CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION
Learning Objectives:
After reading this chapter, you will be able to
1) define the concept of management
2) understand what managers do
3) Define what is organizational behaviour
4) understand the disciplines that contribute to the development of organizational
behaviour

Activity
1. What do mean by management?
2. Do you have managers in your organization? If so what they do?
3. If you are a manager, what challenges do have?

1.1. Definition of Management

There were four blind men. They wanted to see an elephant. The first man described
elephant was like a pillar, second man as rope, the thirdman as wall and the last man as
a fan. Similarly, there was no single definition of Management. To have an
understanding, three important definitions are discussed below:

“Management may be defined as the art of securing maximum results with a minimum
of effort so as to secure maximum prosperity and happiness for both employer and
employee and give the public the best possible service”. -JOHN.E.MEE

“Management is the art of getting things done through and with people in formally
organised groups. It is the art of creating the environment in which people can perform
as individuals yet cooperate towards attainment of group goals. It is the art of removing
blocks to such performance, a way of optimising efficiency to reach goals.” -HAROLD
KOONTZ

“Management is a distinct process consisting of planning, organising, actuating, and

controlling performed to determine and accomplish the objectives by the use of people
and resources.” -GEORGE. R. TERRY
From the give definitions one can understand that management is the process that deals
with planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling so as to effectively and
efficiently administer organizational resources.

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 Features of Management:

You have gone through three popular definitions of Management. Each definition has
its own emphasis. Based on them, we can narrate the following features of
Management:
1.Activity: Management is a process of organised activity. It is concerned with
the efficient use of resources like men, money and materials in the
organisation.
2.Group Activity: Management cannot exist independent of the group or
organisation it manages. It is a cardinal part of any group activity and inspires
workers to put forth their best efforts.
3.Universal Activity: Management is a universal phenomenon. However,
management principles are not universally applicable but are modified to suit
the given situation and the type of organisation.
4.Purposeful: Management is a goal-oriented activity. It is concerned with
the accomplishment of goals through its various functions like planning,
organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling.
5.Process: Management is a process, which involves planning, organizing, directing
and controlling the efforts of human resources in the use of material resources.
These are the basic functions, which every manager performs for the
accomplishment of certain goals.
6.Intangible: Management is abstract and cannot be seen with the eyes. It is
indicated by the quality of the organisation and the results. Thus, feeling of
management is result-oriented.
7.Profession: Management is a profession because most of its established
principles are being applied in practice.
8.Interdisciplinary: This implies that, even though management has been developed
as a distinct discipline, it draws knowledge and concepts from other social
sciences like psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, and so on.
9.Decision-making: Management process involves decision-making at various levels
for getting things done by others. It involves selecting the most appropriate
alternative out of the several available.
10. Science and an art: Management has developed certain principles and laws, which
have wide applications. So it is treated as a science. It is also an art, because it is concerned with
the application of knowledge for the solution of organisational problems.
Check Your Progress:
1. When management is performed at all levels of organization, it is said to
be

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 2. Management requires the knowledge of various disciplines and
hence it is

1.2. What Managers Do?

Managers get things done through other people. They make decisions, allocate resources, and
direct the activities of others to attain goals. Managers do their work in an organization, which
is a consciously coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people that functions on a
relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals. By this definition,
manufacturing and service firms are organizations, and so are schools, hospitals, churches,
military units, retail stores, police departments, and local, state, others and who are responsible
for attaining goals in these organizations are managers (sometimes called administrators,
especially in not-for-profit organizations). What mangers do can be best understood in terms of
managerial functions, managerial roles and managerial skills.
1.2.1. Management Functions
In the early part of the twentieth century, French industrialist Henri Fayol wrote that all managers
perform five management functions: planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and
controlling. 5 Today, we have condensed these to four: planning, organizing, leading, and
controlling. Because organizations exist to achieve goals, someone has to define those goals and
the means for achieving them; management is that someone. The planning function
encompasses defining an organization’s goals, establishing an overall strategy for achieving
those goals, and developing a comprehensive set of plans to integrate and coordinate activities.
Evidence indicates this function increases the most as managers move from lower-level to mid-
level management. Managers are also responsible for designing an organization’s structure. We
call this function organizing . It includes determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do
them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be
made.
Every organization contains people, and it is management’s job to direct and coordinate those
people. This is the leading function. When managers motivate employees, direct their activities,
select the most effective communication channels, or resolve conflicts among members, they’re
engaging in leading.

