1. among themselves in terms of what they want to achieve and have little loyalty to
one another, the group is not cohesive.
2. There is ample evidence showing that cohesive groups are more effective.
a. These results are found both for groups that are studied in highly controlled
laboratory settings and also for work teams observed in field settings.
b. This fits with our intuitive sense that people tend to work harder in groups that
have a common purpose.
3. Companies attempt to increase cohesion in a variety of ways ranging from brief
icebreaker sessions to social events like picnics, parties, and outdoor
adventure-team retreats.
4. Throughout the book, we will try to assess whether these specific efforts are likely
to result in increases in group cohesiveness.
5. We’ll also consider ways that picking the right people to be on the team in the first
place might be an effective way to enhance cohesion.
B. Group functioning
1. In the same way that positive job attitudes can be associated with higher levels of
task performance, group cohesion should lead to positive group functioning.
2. Group functioning refers to the quantity and quality of a group’s work output.
3. What does it mean to say that a group is functioning effectively?
a. In some organizations, an effective group is one that stays focused on a core
task and achieves its ends as specified.
b. Other organizations look for teams that are able to work together collaboratively
to provide excellent customer service.
c. Still others put more of a premium on group creativity and the flexibility to
adapt to changing situations. In each case, different types of activities will be
required to get the most from the team.
C. Productivity
1. The highest level of analysis in organizational behavior is the organization as a
whole.
2. An organization is productive if it achieves its goals by transforming inputs into
outputs at the lowest cost. This requires both effectiveness and efficiency.
3. A hospital is effective when it successfully meets the needs of its clientele.
a. It is efficient when it can do so at a low cost.
b. If a hospital manages to achieve higher output from its present staff by reducing
the average number of days a patient is confined to bed or increasing the
number of staff–patient contacts per day, we say the hospital has gained
productive efficiency.
4. A business firm is effective when it attains its sales or market share goals, but its
productivity also depends on achieving those goals efficiently.
5. Popular measures of organizational efficiency include return on investment, profit
per dollar of sales, and output per hour of labor.
6. Service organizations must include customer needs and requirements in assessing
their effectiveness.
a. A clear chain of cause and effect runs from employee attitudes and behavior to
customer attitudes and behavior to a service organization’s productivity.
D. Survival
1. The final outcome we will consider is organizational survival, which is simply
evidence that the organization is able to exist and grow over the long term.
2. The survival of an organization depends not just on how productive the organization
is, but also on how well it fits with its environment.
3. A company that is very productively making goods and services of little value to the
market is unlikely to survive for long, so survival factors in things like perceiving
the market successfully, making good decisions about how and when to pursue
opportunities, and engaging in successful change management to adapt to new
business conditions are important.
E. Having reviewed the input, process, and outcome model, we’re going to change the
figure up a little bit by grouping topics together based on whether we study them at the
individual, group, or organizational level.
1. As you can see in Exhibit 1-6, we will deal with inputs, processes, and outcomes at
all three levels of analysis, but we group the chapters as shown here to correspond
with the typical ways research has been done in these areas.
2. It is easier to understand one unified presentation about how personality leads to
motivation, which leads to performance, than to jump around levels of analysis.
3. Because each level builds on the one that precedes it, after going through them in
sequence, you will have a good idea of how the human side of organizations
functions. (Exhibit 1-6)
II. Summary and Implications for Managers
A. Managers need to develop their interpersonal, or people, skills to be effective in their
jobs.
B. 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.
C. Specific implications for managers are below:
1. Resist the inclination to rely on generalizations; some provide valid insights into
human behavior, but many are erroneous.
2. Use metrics and situational variables rather than “hunches” to explain
cause-and-effect relationships.
3. Work on your interpersonal skills to increase your leadership potential.
4. Improve your technical skills and conceptual skills through training and staying
current with organizational behavior trends like big data.
5. Organizational behavior 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.
Myth or Science?
