Chapter 1
What Is Organizational Behavior?
PPT 1.2
Chapter Overview
This chapter introduces the concept of organizational behavior. The focus of the text is that
coupling individual understanding of behavior gained through experience with that gained
through systematic organizational behavior (OB) analysis will help managers become more
effective.
Many of the important challenges being faced by today’s managers are described, as are the
three levels of OB study. The outline of the text is described in relation to these three levels.
Chapter Objectives
PPT 1.3
After studying this chapter, the student should be able to:
1. Define organizational behavior (referred to as OB throughout the text).
2. Show the value of systematic study to OB.
3. Identify the major behavioral science disciplines that contribute to OB.
4. Demonstrate why few absolutes apply to OB.
5. Identify managers’ challenges and opportunities in applying OB concepts.
6. Compare the three levels of analysis in this text’s OB model.
Suggested Lecture Outline
,I. INTRODUCTION
A. Until the late 1980s, business school curricula emphasized the technical aspects of
management, focusing on economics, accounting, finance, and quantitative
techniques.
1. Course work in human behavior and people skills received relatively less
attention.
2. During the past three decades, however, business faculty have come to realize
the role that understanding human behavior plays in determining a manager’s
effectiveness, and required courses on people skills have been added to many
curricula.
B. Developing managers’ interpersonal skills also helps organizations attract and keep
high-performing employees.
1. Regardless of labor market conditions, outstanding employees are always in
short supply.
2. Companies known as good places to work have a big advantage.
3. A recent survey of hundreds of workplaces and over 200,000 respondents
showed the social relationships among co-workers and supervisors were
strongly related to overall job satisfaction.
a. Positive social relationships also were associated with lower stress at work
and lower intentions to quit.
b. Having managers with good interpersonal skills is likely to make the
workplace more pleasant, which in turn makes it easier to hire and keep
qualified people.
c. Increasing the OB element in organizations can foster social responsibility
awareness.
4. We have come to understand that in today’s competitive and demanding
workplace, managers can’t succeed on their technical skills alone.
a. They also have to have good people skills.
b. This book has been written to help both managers and potential managers
develop those people skills.
PPT 1.4
II. MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
,A. The roles of a manager — and the necessary skills to perform as one — are
constantly evolving.
1. Yet, more than ever, individuals are placed into management positions without
management training or informed experience.
2. Furthermore, a Gallup poll found that organizations chose the wrong candidate
for management positions 82 percent of the time.
B. Organizational Behavior (OB) Defined.
1. Organizational behavior (OB) studies the influence that
PPT 1.5
individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior
within organizations. The chief goal of OB is to apply that knowledge toward
improving an organization’s effectiveness.
2. OB studies three determinants of behavior in organizations:
a. individuals
b. groups
c. structure
3. OB applies the knowledge gained from this study to make organizations work
more effectively.
4. This text will focus on:
PPT 1.6
a. motivation
b. leader behavior and power
c. interpersonal communication
d. group structure and processes
e. attitude development and perception
f. change processes
g. conflict and negotiation
PPT 1.7
h. work design
C. Effective versus Successful Managerial Activities.
1. What makes one manager more effective than another? To answer the question,
Fred Luthans, a prominent OB researcher, and his associates looked at what
managers do from a unique perspective.
2. Luthans and his associates studied more than 450 managers. All engaged in four
managerial activities:
, a. Traditional management. Decision making, planning, and controlling.
b. Communication. Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork.
c. Human resources (HR) management. Motivating, disciplining, managing
conflict, staffing, and training.
d. Networking. Socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders.
3. Among managers who were successful (defined in terms of speed of promotion
within their organizations), networking made the largest relative contribution
to success and HR management activities made the least relative contribution,
which is the opposite of the average manager.
I. COMPLEMENTING INTUITION WITH SYSTEMATIC STUDY
A. People develop intuitive understandings of the behaviors of other people through
experience. This experiential, common sense method of “reading” human behavior
can often lead to erroneous predictions.
B. You can improve your predictive ability by taking the
systematic approach to the study of human behavior. PPT 1.8
C. The fundamental assumption of the systematic approach is that human behavior is
not random. There are fundamental consistencies that underlie the behavior of all
individuals, and these fundamental consistencies can be identified and then
modified to reflect individual differences.
1. Systematic study of behavior means: examining
PPT 1.9
relationships, attempting to attribute causes and effects,
and basing our conclusions on scientific evidence — that is, on data gathered
under controlled conditions and measured and interpreted in a reasonably
rigorous manner.
2. Evidence-based Management (EBM): This
complementary approach to systematic study involves PPT 1.10
basing managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence. Managers
must become more scientific about how they think about managerial problems
and not rely on instinct.
3. Intuition: your “gut feelings” about “what makes others tick.” This natural
ability to guess how people will react is most accurate when coupled with
systematic thinking and evidence-based management.
