Human Behavior in

Organization
Esmhel B. Briones, MBA
 AN INTRODUCTION
TO ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR

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What is an organization?
• An organization is defined as a collection of people who work
together to achieve a wide variety of goals.
• Organizational behavior is defined as the actions and attitudes
of people in organizations. The field of organizational behavior
(OB) covers the body of knowledge derived from these actions
and attitudes. It can help managers understand the complexity
within organizations, identify problems, determine the best
ways to correct them, and establish whether the changes
would make a significant difference.

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The Meaning of Organizational Behavior
• Organizational behavior (OB) is the study of human
behavior in organizational settings, how human
behavior interacts with the organization, and the
organization itself. Although we can focus on any one
of these three areas independently, we must
remember that all three are ultimately connected and
necessary for a comprehensive understanding of
organizational behavior.
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 THE NATURE OF
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

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Historical Roots of Organizational
Behavior
• Scientific Management
• Classical Organization Theory
• PRECURSORS OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
• THE HAWTHORNE STUDIES
• HUMAN RELATIONS MOVEMENT

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Scientific Management
• One of the first approaches to the study of management,
popularized during the early 1900s, was scientific management.
Individuals who helped develop and promote scientific management
included Frank and Lillian Gilbreth (whose lives are portrayed in a
book and a subsequent movie, Cheaper by the Dozen), Henry Gantt,
and Harrington Emerson. But the person commonly associated with
scientific management is Fredric W. Taylor.
• In every case, Taylor claimed his ideas and methods greatly improved
worker output. His book, Principles of Scientific Management,
published in 1911, was greeted with enthusiasm by practicing
managers and quickly became a standard reference.
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Classical Organization Theory
• During the same era, another perspective on management
theory and practice was also emerging. Generally referred to as
classical organization theory, this perspective is concerned with
structuring organizations effectively. Whereas scientific
management studied how individual workers could be made
more efficient, classical organization theory focused on how a
large number of workers and managers could be most effectively
organized into an overall structure.

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Classical Organization Theory
• Major contributors to classical organization theory included
Henri Fayol, Lyndall Urwick, and Max Weber. Weber, the
most prominent of the three, proposed a “bureaucratic”
form of structure that he believed would work for all
organizations. Although today the term bureaucracy conjures
up images of paperwork, red tape, and inflexibility, Weber’s
model of bureaucracy embraced logic, rationality, and
efficiency. Weber assumed that the bureaucratic structure
would always be the most efficient approach.

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 Classical Organization Theory
• A bureaucracy is an organizational structure in which
tasks are specialized under a given set of rules and a
hierarchy of authority. Division of labor is the separation
of work loads into small segments to be performed by
one or more people. In a bureaucracy, tasks are assigned
through the division of labor. A set of outlined
procedures exists for each job. Because these procedures
are invariable, the tasks assigned for each job become
routine for the employee. Thus, creativity is low.

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Classical Organization Theory
• In contrast to Weber’s views, contemporary organization theorists
recognize that different organizational structures may be appropriate
in different situations. As with scientific management, however,
classical organization theory played a major role in the development
of management thought, and Weber'’ ideas and the concepts
associated with his bureaucratic structure are still interesting and
relevant today.

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THE EMERGENCE OF
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
• The central themes of both scientific management
and classical organization theory are rationality,
efficiency, and standardization. The roles of
individuals and groups in organizations were either
ignored altogether of given only minimal attention. A
few early writers and managers, however, recognized
the importance of individual and social processes in
organizations.
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PRECURSORS OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
• In the early nineteenth century, Robert Owen, a British industrialist,
attempted to improve the condition of industrial workers. He improved
working conditions, raised minimum ages for hiring children, introduced
meals for employees, and shortened working hours. In the early twentieth
century, the noted German psychologist Hugo Munsterberg argued that the
field of psychology could provide important insights into areas such as
motivation and the hiring of new employees. Another writer in the early
1900s, Mary Parker Follett, believed that management should become
more democratic in its dealings with employees. An expert in vocational
guidance, Follett argued that organizations should strive harder to
accommodate their employees’ human needs.

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PRECURSORS OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
• The views of Owen, Mansterberg, and Follett,
however, were not widely shared by practicing
managers. Not until the 1930s did notable change
occur in management’s perception of the
relationship between the individual and the
workplace. At that time, a series of now classic
research studies led to the emergence of
organizational behavior as a field of study.
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THE HAWTHORNE STUDIES
• The Hawthorne studies were conducted between 1927 and
1932 at Western Electric’s Hawthorne plant near Chicago.
(General Electric initially sponsored the research but
withdrew its support after the first study was finished.)
Several researchers were involved, the best known being
Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger, Harvard faculty
members and consultants, and William Dickson, chief of
Hawthorne’s Employee Relations Research Department.

