p. 1

what is organizational behavior the stelldr universe is not so difficult of comprehension as the real actions of other people writer marcel proust i learning objectives after studying this chapter you should be able to demonstrate the importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace describe the manager s functions roles and skills define organizational behavior 08 36 show the value to ob of systematic study identify the major behavioral science disciplines that contribute to ob demonstrate why there are few absolutes in ob identify the challenges and opportunities managers have in applying ob concepts compare the three levels of analysis in this book s ob model.

[close]

p. 2

cowboy advanced organizational behavior aryan gholipour office university of tehran school of management room140 office hours 9:00 ­ 15:00 phone 982161117745 fax 982188006477 email agholipor@ut.ac.ir required text robbins s p and t a judge 2009 organizational behavior 13th ed pearson prentice hall.

[close]

p. 3

anagers make a lot of mistakes some come from inexperience others reflect lack of knowledge and some are just dumb but few mistakes could be considered as stupid as what managers of home security company alarm one inc did as part of a team building exercise employees were paddled with rival companies yard signs as part of a contest that pitted sales teams against one another.the win ners threw pies at the losers fed them baby food made them wear diapers and yes spanked them sometimes coworkers made comments such as bend over baby and you ve been a bad girl outside the team building contests alarm one also routinely spanked employees who were late for work one of the employees who was spanked-janet orlando see photo above was so humiliated that she quit shortly after the episode and later decided to sue alarm one during the trial against alarm one in his closing arguments orlando s attorney said no reasonable middle-aged woman would want to be put up there before a group of young men turned around to show 37

[close]

p. 4

chapter 1 what is organizational behavior her buttocks get spanked and called abusive names and told it was to increase sales and motivate employees it s not surprising that a u.s jury of six men and six women ruled in favor of orlando awarding her more than she d asked for $500,000 in compensatory damages and $1.2 million in punitive damages why did alarm one do this in the first place the california company defended the spankings by saying they were part of a voluntary program to build camaraderie and were not discriminatory because they were given to both male and female workers after the trial orlando and alarm one agreed to a payment of $1.4 million in lieu of alarm one s appealing as of now though the company has not paid orlando a dime forcing her to sue all over again these guys have lied since day one says orlando · ou might think incidents like the one at alarm one ijlustrate that managing people is all about common sense mter all you don t need a textbook to tell you not to spank employees however as we ll see not all aspects of management are common sense mistakes like spanking employees are visible and obvious mistakes but managers commonly make other mistakes due to their lack of knowledge this is where organizational behavior comes into play to see how far common sense gets you try the following from the selfassessment library how much do i know about organizational behavior assessment li brar in the self-assessment library available on cd and online take assessment /vg.i how much do i know about db and answer the following questions i how did you score are you surprised by your score 2 how much of effective management do you think is common sense did your score on the test change your answer to this question the importance of interpersonal skills although practicing managers have long understood the importance of interpersonal skills to managerial effectiveness business schools have been slower to get the message until the late 1980s business school curricula emphasized the technical aspects of management specificajly focusing on economics accounting finance and quantitative techniques course work in demonstrate the importance of human behavior and people skills received minimal attention relative to the technical aspects of management over the past 2 decades however interpersonal skills in the workplace business faculty have come to realize the importance that an understanding of human behavior plays in determining a manager s effectiveness and required courses on people skills have been added to many cunicula as the director of leadership at massachusetts institute of technology s sloan l

[close]

p. 5

what managers do 39 succeeding in management today requires good people skills communication and leadership skills distinguish managers such as jeffrey immelt who rise to the top of their profession immelt ceo of general electric joined the company in corporate marketing in 1982 and spent 20 years in sales marketing and product development leadership positions before moving into ge s top management job outgoing and adept at building relationships immelt travels the world meeting with customers employees suppliers and stockholders in this photo immelt interacts with schoolchildren in a reading program funded by ge school of management recel1lly put it m.b.a students may get by on their technical and quantitative skills the first couple of years out of school but soon leadership and communication skills come to the fore in distinguishing the li1anagers whose careers really take off recognition of the importance of developing managers interpersonal skills is closely tied to the need for organilations to get and keep high-performing employees regardless of labor market conditions outstanding employees are always in short supply l companies with reputations as good places to work have a big advantage a study of the u.s workforce for example found that wages and fringe bendits are not the main reasons people like theirjobs or stay with an employer far more important is the quality of the ell1ployee sjob and the supportivcness of the work environmcnt i so having managers with good interpersonal skills is likely to make the workplace more pleasant which in turn makes it easier to hire and keep qualified people in addition creating a pleasant workplace appears to make good economic sense for instance companies with reputations as good places to work such as the companies that arc included among the best companies to work for in america have been found to generate superior financial performance we hav come to understand that technical skills arc necessary but they are not enough to succeed in management in today s increasingly competitive and demanding workplace managers can t succeed on their technical skills alone they also have to have good people skills this book has been written to help both managers and potential managers develop those people skills what managers do describe the manager s functions roles and skills let s begi n by briefly dcfini ng the terms 1111 11 lgl l and ol galli:atiol1-the place where managers work then let s look at the manager s job specifically what do managers do?

