Name : Benoy

Johnson Kurien.

Subject : Management
Process and
Organizatio
nal Behaviour.

Date of Submission : 14th August 2007.

Assignment no. : MB0022.

Management Process and Organizational
Behavior- MB0022
1. Explain the managerial roles and managerial
skills.
Managerial Roles :
According to mintzberg (1973), managerial roles are
as follows :
1. Informational roles
2. Decisional roles
3. Interpersonal roles

1. INFORMATIONAL ROLES : This involves the role of

assimilating and disseminating information as and
when required. Following are the main sub-roles,
which managers often perform:
a. Monitor- Collecting information from organizations,
both from inside and outside of the organization.
b. Disseminator- Communicating information to
organizational members.
 c. Spokesperson- Representing the organization to
outsiders.
2. DECISIONAL ROLES : It involves decision making.
Again, this role can be sub-divided in to the following:
a. Entrepreneur- Initiating new ideas to improve
organizational performance.
b. Disturbance handlers- Taking corrective actions to
cope with adverse situations.
c. Resource allocators- Allocating human, physical,
and monetary resources.
d. Negotiator- Negotiating with trade unions, or any
other stakeholders.
3. INTERPRESONAL ROLES : This role involves
activities with people working in the organization.
This is supportive role for informational and
decisional roles. Interpersonal roles can be
categorized under three sub-headings:
a. Figurehead- Ceremonial and symbolic role.
b. Leadership- Leading organizations in terms of
recruiting, motivating etc.
c. Liaison- Liasoning with external bodies and
public relations activities.

Management Skills
 Katz (1974) has identifies three essential
management skills: technical, human, and conceptual.
TECHNICAL SKILLS: The ability to apply specialized
knowledge or expertise. All jobs require some
specialized expertise, and many people develop their
technical skills on the job. Vocational and on-the-job
training programs can be used to develop this type of
skill
HUMAN SKILLS : This is the ability to work with,
understand and motivate other people (both
individually and group). This requires sensitivity
towards other issues and concerns. People, who are
proficient in technical skills, but not with interpersonal
skills, may face difficulties to manage their
subordinates. To acquire the Human Skills, it is
pertinent to recognize the feelings and sentiments of
others, ability to motivate others even in adverse
situation, and communicate own feelings to others in a
positive inspiring way.
CONCEPTUAL SKILLS: This is an ability to critically
analyze, diagnose a situation and forward a feasible
solution. It requires creative thinking, generating
options and choosing the best available options.

2. Describe the contemporary work cohort.

Robbins (2003) has proposed contemporary work
cohort, in which the unique value of different cohort is
 that the U.S. workforce has been segmented by the era
they entered the workforce. Individuals’ values differ,
but tend to reflect the societal values of the period in
which they grew up. The cohorts and the respected
values have been listed below:
1. Veterans- Workers who entered the workforce in the
early 1940s through the early 1960s. They exhibited
the following value orientations:
They were influences by the Great Depression and the
World War ll
1. Believed in hard work
2. Tended to be loyal to their employer
3. Terminal values: Comfortable life and family security
2. Boomers- Employees who entered the workforce in
the 1960s through the mid 1980s belonged to
this category. Their value orientations were:
1. Influenced heavily by John F. Kennedy, the civil
rights and feminist movements, the Beatles, the
Vietnam War, and baby-boom competition.
2. Distrusted authority, but gave a high emphasis on the
achievements and material success.
3. Organizations who employed them were vehicles for
their careers.
4. Terminal values: sense of accomplishment and the
social recognition.
3. Xers- began to enter the workforce from the mid-
1980s. they cherished the following values:
1. Shaped by globalization, two-career parent, MTV,
AIDS, and computers.
2. Value flexibility, life options, and achievement of job
satisfaction.
3. Family and relationships were important and enjoyed
team-oriented work.’
4. Money was important, but would trade off for
increased leisure time.
5. Less willing to make personal sacrifices for employers
than previous generations