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To ensure things are going as they should, management must monitor the organization’s
performance and compare it with previously set goals. If there are any significant deviations, it is
management’s job to get the organization back on track. This monitoring, comparing, and
potential correcting is the controlling function.
So, using the functional approach, the answer to the question “What do managers do?” is that
they plan, organize, lead, and control.

1.2.2. Management Roles

In the late 1960s, Henry Mintzberg, then a graduate student at MIT, undertook a careful study of
five executives to determine what they did on their jobs. On the basis of his observations,
Mintzberg concluded that managers perform ten different, highly interrelated roles—or sets of
behaviors. According to Mintzberg there are ten managerial roles which primarly classified in to
three: (1) interpersonal, (2) informational,
or (3) decisional.
Interpersonal Roles All managers are required to perform duties that are ceremonial and
symbolic in nature. For instance, when the president of a college hands out diplomas at
commencement or a factory supervisor gives a group of high school students a tour of the plant,
he or she is acting in a figurehead role. All managers also have a leadership role. This role
includes hiring, training, motivating, and disciplining employees. The third role within the
interpersonal grouping is the liaison role, or contacting others who provide the manager with
information. The sales manager who obtains information from the quality-control manager in his
or her own company has an internal liaison relationship. When that sales manager has contacts
with other sales executives through a marketing trade association, he or she has an outside liaison
relationship.
Informational Roles All managers, to some degree, collect information from outside
organizations and institutions, typically by scanning the news media (including the Internet) and
talking with other people to learn of changes in the public’s tastes, what competitors may be
planning, and the like. Mintzberg called this the monitor role. Managers also act as a conduit to
transmit information to organizational members. This is the disseminator role. In addition,
managers perform a spokesperson role when they represent the organization to outsiders.

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Decisional Roles Mintzberg identified four roles that require making choices. In the
entrepreneur role, managers initiate and oversee new projects that will improve their
organization’s performance. As disturbance handlers, managers take corrective action in
response to unforeseen problems. As resource allocators, managers are responsible for
allocating human, physical, and monetary resources. Finally, managers perform a negotiator
role, in which they discuss issues and bargain with other units to gain advantages for their own
unit.

Summary of Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles

Roles Description Identifiable Activities
Interpersonal Symbolic head: obliged to perform a Greeting visitors: signing legal
Figurehead number of routine duties of a legal or documents
social nature
Leader Responsible for the motivation and Performing virtually all activities
activation of employees: responsible for that involve employees
staffing, training, and associated duties.
Liaison Maintains self-developed network of Acknowledging mail: doing
outside contacts and informers who external board work: performing
provide favours and information other activities that involve
outsiders
Informational Seeks and receives wide variety of Reading periodicals and reports:
Monitor special information (much of it current) maintaining personal contacts
to develop thorough understanding of
organisation and environment: emerges
as nerve center of internal and external
information about the organisation
Disseminator Transmits information received from Holding informational meetings:
other employees to members of the making phone calls to relay
organisation- some information is information
factual, some involves interpretation
and integration influencers
Spokesperson Transmits of diverse value positions of Holding board meeting giving
organisational information to outsiders information to the media
on organisation plans, policies, actions,
result, etc.: serves as expert on
organisation’s industry
Decisional Searches organisation and its Organizing strategy and review
Entrepreneur environment for opportunities and sessions to develop new programs
initiates improvement projects to bring
about change: supervises design of
certain projects as well
Disturbance handler Responsible for corrective action when Organizing strategy and review
organisation faces important sessions that involve disturbances

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 disturbances. and crises
Resource allocator Responsible for the allocation of Scheduling: requesting
organisational resources of all kinds- in authorization: performing any
effect, the making or approval of all activity that involves budgeting
significant organisational decisions and the programming if employees
work
Negotiator Responsible for representing the Participating in union contract
organisation at major negotiations negotiations or in those with
suppliers

1.2.3. Management Skills

Still another way of considering what managers do is to look at the skills or competencies
they need to achieve their goals. Researchers have identified a number of skills that
differentiate effective from ineffective managers.
Technical Skills Technical skills encompass the ability to apply specialized knowledge
or expertise. When you think of the skills of professionals such as civil engineers or oral
surgeons, you typically focus on the technical skills they have learned through extensive
formal education. Of course, professionals don’t have a monopoly on technical skills, and
not all technical skills have to be learned
in schools or other formal training programs. All jobs require some specialized expertise,
and many people develop their technical skills on the job.
Human Skills The ability to understand, communicate with, motivate, and support other
people, both individually and in groups, defines human skills. Many people are
technically proficient but poor listeners, unable to understand the needs of others, or
weak at managing conflicts.
Because managers get things done through other people, they must have good human
skills.
Conceptual Skills Managers must have the mental ability to analyze and diagnose
complex situations. These tasks require conceptual skills. Decision making, for instance,
requires managers to identify problems, develop alternative solutions to correct those
problems, evaluate those alternative solutions, and select the best one. After they have
selected a course of action, managers must be able to organize a plan of action and then

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 execute it. The ability to integrate new ideas with existing processes and innovate on the
job are also crucial conceptual skills for today’s managers.

