Organizational Behavior

1
Organizational Behavior

• Securing Competitive Advantage

2
Chapter One

• Organizational Behavior

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Chapter Overview

• This chapter examines the following topics
• Defining Organizational Behavior
• Micro Organizational Behavior
• Meso Organizational Behavior
• Macro Organizational Behavior
• Contemporary Issues
• Workforce Diversity
• Team Productivity
• Organizational Adaptability
• International Growth and Development
• Putting Organizational Behavior Knowledge to Work
• Diagnosis
• Solution
• Action
• Evaluation
• Becoming an Active Problem Solver
• Overview of the Text

4
Introduction

• Throughout the world, workplace productivity has
  grown steadily for more than a decade, allowing
  standards of living to rise significantly without
  the threat of significant economic inflation
• With recent technological advancements in such
  areas as information systems, manufacturing
  processes, inventory management, and service
  delivery, the current trend of increasing
  productivity ,may extend well into the future
• Nonetheless, individual companies sometimes run
  into productivity problems

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Ford Motor Company Example

• This company currently faces problems as a result
  of
• Fierce competition in the automotive
  manufacturing industry
• Aggressive discounting by domestic manufacturers
• Attractive pricing by international competitors
• CEO William Clay Bill Ford, Jr. faces the
  undaunting tasks of
• Cutting up to 4.5 billion in expenses
• Updating aging product lines
• Shoring up falling quality

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Ford Motor Company ExampleWhat Would You Do If

• you were a manager in a company like Ford Motor
  Company?
• How would you improve employee productivity in
  the face of unacceptably high production costs?
• initial assessments indicate that productivity
  lapses are due to poor employee motivation, what
  would you do to solve this problem?

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The Ford Motor Company Case Indicates

• the know-how needed to solve motivational
  productivity problems can be found in the field
  of organizational behavior
• The management of people through the application
  of knowledge from the field of organizational
  behavior is a primary means through which
  competitive advantage can be created and sustained

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Defining Organizational Behavior

• There are three important considerations
  underlying this definition
• Organizational behavior focuses on observable
  behaviors
• Organizational behavior involves the analysis of
  how people behave both as individuals and as
  members of groups and organizations
• Organizational behavior assesses the behavior of
  groups and organizations per se

• Organizational behavior is a field of study that
  endeavors to understand, explain, predict, and
  change human behavior as it occurs in the
  organizational context

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Defining Organizational Behavior

• The field of organizational behavior traces its
  roots back to the late 1940s when researchers in
  psychology, sociology, political science,
  economics, and other social sciences joined
  together in an effort to develop a comprehensive
  body of organizational research
• It is now divided into three distinct subfields

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Micro Organizational Behavior

• Micro organizational behavior is concerned mainly
  with the behaviors of individuals working alone
• Three subfields of psychology were the principal
  contributors to the beginnings of micro
  organizational behavior
• Experimental psychology provided theories of
  learning, motivation, perception, and stress
• Clinical psychology furnished models of
  personality and human development
• Industrial psychology offered theories of
  employee selection, workplace attitudes, and
  performance assessment

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Meso Organizational Behavior

• Meso organizational behavior is a middle ground,
  bridging the other two subfields of
  organizational behavior
• It focuses primarily on understanding the
  behaviors of people working together in teams or
  groups
• In addition to sharing the origins of the other
  two subfields, meso organizational behavior grew
  out of research in the fields of communication,
  social psychology, and interactionist sociology

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Macro Organizational Behavior

• Macro organizational behavior focuses on
  understanding the behaviors of entire
  organizations
• The origins of macro organizational behavior can
  be traced to four disciplines
• Sociology provided theories of structure,
  social status, and institutional relations
• Political science offered theories of power,
  conflict, bargaining, and control
• Anthropology contributed theories of symbolism,
  cultural influence, and comparative analysis
• Economics furnished theories of competition and
  efficiency

13
Contemporary Issues

• The three subfields of organizational behavior
  offers valuable information, insight, and advice
  to managers facing the challenge of understanding
  and reacting to a broad range of contemporary
  management issues
• Todays managers find four of these issues
  especially important

