Introduction to

Organizational
Behavior
 Learning Outcomes
◉ After studying this chapter, you should be able to:
◉ Demonstrate the importance of interpersonal skills in the
workplace.
◉ Define organizational behavior (OB).
◉ Identify managers’ challenges and opportunities in applying
OB concepts
◉ Developing an OB Model

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 OB is for Everyone
◉ Why do some people do well in organizational settings while
others have difficulty?
◉ What people-related challenges have you noticed in the
workplace?
◉ Why should you care about understanding other people?
◉ Does job satisfaction really make a difference?

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Demonstrate the importance of interpersonal skills in
the workplace.

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A survey of over 2,100 CFOs across 20 industries
indicated that a lack of interpersonal skills is the
top reason why some employees fail to advance

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 The Importance of Interpersonal
Skills
◉ Incorporating OB principles into the workplace can yield superior financial
performance.
◉ Developing managers’ interpersonal skills helps organizations attract and keep high-
performing employees.
◉ There are strong associations between the quality of workplace relationships and
employee job satisfaction, stress, and turnover.
◉ Research suggests that positive work relationships help employees to flourish, leading
to improvements in job and life satisfaction, positive emotions at work, and
perceptions that one’s work has meaning.
◉ Fosters social responsibility awareness

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 Management and Organizational
Behavior
Manager An individual who achieves goals through other people.
Organization 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
Planning A process that includes defining goals, establishing strategy, and developing
plans to coordinate activities
Organizing 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.
Leading A function that includes motivating employees, directing others, selecting
the most effective communication channels, and
resolving conflicts.
Controlling Monitoring activities to ensure they are being accomplished as planned and
correcting any significant deviations

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Management roles

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 Management skills
Technical Skills The ability to apply specialized knowledge or
expertise.

Human Skills The ability to work with, understand, and motivate

other people, both individually and in groups.

Conceptual Skills The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex

situations

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 Effective versus Successful Managerial
Activities
◉ Do managers who move up the quickest in an organization do
the same activities and with the same emphasis as managers
who do the best job?

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Effective versus Successful Managerial
Activities

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 Successful Manager -
defined in terms of
speed of promotion
within their
organization.

Effective Manager -
defined in terms of
quantity and quality of
their performance and
the satisfaction and
commitment of
employees

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People are the key!” The technology can be purchased
and copied; it levels the playing field. The people, on
the other hand, cannot be copied. Although it may be
possible to clone human bodies, their ideas,
personalities, motivation, and organization cultural
values cannot be copied.

Internet retailer Zappos.com understands

how organizational behavior affects an
organization’s performance. The firm
maintains good employee relationships by
offering generous ben efits, extensive
training, and a positive work environment in
which employees are encouraged “to
create fun and a little weirdness.”

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 Organizational behavior
(OB)
◉ A field of study that investigates the impact individuals,
groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations,
for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving
an organization’s effectiveness.

OB is the study of what people do in an organization and the way

their behavior affects the organization’s performance

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 Core Areas
OB is concerned
◉ Motivation specifically with
employment-related
◉ Leader behavior and power situations

◉ Interpersonal communication
◉ Group structure and processes
◉ Attitude development and perception
◉ Change processes
◉ Conflict and negotiation
◉ Work design 15
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You’ve been “reading” people almost all your life by watching
their actions and interpreting what you see, or by trying to
predict what people might do under different conditions.

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Complementing Intuition with Systematic Study Underlying the systematic
approach in this text is the
belief that behavior is not
random.
Rather, we can identify
• These fundamental consistencies are very important.
fundamental consistencies
• Because they allow predictability. underlying the behavior of
• Behavior is generally predictable, and the systematic study of all individuals and modify
behavior is a means to making reasonably accurate predictions. them to reflect individual
differences.

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 Complementing Intuition with Systematic
Study

◉ Systematic study
Looking at relationships, attempting to attribute causes and effects, and
drawing conclusions based on scientific evidence
Evidence-based management
(EBM) The basing of managerial decisions on the best available
scientific evidence.
Intuition
An instinctive feeling not necessarily supported by research
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 Disciplines that contribute to the OB
field
Behavioral Science Contribution Unit of
Analysis
Psychology Seeks to measure, explain and change the behaviors by Individual
studying learning , perceptions, personality, emotions ,
training , leadership effectiveness, needs, motivational
forces, job satisfaction, and work design,

Social Psychology • Focus on people influence on one another. Group

• Change---how to implement it and how to reduce
barriers to its acceptance
• Contribute to measuring, understanding, and changing
attitudes; identifying communication patterns; and
building trust.

Sociology Studies people in relation to their social environment or Group

culture
Anthropology Seeks to understand differences in fundamental values, Organization
attitudes and behavior between people in different system
countries and within different organization 21
 Few Absolutes in OB

◉ Take into account the situational factors

Contingency variables or Situational factors
It moderate the relationship between two or more variables
For example
A job attractive to one person may not be to another; its appeal
is contingent on the person who holds it.

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Identify managers’ challenges and opportunities in
applying OB concepts

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Challenges and Opportunities for
OB

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 Challenges for OB
◉ Economic Pressures
◉ Continuing Globalization
◉ Workforce demographics
◉ Workforce diversity
◉ Customer service
◉ People skills
◉ Networked organizations
◉ Employee Well-Being at Work
◉ Positive Work environment
◉ Ethical Behavior

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Developing an OB Model

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 Inputs in OB Model

◉ Inputs (independent variable) are the variables like

personality, group structure, and organizational culture that
lead to processes.
◉ These variables set the stage for what will occur in an
organization later.

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 Processes in OB Model
◉ Processes are actions that individuals, groups, and organizations
engage in as a result of inputs and that lead to certain outcomes.
◉ At the individual level, processes include emotions and moods,
motivation, perception, and decision making.
◉ At the group level, they include communication, leadership,
power and politics, and conflict and negotiation.
◉ Finally, at the organizational level, processes include human
resource management and change practices.
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 Outcomes in OB Model
◉ Outcomes (dependent variable) are the key variables that you
want to explain or predict, and that are affected by some other
variables
◉ Scholars have emphasized individual-level outcomes, such as
attitudes and stress, task performance, citizenship behavior, and
withdrawal behavior.
◉ At the group level, cohesion and functioning are the dependent
variables.
◉ Finally, at the organizational level, overall productivity and
survival are the outcomes.
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 Outcomes in OB Model
Stress An unpleasant psychological process that occurs in response to
environmental pressures

Attitude Employee attitudes are the evaluations employees make,

ranging from positive to negative, about objects, people, or events

Task Performance The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing core

job tasks

Organizational Discretionary behavior that contributes to the psychological and

Citizenship Behavior social
environment of the workplace
Withdrawal Behavior The set of actions employees take to separate themselves from
the organization.
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 Outcomes in OB Model

Group Cohesion The extent to which members of a group support and validate one
another while at work.

Group Functioning The quantity and quality of a group’s work output.

Productivity The combination of the effectiveness and efficiency of an

organization

Organizational The degree to which an organization is able to exist and

Survival grow over the long term.

Effectiveness The degree to which an organization meets the needs of its

clientele
or customers.
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 Implications for
Managers
◉ Work on your interpersonal skills to increase your leadership
potential.
◉ Improve your technical skills and conceptual skills through
training and staying current with OB trends like big data.
◉ OB can improve your employees’ work quality and
productivity by showing you how to empower your
employees, design and implement change programs, improve
customer service, and help your employees balance work–
life conflicts
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