• Terminal values: true friendship happiness, and

pleasures.
4. Nexters- most recent entrants into the workforce.
1. Grew up in prosperous times, have high expectations,
believe in themselves, and confident in their ability to
succeed.
2. Never-ending search for ideal job; see nothing wrong
in job-hopping.
3. Seek financial success.
4. Enjoy team work, but are highly self-reliant..
5. Terminal values: freedom and comfortable life.
3. Elaborate the issues related to culture and
emotion.
There are two views of culture and emotion:
Universality – Emotions are part of human nature and
in all cultures universality the same set of basic
emotions. Based on his cross-cultural research,
Ekman(1999) has found six emotions which are
universally recognized and applicable. They are:
1. Anger.
2. Fear.
3. Sadness.
4. Happiness.
5. Disgust.
6. Surprise.
Cultural specificity- Human beings are like a tabula
rasa (clean tablet) on which society writes its script. In
other words, culture and traditional, normative patterns
and value-orientations are possible for not only our
personality development, but also appropriate social
and emotional development. This makes us functional
entities in society. Each culture has a unique set of
emotions and emotional responses; the emotions
shown in a particular culture reflects the norms, values,
practices , and language of that culture.
Alexithymia – emotional disorder
Some people have difficulty in expressing their
emotions and understanding the emotions of others.
Psychologists call this alexithymia. People who suffer
from alexithymia rarely cry and are often seen by
others as bland or cold. Their own feelings make them
uncomfortable, and they are not able not discriminate
among their different emotions. People, suffering from
alexithymia, may be effective performers in jobs where
little or no emotional labor. Alexithymic symptoms may
be seen in people who experience:
1. Post-traumatic stress disorder.
2. Certain brain injuries.
3. Eating disorders (i.e., bulimia, anorexia, or binge
eating disorder)
4. Substance use dependence.
5. Depression.
6. Other mental health conditions.
Relationship of gender with emotion.
A number of research findings supports the view that
women are more emotional than men (e.g., Broverman,
Vogel, Clarkson, & Rosenkrantz, 1972; Widiger &
Settle, 1987). Women are assumed to experience more
frequent and intense emotions, whereas men are
assumed to be emotionally inexpressive and to have
argued that the stereotype of men as unemotional is
more accurate for adult targets than for child targets
because males tend to control their emotions as they
get older (Fabes and Martin, 1991). Likewise, women
and men experience happiness in a similar way, but
women have been taught that they can strongly
express the emotion of happiness, whereas men have
been taught to control it. The impact of socialization
practices accumulate over the time, and, thus, these
stereotypes are likely to apply more strongly to adult
populations (Geer and Shields, 1996).
4. Discuss the assumptions of Douglas Mc Gregor
(Theory X and Theory Y).
Douglas McGregor argued that a manager’s view of
human beings is based on a certain grouping of
assumptions and he or she tends to mould his or her
behavior toward employees according to these
assumptions.

Theory X –
In this theory management assumes employees are
inherently lazy and will avoid work, if they can. Workers
need to be closely supervised and a comprehensive
system of controls and a hierarchical structure is
needed to supervise the workers closely. It is also
assumed that the workers generally place security
above all other factors and will display little ambition.
Theory Y –
In this theory management assumes employees may
be ambitious, self-motivated, anxious to accept greater
responsibility, and exercise self-control, self-direction,
autonomy, and empowerment. It is believed that
employees enjoy their mental and physical duties. It is
believed that, if given the chance employees have the
desire to be creative and forward thinking in the
workplace. There is a chance for greater productivity by
giving the employees the freedom to perform to the
best of their abilities without being bogged down by
rules.
From the above, it is clear that Theory X assumes that
lower-order needs dominate individuals. Theory Y
assumes that higher-order needs dominate individuals.

5. What is personal power – Explain different

bases of personal power?
Personal power resides in the individual and is
independent of that individual’s position. Three bases
of personal power are expertise, rational, persuasion,
and reference.
Expert power is the ability to control person’s behavior
by virtue of possessing knowledge, experience, or
judgment that the other person lacks, but needs. A
subordinate obeys a supervisor possessing expert
power because the boss ordinarily knows more about
what is to be done or how it is to be done than does the
subordinate. Expert power is relative, not absolute.
However the table may turn if the subordinate has
superior skills and knowledge than his/her boss. In this
age of technology driven environments, the second
proposition holds true in many occasions where the
boss is heavily dependent on the juniors for
technologically oriented support.
Rational persuasion is the ability to control another’s
behavior, since, through the individual’s efforts, the
person accepts the desirability is an offered goal and a
viable way of achieving it. Rational persuasion involves
both explaining the desirability of expected outcomes
and showing how specific actions will achieve these
outcomes.
Referent power is the ability to control another’s
behavior because the person wants to identify with the
power source. In this case, the subordinate obeys the
boss because he or she wants to behave, perceive, or
believe as the boss does. This obedience may occur, for
example, because the subordinate likes the boss
personally and therefore tries to do things the way the
boss wants it to be done. In a sense, the subordinate
attempts to avoid doing anything that would interfere
with the pleasing boss-subordinate relationship.
Followership is not based on what the subordinate will
get for specific actions or specific levels of
performance, but on what the individual represents- a
path toward lucrative future prospects.
Charismatic power is an extension of referent power
stemming from an individual’s personality and
interpersonal style. Other follow because they can
articulate attractive visions, take personal risks,
demonstrate follower sensitivity, etc.