D. Big Data.
What Is Organizational Behavior?
PPT 1.2
Chapter Overview
This chapter introduces the concept of organizational behavior. The focus of the text is that
coupling individual understanding of behavior gained through experience with that gained
through systematic organizational behavior (OB) analysis will help managers become more
effective.
Many of the important challenges being faced by today’s managers are described, as are the
three levels of OB study. The outline of the text is described in relation to these three levels.
Chapter Objectives
PPT 1.3
After studying this chapter, the student should be able to:
1. Define organizational behavior (referred to as OB throughout the text).
2. Show the value of systematic study to OB.
3. Identify the major behavioral science disciplines that contribute to OB.
4. Demonstrate why few absolutes apply to OB.
5. Identify managers’ challenges and opportunities in applying OB concepts.
6. Compare the three levels of analysis in this text’s OB model.
Suggested Lecture Outline
,I. INTRODUCTION
A. Until the late 1980s, business school curricula emphasized the technical aspects of
management, focusing on economics, accounting, finance, and quantitative
techniques.
1. Course work in human behavior and people skills received relatively less
attention.
2. During the past three decades, however, business faculty have come to realize
the role that understanding human behavior plays in determining a manager’s
effectiveness, and required courses on people skills have been added to many
curricula.
B. Developing managers’ interpersonal skills also helps organizations attract and keep
high-performing employees.
1. Regardless of labor market conditions, outstanding employees are always in
short supply.
2. Companies known as good places to work have a big advantage.
3. A recent survey of hundreds of workplaces and over 200,000 respondents
showed the social relationships among co-workers and supervisors were
strongly related to overall job satisfaction.
a. Positive social relationships also were associated with lower stress at work
and lower intentions to quit.
b. Having managers with good interpersonal skills is likely to make the
workplace more pleasant, which in turn makes it easier to hire and keep
qualified people.
c. Increasing the OB element in organizations can foster social responsibility
awareness.
4. We have come to understand that in today’s competitive and demanding
workplace, managers can’t succeed on their technical skills alone.
a. They also have to have good people skills.
b. This book has been written to help both managers and potential managers
develop those people skills.
PPT 1.4
II. MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
,A. The roles of a manager — and the necessary skills to perform as one — are
constantly evolving.
1. Yet, more than ever, individuals are placed into management positions without
management training or informed experience.
2. Furthermore, a Gallup poll found that organizations chose the wrong candidate
for management positions 82 percent of the time.
B. Organizational Behavior (OB) Defined.
1. Organizational behavior (OB) studies the influence that
PPT 1.5
individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior
within organizations. The chief goal of OB is to apply that knowledge toward
improving an organization’s effectiveness.
2. OB studies three determinants of behavior in organizations:
a. individuals
b. groups
c. structure
3. OB applies the knowledge gained from this study to make organizations work
more effectively.
4. This text will focus on:
PPT 1.6
a. motivation
b. leader behavior and power
c. interpersonal communication
d. group structure and processes
e. attitude development and perception
f. change processes
g. conflict and negotiation
PPT 1.7
h. work design
C. Effective versus Successful Managerial Activities.
1. What makes one manager more effective than another? To answer the question,
Fred Luthans, a prominent OB researcher, and his associates looked at what
managers do from a unique perspective.
2. Luthans and his associates studied more than 450 managers. All engaged in four
managerial activities:
, a. Traditional management. Decision making, planning, and controlling.
b. Communication. Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork.
c. Human resources (HR) management. Motivating, disciplining, managing
conflict, staffing, and training.
d. Networking. Socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders.
3. Among managers who were successful (defined in terms of speed of promotion
within their organizations), networking made the largest relative contribution
to success and HR management activities made the least relative contribution,
which is the opposite of the average manager.
I. COMPLEMENTING INTUITION WITH SYSTEMATIC STUDY
A. People develop intuitive understandings of the behaviors of other people through
experience. This experiential, common sense method of “reading” human behavior
can often lead to erroneous predictions.
B. You can improve your predictive ability by taking the
systematic approach to the study of human behavior. PPT 1.8
C. The fundamental assumption of the systematic approach is that human behavior is
not random. There are fundamental consistencies that underlie the behavior of all
individuals, and these fundamental consistencies can be identified and then
modified to reflect individual differences.
1. Systematic study of behavior means: examining
PPT 1.9
relationships, attempting to attribute causes and effects,
and basing our conclusions on scientific evidence — that is, on data gathered
under controlled conditions and measured and interpreted in a reasonably
rigorous manner.
2. Evidence-based Management (EBM): This
complementary approach to systematic study involves PPT 1.10
basing managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence. Managers
must become more scientific about how they think about managerial problems
and not rely on instinct.
3. Intuition: your “gut feelings” about “what makes others tick.” This natural
ability to guess how people will react is most accurate when coupled with
systematic thinking and evidence-based management.
D. Big Data.
