What is Organizational Behavior?

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Chapter 1
What is Organizational Behavior?
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Learning Objectives
Demonstrate the importance of interpersonal
skills in the workplace.
Describe the managers functions, roles, and
skills.
Define organizational behavior (OB).
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
books OB model.
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The Importance of Interpersonal Skills
What is interpersonal skills?
Why it is needed?
It is very important but not enough why?
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What Managers Do?
Manager
They get things done through other people
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
Leading
Controlling
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What Managers Do?
Management Roles
Interpersonal Roles
Figurehead
Leader
Liason
Informational Roles
Monitor
Disseminator
Spokesperson
Decisional Roles
Entrepreneur
Disturbance Handler
Resource Allocator
Negotiator
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What Managers Do?
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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What Managers Do?
Effective Versus Successful Managerial Activities
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Enter Organizational Behavior
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
organizations effectiveness
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Complementing Intuition with Systematic Study
Systematic Study
Looking at relationships, attempting to attribute
causes and effects, and drawing conclusions based
on scientific evidence
Evidence Based Management
Basing managerial decisions on the best available
scientific evidence
Intuition
A gut feeling not necessarily supported by
research
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Disciplines that Contribute to the OB Field
Psychology
The science that seeks to measure, explain, and
sometimes change the behavior of humans and other
animals
Social Psychology
An area within 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
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There are Few Absolutes in OB
Why there are few absolutes in OB?
Because of situational factors that make the main
relationship between two variables change e.g.,
the relationship may hold for one condition but
not another
Contingency Variables
Situational Factors Variable that moderate the
relationship between two or more other variables
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Challenges and Opportunities for OB
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Responding to Globalization
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Managing Workforce Diversity
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Improving Quality and Productivity
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Improving Customer Service
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Improving People Skills
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Stimulating Innovation and Change
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Coping with Temporariness
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Working in Networked Organizations
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Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts
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Creating a Positive Work Environment
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Improving Ethical Behavior
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Coming Attractions Developing an OB Model
A model
Abstraction of reality, or a simplified
representation of some real-world phenomenon
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Coming Attractions Developing an OB Model
The Independent Variables (X)
The Dependent Variables (Y)

• The presumed cause of the change in the dependent
  variable (Y)
• This is the variable that OB researchers
  manipulate to observe the changes in Y

• This is the response to X (the independent
  variable)
• It is what the OB researchers want to predict or
  explain
• The interesting variable!

X ? Y ? Predictive Ability
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Coming Attractions Developing an OB Model
The Dependent Variables
The Independent Variables
Productivity
Individual Level Variables
Absenteeism
Turnover
Group Level Variables
Deviant Workplace Behavior
Organization System Level Variables
Organizational Citizenship Behavior
Job Satisfaction
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Coming Attractions Developing an OB ModelToward
A contingency OB Model