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Contemporary Issues Workforce Diversity

• Within the societal cultures of the United States
  and Canada, subcultural differences once ignored
  by many managers now command significant
  attention and sensitivity
• Historically, the North American workforce has
  consisted primarily of white males however today
  white males make up only about 15 of business
  new hires in the U.S., whereas women, African
  American, Hispanic, and Asian men account for
  increasingly large segments of the U.S. workforce
• Knowledge about the workplace consequences of
  these differences, drawn from the subfield of
  micro organizational behavior, can provide
  managers with help in this regard

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Contemporary Issues Team Productivity

• Management is becoming less of a process relying
  on top-down command and control
• For various reasons organizations now use greater
  amounts of empowerment
• Often empowerment is accomplished by grouping
  employees into teams, then giving those teams
  responsibility for self-management activities
• Guidance from the meso organizational behavior
  precepts can help managers establish realistic
  expectations about the implementation
  difficulties and probable effects of team-based
  empowerment

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Contemporary Issues Organizational Adaptability

• In todays business world, emphasis is shifting
  from mass production of low-cost, interchangeable
  commodities to the production of high-quality
  goods and services, made individually or in small
  batches and geared to meet the specific demands
  of small groups of consumers
• Companies are reacting by implementing programs
  that require new ways of dividing an
  organizations work into jobs and coordinating
  the efforts of many employees
• Implementations of this sort benefit from
  insights derived from macro organizational
  behavior

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Contemporary Issues International Growth and
Development

• Fewer firms today limit their operations to a
  single national or cultural region than was once
  the case
• Multinationalism or even statelessness has become
  the norm
• The resulting globalization is changing the way
  business is conducted and it promises to continue
  to do so at an increasing pace
• All three subfields of organizational behavior
  have valuable advice to offer managers confronted
  with this challenge

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Putting Organizational Behavior Knowledge to Work

• Putting theoretical knowledge from the field of
  organizational behavior to practical use requires
  that managers develop skills in using such
  knowledge to identify and solve problems in an
  effective manner
• The process of problem solving can be simplified
  and made more effective by breaking it into four
  stages

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Putting Organizational Behavior Knowledge to
Work Diagnosis and Solution

• Problem solving begins with diagnosis, a
  procedure in which managers gather information
  about a troublesome situation and try to
  summarize it in a problem statement
• Information gathering may require direct
  observation of events in and around an
  organization
• Summarizing information in a problem statement
  requires that managers use the mix of theories,
  experience, and intuition they have amassed to
  construct a statement of what is wrong

• Solution is the process of identifying ways to
  resolve the problem identified during the
  diagnosis phase
• Managers prescribing solutions must resist the
  urge to satisfice choosing the first
  alternative that seems workable- and must instead
  push themselves to consider several potential
  solutions and choose the best available
  alternative

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Putting Organizational Behavior Knowledge to
WorkAction and Evaluation

• Problem solving concludes with evaluation, the
  process of determining whether actions taken to
  solve the problem had the intended effect
• Managers must identify in advance the indicators
  they will use to measure success and collect
  measures of these indicators as the action stage
  proceeds
• The evaluation process highlights any differences
  between the intended results of a particular
  solution and the actual results

• Action is setting a proposed solution into motion
• Mangers must first stipulate the specific
  activities they believe are needed to solve a
  particular problem, then oversee the
  implementation of these activities
• Sometimes it is possible to implement a
  step-by-step program that was developed earlier
  to solve a similar problem encountered previously
  or in another organization

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Becoming an Active Problem Solver

• To sharpen your skills as a problem solver, study
  each theory presented in this book to develop a
  basic understanding of the variables and
  relationships it describes
• You should practice following the theories
  applied during problem definition to their
  logical conclusions
• You should also practice specifying the actions
  required to implement and assess your proposed
  solution

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Overview of the Text

• This textbook focuses on providing conceptual
  frameworks that will prove helpful in the future
  as you solve problems and manage behaviors in
  organizations
• What you learn now will serve later as a valuable
  source of competitive advantage for you and your
  firm