[close]

p. 6

40 chapter 1 what is organizational behavior managers get things done through other people they make decisions allocate resources and direct the activities of others to attain goals managers do their work in an organization which is a con ciously 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 on the basis of this definition manufacturing and service firms are organilations and so are schools hospitals churches military units retail stores police departments and local state and government agencies the people who oversee the acti ties of others and who are responsible for attaining goals in these organizations are managers although they re sometimes called administrators especially in not-for-profit organizations in the early part of the twentieth century a french industrialist by the name of henri fayol wrote that all managers perform five management functions planning organiling commanding coordinating and controlling i today we have condensed these to [our planning organiling leading and controlling because organilations exist to achieve goals someone has to define those goals and the means for achieving them management is that someone the planning function encompasses defining an organization s goals establishing an overall strategy for achieving those goals and developing a comprehensive set of plans to integrate and coordinate activities evidence indicates that this function is the one that increases the most as managers move from lower-icvel to midle cl managcll1ent 7 managers are also rcsponsible for designing an organ ization s structure we call this function organizing it includes determining what tasks are to be done who is to do them how the tasks arc to be grouped who reports to whom and where decisions are to be made every organization contains people and it is management sjob to direct and coordinate those people this is the leading funct ion when managers motivate employees direct the acti ties of others select the most effective communication channels or resolve conf1icl among members they re engaging in leading the final function managers perform is controlling to ensure that things are going as they should management 111 list monitor the organization s performance actual performance is then compared with the pre ollsly set goals if there are any significant deviations it is management sjob to get the organization back on track this monitoring comparing and potential correcting is what is meant by the controlling function so using the functional approach the answer to the question what do managers do is that they plan organize lead and control ma in the late 1960s i lenry mintzberg a graduate student at massachusetts institute of technology undertook a careful study of five executives to determine what tho c managers did on their jobs on the basis of his observations mintzberg concluded that managers perform 10 different highly interrelated roles-or sel of behaviors-attributable to their jobs h as shown in exhibit 1-1 these 10 roles can be grouped as being primarily l interpersonal 2 informational and decisional interpersonal role s all managers arc requ ired to perform duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature for instance when the president of a college hands out diplomas at commencement or a factory supervisor gives a group of students a tour of the plant he or she is acting in a figurehead role all

[close]

p. 7

what managers do 41 mintzberg s managerial roles role interpersonal figurehead leader liaison informational monitor disseminator spokesperson receives a wide variety of information serves as nerve center of internal and external information of the organization transmits information received from outsiders or from other employees to members of the organization transmits information to outsiders on organization s plans policies actions and results serves as expert on organization s industry symbolic head required to perform a number of routine duties of a legal or social nature responsible for the motivation and direction of employees maintains a network of outside contacts who provide favors and information description decisional entrepreneur disturbance handler resource allocator negotiator searches organization and its environment for opportunities and initiates projects to bring about change responsible for corrective action when organization faces important unexpected disturbances makes or approves significant organizational decisions responsible for representing the organization at major negotiations source adapted from the nature of managerial work by h mintzberg copyright c 1973 by h mintzberg reprinted by permission of pearson education managers also have a lead i hijj role this role includes hiring trall1l11g motivating and disciplining employees the third role within the interpersonal grouping is the liaisoll role mintzberg described this activity as contacting outsiders who provide t he manager wi th information these may be individuals or groups inside or outside the organizatioll the sales manager who obtains information from the quality-control manager in his or her own company has an internal liaison relationship when that sales manager has contacts with other sales executives through a marketing trade association he or she has an outside liaison relationship informational roles alilllanagers to some degree collect information from outside organil.ations and institutions typically they obtain it by reading magazines and talking with other people to learn of changes in the public s tastes what competitors may be planning and the like mintzberg called this the managers individuals who achieve goals through other people planning 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 a process that includes defining goals establishing strategy and developing plans to coordinate activities leading 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 a function that includes motivating employees directing others selecting the most effective communication channels and resolving conflicts controlling monitoring activities to ensure that they are being accomplished as planned and correcting any significant deviations.