“Management by Walking Around Is the Most Effective
Management”
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Show the value to OB of systematic study
Learning Outcomes: Apply the study of perception and attribution to the workplace; Discuss the influence of
culture on organizational behavior; Explain the effects of power and political behavior on organizations
AASCB: Ethical understanding and reasoning; Reflective thinking
This is mostly false, but with a caveat. Management by walking around (MBWA) is an
organizational principle made famous with the 1982 publication of In Search of Excellence and
based on a 1970s initiative by Hewlett-Packard—in other words, it’s a dinosaur. But the idea of
requiring managers at all levels of the organization to wander around their departments to
observe, converse, and hear from employees continues as a common business practice. Many
companies expecting managers and executives to do regular “floor time” have claimed benefits
from employee engagement to deeper management understanding of company issues. While
MBWA sounds helpful, it is not a panacea or cure-all. The limitations of MBWA are threefold:
available hours, focus, and application.
1. Available hours. Managers are tasked with planning, organizing, coordinating, and
controlling, yet even CEOs—the managers who should be the most in control of their time—
report 53 percent of their average 55-hour workweek is spent in meetings. We’ve yet to see a
meeting conducted while touring the plant!
2. Focus. MBWA turns management’s focus toward the concerns of employees. This is good,
but only to a degree. As noted by Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, this is a problem. “Part of
the key to time management is carving out time to think, as opposed to constantly reacting.
And during that thinking time, you’re not only thinking strategically, thinking proactively,
thinking longer-term, but you’re literally thinking about what is urgent versus important.”
Weiner and other CEOs argue that meetings distract them from their purpose, especially
internal company interactions.
3. Application. The principle behind MBWA is that the more managers know their employees,
the more effective those managers will be. This is not always (or even often) true. As we’ll
learn in Chapter 6, knowing something (or thinking you know) should not always lead us to
acting on only that information. For example, a 30-minute test to determine personality traits
and reactions to scenarios recently resulted in a 20 percent reduction in attrition for a Xerox
call center, even though managers had previously been diligent in seeking information on
candidates through interviews. There is no substitute for good, objective data.
Based on the need for managers to dedicate their efforts to administering and growing
businesses, and given the proven effectiveness of objective performance measures, it seems the
time for MBWA is gone. Yet there is one caveat. We certainly don’t argue that managers should
refrain from knowing their employees, or that a stroll through the work floor is a bad idea.
Rather, we find the regular, intentional interactions of MBWA do not, in themselves, make an
effective management tool.
Sources: H. Mintzberg, “The Manager’s Job,” Harvard Business Review (March–April 1990), pp. 1–13; R. E. Silverman, “Where’s the Boss?
Trapped in a Meeting,” The Wall Street Journal (February 14, 2012), p. B1, B9; and J. Walker, “Meet the New Boss: Big Data,” The Wall Street
Journal (September 20, 2012), p. B1.
Class Exercise
1. Divide the class into groups of 5 to 6 students each. Try to ensure a mixture of male and
females in each group.
2. Have students in each group discuss the type of manager they would like to be. Students
should identify specific characteristics such as “open and in touch” or “knowledgeable,
but distant.”
3. Ask students to develop a list of ways that MBWA could help them be more effective
managers such as help to build trust, improve accountability and morale, or increase
productivity.
4. Finally, ask students to assume that MBWA is commonly used in their organization. How
can they use the practice most effectively?
Teaching Notes
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
BlackBoard 9.1, WIMBA, and Second Life Virtual Classrooms. See
http://www.baclass.panam.edu/imob/SecondLife for more information.
Personal Inventory Assessments
Multicultural Awareness Scale
Any study of organizational behavior (OB) starts with knowledge of yourself. As one step, take
this PIA to determine your multicultural awareness.
An Ethical Choice
Vacation Deficit Disorder
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Identify managers’ challenges and opportunities in applying OB concepts
Learning Outcomes: Describe the factors that influence the formation of individual attitudes and values; Discuss
the factors influencing individual decision making in organizations; Discuss the influence of culture on
organizational behavior
AASCB: Ethical understanding and reasoning
Do you work to live, or live to work? Those of us who think it’s a choice might be wrong. No
matter what employee vacation accrual balance sheets indicate, in many cases, workers will end
this year with a week of unused time. Or more. Consider Ken Waltz, a director for Alexian
Brothers Health System. He has 500 hours (approximately 3 months) in banked time off and no
plans to spend it, choosing work over time with his two sons. “You’re on call 24/7 and these
days, you’d better step up or step out,” he says, referring to today’s leaner workforce, “It’s not
just me—it’s upper management… . It’s everybody.”
