Organizational

Behavior
 INTRODUCTION TO
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

 Define organizational behavior.

 Trace historical roots of organizational behavior
 Discuss emergence of contemporary organizational
behavior, including its precursors, the Hawthorne
studies, and the human relations movement.
 Describe contemporary organizational behavior—
its characteristics, concepts, and importance.
 Identify and discuss contextual perspectives on
organizational behavior.
 What is an organization?

 An organization is defined as a collection

of people who work together to achieve a
wide variety of goals.

Tesfa M,(Asst. Professor)

 Organizational Behavior

 Organizational behavior (OB) is;

 The study of human behavior in organizational

settings,
 The study of how human behavior interacts with the
organization, and
 The study of organization itself.
 Organizational Behavior
 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.
 6

OB
 OB studies what people do in an organization
and how that behavior affects the performance of
the organization.
 Organizational Behavior
 Organizational Behavior can help managers;
 Understand the complexity within organizations,
 Identify problems,
 Determine the best ways to correct them, and
 Establish whether changes would make a
significant difference.
 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.
 Importance of Organizational
Behavior

 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
 THE NATURE OF ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR

 Individuals do not work in isolation. They

come in contact with other people and with
the organization in a variety of ways.
 Points of contact include managers,
coworkers, the formal policies and
procedures of the organization, and various
changes implemented by the organization.
 Historical Roots of Organizational Behavior

 One reason for the relatively late development of management

as a scientific field is;
 Very few large business organizations existed until around a
hundred years ago. Although management is just as important to a
small organization as it is to a large one, large firms provided both a
stimulus and a laboratory for management research.
 Second, many of the initial players interested in studying
organizations were economists. Economists initially assumed that
management practices are by nature efficient and effective;
therefore, they concentrated on higher levels of analysis such as
national economic policy and industrial structures rather than on the
internal structure of companies.
 Scientific Management

One of the first approaches to the study of

management, popularized during the early 1900s,
was scientific management.
 Scientific Management

The person commonly associated with scientific

management is Fredric W. Taylor.
Early in his life, Taylor developed an interest in
efficiency and productivity.
 Scientific Management

Laborers opposed scientific management because of its

explicit goal of getting more output from workers.
Congress investigated Taylor’s methods and ideas
because some argued that his incentive system would
dehumanize the workplace and reduce workers to little
more than drones.
Later theorists recognized that Taylor’s views on
employee motivation were inadequate and narrow.
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.
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.
Classical Organization Theory

 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.
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.
Classical Organization Theory

 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.
Classical Organization Theory

 In a bureaucracy, the standards for evaluating job

performance do not need to be updated because
required tasks never change. However, this lack of
variation leads to an impersonal work
environment, lacking incentives for extraordinary
task performance and ultimately limiting the
growth potential of individual employees.
Classical Organization Theory

 In contrast to Weber’s views, contemporary

organization theorists recognize that different
organizational structures may be appropriate in
different situations.
Central themes of both scientific management and classical
organization theory
PRECURSORS OF ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR
PRECURSORS OF ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR
PRECURSORS OF ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR
 PRECURSORS OF
ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR
 The views of Owen, Munsterberg, 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.
 HUMAN RELATIONS
MOVEMENT

 The basic premises underlying the human relations

movement are
 that people respond primarily to their social
environment,
 that motivation depends more on social needs than
on economic needs, and
 that satisfied employees work harder than
unsatisfied employees.
 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.
 HUMAN RELATIONS
MOVEMENT

 Effective leadership matches need-

fulfillment rewards with desired behaviors
(tasks) that accomplish organizational goals.
HUMAN RELATIONS
MOVEMENT
CONTEMPORARY ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR

 Contemporary organizational behavior has two

fundamental characteristics that warrant special
discussion. It also generally accepts a set of
concepts to define its domain.
CONTEMPORARY ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR

Nature of the Field

CONTEMPORARY ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR

 Researchers and managers who use concepts and

ideas from organizational behavior 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.
Organizational Behavior is
Interdisciplinary
 Contributing Disciplines
to the OB Field
Micro:
The Individual

Macro:
Groups &
Organizations
 Psychology seeks to Sociology studies
measure, explain, people in relation to their
and change individual’s 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
 Descriptive Nature
A primary goal of organizational behavior is to
describe relationships between two or more
behavioral variables.

 These variable are if better working conditions

lead to more satisfaction, if more satisfied people
see their jobs differently from unsatisfied people,
or if both satisfaction and perceptions of working
conditions are actually related through other
variables.
 Descriptive Nature
 Organizational behavior is descriptive for several
reasons:
 Immaturity of the field, the complexities inherent in
studying human behavior,
 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.
Contextual Perspectives on Organizational Behavior

 Several contextual perspectives have increasingly

influenced organizational behavior:
 the systems approach and contingency
perspectives,
 the interactional view, and
 the popular- press perspectives.
Contextual Perspectives on Organizational Behavior

 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.
Contextual Perspectives on Organizational Behavior
Systems Perspective
Contextual Perspectives on Organizational Behavior
Systems Perspective

Input

 An organizational system receives four kinds of

inputs form its environment: material, human,
financial, and informational.
Contextual Perspectives on Organizational Behavior
Systems Perspective

Output

 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.
Contextual Perspectives on Organizational Behavior
Systems Perspective

Feedback

 Finally,the system receives feedback from the

environment regarding these outputs.
Contextual Perspectives on Organizational Behavior
Contingency Perspective

