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Summary Organizational Behaviour
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SamenvattingOrganizational behaviour
Hoofdstuk 1: What is organizational behaviour?
Why a course in organizational behaviour?
Organizations are
- Interesting;
o All of us are in touch with organizations, from birth to death
- Important
o Success today does not imply success tomorrow, we learn and structure our
groups accordingly (constructivism)
o Individuals are limited in their physical and mental capabilities → combine
workforces for a greater purpose
- Oranizational behaviour makes the difference
o Best companies to work for, are the best companies
o A company is only as good as its best employees
▪ Underlying assumption is that individual and group behaviours impact
organizational performance
Organizational behaviour = study of all factors (personal, contextual and institutional) that impact
individual- or group behaviour whitin an organization
An organization is an institution consisting of a coordinated group of people who cooperate together to achieve a
common goal
- Organisations can engage in division of labor, and provide synergy (if the goal is a service or
a product)
o Division of labour: the process of breaking the work to be done into specialized
tasks that individuals or groups can perform
o Synergy: creation of a whole is greater than the sum of its parts
Social exchange
Human resource performance = a social exchange
- Contributions: what does the employee offer the organisation?
- Inducements: what does the employee receive in returns from
organisation?
→ need to find a balance, important for job satisfaction, involvement, …= social
contract
Social exchange implies a psychological contract, we are willing to trust:
- Comprises the unspoken expectations that employees and organizations have of
each other
- Psychological contract relies on mutual trust
- When it gets broken
o Voice yourself or be quiet?
o Neglect or destroy the contract?
o Quit?
1
,Job performance
Job performance = attributes x work effort x organisation support
- All three must be present for high performance
o Attributes: personel, employees,…
o Effort: their contributions,…
o Support: eg. Infrastructure
→ if one of the tree is 0, then there is no good job performance
Let’s analyse the performance eq. in more detail / dep & indep variables. Most challenging aspect of OB = measuring
performance of an individual
- Question: do all dep variables add up? How to measure? By:
o Productivity (ROI, ROA (assets),…)
o Fortune 100 – list
o Absenteeism, engagement
o Commitment (turnover)
o Satisfaction/job stress (success or failure)
o Corporate social responsibility (planet, people, profit)
→ some variables can be more important then others, the sum of all the variables is most important
Independent variables
Goal: investigate the relation between variables, to explain, predict and direct human behaviour
Problem: very few absolute laws in the social sciences; need for a contingency approach
- Eg. X only leads to Y if condition Z is met;
In reality: lots of variables; → makes it hard to develop absolute laws;
Challenges of organisations today? (in the “new” economy)
Note that today’s jobs are very different from 20 years ago (data-analysts; automation;multimedia designers).
Organisations are different (not necessarily one location). Globalisation – no eternal growth!
Challenges today:
- Macro-economic variations (eg. crisis 200);
- Business ethics:
o Demands that organizations act socially responsible
- Innovations (type of work changes);
o Also in customer service;
o Flexible and virtual organisations (eg. Bol.com) – smart workingNetwork organizations;
o Online shops;
o Work together apart;
- Work-life balance; (people value their personal life a lot more, technological changes enables
people to work from home);
- Globalisation;
o Increased labour mobility, move your business to cheaper workplaces,
workforce diversity;
o Global manager: understanding of international business and cross-cultural
management
o Workers will always be partially influenced by their upbringing culture
2
,Business process re-engineering
= restructuring in order to adapt quickly to a changing world;
Changes occur in:
- The type of work;
o Technology;
▪ BUT eg. e-mail also intensified the workpressure; (=bad thing)
o Knowledge based-management;
▪ Brain drain; (when people leave their country after their education); →
kennis verdwijnt dus uit dat land
▪ Knowledge-based economy;
- Organizational culture & managerial values;
o Changes in managerial values
- Relation between employee-employer
o Work-life balance
▪ More support to minimize stress levels and burnouts
▪ Maximize work performance
▪ Managing work and family commitments gets more important in dual-income
households
- Casualization of the workforce;
o Organisations are seeking greater flexibility and adaptability to respond to
changes in demand eg.
- Teleworking;
o You can take your knowledge base home with you and work fromthere
o Benefits for work-life balance, but also risk for social isolation and missing out on
opportunities
- Changes in the labour force:
o Greater zand more mobile
o Age diversity
o Gender diversit
o Cultural diversity
→ diversity greatly impacts performance → need for research on diversity (eg. cultural diversity & Hofstede’s 5
cultural dimensions, social value orientation, …)
Can OB inform us about the impact of culture and values on organizations?
Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture
Relevance of study by Hofstede
- Predicting? (eg. success of expatriate missions)Explaining? (eg. initial failure of Disney-Paris; vendor/client-
based relations in IT outsourcing)
- Steering? (boosting integration; successful cooperation)
3
, Culture and globalization
Global management skills include:
- Being able to communicate with people from various cultures.
- Being sensitive for cultural subtleties, being flexible, and adapting easily.
- Understanding different socio-political systems.
Globalozation: a double-edge sword
- Raising living standards deplete Earth’s resources
- Do we change the demography of poverty? (read “counterpoint” p. 22)
o We will raise the poverty level?
o Less hunger in the world, more education
- Advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing
o People are exploited, but cheaper prices
o More competition
- Health hazards
The importance of ethics and values in organizations
Current emphasis on CSR and PPP
Increase in ethical dilemmas
- Decision making when there is a conflict of interest; there is an opportunity to benefit by exploiting another.
- Several approaches to solve them, each with shortcomings
o Deontological but very rigid → I’m always choosing for the best option
o Consequential /utilitarian but sometimes not very empathic → we always chose for the most people
Ethical dilemmas and cooperation/competition → Case study: prisoner’s dimmema
Study guide
What are new challenges that managers face since the pandemic? Since the Ukrainian war? What additional
information would be desirable in order to implement organizational changes (for business process reengineering). In
other words, where would you direct your research interest in OB?
- After the last pandemic, organisations work more virtual.
- Since the Ukrainian war, organisations realised that they depend on other countries. They needed to work
more on their own. Now the energy prices raised, organisations changed their production cycle because it
became too expensive.
- Globalization has become better because we’re more connected with countries, but also more dangerous.
When we are too depended on other countries, and face a crisis, then we are also affected by that.
- When we think about organizational changes, we think organizational support will have the biggest effect on
job performance. And so we can easily change the organization.
- After a crisis, the support of the organization to the employees becomes more important.
Prisoner’s dilemma:
What do you think about comparing iterated PD games with firms competing in a market?
- For the firms it is better to work together, as well in the PD games. It can be tempting in the short term to
defect and not too cooperate, but in the long term the other firm will also defect and so both will get nothing.
If the logic behind Leach’s story is sound, why is corporate profit-making such a cut-throat business?
- You never know what the other player will do. If he doesn’t cooperate then you will have a disadvantage. Then
the other will be the “winner”. So It’s always a risk to trust the other player.
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