Jane Himmel, a senior manager for Palmer House Hilton, agrees. She took 5 of her allotted 22
days off in 2012, but didn’t consider even those days a break because she chose to monitor her
e-mail constantly. “If I don’t keep up with it, it’s just insane when I get back,” she says. Almost a
full one-third of 1,000 respondents in a study by Kelton Research agreed, citing workload as a
reason for not using allotted vacation days. In 2011, 65 percent of U.S. workers had unused
vacation days, and experts believe the percentage is increasing. Much of the reason is attributable
to the economy; one person is often doing the work of three, and many fear they may lose their
jobs if they take vacation. But the cost of nonstop working can be high. There are ethical choices
here, for the employer and for the employee.
It would be easy to assume employers prefer employees to work without breaks, but that’s not
always the case. Many states require employers to compensate departing employees financially
for accrued vacation time, and most companies say they recognize the benefits of a refreshed
workforce. As a result, they often encourage their employees to take their vacations through
periodic “use it or lose it” e-mail reminders. Yet, employers are also expecting workers to do
more with less, in the form of fewer co-workers to help get the job done, putting implicit or
explicit pressure on them to use all available resources—chiefly their time—to meet manager
expectations.
Research indicates employees are more likely to respond to the direct pressure of management
than to the indirect benevolence of corporate policy. Thus, policy or not, many employees do not
take their allotted vacation time due to direct or indirect pressure from their manager. While it is
easy to dismiss these pressures, in today’s economy there is always a ready line of replacements,
and many employees will do everything possible to keep in their manager’s good graces,
including foregoing vacation time.
The downside, of course, is the risk of burnout. Foregoing vacation time can wear you down
emotionally, leading to exhaustion, negative feelings about your work, and a reduced feeling of
accomplishment. You may find you are absent more often, contemplate leaving your job, and
grow less likely to want to help anyone (including your managers). Here are some choices you
can make to prevent a downward spiral:
1. Recognize your feelings. According to a recent report by ComPsych Corp. on 2,000
employees, two in three identified high levels of stress, out-of-control feelings, and extreme
fatigue. We solve few problems without first recognizing them.
2. Identify your tendency for burnout. Research on 2,089 employees found that burnout is
especially acute for newcomers and job changers. If you have recently made a career change,
it can help you to know any increase in symptoms should level off after 2 years. But keep in
mind that each individual experiences stress differently.
3. Talk about your stressors. Thomas Donohoe, a researcher on work–life balance, recommends
talking with trusted friends or family. On the job, appropriately discussing your stress factors
can help you reduce job overload.
4. Build in high physical activity. Recent research found an increase in job burnout (and
depression) was strongest for employees who did not engage in regular physical activity,
while it was almost negligible for employees who did engage in regular high physical
activity. Physical activity distracts the mind from stressors, enhances feelings of mastery and
self-efficacy, and builds physiological resilience to stress.
5. Take brief breaks throughout your day. For office employees, the current expert suggestion is
to spend at least 1 to 2 minutes standing up every hour to combat the effects of all-day sitting.
Donohoe also suggests snack breaks, walks, or small naps to recharge.
6. Take your vacation! Studies suggest that recovery from stress can happen only if employees
are (a) physically away from work and (b) not occupied by work-related duties. That means
log off your e-mail accounts, shut off your phone, and put down your pen for the duration of
the vacation. As much as possible, remove yourself from the work environment physically
and mentally.
With work only a thumb swipe away and performance demands high, it is not always easy to
look beyond the next deadline. But to maximize your long-term productivity and avoid stress,
burnout, and illness—all of which are ultimately harmful to employer aims and employee careers
alike—you should not succumb to vacation deficit disorder. Educate your managers. Your
employer will thank you for it.
Sources: B. B. Dunford, A. J. Shipp, R. W. Boss, I. Angermeier, and A. D. Boss, “Is Burnout Static or Dynamic? A Career Transition Perspective
of Employee Burnout Trajectories,” Journal of Applied Psychology 97, no. 3 (2012), pp. 637–650; E. J. Hirst, “Burnout on the Rise,” Chicago
Tribune (October 29, 2012), pp. 3-1, 3-4; B. M. Rubin, “Rough Economy Means No Vacation,” Chicago Tribune (September 3, 2012), p. 4; and
S. Toker and M. Biron, “Job Burnout and Depression: Unraveling Their Temporal Relationship and Considering the Role of Physical Activity,”
Journal of Applied Psychology 97, no. 3 (2012), pp. 699–710.