6. Write a short note on potential sources of

stress.
While environmental factors are forces outside the
organization, which may act as potential sources of
stress due to uncertainties and threats that they create
for any organization and its members, factors within
the organization can also act as potential source of
stress. Together or singly they may create a tense and
volatile working environment which can cause stress
for organizational members because the inability of
individuals to handle the pressure arising out of these
sources.
The following may be seen to be the potential sources
of stress:
1. Environmental factors:

• Environmental uncertainty influences stress

levels among employees in an organization.

• Changes in the business cycle create economic

uncertainties.

• Political uncertainties can be stress inducing.

 • Technological uncertainties can cause stress
cause new innovations can make an employee’s
skill and experience obsolete in a very short
period of time.

2. Organizational factors:

• Pressures to avoid errors or complete tasks in a

very limited time period, work overload, a
demanding and insensitive boss, and unpleasant
coworkers are a few examples.
• Tasks demand are factors related to a person’s job.
They include the design of the individual’s job
(autonomy, task variety, degree of automation),
work conditions, and the physical work layout.

• Role demands relate to pressures that are a

function of the role an individual plays in an
organization.
a. Role conflicts create expectations that may be
hard to reconcile or satisfy.
b. Role overload is experienced when the
employee is expected to do more than time
permits.
c. Role ambiguity is created when role expectations
are not clearly understood.
d. Interpersonal demands are pressures created by
other employees.
e. Organizational structure defines the level of
differentiation in the organization, the degree of
rules and regulations, and where decisions are
made. Excessive rules and lack of participation in
decisions might be potential source of stress.

Organizational leadership represents the

managerial style of the organization’s senior
executives. CEOs, by virtue of their managerial
styles create an organizational culture which
reflects tension, fear, and anxiety. They
overemphasize tight control, hire and fire policies
which keep organizational members on hot seat
and create stress among them.
f. Individual factors:
g. these are factors in the employees personal life.
Primarily, these factors are family issues, personal
economic problems, and inherent personality
characteristics.
h. Broken families, wrecked marriages and other
family issues may create stress at workplace as
well.
i. Economic problems created by individuals
overextending their financial resources. Spending
 more than earnings stretches financial positions,
create debt situations among individuals.
j. A significant individual factor influencing stress is
a person’s basic dispositional nature. Over-
suspicious anger and hostility increases a person’s
stress and risk for heart disease. These individuals
with high level of mistrust for other also cause
stress for themselves.
k. stressors are additive—stress builds up.

Individual Differences-
1. Five individual difference variables moderate the
relationship between potential stressors and
experiences stress:
a. Perception.
b. Job experience.
c. Locus of control.
d. Self-efficacy.
e. Hostility.

a. Perception: Moderates the relationship between a

potential stress condition and an employee’s reaction
to it. Stress potential doesn’t lie in objective
conditions; it lies in an employee’s interpretation of
those conditions.

b. Job experience: The evidence indicates that

experience on the job tends to be negatively related
to work stress.
First is the idea of selective withdrawal. Voluntary
turnover is more portable among people who
experience more stress.
Second, people eventually develop coping
mechanisms to deal with stress.
Collegial relationships with coworkers or supervisors
can buffer the impact of stress.

c. Locus of control: Those with an internal locus of

control believe they control their own destiny.
Internals perceive their jobs to the less stressful than
do externals.
Internals are likely to believe that they can have a
significant effect on the results.
Those with an external locus believe their lives are
controlled by outside forces.
Externals are more likely to be passive and feel
helpless.
d. Self-efficacy: The confidence is one’s own abilities
appear to decrease stress.

e. Hostility: People who are quick to anger, maintain

a persistently hostile outlook, and project a cynical
mistrust of others are more likely to experience
stress in situations.