Session I

Introduction to
Organizational Behavior

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 Succeeding in management today requires good interpersonal skills.
Communication and leadership skills distinguish managers such as
John Chambers, who rise to the top of their profession. Chambers is
CEO of Cisco Systems, the world’s largest maker of networking
equipment. He is respected as a visionary leader and innovator who
has the ability to drive an entrepreneurial culture. As an effective
communicator, Chambers is described as warmhearted and straight
talking. In this photo Chambers speaks during a launch ceremony of a
green technology partnership Cisco formed with a university in China.

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 OB studies what people do in an
organization and how that behavior
affects the performance of the
organization.

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 Effective manager vs. successful manager

 Management duties
• What managers do

• Management roles

• Management skills

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 1. The Importance of Interpersonal
Skills

• Understanding OB helps determine manager

effectiveness
1. Technical and quantitative skills are important
2. But leadership and communication skills are
CRITICAL
• Organizational benefits of skilled managers
1. Lower turnover of quality employees
2. Higher quality applications for recruitment
3. Better financial performance 1-6
 2. What Managers Do?
1. Management functions
2. Management Roles
3. Management Skills
4. Effective versus successful managerial
activities
5. Manager’s job

Manager: an individual who achieves

goals through other people.
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 What Managers Do?
 Management Activities:

1. Make decisions
2. Allocate resources
3. Direct activities of others to attain goals
 Work in an organization

• An organization is 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.
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 Management Functions
Organizing:
Planning: determining what tasks are to be
a process that include defining done, who is to do them, how the
goals, establishing strategy, and tasks are to be grouped, who
developing plans to coordinate reports to whom, and where
activities decisions are to be made.

Managers
Leading: Controlling:
a function that includes monitoring activities to
motivating employees, ensure they are being
directing others, selecting
the most effective accomplished as planned
communication channels, and correcting any
and resolving conflict. significant deviation.
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Management functions
 Interpersonal roles

 Informational roles

 Decisional roles

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Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles:
Interpersonal

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Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles:
Informational

Source: Adapted from The Nature of Managerial Work by H. Mintzberg. Copyright © 1973
by H. Mintzberg. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education. 1-12
 Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles:
Decisional

Source: Adapted from The Nature of Managerial Work by H. Mintzberg. Copyright © 1973
by H. Mintzberg. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education. 1-13
 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.
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 Effective versus Managerial Activities
(Luthans’ Study)
• Four types of managerial activity:
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. Net working
Socializing, campaigning, and interacting with
outsiders. 1-15
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 Goals of Organizational
Behavior

 Explain, predict, and

 control human behavior

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 O. B.
• Organizational behavior is a field of study, meaning
that it is a distinct area of expertise with a common
body of knowledge.
• What does it study?
• It studies three determinants of behavior in
organizations: individuals, groups, and structure.
• In addition, OB applies the knowledge gained about
individuals, groups, and the effect of structure on
behavior in order to make organizations work more
effectively.
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 Definition of OB?
• OB is the study of what people do in an organization
and how their behavior affects the organization’s
performance.
• And because OB is concerned specifically with
employment-related situations
• you should not be surprised that it emphasizes
behavior as related to concerns such as:
( jobs, work, absenteeism, employment turnover,
productivity, human performance, and management).

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CONT.
• Although debate exists about the relative
importance of each.
• OB includes the core topics of motivation,
leader behavior and power, interpersonal
communication, group structure and
processes, learning, attitude development
and perception, change processes, conflict,
work design, and work stress.

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 Complementing Intuition with
Systematic Study
• Each of us is a student of behavior. Whether
you’ve explicitly thought about it before, you’ve
been “reading” people almost all your life,
watching their actions and trying to interpret what
you see or predict what people might do under
different conditions.
• Unfortunately, the casual or common sense
approach to reading others can often lead to wrong
predictions. However, you can improve your
predictive ability by supplementing intuition with
a more systematic approach.
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• Behavior is generally predictable/unpredictable.
• systematic study of behavior
is a means to making reasonably accurate
predictions.
• When we use the term systematic study?
mean looking at relationships, attempting to attribute
causes and effects, and basing our conclusions on
scientific evidence that is, on data gathered under
controlled conditions and measured and interpreted
in a reasonably rigorous manner.
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Intuition and Systematic Study
• Looks at relationships
• Attempting to attribute
Systematic • Cases and effect
study • Drawing conclusions
• Based on Scientific evidence

• Gut feelings
• Not necessarily
Intuition
• Supported by research
• Common sense

The two are complementary means of predicting behavior.

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 An Outgrowth of Systematic Study…

Evidence-Based Management (EBM)

The Basing managerial decisions on the best

available scientific evidence.

