Introduction to Organizational Behavior

INTRODUCTION TO ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter students should be able to:
1. Define organizational behavior (OB).
2. Identify the primary behavioral disciplines contributing to OB.
3. Describe the three goals of OB.
4. List the major challenges and opportunities for managers to use OB concepts.
5. Describe how OB concepts can help make organizations more productive.
6. Discuss why work force diversity has become an important issue in management.
7. Explain how managers and organizations are responding to the problem of employee ethical
dilemmas.
8. Discuss how knowledge of OB can help managers stimulate organizational innovation and change.
I.

THE FIELD OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

A. Definition
1. Organizational behavior is the systematic study of the actions and attitudes that people
exhibit within organizations. (4)
2. Key parts of the definition
a) Systematic study (5)
(1) The use of scientific evidence gathered under controlled conditions and measured
and interpreted in a reasonably rigorous manner to attribute cause and effect. (6)
(2) OBits theories and conclusionsis based on a large number of systematically
designed research studies.
b) Systematic study of actions (or behaviors) and attitudes include three areas:
productivity, absenteeism, and turnover. (7)
(1) Managers clearly are concerned with the quantity and quality of output that each
employee generates.
(2) Absence and turnoverparticularly excessively high ratescan adversely affect
this output.
(3) Organizational citizenshipdiscretionary behavior that is not part of an
employees formal job requirements but promotes effective organizational
functioningis a fourth type of behavior that has recently been found to be
important in determining employee performance. (8-9)
(4) Organizational behavior is also concerned with employee job satisfaction, which
is an attitude. (10)
(5) Job satisfaction is a concern for three reasons.
(a) There may be a link between satisfaction and productivity.
(b) Satisfaction appears to be negatively related to absenteeism and turnover.
(c) It can be argued that managers have a humanistic responsibility to provide
their employees with jobs that are challenging, intrinsically rewarding, and
satisfying.
c) Systematic study of people within an organization
(1) OB is specifically concerned with work-related behavior.
(2) An organization is a consciously coordinated social unit, which comprises two or
more people and functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common
goal or set of goals. (11)
(3) OB is characterized by formal roles that define and shape the behavior of its
members.
B. Contributing Disciplines (12)
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Introduction to Organizational Behavior

1. Organizational behavior is applied behavioral science.

a) The predominant contributing disciplines are psychology, sociology, social
psychology, anthropology, and political science.
b) Psychology contributes mainly at the individual/micro level of analysis, whereas the
latter disciplines contribute on the group/macro level of analysis.
2. Psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the
behavior of humans and other animals.
a) Psychologists concern themselves with studying and attempting to understand
individual behavior.
b) Contributors are learning theorists, personality theorists, counseling psychologists,
and, most important, industrial and organizational psychologists.
c) Early industrial psychologists concerned themselves with problems of fatigue,
boredom, and any other factor relevant to working conditions that could impede
efficient work performance.
d) More recently, their contributions have been expanded to include learning,
perception, personality, emotions, training, leadership effectiveness, needs and
motivational forces, job satisfaction, decision-making processes, performance
appraisals, attitude measurement, employee-selection techniques, job design, and
work stress.
3. Sociology studies people in relation to their fellow human beings.
a) Greatest contribution has resulted from their study of group behavior in
organizations, particularly formal and complex organizations.
b) Areas of valuable input include group dynamics, design of work teams, organizational culture, formal organization theory and structure, bureaucracy, communications, status, power, conflict, and work/life balance.
4. Social psychology is an area within psychology, blending concepts from psychology and
sociology.
a) It focuses on the influence of people on one another.
b) A major area of concernchangehow to implement it and how to reduce barriers
to its acceptance.
c) Areas of significant contributions are in measuring, understanding, and changing
attitudes, communication patterns, the ways in which group activities can satisfy
individual needs, and group decision-making processes.
5. Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.
a) It includes human physical character, evolutionary history, geographic distribution,
group relationships, and cultural history and practices.
b) This has helped us understand differences in fundamental values, attitudes, and
behavior between people in different countries and within organizations.
6. Political science, the study of the behavior of individuals and groups within a political
environment, is frequently overlooked.
a) Specific topics of concern to political scientists include structuring of conflict,
allocation of power, and how people manipulate power for individual self-interest.
II.