[close]

p. 8

chapter 1 what is organizational behavior monitor role managers also act as a conduit to transmit information to organij:ational members this is the dissnninalorrole in addition managers perform a sjjolu i/m soi role when they represent the organization to outsiders decisional roles minllberg identified four roles that j c olve around making choices in the jlltr fprpllf ii/to e managers initiate and oversee new projects that will improvc their organil

[close]

p. 9

what managers do 43 exhibit 1-2 allocation of activities by nme successful managers effective managers average managers 19 32 48 13 26 11 19 28 44 11 troditional management human resource management communication networking source based an f luthans r m hadgetts and s a rosenkrantz reol managers icambridge ma ballinger 1988 3 human resource management motivating disciplining managing conflict staffing and training 4 networking socializing politicking and interacting with outsiders the average manager in the study spent 32 percent of his or her time in traditional management activities 29 percent communicating 20 percent in human resource management activities and 19 percent networking however the amouj1 t of time and effort that different managers spent on those four activities varied a great deal specifically as shown in exhibit 1-2 managers who were suc[fssjul defined in terms of the speed of promotion within their organization had a very different emphasis than managers who were efjective defined in terms of the quantity and quality of their performance and the satisfaction and commitment of their employees among successful managers networking made the largest relative contribution to success and human resource management activities made the least relative contribution among effective managers communication made the largest relative contribution and networking the least more recent studies conducted in a variety of countries australia israel italy japan and the united states further confirm the link between networking and success within an organization i i for example one study found that australian managers who actively networked received more promotions and enjoyed other rewards associated with career success and the connection between communication and effective managers is also clear a study of 410 u,s managers indicates that managers who seek information from colleagues and employees-even if it s negative-and who explain their decisions are the most effective 12 this research adds important insights to our knowledge of what managers do on average managers spend approximately 20 to 30 percent of their time on each of the four activities traditional management communication human resource management and networking however successful managers don t technical skills the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise the ability to work with understand and motivate other people both individually and in groups human skills conceptual skills the mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations,

[close]

p. 10

44 chapter 1 what is organizational behavior give the same emphasis to each of those activities as do effective managers in fact their emphases are almost the opposite this finding challenges the historical assumption that promotions are based on performance and it illustrates the importance of networking and political skills in getting ahead in organizations one common thread runs through the functions roles skills activities and approaches to management each recognizes the paramount importance of managing people regardless of whether it is called the leading function interpersonal roles human skills or human resource management communication and networking activities it s clear that managers need to develop their people skills if they re going to be effective and successful enter organizational behavior we ve made the case for the importance of people skills but neither this book nor the discipline on which it is based is called people skills the term that is widely used to describe the discipline is organizational behavior organizational behavior often abbreviated ob is a field of study define organizational behavior ob that investigates the impact that individuals groups and su-ucture have on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such knowledge loward improving an organization s effectiveness that s a mouthful so let s break it down 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 tn addition ob applies the knowledge gained about individuals groups and the effect of tructure on behavior in order to make organizations work more effectively j microsoft understands how organizational behavior affects an organization s performance the company maintains good employee relationships by providing a great work environment generous benefits and challenging jobs the two-story wall painting shown here is one of 4,500 pieces of contemporary art displayed at microsoft s corporate campus for employees enjoyment other benefits such as valet parking dry-cleaning and laundry service free grocery delivery and take-home meals help employees focus on their work at microsoft employee loyalty and productivity are high contribuing to the company s growth to $44 billion in revenues since its founding in 1975.

[close]

p. 11

complementing intuition with systematic study 45 to sum up our definition ob is concerned with the stlldy 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 to find that it emphasizes behavior as related to concerns such asjobs work absenteeism employment turnover productivity human performance and management there is increasing agreement as to the componenls or topics that constitute the subject area of ob although there is still considerable debate as to the relative importance of each there appears to be general agreement that 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.l complementing intuition with systematic study each of us is a student of behavior since our earliest years we ve watched the actions of others and have attempted to interpret what we see whether or not you ve explicitly thought about it before you ve been reading people almost all your life you watch what others do and try to explain to show the value to 08 of systematic study yourself why they have engaged in their behavior in addition you ve attempted to predict what they might do under different sels of conditions unfortunately your casual or commonsense approach to reading others can often lead to erroneous predictions however you can improve your predictive ability by supplementing your intuitive opinions with a more systematic approach the systematic approach used in this book will uncover important facls and relationships and will provide a base from which more accurate predictions of behavior can be made underlying this systematic approach is the belief that behavior is not random rather there are certain fundamental consistencies underlying the behavior of all individuals that can be identified and then modified to reflect individual differences these fundamental consistencies are very important why because they allow predictability behavior is generally predictable and the systematic study of behavior is a means to making reasonably accurate predictions when we use the phrase systematic study we mean looking at relationships attempting to attj;bute causes and effecls and basing our conclusions on scientific evidencethat is on data gathered under controlled conditions and measured and interpreted in a reasonably rigorous manner see appendix a for a basic review of research methods used in studies of organizational behavior an approach that complements systematic study is evidence-based management evidence-based management ebm involves basing managerial decisions 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 systematic study looking at relationships attempting to attribute causes and effects and drawing conclusions based on scientific evidence evidence-based management ebm basing managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence.

