces of their peer group
than to the controls and incentives of management
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Human Relations Movement
MARY PARKER FOLLET: Management as a
concept
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1. Dynamism
2. Empowerment
3. Participation
4. Leadership
5. Conflict 11
6. Experience
Human Relations Movement
Douglas McGregor: Theory Y
1. Work is a natural activity like play or rest
2. People are capable of self-direction and self-
control if they are committed to objectives.
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3. People generally become committed to
organisational objectives if they are rewarded
for doing so.
4. The typical employee can learn to accept and
seek responsibility.
5. The typical member of the general population 12
has imagination, ingenuity and creativity
Organisational Metaphors
1. Organisations as machines (orderly relationships; clearly
defined logical system with subsystems, predictability and
controllability)
2. Organisations as organisms (adaptation to the
environment; open system that transforms input in
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various output, dealing with survival)
3. Organisations as brains (think tanks, having information-
processing capacity, strategy formulation, planning
processes and management of the organisations, self-
regulation of dispersed intelligence)
4. Organisations as cultures (Constructed beliefs and
interpretations, subjective reality, own language, shared
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values, norms and mental models)
Organisational Metaphors
5. Organisations as political systems (competition, conflict
and influencing; power and politicking; own goals versus
organisational goals)
6. Organisations as physic prisons (being controlled
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mentally by the organisation; constrained thinking;
unconsciously getting trapped in web of own creation)
7. Organisations as flux and transformation (self-producing
system; mutual casuality, dialectic change)
8. Organisations as instruments of domination (Ugly face,
external domination of environment and humans,
dominating own people)
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Evolving organisations
• Ecological: success and failure in a
population context
• Institutional: similarities and what is taken
for granted
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• Interpretive: culture and meaning
• Learning: noticing, interpreting and
adapting
• Resource dependence: interactions with
environments
• Transaction cost: make or buy – has 15
consequences
Learning about OB
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Learning OB from theory
A good theoretical model:
• Defines key terms
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• Constructs a conceptual framework that explains
how important factors are interrelated (graphic
models)
• Provides a departure point for (empirical) research
and practical implication 17
Learning OB from research
Five sources of OB research insights
(listing in order of decreasing reliability)
• Meta-analyses
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• Field studies
• Laboratory studies
• Sample surveys
• Case studies
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Uses of OB research findings
• Instrumental use
• Direct practical application
• Conceptual use
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• General conceptual enlightment
• Symbolic use
• Verify or legitimise existing positions
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Topics covered
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