GOALS OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

A. What three goals does OB seek (13)
B. Explanation
1. Seek to answer why an individual or a group of individuals did something.
2. Explanation is the least important of the three goals, from a management perspective,
because it occurs after the fact.
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C. Prediction
1. The goal of prediction focuses on future events to determine what outcomes will result
from a given action.
2. There are various ways to implement a major change, so the manager is likely to assess
employee responses to several change interventions. Such information can be used in
making the decision as to which change effort to use.
D. Control
1. The most controversial goal is to control behavior because most of us live in democratic
societies, which are built upon the concept of personal freedom.
2. OB does offer technologies that facilitate the control of people.
a) Whether those technologies should be used in organizations becomes an ethical
question.
III.

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR OB: A MANAGERIAL PERSPECTIVE

A. The ability to explain, predict, and control organizational behavior has never been more
important to managers because of changing workforce demographics; global competition which
require flexibility, rapid change and innovation; and organizational commitment and loyalty
changes. (14-15)
B. Increased Foreign Assignments
1. Organizations are no longer constrained by national borders, which means as a manager,
you're increasingly likely to find yourself in a foreign assignment.
C. Working with People from Different Cultures
1. Globalization also means that you will be working with bosses, peers, and other
employees that were raised in different cultures.
D. Coping with Anti-Capitalism Backlash
1. Capitalism's focus on efficiency and growth is not accepted worldwide.
E. Overseeing Movement of Jobs to Countries with Low-Cost Labor
1. Management is under pressure to keep labor costs down, yet moving jobs to lower labor
cost countries also gets criticized.
2. Workforce diversity means that organizations are becoming a more heterogeneous mix of
people.
3. Workforce diversity means that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms
of gender, race, and ethnicity.
a) Encompasses anyone who varies from the norm. In addition to the more obvious
groupswomen, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americansit
also includes the physically disabled, homosexuals, and the elderly.
F. Embracing Diversity (16-17)
1. Traditional melting pot approach to differences in organizations assumed that people who
were different would somehow automatically want to assimilate.
2. Now the challenge for organizations is to make themselves more accommodating to
diverse groups.
G. Changing U.S. Demographics
1. Diverse groups were such a small percentage of the U.S. workforce.
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a) The bulk of the pre-1980s workforce was male Caucasians working full time to
support a non-employed wife and school-aged children.
b) Currently, 46.6 percent of the U.S. labor force are women. Minorities and immigrants
make up 23 percent.
2. Workforce diversity has important implications for management practice.
a) Managers need to recognize differences and respond to them.
(1) Diversity, if positively managed, can increase creativity and innovation in
organizations as well as improve decision making by providing different
perspectives on problems.
H. Improving Quality and Productivity (18)
1. Managers are facing constant challenges to improve quality and productivity. To do this,
they are implementing programs such as quality management and process reengineering,
which require extensive employee involvement. (19-20)
a) See Exhibit 1-3, What Is Total Quality Management?
2. Process reengineering asks managers to reconsider how work would be done and how
would their organization be structured if they were to start over.
I.

Improving People Skills (21-22)

1. People skills are critical to managerial effectiveness.
2. There are specific people skills that managers can use on the job.
a) The text will raise this as you read.

J. Improving Customer Service

1. The majority of employees in developed countries work in service jobs, which requires
substantial interaction with an organization's customers.
2. OB can contribute to performance by showing how employee attitudes and behavior are
associated with customer satisfaction.
K. Empowering People
1. The reshaping of the relationship between managers and those they are supposedly responsible for managing.
a) Decision-making is being pushed down to the operating level.
b) Managers are allowing employees full control of their work.
c) An increasing number of organizations are using self-managed teams.
2. Managers are empowering employees.
3. Managers are having to learn how to give up control, and employees are having to learn
how to take responsibility for their work and make appropriate decisions.
L. Working in Networked Organizations
1. Technology has allowed people to communicate and work together even though they may
be thousands of miles apart.
M. Stimulating Innovation and Change
1. Todays successful organizations must foster innovation and master the art of change or
they will become candidates for extinction.
2. Victory will go to those organizations that maintain their flexibility, continually improve
their quality, and beat their competition to the marketplace with a constant stream of
innovative products and services.
3. The challenge for managers is to stimulate employee creativity and tolerance for change.
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Introduction to Organizational Behavior