One common thread runs through the functions, roles, skills, activities, and approaches to
management: Each recognizes the paramount importance of managing people, whether it
is called “the leading function,” “interpersonal roles,” “human skills,” or “human
resource management, communication, and networking activities.” It is clear managers
must develop their people skills to be effective and successful.

1.3. What is Organizational Behaviour (OB)?

Organizational behavior (often abbreviated OB) is a field of study that investigates the impact
that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of
applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness. That’s a mouthful,
so let’s break it down.
Organizational behavior is a field of study, meaning that it is a distinct area of expertise with a
common body of knowledge. What does it study? It studies three determinants of behavior in
organizations: individuals, groups, and structure.
In addition, OB applies the knowledge gained about individuals, groups, and the effect of
structure on behavior in order to make organizations work more effectively.
To sum up our definition, OB is the study of what people do in an organization and how their
behavior affects the organization’s performance. And because OB is concerned specifically with
employment-related situations, you should not be surprised that it emphasizes behavior as related
to concerns such as jobs, work, absenteeism, employment turnover, productivity, human
performance, and management.
Although debate exists about the relative importance of each, OB includes the core topics of
motivation, leader behavior and power, interpersonal communication, group structure and
processes, learning, attitude development and perception, change processes, conflict, work
design, and work stress.

Organizational behavior is an applied behavioral science built on contributions from a number of

behavioral disciplines, mainly psychology and social psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

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Psychology’s contributions have been mainly at the individual or micro level of analysis, while
the other disciplines have contributed to our understanding of macro concepts such as group
processes and organization.
Psychology
Psychology seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other
animals. Those who have contributed and continue to add to the knowledge of OB are learning
theorists, personality theorists, counseling psychologists, and, most important, industrial and
organizational psychologists.
Early industrial/organizational psychologists studied the problems of fatigue, boredom, and other
working conditions that could impede efficient work performance. More recently, their
contributions have expanded
to include learning, perception, personality, emotions, training, leadership effectiveness, needs
and motivational forces, job satisfaction, decision-making processes, performance appraisals,
attitude measurement, employee-selection techniques, work design, and job stress.
Social Psychology
Social psychology , generally considered a branch of psychology, blends concepts from both
psychology and sociology to focus on peoples’ influence on one another. One major study area is
change —how to implement it and how to reduce barriers to its acceptance. Social psychologists
also contribute to measuring, understanding, and changing attitudes; identifying communication
patterns; and building trust. Finally, they have made important contributions to our study of
group behavior, power, and conflict.

Sociology
While psychology focuses on the individual, sociology studies people in relation to their social
environment or culture. Sociologists have contributed to OB through their study of group
behavior in organizations, particularly formal and complex organizations. Perhaps most
important, sociologists have studied organizational culture, formal organization theory and
structure, organizational technology, communications, power, and conflict.
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.
Anthropologists’ work on cultures and environments has helped us understand differences in

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fundamental values, attitudes, and behavior between people in different countries and within
different organizations. Much of our current understanding of organizational culture,
organizational environments, and differences among national cultures is a result of the work of
anthropologists or those using their methods.
Check your Progress
Answer the following:
1. What are the basic functions of management?
2. What are the main roles of managers?
3. What are the basic skills of management?

Summary and implications for Managers

Managers need to develop their interpersonal, or people, skills to be effective in their jobs.
Organizational behavior (OB) investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have
on behavior within an organization, and it applies that knowledge to make organizations work
more effectively.
Specifically, OB focuses on how to improve productivity; reduce absenteeism, turnover, and
deviant workplace behavior; and increase organizational citizenship behavior and job
satisfaction. Here are a few specific implications for managers:
 Some generalizations provide valid insights into human behavior, but many are
erroneous. Organizational behavior uses systematic study to improve predictions
of behavior over intuition alone.
 Because people are different, we need to look at OB in a contingency framework,
using situational variables to explain cause-and-effect relationships.
 Organizational behavior offers specific insights to improve a manager’s people
skills.

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 Review questions
1. What is management?
2. What mangers do in their planning function?
3. What mangers do in their interpersonal roles?
4. Explain the managerial skills.
5. What is Organizational behaviour?
6. Explain the disciplines that contribute to development of OB

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