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 The Hawthorne Studies (1924 – 1945)

 The Hawthorne Experiments

 The experiments were carried out between 1927
and 1933 at the Chicago Hawthorne plant of the
Western Electric Company. Four studies were
carried out namely:
 The illumination studies
 The Relay Assembly Test Room Studies
 The interviewing Program
 The Bank Wiring Room studies
 The illumination studies

 These studies were expected to determine the

relationship between the level of illumination
and worker’s productivity.
 It was expected that worker’s productivity
would increase with increasing levels of
illumination.
 The studies failed to prove any relationship
between worker’s productivity and level of
illumination
 Relay assembly test room studies

 These studies were carried out to determine the relationship

between worker’s productivity and improved benefits and
working conditions.
 Manipulated factors of production to measure effect on output:
 Pay Incentives
 Length of Work Day & Work Week
 Use of Rest Periods
 Company Sponsored Meals
 The studies found out that there was no cause – and – effect
relationship between working conditions and output.
 Rather, there were other factors that affected worker’s
output such as his/her attitudes and supervisor behavior
 Interview program

 A group of employees were interviewed to learn more about

their opinions with respect to their work, working conditions
and supervision. The workers suggested that:
 Psychological factors help determine whether a worker is
satisfied or dissatisfied in any particular work situation
 The person’s need for self-actualization determines his/her
satisfaction in the work.
 A person’s work group and his relationship to it, also
determines his/her productivity.
 Behavior of managers and workers in the work setting is as
important in explaining the level of performance as the
technical aspects of the task
 Bank wiring room studies
 This study was expected to study the effect of group influence on
workers productivity.
 Few Special Conditions
 Segregated work area
 No Management Visits
 Supervision would remain the same
 Observer would record data only – no interaction with workers
 New incentive pay rate was established for the small group
 Any increases in output would be included in departmental pay
incentives
 The researchers found out that an informal grouping and relationship
was a critical factor in the workers’ productivity.
 The informal group determined the group’s productivity, and
functioned as a protective mechanism (served both for internal and
external purposes).
 Conclusions on Hawthorne experiments
 An industrial organization is a socio technical system. The
socio part is the human aspects that need to be taken care of
in order to increase workers’ productivity and the technical
system is the physical aspects that also need to be improved.
 Employee attitudes and morale are also important as
determinants of productivity.
 Other factors include worker’s personality and supervisor’s
behavior, leadership style also affect worker’s altitude and
morale.
 A worker’s social group has a prevailing effect on his or her
altitude and productivity
 Contribution

 The Hawthorne Studies have however made

the following contribution OB.
 Their finding on the importance of informal groups is also a
key to organization theory.
 Contribution on course effect of job satisfaction
 Contribution in the role of leadership and style of leadership
 Their emphasis on employee altitude towards work as an
additional to other factors was a breakthrough in OB.
 Zappos.com experience
 Online shoe retailer Zappos.com understands how organizational
behavior affects an organization’s performance. Zappos maintains
good employee relationships by providing generous benefits, extensive
customer service training, and a positive, fun-loving work environment.
Employees are empowered to make decisions that increase customer
satisfaction and are encouraged to create fun and a little weirdness.” At
Zappos, employee loyalty, job satisfaction, and productivity are high,
contributing to the company’s growth. In this photo, employees view a
line of shoes in one of the company’s quirky offices.

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What other knowledge
help us understand OB?

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 Contributing Disciplines
Psychology seeks to Sociology studies
measure,explain, people in relation to their
and change fellow human beings
behavior

Social psychology
focuses on the
influence of people
on one another

Political science is the

Anthropology is the
study of the
study of societies
behavior of individuals
to learn about human
and groups within
beings and their activities
a political environment
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OB Model

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Dependent variable
 Things which will be affected by OB
• Productivity
• What factors influence the effectiveness and
efficiency of individuals
• Absenteeism
• Absenteeism is not all bad
• Having too high employee absent rate will affect
productivity
• Turnover
• Not all turnover is bad
• High turnover rate…in some degree affect
productivity, particularly 4 the hospitality inducstry

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• Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)
• No one will want to pick up the slack
• No one would want to walk extra miles to achieve
the goals.
• Job satisfaction
• Unhappy employees…what else can you say?

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Organizational citizenship
 Discretionary behavior
 Not part of an employee's formal job
requirements
 Promotes the effective functioning of the
organization

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Examples of Organizational
Citizenship
 Helping others on one's work team
 Volunteering for extra job activities
 Avoiding unnecessary conflicts
 Making constructive statements about
one's work group and the overall
organization

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Independent variables
 Individual variables
• Age, gender, personality, emotion, values, attitude,
ability
• Perception, individual decision making, learning, and
motivation
 Group variables
• Norm, communication, leadership, power, politics
 Organization system variables
• Organizational culture, HR practices

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Challenges and
Opportunities for OB

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 Typical employee is getting older
 More women and minorities in the workplace
 Global competition is requiring employees to
become more flexible
 Historical loyalty-bonds that held many
employees to their employers are being
severed

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 The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company is recognized worldwide as
the gold standard of the hospitality industry. Its motto—“We are
ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen”—is
exemplified by the employee shown here serving a guest on the
summer terrace of the Ritz-Carlton Moscow. The Ritz-Carlton’s
customer-responsive culture, which is articulated in the
company’s motto, credo, and service values, is designed to
build strong relationships that create guests for life.

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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

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Managing Diversity
Workforce diversity -organizations are
becoming a more heterogeneous mix of people in
terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity, and sexual
orientation

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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.

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Basic OB Model

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OB Insights
 Improving People Skills
 Improving Customer Service
 Empowering People
 Working in Networked Organizations
 Stimulating Innovation and Change

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OB Insights
 Coping with “Temporariness”
 Helping Employees Balance Work/Life
Conflicts
 Declining Employee Loyalty
 Improving Ethical Behavior

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