a) The field of OB provides a wealth of ideas and techniques to aid in realizing these
goals.
N. Coping with Temporariness
1. Managers have always been concerned with change. What is different is the amount of
time between change implementations.
2. Today, change is an ongoing activity for most managers. The concept of continuous improvement, for instance, implies constant change.
3. Managing used to be characterized by long periods of stability interrupted occasionally
by short periods of change.
a) That is reversed today.
4. Managers and employees face a world of permanent temporariness.
a) Workers need to continually update their knowledge and skills to perform new job
requirements.
b) Work groups are also increasingly in a state of flux. In the past employees were
assigned to a specific department, and that assignment was relatively permanent.
c) Organizations themselves are in a state of flux. They continually reorganize their
various divisions, sell off poorly performing businesses, downsize operations, and
replace permanent employees with temporaries.
5. Todays managers and employees must learn to learn to live with flexibility, spontaneity,
and unpredictability.
I.

Helping Employees Balance Work/Life Conflicts

1. The typical employee no longer shows up Monday through Friday for an eight- or ninehour shift.
2. A number of forces have contributed to the blurring of the line between work and
nonwork time, thus, creating personal conflicts and stress.
a) The creation of global organizations means the work world never sleeps.
b) Communication technology allows employees to do their work anywhereat home,
in their car, or on the beach.
c) Organizations are asking employees to put in longer hours.
d) Few families have only a single breadwinner.
3. Employees are not happy about work squeezing out personal lives.
4. Organizations that do not help their people achieve work/life balance will find it
increasingly hard to attach and retain employees.

J.

Declining Employee Loyalty

1. Corporate employees used to believe that their employers would reward loyalty and good
work with job security, generous benefits, and steady pay increases.
2. That changed beginning in the mid-1980s as corporations sought to become lean and
mean by closing factories, moving operations to lower-cost countries, selling off or
closing down less-profitable businesses, eliminating entire levels of management,
replacing permanent employees with temporaries, and substituting performance-based
pay systems for seniority-based programs.
3. European companies are also doing this.
4. These changes have resulted in a sharp decline in employee loyalty.

K. Improving Ethical Behavior

1. In todays organizational world it is not surprising that many employees feel pressured to
cut corners, break rules, and engage in other forms of questionable practices.
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Introduction to Organizational Behavior

2. Members of organizations are increasingly finding themselves facing ethical dilemmas,

situations in which they are required to define right and wrong conduct.
3. Good ethical behavior has never been clearly defined.
a) In recent years the line differentiating right from wrong has become even more
blurred.
b) All around them employees see peopleelected officials, successful executives, and
employees in other companiesengaging in unethical practices.
4. There are a variety of responses to this problem.
a) Write and distribute codes of ethics to guide employees through ethical dilemmas.
b) Offer seminars, workshops, and similar training programs to try to improve ethical
behaviors.
c) Provide in-house advisors, who can be contacted, in many cases anonymously, for
assistance in dealing with ethical issues.
d) Create protection mechanisms for employees who reveal internal unethical practices.
5. Todays manager needs to create an ethically healthful climate in which his or her
employees can do their work productively and confront a minimal degree of ambiguity
regarding what constitutes right and wrong behaviors.
IV.

THE PLAN OF THIS BOOK

A. The book uses a building block approach. (23)
1. See Exhibit 1-4.
2. Chapters 2 through 6 deal with the individual in the organization.
a) The foundations of individual behaviorvalues, attitudes, perception, and learning.
b) The role of personality and emotions in individual behavior.
c) Conclude with motivation issues and individual decision making.
3. Chapters 7 through 12 address group behavior.
a) Introduce a group behavior model.
b) Discuss ways to make teams more effective.
c) Consider communication issues and group decision-making.
d) Investigate leadership and the issues of trust, power, politics, and conflict and
negotiation.
4. Organizational behavior reaches its highest level of sophistication when we add the
formal organization system to our knowledge of individual and group behavior. Chapters
13 through 16, discuss:
a) How an organizations structure, work design, and technology affect behavior.
b) The effect that an organizations human resource policies and practices have on
people.
c) How each organization has its own culture that acts to shape the behavior of its
members.
d) The various organizational change and development techniques that managers can
use to affect behavior for the organizations benefit.