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 THE HAWTHORNE STUDIES
• The first major experiment at Hawthorne studied the effects of
different levels of lighting on productivity. The researchers
systematically manipulated the lighting in the area in which a group of
women worked. The group’s productivity was measured and compared
with that of another group (the control group) whose lighting was left
unchanged. As lighting was increased for the experimental group,
productivity went up—but, interestingly, so did the productivity of the
control group. Even when lighting was subsequently reduced, the
productivity of both groups continued to increase. Not until the
lighting had become almost as dim as moonlight did productivity start
to decline. This led the researchers to conclude that lighting had no
relationship to productivity—and at this point General Electric
withdrew its sponsorship of the project!
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HUMAN RELATIONS MOVEMENT
• The behavioral theory of management holds that all
people (including employees) have complex needs,
desires, and attitudes. The fulfillment of needs is the
goal toward which employees are motivated. Effective
leadership matches need-fulfillment rewards with
desired behaviors (tasks) that accomplish
organizational goals.

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 HUMAN RELATIONS MOVEMENT
• The values of the human relationists are perhaps best exemplified by
the works of Douglas McGregor and Abraham Maslow. McGregor is
best known for his classic book The Human Side of Enterprise, in
which he identified two opposing perspectives that he believed
typified managerial views of employees. Some managers, McGregor
said, subscribed to what he labeled Theory X. Theory X, which takes a
pessimistic view of human nature and employee behavior, is in many
ways consistent with the tenets of scientific management. A much
more optimistic and positive view of employees is found in Theory Y.
Theory Y, which is generally representative of the human relations
perspective, was the approach McGregor himself advocated.

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HUMAN RELATIONS MOVEMENT
• In 1943, Abraham Maslow published a pioneering
psychological theory applicable to employee
motivation that became well known and widely
accepted among mangers. Maslow’s theory assumes
that motivation arises from a hierarchical series of
needs. As the needs of each level are satisfied, the
individual advances to the next level.

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Toward Organizational Behavior
• Most scholars would agree that organizational behavior
began to emerge as a mature field of study in the late
1950s and early 1960s. That period saw the field’s
evolution from the simple assumptions and behavioral
models of the human relationists to the concepts and
methodologies of a scientific discipline. Since that time,
organizational behavior as a scientific field of inquiry has
made considerable strides, although there have been
occasional steps backward as well.
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CONTEMPORARY ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FIELD:
• Researchers and managers who use concepts and ideas from
organizational behavior must recognize that it has an
interdisciplinary focus and a descriptive nature; that is, it
draws from a variety of fields and attempts to describe
behavior (as opposed to prescribing how behavior can be
changed in consistent and predictable ways).

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An Interdisciplinary Focus
• In many ways, organizational behavior synthesizes several
other fields of study. Psychology, especially organizational
psychology, is perhaps the greatest contributor to the field of
organizational behavior. Psychologists study human behavior,
whereas organizational psychologists specifically address the
behavior of people in organizational settings. Many of the
concepts that interest psychologists, such as individual
differences and motivation, are also central to studying of
organizational behavior.

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An Interdisciplinary Focus
• Sociology also has had a major impact on the field of
organizational behavior. Sociologists study social systems
such as families, occupational classes, and organizations.
Because a major concern of organizational behavior is the
study of organization structures, the field clearly overlaps
with areas of sociology that focus on the organization as a
social system.

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An Interdisciplinary Focus
• Anthropology is concerned with the interactions between
people and their environments, especially their cultural
environment. Culture is major influence on the structure of
organizations as well as on the behavior of individual people
within organizations.

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An Interdisciplinary Focus
• Political science also interests organizational behaviorists.
We usually think of political science as the study of political
systems such as governments. But themes of interest to
political scientists include how and why people acquire
power, political behavior, decision making, conflict, the
behavior of interest groups, and coalition formation. These
are also major areas of interest in organizational behavior.

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An Interdisciplinary Focus
• Economists study the production, distribution, and
consumption of goods and services. Organizational
behaviorists share the economist’s interest of topics such as
labor market dynamics, productivity, human resource
planning and forecasting, and cost-benefit analysis.

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An Interdisciplinary Focus
• Engineering has also influenced the field of organizational
behavior. Industrial engineering in particular has long been
concerned with work measurement, productivity
measurement, work flow analysis and design, job design, and
labor relations. Obviously these areas are also relevant to
organizational behavior.

