Download CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1
AN
INTRODUCTION
TO
ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR
A Breakthrough View on
Management?
Ten policies and practices to adopt to
change the culture and increase employee
productivity:
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Incentive pay
Employee ownership
Employment security
Selective recruiting
Competitive wages
– Information sharing
– Participation &
empowerment
– Cross-training
– Promoting from
within
– Self-managed teams
What is Organizational
Behavior?
• A relatively new field of inquiry
concerned with scientific study of
behavioral processes that occur in work
settings
• Encompasses topics like employee
attitudes, motivation, and performance
• Extends to larger organizational and
societal factors
What is Organizational
Behavior? (cont.)
• OB borrows from behavioral and social
sciences such as psychology, sociology,
political science, and anthropology.
• Most of what is borrowed comes from
psychology (Maslow, Herzberg, Skinner).
Why Bother? Or, Three Reasons
for Studying Organizational
Behavior
• Practical applications
• Personal growth
• Increased knowledge
Organizational Behavior
• Systematic study of the behavior and
attitudes of both individuals and groups
within organizations
Organizational Theory
• Focuses on organization as the unit of
analysis e.g. organizational goals,
technology, and culture
• Macro level perspective (across
organizational approach)
• Uses distinctly different research
methods, mostly surveys and
case studies
Fields Related to OB
• Human Resource Management
• Organizational Development
Human Resource
Management
• Applies principles of behavioral sciences
in the workplace
• Concerned with applied techniques and
behavioral technology
• Links the individual and the organization
by designing systems to attract, develop,
and motivate individuals within an
organization
Organizational Development
• Involved in the introduction of successful
changes in organizations
• Macro perspective
• Focuses on changing structure and
changing values of organization
Emergence of OB Historical View
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Scientific Management
Human Relations Approach
Contingency Approach
Culture-Quality Movement
Scientific Management
• Developed by Frederick Taylor
• Detailed analysis of tasks and time-andmotion studies
• Piece-rate pay schemes to improve
productivity
• “One best way” to perform task
Criticisms of Scientific
Management
• Lots of work and time involved to arrive
at standards
• Workers resist having their effort and
productivity measured
• Workers oppose changes in pay schemes
Example of Pay Scheme
• Schmidt, a pig-iron handler
• Hauled pig-iron
• Increased output by 280%, yet pay
increased only 61%
• Taylor believed inequity was justified
because management was entitled to
substantial profits
Human Relations Approach
• Emphasized importance of motivation
and attitudes in explaining worker
behavior
• Drew strength from Hawthorne Studies
(important because social factors
influence worker behavior)
Human Relations Approach
(cont.)
• Important studies and aspects of this
approach
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Relay Assembly Room Study
Hawthorne Effect
Conclusion
Problem
Relay Assembly Room Study
• Objective was to determine what effect
changes in work setting would have on
women’s productivity
• Introduced various different changes:
rest periods, free lunch, shortened work
day, five day work week, variations in
pay method
Relay Assembly Room Study
(cont.)
• All changes followed an upward trend in
productivity over the course of the study.
Hawthorne Effect
• People will act differently when being
studied than they do in normal situations.
Conclusions
• Social effects on the work setting are very
important to employees.
Problem
• Assumes that workers who are satisfied
will be more productive
• Has never been proven
Contingency Approach
• Acknowledges the difficulty of offering
simple general principles to explain or
predict behavior in organizational
settings
• Seeks to identify the factor necessary for
a given principle to hold
• Recognizes interdependency
Culture/Quality Movement
• Quick interest in corporate culture and
quality improvement
• Emphasizes quality, service, high
performance, and flexibility
• Productivity and financial returns are
enhanced
Challenges Confronting
Managers in the 21st Century
• Workforce diversity
• Contingent workers
• Expression of emotions at work
Workforce Diversity
• One major conclusion of the Work Force
2000 study was that a large proportion of
the new entrants to the labor force for the
near future will be from demographic
categories other than that of white males.
• Many managers still face the challenge of
how diversity should be specifically
“managed”.
Contingent Workers
• The use of contingent, or temporary
workers, is surging.
– Over 400% percent in the past 15 years
• The superficial advantages to employers
are greater flexibility and savings on
perks.
Contingent Workers (cont.)
• However, it is not at all clear that many
temps benefit from the supposed
“gateway” opportunity that contingent
employment may offer.
• A major concern for managers is how to
effectively manage employees who do not
have a sense of commitment or
loyalty to their employer.
The Expression of Emotions
at Work
• Evidence of this growing tendency is
given by data on the rise of workplace
violence.
– Murder in the workplace is the fastest
growing of homicides.
– The increase in hate crimes in society in
general has been also spreading into the
workplace.
The Expression of Emotions
at Work (cont.)
• Factors that contribute to greater
violence at work include: failure to screen
for unstable applicants, mediocre
supervision that fails to manage potential
conflict, and perceived inequities.
• The propensity to act on strong positive
emotion is also an emerging
challenge for managers.
The Expression of Emotions
at Work (cont.)
– Workplace romances
– There is a growing concern with the
misuse of power in the work place:
instances of sexual harassment
Criticisms of the Field
• Findings in field are too obvious
– Reading in results of studies
– Findings are self-evident to anyone
– Hindsight Bias (the tendency to claim that
we would have foreseen the relative
inevitability of an outcome)