SUMMARY (24-25)
1. Organizational behavior (OB) is the systematic study of the actions and attitudes that people exhibit
within organizations.
2. Organizational behavior is applied behavioral science. The predominant contributing disciplines are
psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and political science.
3. The three primary goals of OB are to explain why an individual or a group of individuals do something; to predict future eventsto determine what outcomes will result from a given action; and to
control behavior, the most controversial goal of the three. OB does offer technologies that facilitate
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Introduction to Organizational Behavior

the control of people. Whether those technologies should be used in organizations becomes an ethical
question.
4. The major challenges and opportunities for managers to use OB concepts occur in the areas of
customer service, improving quality and productivity through the use of quality management,
reengineering and other techniques; improving people skills; managing workforce diversitya key
challenge since organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, race, and
ethnicity; responding to globalization; empowering people by the reshaping of the relationship
between managers and those theyre supposedly responsible for managing; stimulating innovation
and change; coping with temporariness as the workforce becomes more part time and contingency
based; dealing with declining employee loyalty; and improving ethical behavior.
5. The plan of the book is built on a building-block approach. Chapters 2 through 6 deal with the
individual in the organization. Chapters 7 through 12 address group behavior. Chapters 13 through 16,
discuss how an organizations structure, work design, and technology affect behavior, the effect that
an organizations human resource management policies and practices have on people, how each
organization has its own culture that acts to shape the behavior of its members, and the various
organizational change and development techniques that managers can use to affect behavior for the
organizations benefit.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Define organizational behavior (OB).
Answer - Organizational behavior is the systematic study of the actions and attitudes that people
exhibit within organizations. There are three key parts. Systematic study is the use of scientific evidence gathered under controlled conditions and measured and interpreted in a reasonably rigorous
manner to attribute cause and effect. Systematic study of actions (or behaviors) and attitudes occurs in
three areas: productivity, absenteeism, and turnover. Systematic study within an organizationOB is
specifically concerned with work-related behaviorand that takes place in organizations. A fourth
type of behavior, organizational citizenship, has been added as a determiner of organizational
effectiveness.
2. Identify the primary behavioral disciplines contributing to OB.
Answer - Organizational behavior is applied behavioral science. Psychology is the science that seeks
to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals. Sociology
studies people in relation to their fellow human beings. Greatest contribution was through their study
of group behavior in organizations, particularly formal and complex organizations. Social Psychology
is an area within psychology, blending concepts from psychology and sociology. It focuses on the
influence of people on one another. Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities. This has helped us understand differences in fundamental values, attitudes,
and behavior between people in different countries and within organizations. Political science, the
study of the behavior of individuals and groups within a political environment, is frequently
overlooked.
3. Describe the three goals of OB.
Answer Explanation, which seeks to answer why an individual or a group of individuals did something. It is the least important of the three goals, from a management perspective, because it occurs
after the fact. Prediction focuses on future events to determine what outcomes will result from a given
action. Control is the most controversial goal because most of us live in democratic societies, which
are built upon the concept of personal freedom. OB does offer technologies that facilitate the control
of people. Whether those technologies should be used in organizations becomes an ethical question.
4. List the major challenges and opportunities for managers to use OB concepts.
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Introduction to Organizational Behavior

