Download Foundations of Behaviour in Organisations

Foundations of Behaviour in Organisations
Dr. Berna Bridge
University of Leicester
Centre for Leadership and Management
Organisational Behaviour
 People differ in many ways. At work, those
difference influence how they interpret an
assignment, whether they like to be told what to do,
and how they handle challenges. Managers’
personalities and attitudes can also profoundly
affect the work place.
 People are an organisation’s most valuable resource
and the source of most difficult problems.
Organisational Behaviour
 Organisational Behaviour: (OB) An interdisciplinary
field dedicated to the study of how individuals and
groups tend to act in organisations.
(People may cooperate with, compete with, support
or undermine one another. People can distract the
organisation from its strategy by engaging in conflict
or they can pool their talents together to accomplish
much more.)
Organisational Behaviour
 Organisational citizenship: Work behaviour that goes
beyond job requirements and contributes as needed
to the organisational success.
 Three basic leadership skills are at the core of
identifying and solving people’s problems:
 diagnosing or gaining insight into the situation a
manager is trying to influence
 adopting individual behaviour and resources to meet
the needs of the situation
 communicating in a way that others can understand
and accept
 Thus, managers need insight about individual
differences to understand what a behavioural
situation is now and what it may be in the future.
 Managers can encourage organisational citizenship by
applying their knowledge of human behaviour, such as
selecting people with positive attitudes and
personalities, helping them to see how they can
contribute and enabling them to learn from and cope
with workplace challenges.
Attitude
 Attitude: A cognitive and effective evaluation that
predisposes a person to act in a certain way.
 Eg: A person who has the attitude ‘I love my work, it
is challenging and fun’ probably will tackle workrelated problems cheerfully, while one who comes to
work with the attitude ‘I hate my job’ will panic or
grumble.
Attitude
 Attitudes have three components:
 Cognitions (thoughts-beliefs, opinions)
 Affect (feeling-such as loving or hating the job)
 Behaviour
Work-related Attitudes
 To lead employees effectively, managers seek to
cultivate the kinds of attitudes that are associated
with high performance.
 Two attitudes that relate to high performance are
job satisfaction and organisational commitment.
Work-related Attitudes
 Job satisfaction: A positive attitude toward one’s
job.
(When their work matches their interest, when
working conditions and rewards are satisfactory and
when the employees like their co-workers. Research
shows that the link between satisfaction and
performance is generally small and is affected by
other factors.)
Work-related Attitudes
 Organisational commitment: Loyalty to and heavy
involvement in one’s organisation-this has become
especially important during the recent years with
tight labour market.
(An employee with a high degree of organisational
commitment say ‘we’ when talking about the
organisation.)
 Cognitive dissonance: A condition in which two
attitudes or a behaviour and an attitude conflict, a
psychological discomfort that occurs when individuals
recognise inconsistencies in their own behaviours and
attitude.
 For example: A person’s high level of organisational
commitment may conflict with that person’s
commitment to family members. If employees
routinely work evenings and weekends, their long
hours and dedication to the job may conflict with
their belief that family ties are important.
 Personality: The set of characteristics that underline
a relatively stable pattern of behaviour in response
to ideas, objects, or people in the environment. ( she
has a pleasant personality, he has an aggressive
personality…)
Big five personality factors
 Extroversion: The degree to which a person is
sociable, talkative, assertive, and comfortable with
interpersonal relationships.
 Agreeableness: The degree to which a person is able
to get along with others by being good natured,
cooperative, forgiving, understanding and trusting.
 Conscientiousness: The degree to which a person is
focused on a few goals, thus behaving in ways that
are responsible, dependable, persistent, and
achievement oriented.
Big five personality factors
 Emotional stability: The degree to which a person is
calm, enthusiastic, and secure rather than tense,
nervous, depressed, moody, or insecure.
 Openness to experience: The degree to which a
person has a broad range of interests and is
imaginative, creative, artistically sensitive, and willing
to consider new ideas.
 These factors represent a continuum, that is any
individual may exhibit a low, moderate or high degree
of each quality.
 A person who has an extremely high degree of
agreeableness would likely be described as warm,
friendly, and good natured while one at the opposite
extreme might be described as cold, rude or hard to
get along with.
 In general, having a moderate to high degree of each
of the personality factors is considered desirable for
a wide range of employees.
 In addition, certain factors may be particularly
important for specific kinds of work.
Attitudes and Behaviours Influenced by
Personality
 An individual’s personality influences a wide variety
of work related attitudes and behaviours.
 Locus of control: The tendency to place the primary
responsibility for one’s success or failure either
within oneself (internally) or on outside forces.
(externally)
Attitudes and Behaviours Influenced by
Personality
 People tend to differ in terms of what they tend to
attribute as the cause of their success or failure.
 Some people place the primary responsibility within
themselves, they feel in control of their own fate.
These people have a high internal locus of control.
These people are easier to motivate. They are better
able to handle complex information and problem
solving, are more achievement oriented but are also
more independent and more difficult to lead.
Attitudes and Behaviours Influenced by
Personality
 Other people believe that events in their lives occur
because of chance, luck or outside people and events.
They have a high external locus of control.
 They are harder to motivate, less involved in their
jobs, more likely to blame others when things go
wrong but easier to lead.
 Authoritarianism: The belief that power and status
differences should exist within the organisation.
 People with high authoritarianism tend to be
concerned with power and toughness, obey
recognised authority above them, stick to
conventional values, critically judge others, and
oppose the use of subjective feeling.
 The degree to which manager are authoritative will
influence how they wield and share power.
 The degree to which employees are authoritative will
influence how they react to their managers.
 If a manager and employee differ in their degree of
authoritarianism, the manager may have difficulty
leading effectively.
 Machiavellianism: The tendency to direct much of
one’s behaviour toward the acquisition of power and
the manipulation of others for personal gain.
 It is named after Niccolo Machiavelli, a sixteen
century author who wrote The Prince, a book for
nobleman of the day on how to acquire and use power.
 High Machs are predisposed to being pragmatic,
capable of lying to achieve personal goals, more likely
to win in win-lose situations, and more likely to
persuade than be persuaded.
 In loosely structured situations, high Machs actively
take control, while low Machs accept the direction
given by others. Low Machs thrive in highly
structures situations, while high Machs perform in a
detached, disinterested way. High Machs are
particularly good in jobs that require bargaining skills
or that involve substantial rewards for winning.
 Problem solving styles: Managers also need to
understand that individuals differ in the way they go
about gathering and evaluating information for
problem solving and decision making. There are four
functions (Carl Jung) related to this process:
 sensation, intuition, thinking and feeling.
 Gathering information and evaluating information are
separate activities.
 People gather information by sensation or intuition,
but not by both simultaneously.
 Sensation type people would rather work with known
facts and hard data and prefer routine and order in
gathering information.
 Intuitive type people would rather look for
possibilities than work with facts and prefer solving
new problems and using abstract concepts.
 People evaluate information by thinking and feeling.
 Thinking type individuals base their judgements on
impersonal analysis, using reason and logic rather
than personal values or emotional aspects of the
situation.
 Feeling type individuals base their judgements more
on personal feeling such as harmony and tend to make
decisions that result in approval from others.
 According to Jung, only one of the four functions is
dominant in an individual. However, the dominant
function is usually backed up by one of the functions
from the other set of paired opposites.
 Studies show that the sensation-thinking combination
characterises many managers in Western
industrialised societies. However, the intuitivethinking style is useful for top executives who have
to deal with many complex problems and make fast
decisions.