 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.
Contextual Perspectives on Organizational Behavior
Interactional Perspective

 The interactional view implies that simple cause-

and-effect descriptions of organizational
phenomena are not enough.
Contextual Perspectives on Organizational Behavior
Interactional Perspective
Contextual Perspectives on Organizational Behavior
Interactional Perspective

 Both positions are probably incomplete: employee

attitudes may influence job perception, but these
perceptions may in turn influence future attitudes.
Contextual Perspectives on Organizational Behavior
Interactional Perspective

 Both positions are probably incomplete: employee

attitudes may influence job perception, but these
perceptions may in turn influence future attitudes.
 MANAGING PEOPLE AND
ORGANIZATIONS

 One common thread permeates virtually all

managerial activity:
 Interacting with other people.
 The “typical” day for most managers is almost
entirely devoted to interacting with others.
 The management process and behavior of
people in organizations are undeniably
intertwined.
 MANAGERIAL PERSPECTIVES ON
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

 Virtually all organizations have managers with

titles but probably no organization has a position
called organizational behavior manager.
 The reason for this is simple: organizational
behavior is not an organizational function or area.
Instead, it is best described as a perspective or set
of tools that all managers can use to carry out their
jobs more effectively.
 MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS, ROLES,
AND SKILLS

 The four basic managerial functions in

organizations are planning, organizing, leading,
and controlling.
 THE FOUR FUNCTIONS OF MANAGEMENT

PLANNING

CONTROLLING ORGANIZING

LEADING
 MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS, ROLES,
AND SKILLS

 By applying these functions to the various

organizational resources— human, financial,
physical, and informational—the organization
achieves different levels of effectiveness and
efficiency.
 MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS, ROLES,
AND SKILLS

 Managerial Roles

 Henry Mintzberg identified ten basic managerial

roles clustered into three general categories.
MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS, ROLES,
AND SKILLS
MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS,
ROLES, AND SKILLS
 Mintzberg identified four decision-making roles.
 The entrepreneur voluntarily initiates change, such as innovations
or new strategies, in the organization.
 The disturbance handler helps settle disputes between various
parties, such as other mangers and their subordinates.
 The resource allocator decides who will get what—how resources
in the organization will be distributed among various individuals
and groups.
 The negotiator represents the organization in reaching agreements
with other organizations,

Behavioral processes are clearly crucial in each of these decisional

roles.
 MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS,
ROLES, AND SKILLS
 MANAGERIAL SKILLS
 Still another important element of managerial
work is the set of skills necessary to carry out
basic functions and fill fundamental roles.
 In general, most successful managers have a
strong combination of technical, interpersonal,
conceptual, and diagnostic skills.
MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS, ROLES,
AND SKILLS
Managerial Skills
 MANAGING FOR
EFFECTIVENESS

 Threebasic levels of outcomes determine

organizational effectiveness:
MANAGING FOR
EFFECTIVENESS
Three Levels of OB Analysis
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
 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
industry
 65

Continued ------
 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?
 66

Organizational citizenship
 Discretionarybehavior
 Not part of an employee's formal job
requirements
 Promotes the effective functioning of the
organization
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
 Few Absolutes in OB
 Impossibleto make simple and accurate generalizations
 Human beings are complex and diverse
 OB concepts must reflect situational conditions: contingency
variables
 Challenges and Opportunities for
OB
 The workplace is contains a wide mix of cultures,
races, ethnic groups, genders and ages
 Employees have to learn to cope with rapid change
due to global competition
 Corporate loyalty has decreased due to corporate
downsizing and use of temp workers
 Managers can benefit from OB theory and concepts
Responding to Globalization
 Increased foreign assignments
 Differingneeds and aspirations in
workforce
 Working with people from different
cultures
 Domestic motivational techniques and
managerial styles may not work
 Overseeing movement of jobs to
countries with low-cost labor
 Managerial Challenges
 In managerial work, organizational behavior has
several implications for various managerial,
organizational, and global challenges.
 From the managerial perspective, there are four major
challenges that affect organizational behavior.
MANAGERIAL
CHALLENGES
 Managing Workforce Diversity
Workforce diversity:
organizations are
becoming a more
heterogeneous mix of
people in terms of gender,
age, race, ethnicity, and
sexual orientation
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 while, at the
same time, not discriminating.”
 1-75

OB Offers Insights Into:

 Improving quality and productivity
 Customer service and building a
customer-responsive culture
 Developing people skills
 1-76

OB Aids in Dealing
With:
 StimulatingInnovation and Change
 Increasing “temporariness” in the
workplace
 Helping employees balance work-life
conflicts
 Improving ethical behavior
 Thinking Positive

 Creating a positive work environment can be a competitive

advantage
 Positive Organizational Scholarship (Positive OB):
 Examines how organizations develop human strengths, foster
vitality and resilience, and unlock potential.
 Focus is on employee strengths, not their weaknesses.
 Implications for Managers
 OB helps with:
 Insightsto improve people skills
 Valuing of workforce diversity
 Empowering people and creating a positive
work environment
 Dealing with labor shortages
 Coping in a world of temporariness
 Creating an ethically healthy work
environment
 1-79

Keep in Mind…
 OB’s goal is to understand and predict human behavior in
organizations.
 Fundamental consistencies underlie behavior.
 It is more important than ever to learn OB concepts.
 Both managers and employees must learn to cope with
temporariness.