Answer - Improving quality, customer service, and productivity through the use of quality
management, reengineering and other techniques; improving people skills; managing workforce
diversitya key challenge since organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender,
race, and ethnicity; responding to globalization; empowering people by the reshaping of the
relationship between managers and those they are supposedly responsible for managing; stimulating
innovation and change; coping with temporariness as the workforce becomes more part time and
contingency based; dealing with declining employee loyalty; and improving ethical behavior.
5. Explain the key elements in quality management.
Answer - See Exhibit 1-3, What Is Quality Management?
6. Discuss why workforce diversity has become an important issue in management.
Answer - Workforce diversity means that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of
gender, race, and ethnicity. It encompasses anyone who varies from the norm. In addition to the more
obvious groupswomen, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americansit also
includes the physically disabled, the elderly, and so on. Traditional melting pot approach to
differences in organizations assumed that people who were different would somehow automatically
want to assimilate. Traditionally, diverse groups were such a small percentage of the U.S. workforce.
Currently, 46 percent of the U.S. labor force are women. Minorities and immigrants make up 23
percent.
7. Discuss two ways in which globalization affects a managers people skills.
Answer First, a manager will likely find himself in a foreign assignment in which he will be
managing a workforce, which is likely to be very different in needs, aspirations, and attitudes from
the ones back home. Second, even in their own countries, managers could likely find themselves
working with bosses, peers, and employees who were born and raised in different cultures.
8. A number of forces have contributed to blurring the lines between employees work and personal
lives. Discuss four of these forces.
Answer First, the creation of global organizations means the work world never sleeps. Second,
communication technology allows employees to do their work anywhereat home, in their cars, on
the beach. Third, organizations are asking employees to put in longer hours. Fourth, few families
have only a single breadwinner, requiring married employees to find the time to fulfill commitments
to home, spouse, children, parents, and friends.
9. Explain how managers and organizations are responding to the problem of employee ethical
dilemmas.
Answer Managers and organizations write and distribute codes of ethics to guide employees
through ethical dilemmas. They offer seminars, workshops, and similar training programs to try to
improve ethical behaviors and provide in-house advisors, who can be contacted, in many cases
anonymously, for assistance in dealing with ethical issues. They create protection mechanisms for
employees who reveal internal unethical practices. Todays managers need to create an ethically
healthful climate in which their employees can do their work productively and confront a minimal
degree of ambiguity regarding what constitutes right and wrong behaviors.

EXERCISES
A.

Have students introduce themselves by giving their name, and any other information you deem
appropriate, and by offering one short one- to three-minute story about an experience they had with
an organization. Give students several minutes to think about their story, keep time, and stop
students who go too long. Use the stories to introduce the importance of OB to them.
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Introduction to Organizational Behavior

B.

Divide the class into groups of three to five students each. Have each group identify a current news
story from the popular press such as newscasts, newspapers, journals, and so on, which involve
management and/or organizational behavior. These stories/situations can be local, domestic, or
international. Give the groups several minutes to discuss the story details, and have each group
evaluate how the current managers handled the situation. Then have each group orally provide a
brief (three to four minute) critique of the current managers response. Suggested topics might be a
current business merger, the implementation of the euro, a local plant closing or relocation, an
article or story about a diversity issue or work/family balance.

C.

Divide the class into groups of three, and have them discuss their experiences with managers. They
may discuss items such as their last performance appraisal, a job interview, or a customer service
issue. Use this as a starting point to discuss the importance of "people" in an organizational
context.

D.

If you have older adult students, have them share their experiences regarding how the workplace
used to look. Examine such issues as the demographic make-up of the organization, and the
attitudes of workers towards management. Emphasize how new the field of OB is, based upon
these anecdotes.

Analyzing Your Organization (additional exercise not in the textbook)

The end of each chapter will have a hands-on activity in which students will apply the material to
the organization in which they work. If they dont currently work, they could pick an organization
to use as a model, such as their local grocer. You also could adapt this assignment to an
organization that they research in the library or on the web, although it will lose its real world
feel. The point is to take the theories and concepts and apply them to real organizations.
There are a number of ways you can use this in your class. For example, it could serve as
homework to be turned in each week, or a project to be built upon each week and turned in at the
end of the class as a term paper/project. You could also use the exercise as a class discussion item,
selecting students to do short discussion starter presentations several times per term. Still another
use is to have them summarize their findings in small groups, and have each group report a
summary to the class.
Most of these activities will involve interviewing someone who has knowledge of the topic. For
example, when covering the human resource issues in chapter 15, they will most likely want to
discuss the assignment with someone in HR.
Use the questions provided as a guideline, but be sure to adapt them to the students needs. I would
also suggest that the students get approval from their manager or supervisor early on in the
semester. Because we are dealing with people issues all semester they should detail the project to
the relevant parties early on.
For the first assignment, have them take this course syllabus and a description of the project to their
supervisor. This will allow the supervisor to see the scope of topics discussed, and possibly spark
some ideas for conversation points in the future. In week 2 of the course, have the students briefly
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Introduction to Organizational Behavior

describe their chosen organization, discussing what goods or services they produce, how many
employees it has, what the structure looks like, and a general overview of how the organization is
managed.

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