[close]

p. 12

46 chapter 1 what is organizational behavior myth or ssume that you signed up to take an introductory college course in finance on the first day of class your instructor asks you to take out a pie ce of paper and answer the following question what is the net present value at a discount rate of 12 percent per year of an investment made by spending $1,000,000 this year on a portfolio of stocks with an initial dividend next year of $100,000 and an expected rate of dividend growth thereafter of 4 percent per year it s unlikely you d be able to answer that question without some instruction in finance now change the scenario you re in an introductory course in organizational behavior on the first day of class your instructor asks you to write the answer to the following question what s the most effective way to motivate employees at work at first you might feel a bit of reluctance but once you began writing you d likely have no problem coming up with suggestions on motivation that s one of the main challenges of teaching or taking a course in ob you enter an ob course with a lot of preconceived notions that you accept as facts you think you already know a lot about human behavior 14 that s not typically true in finance accounting or even marketing so in contrast to many other disciplines ob not only introduces a you to a comprehensive set of concepts and theories it has to deal with a lot of commonly accepted facts about human behavior and organizations that you ve acquired over the years some examples might include you can t teach an old dog new tricks leaders are born not made and two heads are better than one but these facts aren t necessarily true so one of the objectives of a course in organizational behavior is to rep/ace popularly held notions often accepted without question with science-based conclusion s as you ll see in this book the field of ob is built on decades of research this research provides a body of substantive evidence that is able to replace preconceived notions throughout this book we ve included boxes titled myth or science they call your attention to some of the most popular of these notions or myths about organizational behavior we use the boxes to show how ob research has disproved them or in some cases shown them to be true hopefully you ll find these boxes interesting but more importantly they ll help remind you that the study of human behavior at work is a science and that you need to be vigilant about seat-of-the-pants explanations of work-related behaviors · on the best available scientific evidence we d want doctors to make decisions about patient care based on the latest available evidence and ebm argues that we want managers to do the same that means managers must become more scientific in how they think about management problems for example a manager might pose a managerial question search for the best available evidence and apply the relevant information to the question or case at hand you might think it s difficult to argue against this what manager would argue that decisions shouldn t be based on evidence but the vast majority of management decisions are still made on the fly with little or systematic study of available evidence 15 systematic study and ebm add to intuition or those gut feelings about why i do what i do and what makes olhers tick or course a systematic approach does not mean that the things you have come to believe in an unsystemalic way are necessarily incoltecl as jack welch the former ceo of general elecuic noted the trick of course is to know when to go with your gut if we make all decisions with intuition or gut instinct we re likely making decisions with incomplete information-sort orlike making an investment decision with only half the data the limits of relying on inluition are made worse by the fact that we tend to overestimale the accuracy of what we think we know a recent survey revealed that 86 percent of managers thoughl their organization was treating their

[close]

p. 13

disciplines that contribute to the 06 field 47 employees well ilowever only percent or the employees thought they were well treated we lind a similar problem in chasing the business and popular media for managcment wisdom the business press tends to be dominated by fads as one writer put it every fe ycars ne companies succeed and they are scrutinij:ed for the underlying truths they illight reveal but often there is no underlying truth the compalliesjust happenec to be in the right place at the right time ii although we try to avoid it we might also fall into this trap it s not that the business press stories are all wrong it s that without a systematic approach it s hard to separate the wheat from the charr some or the conclusions we make in this text based on reasonably substantivc research findings will ollly support what you always kncw as true but you ll also be exposed to research evidcnce that runs counter to what you may have thought was common sense on of the objectives of this text is to encourage you to ellhance your intuitive iews or beha ior with a systematic analysis in the heliefthat such analysis will improve your accuracy in explaining and predicting bellavior we re not advising that you throw your intuition or all the business press out the window or are we arguing that research is always right researchers make mistakes too what we arc advising is to use evidence as much as possible to inform your intuition and experience that is the promise of ob disciplines that contribute to the ob field organizational behavior is an applied behavioral science that is built on contributions from a number or behavioral disciplines the predominant areas arc psychology and social psychology sociology and anthropology a you shall learn psyc hology s con tribu tio ns have been mai nly at the identify the major behavioral science individual or micro lew l of analysis while the other disciplines have disciplines that contribute to ob contributed to our understanding 0 macro concepts such as group processes and organization exhibit 1-3 is an overview or the m jor contributions to the study or orgallij:ational behavior p psychology is the science that seeks to measure explain and sometimes change the behavior or humans and other animals psychologists concern themsel es with studying and attempting to understand indi idual behavior those who have contributed and continue to add to the knowledge orob are learning theoj·ists personality thcorists counseling psychologists and most important industrial and organij:ational psychologists early industrial/organilational psychologists concerned themselves with the problems of fatigue boredom and other factors rele ant to working intuition a gut feeling not necessarily supported by research the science that seeks to measure explain and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals psychology

