Chapter 1

Introduction to Organizational Behaviour

The Importance of Interpersonal Skills
Understanding OB helps determine manager
effectiveness
Technical and quantitative skills important
But leadership and communication skills are
CRITICAL
Improving Managers interpersonal skills can
entail significant benefits for organizations such
as:
Lower turnover of quality employees
Higher quality applications for recruitment
Better financial performance
What Managers Do?
A Manager is someone who gets things done
through other people.
Specifically they:
Make decisions
Allocate resources
Direct activities of others to attain goals
Work in an organization
A consciously coordinated social unit composed
of two or more people that functions on a
relatively continuous basis to achieve a
common goal or set of goals.
Management Functions

Plan Organize

Manage
rs

Lead Control

Copyright 2011 Pearson Education, Inc.

publishing as Prentice Hall
1-4
Four Management Functions
(continued)
PLAN
A process that includes defining goals,
establishing strategy, and developing plans to
coordinate activities.
ORGANIZE
Determining what tasks are to be done, who is
to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped,
who reports to whom, and where decisions are
to be made.
Four Management Functions -
Continued
LEAD
A function that includes motivating employees,
directing others, selecting the most effective
communication channels, and resolving
conflicts.
CONTROL
Monitoring performance, comparing actual
performance with previously set goals, and
correcting any deviation.
Mintzbergs Managerial Roles
Discovered ten managerial roles

Separated into three groups:

Interpersonal
Informational
Decisional
Mintzbergs Managerial Roles:
Interpersonal
Mintzbergs Managerial Roles:
Informational

1-9
Mintzbergs Managerial
Roles: Decisional

.
Essential Management Skills
Technical Skills
Job specific knowledge and techniques needed
to proficiently perform work tasks.
Human Skills
The ability to work with, understand, and
motivate other people, both individually and in
groups.
Conceptual Skills
The mental ability to analyze and diagnose
complex situations.
Luthans Study of Managerial
Activities

Luthans distinguished between two types

of managers:

1. Successful managers (who

promoted faster)
2. Effective managers (those who did
their jobs well)
Luthans Study (continued)
Four types of managerial activity:

Traditional Management
Decision making, planning, and controlling

Communication
Exchanging routine information and processing
paperwork
Human Resource Management
Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict,
staffing and training
Networking
Socializing, politicking, and interacting with
others
Luthans Study (continued)
Successful managers did different things as
compared to effective managers

With successful managers, it was determined that

networking was the most important activity.

Effective managers relied more on

communication as the largest contributor to
their effectiveness.
What is Organizational
Behavior?

A field of study that investigates the impact

that individuals, groups, and structure have on
behavior within organizations, for the purpose
of applying such knowledge toward improving
an organizations effectiveness.
What is OB? (continued)
Simply put, OB is the study of what people do in the
organization and how their behaviour affects the
organizations performance.

Core Topics Included in OB:

Employee motivation
Leader behaviour and power
Interpersonal communication
Group dynamics
Attitude development and perception
Work design
Conflict management
 Contributing Disciplines

Many behavioral sciences

have contributed to the
development of
Organizational
Psychology
Behavior

Social
Psychology

Anthropolog
Sociology
y
Challenges and Opportunities
for OB
The workplace contains a wide mix of cultures,
races, ethnic groups, genders and ages.

Employees have to learn to cope with rapid

change due to global competition

Corporate loyalty has decreased due to corporate

downsizing and use of temporary workers

Managers can benefit from OB theory and

concepts
Challenges and Opportunities
for OB (continued)
Responding to Globalization
Managing Workforce Diversity
Dealing with Changing Demographics
Improving Quality and Productivity
Improving Customer Service
Improving People Skills
Stimulating Innovation and Change
Coping with Temporariness
Working in Networked Organizations
Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts
Creating a Positive Work Environment
Improving Ethical Behavior
 Responding to Globalization
Globalization refers to
the tendency of the
firms to extend their
sales or manufacturing
to new markets abroad.

Firms expand abroad for

two main reasons:

Sales Expansion

Cutting labor costs

Globalization (continued)
Globalization has changed the managers job
in three ways:

Increased foreign assignments

Working with people from different cultures

Overseeing movement of jobs to countries with

low-cost labor
Managing Workforce Diversity

Workplace diversity means that the

people in organizations are
becoming more heterogeneous in
terms of gender, age, race and
ethnicity.
Diversity Implications
Managers have to shift
their philosophy from
treating everyone alike to
recognizing differences
and responding to those
differences in ways that
ensure employee
retention and greater
productivity while, at the
same time, not
discriminating.
Improving Ethical Behaviour
In an organizational world characterised by cutbacks,
expectations of high worker productivity and tough
competition, employees often feel pressurised to engage in
unethical practices.

They increasingly find themselves facing ethical

dilemmas, situations in which they are required to define
right and wrong conduct.

Managers need to take appropriate steps to cultivate an

ethical climate in their organization.
Stimulating Innovation &
Change
Creativity Generation of novel & useful
ideas
Innovation Implementation of those ideas

In other words creativity is an important

perquisite for innovation!
Types of Study Variables
Independent (X) Dependent (Y)
The presumed cause This is the response
of the change in the to X (the
dependent variable independent
(Y). variable).
This is the variable It is what the OB
that OB researchers researchers want to
manipulate to predict or explain.
observe the changes The interesting
in Y.
X Y Predictive
variable!
Ability
Interesting OB Dependent
Variables
Productivity
An organization is productive if it attains its goals by
transforming inputs into outputs at lowest cost.
Thus, productivity requires both effectiveness
(achievement of goals) and efficiency (meeting
goals at a low cost).

Absenteeism
Failure to report to work a huge cost to employers.

Turnover
Voluntary and involuntary permanent withdrawal
from an organization.
Interesting OB Dependent
Variables
Deviant Workplace Behavior

Voluntary behavior that violates significant

organizational norms and thereby threatens the
well-being of the organization and/or any of its
members.

Deviant workplace behaviors can include:

Stealing
Sabotage
Insulting or threatening colleagues
Sexual harassment
More Interesting OB Dependent
Variables
Organizational Citizenship Behavior
(OCB)
Discretionary behavior that is not part of an
employees formal job requirements, but that
nevertheless promotes the effective functioning
of the organization.
Job Satisfaction
A general attitude (not a behavior) toward
ones job; a positive feeling about one's job
resulting from an evaluation of its
characteristics.