Class Exercise
1. Form groups of 5 students.
2. Have each group do an Internet search for stress levels and vacation time.
3. Each group should access at least five resources.
4. Ask students to discuss the similarities and differences among the resources they
accessed.
5. Ask one representative from each group to present to the class the consensus of the
discussion based on the group’s findings.
Teaching Notes
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
BlackBoard 9.1, WIMBA, and Second Life Virtual Classrooms. See
http://www.baclass.panam.edu/imob/SecondLife for more information.
Career OBjectives
What do I say about my termination?
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Compare the three levels of analysis in this book’s OB model
Learning Outcomes: Describe the factors that influence the formation of individual attitudes and values; Apply the
study of perception and attribution to the workplace; Discuss the influence of culture on organizational behavior;
Describe best practices for creating and sustaining organizational cultures
AASCB: Diverse and multicultural work environments
I got fired! When prospective employers find out, they’ll never hire me. Is there anything I can
say to turn this around? – Matt
Dear Matt: Under this dark cloud, there are some silver linings: 1) firing, or involuntary
termination, happens to just about everyone at least once in a career; and 2) there is a worldwide
job shortage of skilled workers. You might be amazed to know that historically, individuals have
changed jobs an average of 11 times over their early careers (from age 18-44). In fact, you can
probably expect to stay in a job for less than three years, which means you’ll have a lot of jobs in
your lifetime.
Therefore, you shouldn’t feel hopeless; you are likely to find your next job soon.
ManpowerGroup’s recent survey of over 37,000 employers in 42 countries found that 36 percent
of organizations have talent shortages, the highest percentage in 7 years.
Still we know you are worried about how to present the facts of your involuntary termination to
prospective employers. If you give a truthful, brief account of the reason for your termination,
you can position yourself well. Here are some additional suggestions:
Remember your soft skills count; in fact they top the lists of employer requirements for
all industries. According to Chuck Knebi, a communications manager for the job
placement company WorkOne, use your resume and cover letter, interviews, and thank
you notes to showcase your communication skills. Employers report they are also
looking for a teamwork attitude, positivity, personal responsibility, and punctuality, so use
every opportunity to demonstrate these traits.
Although your soft skills count, don’t forget your technical skills; employers agree they
are equally important. Knebl advises you to use your resume to list your technical
abilities and be prepared to elaborate upon request. Need some more skills? Job training
has been shown to be helpful and can sometimes be free through colleges and
unemployment offices.
Emphasize your ongoing training and education, especially as they relate to new
technology; top performers are known to be continuous learners. Also, if you’ve kept up
with recent trends in social media, show it, but don’t go on about your friend’s tweet to
Rhianna .
Best wishes for your success!
Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, United States Department of Labor, Employment Projections, http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm; G.
Jones, “How the Best Get Better and Better,” Harvard Business Review (June 2008); 123-27; ManpowerGroup, “The Talent Shortage
Continues/2014,” http://www,manpowergroup.com/wps/wcm/connect/0b882c15-38bf-41f3-8882-44c33d0e2952/2014_Talent_Shortage_WP
_US2.pdf?MOD=AUPERES; J. Meister, “Job Hopping is the ‘New Normal’ for Millenials: Three Ways to Prevent a Human Resource
Nightmare,” Forbes (August 14, 2012),
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeannemeister/2012/08/14/job-hopping-is-the-new-normal-for-millenials-three-ways-to-prevent-a-human-reource-ni
ghtmare/; and N. Schultz, “Hard Unemployment Truths about “Soft Skills,” The Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2012, A15.
Class Exercise
1. Have students form groups of five.
2. Have students go to the Academic Google search site (http://scholar.google.com/) and
explore work as a source of personal identity and the effect of unemployment on an
individual’s identity.
3. Have each group read three of the references (full articles, not just abstracts).
4. Have them discuss their findings and arrive at a consensus about the effects of
employment and personal identity.
5. Have a member from each group present to the class the results of the discussion.
Teaching Notes
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
BlackBoard 9.1, WIMBA, and Second Life Virtual Classrooms. See
http://www.baclass.panam.edu/imob/SecondLife for more information.
