Introduction to

the Field of
Organizational
Behavior

McGraw-Hill/Irwin
McShane/Von Glinow OB 5e Copyright © 2010 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Organizational Behavior and
Organizations
 Organizational behavior
• The study of what people think,
feel, and do in and around
organizations
 Organizations
• Groups of people who work
interdependently toward some
purpose

John Lassiter
Chief Creative Officer
of Pixar and Disney

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OB Foundations
 Distinct field around the 1940s
 OB concepts discussed for more
than 2,000 years
 Some pivotal scholars before OB
formed include:
• Max Weber
• Frederick Winslow Taylor
• Elton Mayo
• Chester Barnard (shown)
• Mary Parker Follett

Chester Barnard

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Why Study OB?

 Satisfy the need to understand and predict

 Helps us to test personal theories
 Influence behavior – get things done
 OB improves an organization’s financial
health
 OB is for everyone

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Old Perspective of
Organizational Effectiveness
 Goal oriented -- Effective firms
achieve their stated objectives
 No longer accepted as indicator
of org effectiveness
• Could set easy goals
• Some goals too abstract to
evaluate
• Company might achieve wrong
goals

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Four Perspectives of Organizational
Effectiveness
Open Systems Perspective

Organizational Learning Perspective

High-Performance WP Perspective

Stakeholder Perspective

NOTE: Need to consider all four perspectives

when assessing a company’s effectiveness
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Open Systems Perspective
Environment
Feedback Feedback

Feedback Feedback

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Organizational Learning
Perspective
 An organization’s capacity to acquire, share,
use, and store valuable knowledge
 Need to consider both stock and flow of
knowledge
• Stock: intellectual capital
• Flow: org learning processes of acquisition,
sharing, and use

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Intellectual Capital

Human Knowledge that people possess and

Capital generate

Knowledge captured in systems and

Structural Capital structures

Relationship Value derived from satisfied

Capital customers, reliable suppliers, etc.

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Organizational Learning Processes

KNOWLEDGE
KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE
KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE
KNOWLEDGE
ACQUISITION
ACQUISITION SHARING
SHARING USE
USE

Extracting information Distributing Applying knowledge

and ideas from its knowledge to organizational
environment as well throughout the processes in ways
as through insight organization that improves the
organization’s
effectiveness
Examples in practice
Hiring skilled staff Posting case Giving staff
studies on intranet freedom to try out
ideas

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High Performance Work Practices
(HPWPs)
HPWPs are internal systems and structures
that are associated with successful companies
1. Employees are competitive advantage
2. Value of employees increased through specific
practices.
3. Maximum benefit when org practices are bundled

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High Performance Work Practices

No consensus, but HPWPs include:

• Employee involvement and job autonomy (and
their combination as self-directed teams).

• Employee competence (training, selection, etc.).

• Performance-based rewards

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Stakeholder Perspective

 Stakeholders: any entity who affects or is

affected by the firm’s objectives and actions
 Personalizes the open systems perspective
 Challenges with stakeholder perspective:
• Stakeholders have conflicting interests
• Firms have limited resources

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Stakeholders: Values and Ethics
 Values and ethics prioritize
stakeholder interests
 Values
• Stable, evaluative beliefs, guide
preferences for outcomes or
courses of action in various
situations
 Ethics
• Moral principles/values,
determine whether actions are
right/wrong and outcomes are
good or bad
Lockheed Martin

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Types of Individual Behavior

Goal-directed behaviors under

Task Performance
person’s control

Contextual performance – cooperation

Organizational
and helpfulness beyond required job
Citizenship
duties

more
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Types of Individual Behavior (con’t)

Counterproductive Voluntary behaviors that potentially

Work Behaviors harm the organization

Joining/staying with Agreeing to employment relationship;

the Organization remaining in that relationship

Maintaining Work
Attending work at required times
Attendance

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Increasing Workforce Diversity
 Surface-level diversity
• Observable demographic and other overt differences in
people (e.g. race, ethnicity, gender, age)
 Deep-level diversity
• Differences in psychological characteristics (e.g.
personalities, beliefs, values, and attitudes)
• Example: Differences across age cohorts (e.g. Gen-Y)
 Implications
• Leveraging the diversity advantage
• Also diversity challenges (e.g. teams, conflict)
• Ethical imperative of diversity

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Employment Relationships
 Work/life balance
• Minimizing conflict between work and nonwork
demands number one indicator of career success

 Virtual work
• Using information technology to perform one’s job away
from the traditional physical workplace
• Telework – issues of replacing face time, clarifying
employment expectations

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