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An Interdisciplinary Focus
• Most recently, medicine has influenced organizational
behavior in connection with study of human behavior at
work, specifically in the area of stress. Increasing research is
showing that controlling the causes and consequences of
stress in and out of organizational settings is important for
the well-being of the individual as well as that of the
organization.

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A Descriptive Nature
• A primary goal of organizational behavior is to describe
relationships between two or more behavioral variables. The
theories and concepts of the field, for example, cannot
predict with certainty that changing a specific set of
workplace variables will improve an individual employee’s
performance by a certain amount.

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 A Descriptive Nature
• Organizational behavior is descriptive for several reasons: the
immaturity of the field, the complexities inherent in studying
human behavior, and the lack of valid, reliable, and accepted
definitions and measures. Whether the field will ever be able to
make definitive predictions and prescriptions is still an open
question. But the value of studying organizational behavior
nonetheless is firmly established. Because behavioral processes
pervade most managerial functions and roles, and because the
work of organizations is done primarily by people, the knowledge
and understanding gained from the field can help managers in
significant ways.
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 The Importance of Organizational
Behavior
• Although the importance of organizational behavior may be
clear, we should still take a few moments to emphasize certain
points. People are born and educated in organizations, acquire
most of their material possessions from organizations, and die
as members of organizations. Many of our activities are
regulated by organizations called governments. And most
adults spend the better part of their lives working in
organizations. Because organizations influence our lives so
powerfully, we have every reason to be concerned about how
and why those organizations function.

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 The Importance of Organizational
Behavior
• Organizational behavior can greatly clarify the factors that affect
how managers manage. It is the field’s job to describe the
complex human context in which managers work and to define
the problems associated with that realm. The value of
organizational behavior is that it isolates important aspects of the
manager’s job and offers specific perspectives on the human side
of management: people as organizations, people as resources,
and people as people.

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Systems and Contingency Perspectives
• The systems and contingency perspectives take
related viewpoints on organizations and how they
function. Each is concerned with interrelationship
among organizational elements and between
organizational and environmental elements.

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The Systems Perspective
• The systems perspective, or the theory of systems,
was first developed in the physical sciences, but it has
been extended to other areas, such as management.
A system is an interrelated set of elements that
function as a whole.

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The Systems Perspective
• An organizational system receives four kinds of inputs
form its environment: material, human, financial, and
informational. The organization then combines and
transforms the inputs and returns them to the
environment in the form of products or services,
profits or losses, employee behaviors, and additional
information. Finally, the system receives feedback
from the environment regarding these outputs.
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The Contingency Perspective
• In the early days of management studies, managers searched for
universal answers to organizational questions. They sought
prescriptions that could be applied to any organization under any
conditions. For example, early leadership researchers tried to discover
forms of leadership behavior that would always increase employee
satisfaction and effort. Eventually, however, researchers realized that
the complexities of human behavior and organizational settings make
universal conclusions virtually impossible. They discovered that in
organizations, most situations and outcomes are contingent; that is,
the relationship between any two variables is likely to be influenced
by other variables.
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• The universal approach, shown at the top of the exhibit
presumes a direct cause-and-effect linkage between
variables. For example, it suggests that whenever a manager
encounters a certain problem or situation (such as
motivating employees to work harder), a universal approach
exists that will lead to the desired outcome (such as raising
pay or increasing autonomy).
• The contingency approach, on the other hand, acknowledges
several other variables that alter the direct relationship. In
other words, appropriate managerial actions in any given
situation depend on elements of that situation.
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Interactionalism
• Interactionalism is a relatively new approach to understanding
behavior in organizational settings. First presented in terms of
interactional psychology, this view assumes that individual behavior
results from a continuous and multidirectional interaction between
the characteristics of a person and characteristics of a situation. More
specifically, interactionalism attempts to explain how people select,
interpret, and change various situations.

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 Interactionalism
• The interactional view implies that simple cause-and-effect
descriptions of organizational phenomena are not enough. For
example, one set of research studies may suggest that job changes
will lead to improved employee attitudes. Another set of studies may
propose that attitudes influence how people perceive their jobs in
the first place. Both positions are probably incomplete: employee
attitudes may influence job perception, but these perceptions may in
turn influence future attitudes. Because interactionalism is a fairly
recent contribution to the field, it is less prominent in the chapters
that follow than the systems and contingency theories.

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Note: the individual and the situation are presumed to interact continuously. This
interaction is what determines the individual’s behavior.

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-End-

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Thank You

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