Point/Counterpoint
The Battle of the Texts
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Identify managers’ challenges and opportunities in applying OB concepts
Learning Outcomes: Define organizational behavior and identify the variables associated with its study; Explain
the relationship between personality traits and individual behavior
AACSB: Analytical thinking; Diverse and multicultural work environments
Point
Walk into your nearest major bookstore. You’ll undoubtedly find a large selection of books
devoted to management and managing. Consider the following recent titles:
The Secret (Berrett-Koehler, 2014
Turn the Ship Around! (Portfolio, 2013)
The Way You Do Anything Is the Way You Do Everything (Wiley, 2014)
Leadership Safari (Best Seller, 2014)
Business Is a Baby (Amazon Digital Services, 2014)
Think Like a Freak (William Morrow, 2014)
Spiraling Upward (Amazon Digital Services, 2015)
Refire! Don’t Retire (Berrett-Koehler, 2015)
Top Dog (Amazon Digital Services, 2015)
Popular books on organizational behavior often have cute titles and are fun to read, but they
make the job of managing people seem much simpler than it is. Most are based on the author’s
opinions rather than substantive research, and it is doubtful that one person’s experience
translates into effective management practice for everyone. Why do we waste our time on “fluff”
when, with a little effort, we can access knowledge produced from thousands of scientific studies
on human behavior in organizations?
Organizational behavior is a complex subject. Few, if any, simple statements about human
behavior are generalizable to all people in all situations. Should you really try to apply leadership
insights you got from a book about Star Wars or Breaking Bad to managing software engineers
in the twenty-first century?
Counterpoint
Organizations are always looking for leaders, and managers and manager-wannabes are
continually looking for ways to hone their leadership skills. Publishers respond to this demand
by offering hundreds of titles that promise insights into managing people. Books like these can
provide people with the secrets to management that others know about. Moreover, isn’t it better
to learn about management from people in the trenches, as opposed to the latest esoteric musings
from the “Ivory Tower”? Many of the most important insights we gain from life aren’t
necessarily the product of careful empirical research studies.
“Fluffy” management guides sometimes do get published, and once in a while they become
popular. But do they outnumber the esoteric research studies published in scholarly journal
articles every year? Far from it; sometimes it seems that for every popular business text, there
are thousands of scholarly journals. Many of these articles can hardly be read by individuals in
the workplace – they are buried in academic libraries, riddled with strange acronyms and
“insider” terms, and light on practical application. Often they apply to specific management
scenarios, so they are less generalizable. For example, a couple of recent management and
organizational behavior studies were published in 2015 with the following titles:
Transferring Management Practices to China: A Bourdieusian Critique of Ethnocentricity
Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Clan Control in Korean Multinational Companies: A
Contractual Investigation of Employees’ Fairness Monitoring Based on Cultural Values
The Resistible Rise of Bayesian Thinking in Management: Historical Lessons from
Decision Analysis
A Model of Rhetorical Legitimization: The Structure of Communication and Cognition
Underlying Institutional Maintenance and Change
We don’t mean to poke fun at these studies, but, our point is that all ways of creating knowledge
can be criticized. If business books can sometimes be “fluffy,” academic articles can be esoteric
and even less relevant. Popular books can add to our understanding of how people work and
how to best manage them; we shouldn’t assume they are not of value. And while there is no one
right way to learn the science and art of managing people in organizations, the most enlightened
managers gather insights from multiple sources, their own experience, research findings,
observations of others, and yes, the popular business press. Authors and academics have an
important role to play, and it isn’t fair to condemn business books with catchy titles.
Class Exercise
Choose two teams of three to five students, the remainder of the class can act as the jury. Select
one or two of the titles listed in the exercise. Have one team defend the “lessons” taken from the
selected reading; the other team will prepare an argument as to why the lessons from the readings
may not be appropriate from an OB perspective. Give each team adequate time to present their
case to the remainder of the class. After each team has presented their arguments, the remainder
of the class should ask probing questions based on their understanding of the OB concepts
covered in this first chapter. The class acting as jury can then vote on which team provided the
most compelling arguments.
Teaching Notes
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
BlackBoard 9.1, WIMBA, and Second Life Virtual Classrooms. See
http://www.baclass.panam.edu/imob/SecondLife for more information.