Organizational Behavior

What is an Organization? Organization is simply a group with two or more people that share a certain set of goals and meet at regular times. Organization 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.

What is Organizational Behavior? Organizational Behavior is the study of human behavior in the workplace, the interaction between people and the organization with the intent to understand and predict human behavior. Organizational Behavior is a field of study, meaning that it is a distinct area of expertise with a common body of knowledge.

Why Study Organizational Behavior? Success isn’t a destination – it’s a process. And the margin between successes is often small. Learn the principles of defining and achieving success in your own life. Begin the journey today. This journey begins with understanding the behaviors between the leader, the followers, and the organization. This is also a leadership course of study. To be successful leader, one needs to understand the behaviors of people, organizations, and the situation.

Who is a Manager? The person get things done through other people is the Manager. Manager makes decision, allocate resources and direct the activities of others to attain goals.

What Managers do? Managers do their work in an organization. Managers are responsible for designing an organizations structure. Managers perform four management functions: Planning Organizing Leading Controlling

Management Functions Planning: A process that includes defining goals, establishing strategy and developing plans to coordinate activities. Organizing: Determining what tasks to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, where decisions are to be made.

Management Functions (Contd.) 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 plan and correcting any significant deviations

Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles Interpersonal Roles Figurehead Leader Liaison Informational Roles Monitor Disseminator Spokes Person Decisional Roles Entrepreneur Disturbance handler Resource Allocator Negotiator

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: The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations.

Managerial Activities Managers all engaged in the following four activities: Traditional Management: Decision making, planning and controlling. Communication: Exchanging routine information and processing paper works. Human Resource Management: Motivating, disciplining, managing conflicts, staffing and training. Networking: Socializing, politicking and interact with outsiders

A Review of the Manager’s Job We learned that managers’ jobs are: Functions, roles, skills, activities and approaches to management: Each recognizes the paramount importance of managing people. Regardless of whether it is called “the leading function”, “interpersonal roles”, “human skills”, or “human resource management, communication and networking activities”, it’s clear that managers need to develop their people skills if they’re going to be effective and successful.

Dimensions of OB

Intuition and Systematic Study A gut feeling not necessarily supported by research Systematic Study Looking at relationships, attempting to attribute, causes and effects and drawing conclusions based on scientific evidence

Multidisciplinary Nature of OB Psychology: Study of the Individuals Sociology: Study of small group behavior Anthropology: Study of cultures (Corporate Culture) Economics: Rational Decision making Political Science: Power and Conflict, coalitions and alliances

Challenges and Opportunities for OB There are a lot of challenges and opportunities today for managers to use OB concepts. We review some of the critical issues confronting managers for which OB offers solutions-or at least some meaningful insights toward solutions. Responding to globalization: Increased foreign assignments Working with people from different cultures Coping with anticapitalism backlash Movement of jobs to countries with low-cost labor Managing people during the war of terror

Challenges and Opportunities for OB (Contd.) Managing workforce diversity: The concept is that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation and inclusion of other diverse groups. A diverse workforce, for instance, includes women, people of color, the physically disabled, senior citizens ,so on. Embracing diversity Changing demographics Implications

Challenges and Opportunities for OB (Contd.) Improving quality and productivity Responding to the coming labor shrtage Improving customer service Improving people skills Empowering people Stimulating innovation and change Coping with “Temporariness” Working in networked organizations Helping employees balance work-life conflicts Improving ethical behavior

Developing OB Model Dependent variables: A response that is affected by an independent variable. Productivity Absenteeism Turnover Deviant workplace behavior Organizational citizenship behavior Job satisfaction

Developing an OB Model (Contd.) Independent variables: The presumed cause of some change in the dependent variable. Individual-level variables Group-level variables Organizational systems-level variables

Summary Organizations come in many shapes and sizes – we need to study these. Behavior of organizations, groups, and individuals, if studied, is predictable. To study Organizational Behavior, one needs to move from an intuition and common sense approach to a systematic study.

Looking Forward Personality, ability and learning, Read it, work the self-assessments and begin the discovery of your behaviors best harvesting your potentialities. Start your journey and awake the giant within

Questions?

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