Chapter 1 “What is organizational behaviour?”
Interpersonal skills such as teamwork, communicating effectively and leadership are very important in
the workplace. Study shows that not only technical skills alone are needed to succeed as a manager.
They also have to have good people skills.
Manager = An individual who achieves goals through other people. All managers perform four
management functions:
▪ 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 that they are being accomplished as
planned and correcting any significant deviations.
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.
Henry Mintzberg concluded that managers perform ten different, highly interrelated rolls:
Managers also need to have multiple skills:
▪ Technical skills: the ability to apply specialised knowledge or expertise.
▪ Human skills: the ability to work with, understand an motivate other people, both individually and
in groups.
▪ Conceptual skills: the mental ability to analyse and diagnose complex situations.
According to a study of Fred Luthans and his associates, all managers are engaged in four managerial
activities: tradition management, communication, human resource management and networking. A
successful manager seems to have his success because of networking, whereas an effective manager
is effective my means of communicating.
Psychology = The science that seeks to measure, explain and sometimes change the behaviour of
humans and other animals.
,Social psychology = An area of psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology
and that focuses on the influence of people on one another.
Sociology = The study of people in relation to their social environment or culture.
Anthropology = The study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.
Human beings are complex and thus human behaviour is hard to predict. However, it does mean that
OB concepts must reflect situational conditions. We can say that x leads to y, but only under
conditions specified in z: the contingency variables.
The world has become a global village and companies starting in one country have spread to multiple
all around the globe. In a global economy, jobs tend to flow to places where lower costs provide
business firms with a comparative advantage. As companies start to get more global, their workforce
diversity is increasing as well. Organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender,
age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and inclusion of other diverse groups.
Positive organizational scholarship = An area of OB research that concerns how organizations
develop human strength, foster vitality and resilience, and
unlock potential.
Ethical dilemmas and ethical choices = Situations in which individuals are required to define right
and wrong conduct.
A model is an abstraction of reality. A simplified representation of some real-world phenomenon.
Lecture 1
Organisational Behaviour = A field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups,
and structure have on behaviour within organisations, for the purpose
of applying such knowledge toward improving an organisation’s
effectiveness.
Why bother studying Organisational Behaviour?
Understanding OB helps determine manager effectiveness
▪ Technical and quantitative skills are important
▪ Leadership and communication skills are critical
Organisational benefits of skilled managers
▪ Lower turnover of quality employees
▪ Higher quality applications for recruitment
▪ Better financial performance
, OB can be seen as common sense. However, the obvious must not be so obvious, or more would
practice it. So, it turns out that the obvious is not so obvious and it’s a hell of a lot harder to do than
we ever imagined. Sometimes a practice is a rare phenomenon in the workplace and therefore the
obvious will not always be put into reality.
Organisational Behaviour can also be seen as a science, it’s intuition versus systematic study:
▪ Intuition: gut feelings, individual observation, common sense
▪ Systematic study: look at relationships, scientific evidence, predicts behaviours
Use evidence as much as possible to inform your intuition and experience. That is the promise of OB.
However, systematic study can lead to evidence-based management. You must think like scientists:
pose a managerial question, search for the best available evidence and apply relevant information to
the case.
Theory = an integrated set of principles
Hypotheses = predictions derived from theory: test the theory, do some direct research and practice
the implications of the theory
A good theory effectively summarizes a wide range of observations and makes clear predictions.
OB as a science distinguishes two types of methods:
1. Systematic observation
a. Allows for the study of variables
i. We simply can’t manipulate / discriminate
ii. We ethically can’t manipulate / sabotage
b. Allows us to examine the relationship between several variables at once
2. Experimental Method
a. Allows us to draw conclusions about causality
b. Allows us a great deal of control over the variables being studied
Key takeaways
▪ OB focuses on how to improve factors that make organisations more effective
▪ Managers need to develop their interpersonal skills to be effective
▪ The best predictions of behaviour are made from a combination of a good theory, systematic
study, and some intuition
Chapter 3 “Attitudes and job satisfaction”
Attitudes = Evaluative statements or judgements concerning objects, people or events.
▪ Cognitive component: the opinion or belief segment of an attitude.
▪ Affective component: the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude.
▪ Behavioural component: an intention to behave in a certain way towards
someone or something.
Cognitive dissonance = Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behaviour and
attitudes.
Employees can have multiple attitudes regarding their jobs. Job satisfaction is the positive feeling
about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. When a person identifies with a job
and actively participates in it and considers performance important to self-worth, we are talking about
job involvement. The degree to which employees’ belief they influence their work environment, their
competence and the meaningfulness of their job is about psychological empowerment. If job
involvement and psychological empowerment are on high levels, these are related positively to
organizational citizenship and job performance.
