Scribd
Upload
27 views39 pages

What Is Organizational Behavior?

This document provides an overview of organizational behavior concepts. It defines key terms like management, organizations, and managerial roles and functions. It also outlines major independent variables that influence dependent variables in organizational behavior like productivity, absenteeism, and job satisfaction. These include individual, group, and organizational factors. The goal of organizational behavior is to apply knowledge about human behavior in organizations to improve their effectiveness.

Uploaded by

Zia Uddin
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
27 views39 pages

What Is Organizational Behavior?

This document provides an overview of organizational behavior concepts. It defines key terms like management, organizations, and managerial roles and functions. It also outlines major independent variables that influence dependent variables in organizational behavior like productivity, absenteeism, and job satisfaction. These include individual, group, and organizational factors. The goal of organizational behavior is to apply knowledge about human behavior in organizations to improve their effectiveness.

Uploaded by

Zia Uddin
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 39

Lecture ONE

What Is
Organizational
Behavior?
What Managers Do
Managers (or Administrators)
An individuals who achieve goals through other people

Managerial Activities
• Make decisions
• Allocate resources
• Direct activities of others to
attain goals
Where Managers Work

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

Planning Organizing

Management
Functions

Controlling Leading
Management Functions (cont’d)
Planning
A process that includes defining goals,
establishing strategy, and developing plans
to coordinate activities
Management Functions (cont’d)
Organizing
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
Management Functions (cont’d)
Leading
A function that includes motivating
employees, directing others, selecting the
most effective communication channels,
and resolving conflicts
Management Functions (cont’d)
Controlling
Monitoring activities to ensure they are being
accomplished as planned and correcting any significant
deviations
Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles
Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles (cont’d)
Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles (cont’d)
Management Skills

Technical Skills
The ability to apply specialized
knowledge or expertise
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
Effective Versus Successful Managerial
Activities (Luthans)

1. Traditional Management
• Decision making, planning, and controlling
2. Communication
• Exchanging routine information and processing
paperwork
3. Human Resource Management
• Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing,
and training
4. Networking
• Socializing, politicking, and interacting with others
Allocation of Activities by Time
Enter Organizational Behavior

Organizational Behavior (OB)


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
organization’s effectiveness
Complementing Intuition with Systematic Study

Intuition
“Gut” feelings about “why I do what I do” and “what makes
others tick”

Systematic Study
Looking at relationships, attempting to attribute causes
and effects, and drawing conclusions based on scientific
evidence
Provides a means to predict behaviors
Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field
Psychology
The science that seeks to measure, explain, and
sometimes change the behavior of humans and other
animals
Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field (cont’d)

Sociology
The study of people in relation to their fellow human
beings
Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field (cont’d)

Social Psychology
An area within psychology that blends concepts from
psychology and sociology and that focuses on the influence
of people on one another
Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field (cont’d)
Anthropology
The study of societies to learn about human beings and
their activities
There Are Few Absolutes in OB

Contingency variables: “It Depends!”


Situational factors that make the main relationship
between two variables change—e.g., the
relationship may hold for one condition but not
another

In Country 1 x May be related to y


In Country 2 x May NOT be related to y
Challenges and Opportunities for OB

• Responding to Globalization
– Increased foreign assignments
– Working with people from different cultures
– Coping with anti-capitalism backlash
– Overseeing movement of jobs to countries with
low-cost labor
– Managing people during the war on terror
• Managing Workforce Diversity
– Embracing diversity
– Changing demographics
– Implications for managers
• Recognizing and responding to differences
Major Workforce Diversity Categories

Gender
National
Disability Origin

Age
Non-Christian
Race

Domestic
Partners
Challenges and Opportunities for OB (cont’d)

• Improving Quality and Productivity


– Quality management (QM)
– Process reengineering
• Responding to the Labor Shortage
– Changing work force demographics
– Fewer skilled laborers
– Early retirements and older workers
• Improving Customer Service
– Increased expectation of service quality
– Customer-responsive cultures
What Is Quality Management?

1. Intense focus on the customer


2. Concern for continuous improvement
3. Improvement in the quality of everything the
organization does
4. Accurate measurement
5. Empowerment of employees
Challenges and Opportunity for OB (cont’d)

• Improving people skills


• Empowering people
• Stimulating innovation and change
• Coping with “temporariness”
• Working in networked organizations
• Helping employees balance work/life conflicts
• Improving ethical behavior
• Managing people during the war on terrorism
A Downside to Empowerment?
Basic OB Model, Stage I
Model
An abstraction of reality
A simplified representation of
some real-world phenomenon
The Dependent Variables
Dependent Variable
A response that is affected by an independent variable (what
organizational behavior researchers try to understand)

x
The Dependent Variables (cont’d)

Productivity
A performance measure that includes
effectiveness and efficiency

Effectiveness
Achievement of goals

Efficiency
Meeting goals at a low cost
The Dependent Variables (cont’d)

Absenteeism
The failure to report to work

Turnover
The voluntary and
involuntary permanent
withdrawal from an
organization
The Dependent Variables (cont’d)

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
The Dependent Variables (cont’d)

Organizational Citizenship Behavior


(OCB)
Discretionary behavior that is not
part of an employee’s formal job
requirements, but that nevertheless
promotes the effective functioning of
the organization
The Dependent Variables (cont’d)

Job Satisfaction
A general attitude (not a behavior) toward one’s job; a
positive feeling of one's job resulting from an evaluation of
its characteristics
The Independent Variables

Independent Variable
The presumed cause of some change in the dependent
variable; major determinants of a dependent variable

Independent
Variables Can Be

Individual-Level Group-Level Organization


Variables Variables System-Level
Variables
Basic OB Model
Basic OB
Model, Stage
II

You might also like