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Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 1
1.
B. 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?
to provide excellent customer service.
C. Productivity
whole.
3. A hospital is effective when it successfully meets the needs of its clientele.
number of staff–patient contacts per day, we say the hospital has gained
productive efficiency.
6. Service organizations must include customer needs and requirements in assessing
their effectiveness.
D. Survival
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.
individual, group, or organizational level.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 2
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
functions. (Exhibit 1-6)
II. Careers in OB and Employability Skills
A. Challenges relevant to OB can be found in just about every
function of business, from finance and accounting to management and marketing.
1. A review of the great challenges that most businesses face reveals that OB is an
revenue and increasing profit.
2. Clearly, the knowledge of OB concepts such as stress management, change, attitudes,
emotions, and motivation, among others, can help you navigate your interactions with
your classmates as you continue to learn.
3. Given the pervasiveness of OB in organizational life, entry-level employees and
responsibility, and knowledge application and analysis.
B. Employability Skills that Apply across Majors
1. Throughout this text, you’ll learn and practice many skills that hiring managers identify
as important to success in a variety of business settings, including small and large firms,
nonprofit organizations, and public service. These skills will also be useful if you plan
to start your own business, for example:
situation or set of circumstances.
3. Communication is defined as effective use of oral, written, and nonverbal
communication skills for multiple purposes (e.g., to inform, instruct, motivate,
persuade, and share ideas); effective listening; using technology to communicate; and
being able to evaluate the effectiveness of communication efforts—all within diverse
contexts.
4. Collaboration is a skill in which individuals can actively work together on a task,
constructing meaning and knowledge as a group through dialogue and negotiation that
results in a final product reflective of their joint, interdependent actions.
5. Knowledge application and analysis is defined as the ability to learn a concept and then
understanding.
6. Social responsibility includes skills related to both business ethics and corporate social
responsibility. Business ethics includes sets of guiding principles that influence the way
individuals and organizations behave within the society that they operate. Corporate
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 3
social responsibility is a form of ethical behavior that requires that organizations
understand, identify, and eliminate unethical economic, environmental, and social
behaviors.
III. 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. Get to know the person, and understand the
context.
2. Use metrics 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. 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.
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—
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 4
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?
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
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
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 5
(http://docplayer.net/19442732-Effective-use-of-collaboration-tools-for-online-learning-jennifer-pontano-ke-anna-sk
ipwith-drexel-university-e-learning-2-0-conference-march-2011.html) for more information.
MyLab Management
Watch
It!
Herman Miller: Organizational Behavior
complete the video exercise.
MyLab Management
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:
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
everything possible to stay in their manager’s good graces.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 6
The issue of vacation time is an ethical choice for the employer and for the employee. Many organizations have
well-being and productivity:
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.
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.
5. Take brief breaks throughout your day. For oGce employees, the current expert suggestion is to spend at least
the work environment physically and mentally.
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
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.
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
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 7
(http://docplayer.net/19442732-Effective-use-of-collaboration-tools-for-online-learning-jennifer-pontano-ke-anna-sk
ipwith-drexel-university-e-learning-2-0-conference-march-2011.html) for more information.
Career OBjectives
What do I say about my termination?
This exercise contributes to:
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
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
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. Knebi advises you to use your resume to list your technical
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
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 8
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,”
(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-nightmare/; 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.
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
(http://docplayer.net/19442732-Effective-use-of-collaboration-tools-for-online-learning-jennifer-pontano-ke-anna-sk
ipwith-drexel-university-e-learning-2-0-conference-march-2011.html) for more information.
Point/Counterpoint
The Battle of the Texts
This exercise contributes to:
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:
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 9
The Secret (Berrett-Koehler, 2014)
Turn the Ship Around! (Portfolio, 2013)
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)
author is a veteran from the business world, it is doubtful that one person’s experience translates
into an effective management practice for everyone. Even when the authors are
numbers-oriented, as are the Think Like a Freak authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, their
conclusions for management are not management research based. So why do we base our own
aren’t based on research about the type of workplaces in which we function.
Counterpoint
People want to know about management—the good, the bad, and the ugly. People who have
experience or high interest write about the topics that interest readers, and publishers put out the
the product of careful empirical research studies.
Unhelpful 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 journal articles. Many of these articles can hardly be read by individuals
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 10
scenarios, so they are even less generalizable. For example, a few recent management and OB
studies were published in 2015 with the following titles:
Transferring Management Practices to China: A Bourdieusian Critique of Ethnocentricity
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
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
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.wimba.com/solutions/higher-education/wimba_classroom_for_higher_education),
(http://go.secondlife.com/landing/education/) and
(http://docplayer.net/19442732-Effective-use-of-collaboration-tools-for-online-learning-jennifer-pontano-ke-anna-sk
ipwith-drexel-university-e-learning-2-0-conference-march-2011.html) for more information.