[close]

p. 14

chapter 1 what is organizational behavior exhibit 1-3 behavioral science toward an 08 discipline contribution leorning motivatian personolity emotions perception training leodership effectiveness job sotisfoction individuol decision moking performance oppraisal attitude meosurement employee selection work design work stress behoviorol chonge attitude chonge communication group processes group decision making communication power conflict intergroup behavior study of organizational behavior unit of analysis output psychology individual sociol psychology group sociology formal organization theory organizational technology organizational change organizational culture comparative values comparative attitudes cross-cultural analysis organizational culture organizational environment power 1 1 organization system anthropology ilij conditions that could impede efricient work performance more recently their contributions have bccn expanded to include learning perception personality emotions training leadership effectiveness needs and motivational forces job satisfaction decision-making processes performance appraisals atli tudc m eas u remcn t ern ployee-se leclion tech n iques work design and job stress social psychology blends concepts from both psychology and sociology though it is generally considered a branch of psychology it focuses on peoples influence on one another one major area receiving considerable investigation from social psyc hologists has been change-how to implement it and how to reduce barriers to its acceptance in addition we find social psychologists making significant contributions in th e areas of measuring understanding and changing attitudes communication patterns and building trust finally social psychologisl have made important contributions to our study of grollp behavior power and conflict.

[close]

p. 15

disciplines that contribute to the ob field 49 other disciplines make use it may surprise you to lea rn that increasingly other business disciplines are employing db concepts of the business disciplines marketing has the closest overlap with db one of the primary areas of marketing is consumer research and trying to predict consumer behavior is not that different from trying to predict employee behavior both require an understanding of the dynamics and underlying causes of human behavior and there s a lot of correspondence between the disciplines what s perhaps more surprising is the degree to which the so-called hard disciplines are making use of soft db concepts behavioral finance behavioral accounting and behavioral economics also called economic psychology all have grown in importance and interest in the past several years on reflection this shouldn t be so surprising your common sense will tell you that humans are not perfectly rational creatures and in many cases our actions don t conform to a rational model of behavior although some elements of irrationality are incorporated into economic thought increasingly finance accounting and economics researchers find it useful to draw from db concepts for example investors have a ten dency to place more weight on private information information that only they or a limited group of people know than on public information even when there is reason to believe that the public information is more accurate to understand this phenomenon finance researchers use db concepts in addition behavioral accounting research might study how feedback influences auditors behavior or the functional and dysfunctional implications of earnings warnings on investor behavior the point is that while you take separate courses in various business disciplines the lines between them are increasingly being blurred as researchers draw from common disciplines to explain behavior we think that s a good thing because it more accurately matches the way managers actually work think and behave source based on w chuang and b lee an empirical evaluation of the overconfidence hypothesis journal of banking and finance september 2006 pp 2489 2515 and a r drake j wong and s b salter empowerment motivation and performance examining the impact of feedback and incentives on nonmanagement employees behavioral research in accounting 19 2007 pp 71 89 while psychology focuses on the individual sociology studies people in relation to their social environment or culture sociologists have contributed to ob through their study of group behavior in organizations particularly formal and complex organizations perhaps most importantly sociology has contributed to research on organizational culture formal organization theory and structure organizational technology communications power and conflict h anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities for instance anthropologists work on cultures and environments has helped us understand differences in fundamental values attitudes and behavior between people in different countries and within different organizations much of our current understanding of organizational culture organizational environments and differences between national cultures is a result of the work of anthropologisl or those using their methods social psychology an area of psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology and that focuses on the influence of people on one another sociology the study of people in relation to their social environment or culture anthropology the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.

[close]