Summary - Organisational Behaviour (6011P0215Y)

Summary Organizational Behavior
Week 1: Chapter 1; Introduction to Organizational behavior
Workers: an individual who contributes to the accomplishment of work goals
Managers: an individual who achieves goals through other people
Management skills include 
- Technical skills: describe the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise
- Conceptual skills: involve the mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations
- People/human skills: include the ability to work with, understand, and motivate other
people, both individually and in groups

OB skills are important because…
o ‘Great places to work’ have better financial performance
o Better interpersonal skills attract and keep high-performing employees
o There is a strong association between the quality of workplace relationships and job satisfaction,
stress and turnover
o A lack of people skills is the top reason why some employees fail to advance

WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR?
Organizational behavior (OB): a field of study that investigates the impact of individuals, groups and
structure have on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward
improving an organization’s effectiveness
E.g., Decision-making, motivation, teamwork etc
However, technical, financial, economic aspects of the job do NOT belong in the OB field

LEVELS OF ANALYSIS IN ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOR




Individual level: Personality (input) – emotions (process) – stress (outcome)
E.g., highly neurotic people are more likely to experience negative emotions on daily basis, and, as a
result, they are more prone to stress

Group level: Group roles (input) – conflict (process) – group cohesion (outcome)
E.g., lack of clarity on who does what leads to conflict, and that results in low cohesion

Organizational level: Culture (input) – change practices (process) – survival (outcome)
E.g., diverse culture makes it easier to adjust to changes and as a result, increase chances of survival

Cross level: Personality (individual output) – leadership (group process) – survival (organizational
outcome)
E.g., certain personality types (e.g., internal locus of control) emerge as leaders during turbulent
items to ensure survival of the company

,EFFECTIVE VS SUCCESFUL MANAGERS
RQ: “ Do managers who move up most quickly (successful managers) in an organization do the same
activities and with the same emphasis as managers who do the best job (effective managers)?”
- Successful: in terms of promotion
- Effective: in terms of the quantity and quality of their performance and the satisfaction and
commitment of employees

Managerial activities can be grouped in four types:
1) Traditional management  decision making, planning and controlling
2) Communication  exchanging routine information and processing paperwork
3) Human resource management  motivating, discipling, managing conflict, staffing and training
4) Networking  socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders

SHOW THE VALUE OF SYSTEMATIC STUDY TO OB
You can improve your predictive ability by supplementing intuiting with a more systematic approach:
Systematic study
- Predicting behavior based on scientific evidence
- Looking at relationships, causes and effects
- Systematic evaluation of information (e.g., via statistics)
Evidence-based management
- Complements systematic study
- Basing managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence

DISCIPLINES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE OB FIELD
 Psychology: the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of
human and other animals
 Social psychology: an area of psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology to
focus on the influence of people on one other
 Sociology: the study of people in relation to their social environment or culture
 Anthropology: the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities

DEMONSTRATE WHY FEW ABSOLUTES APPLY TO OB
Only a few absolutes apply to OB (absolutes = statements that are always true), because people are
complex
 Two people act differently in the same situation
 The same person acts differently in different situations

Contingency variables are situational factors; variables that moderate the relationship between two
or more variables  reflect individual differences

IDENTIFY THE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITES OF OB
CONCEPTS
 Workforce diversity and inclusion
 Continuing globalization
 Technology and social media
 (Un)ethical behavior
 Corporate social responsibility (CSR)


Week 1: Chapter 2; Diversity & Discrimination
Diversity is an organizational resource that can boost competitive advantage
Effective management of diverse settings is needed

, TWO FORMS OF WORKPLACE DIVERSITY
Work place diversity: differences among people due to age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual
orientation and many other characteristic used to distinguish people
 Surface-level diversity: differences in easily perceived characteristic, such as
gender, race, ethnicity, age or physical disability
 Deep-level diversity: differences in value, personality, and work preferences
that become progressively more important for determining similarity as
people get to now one another
Surface-level diversity does NOT necessarily reflect deep-level diversity!

GENDER IDENTITY & SEXUAL ORIENTATION
- Gender identity: Male, female, a blend of both, neither, etc.
- Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual etc
Neither gender identity nor sexual orientation appear to affect job performance or leadership
But women earn less than men for the same positions & have fewer professional opportunities

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT FOR WOMEN TO CLIMB THE LADDER?
Role incongruity theory of prejudice (Eagly & Karau, 2002)
- We evaluate group positively when their typical characteristics align with that group’s social roles
- Characteristics associated with the female gender stereotype and those associated with the
typical leadership stereotype do not align!
 double blind

CHANGES IN THE WORKPLACE
Workplace is becoming more diverse due to fundamental societal changes that happen relatively fast:
o Higher employment age
o More women in the workforce
o Higher number of LGBTQ+ people in the workforce
o Higher number of immigrants or native-born children of immigrants
While much has changed, full acceptance and accommodation of minority groups remain a work

WORKPLACE DICRIMINATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS
Discrimination: is a note a difference between things – discrimination is bad once it becomes unfair
Stereotyping: judging someone based on our perception of the group to which that person belongs

Unfair discrimination in the workplace
 Discrimination policies or practices: actions taken by representatives of the organization that
deny equal opportunity to perform or unequal rewards for performance
 Sexual harassment: unwanted sexual advances and other verbal or physical conduct of sexual
nature that create a hostile or offensive work environment
 Intimidation: overt threats or bullying directed at members of specific groups of employees
 Mocker and insults: jokes or negative stereotypes, sometimes jokes that are taken too far
 Exclusion: exclusion of certain people forms job opportunities, social events, discussion
 Incivility: disrespectful treatment, including behaving in an aggressive manner, interrupting
people or ignoring their opinions

Discrimination has negative consequences for organizations:
 Reduced productivity and Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB; doing voluntary extra tasks)
 More conflict
 Increased turnover
 Potentially not hiring adequate job candidates