Summary social and organizational
psychology
Chapter 1: what is organizational behavior?
A crisis of leadership?
Organizational behavior (OB): studies the challenges leaders face in the
workforce. OB is defined as the study of individuals and their behaviors at work. it is
a multidisciplinary and multilevel research rea that draws from applied psychology,
cultural anthropology, communication and sociology.
What is organizational behavior
Hawthorne effect: Mayo was interested in how to increase productivity. He came
up with the Hawthorne effect and refers to positive responses in attitudes and
performance when researchers pay attention to a particular group of workers. It was
concluded that the human element in organizations was more important than the
previously thought, ad they learned that workers want attention.
Empathy wages: gifts to employees, this elicits feelings of gratitude.
Disciplines contributing to organizational behavior
Applied social psychology: is the study of how people interact in groups and
addresses significant challenges facing leaders as organizations use teams more
regularly to get things done.
The goal of OB as a field is to improve the functioning of the organization and how
employees experience their work.
Turnover: for example, OB researchers study how perceptions of politics at work
might lead to an employee quitting the organization.
From theory to practice
OB is an applied science, so first it is necessary to briefly review what science is all
about. The goals of science are:
1. Description: what does the process look like?
2. Prediction: will the process occur again? And when?
3. Explanation: why is it happening?
4. Control: can we change whether or not this happens?
Evidence-based management (EBM): the ability to translate research to practice.
A researcher generates hypotheses about human behavior in organizations and then
gathers data to test it. Research eliminates the guesswork about what will work (or
not work), and this helps leaders solve the problems they face every day.
,Evidence-based management
EBM improves a leader’s decisions by disciplined application of the most relevant and
current scientific evidence. The most widely used definition of EBM: making decisions
about the management of employees, teams or organizations through the
conscientious, explicit and judicious use of four sources of information:
1. The best available scientific evidence: for example, research published on
OB.
2. The best available organizational evidence: for example, interviews or
surveys completed by people in an organization.
3. The best available experiential evidence: for example, the intuition of the
leader and his or her expert opinions.
4. Organizational values and stakeholders’ concerns: for example, stock
price or groups that focus on whether the organization employs
environmentally friendly practices.
Leaders must have the ability (basic skills and competencies), motivation (behavioral
beliefs, behavioral control and normative beliefs) and opportunity (support that
overcomes barriers) to practice EBM.
The “fit” between the decision maker and the organizational context enables more
effective evidence-based processes.
The following standards may be applied by leaders using EBM to ask questions and
challenge their thinking about their organizations:
1. Stop treating old ideas as if they were brand new
2. Be suspicious of “breakthrough” studies and ideas
3. Develop and celebrate collective brilliance
4. Emphasize drawbacks as well as virtues
5. Use success (and failure) stories to illustrate sound practices but not in place
of a valid research method
6. Adopt a neutral stance toward ideologies and theories
What is critical thinking?
Critical thinking: EBM can result in a lot of information and critical thinking helps a
leader sort through it all and determine what is most relevant to the problem at
hand. It is defined as follows: Critical thinking calls for persistent effort to examine
any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of evidence that supports it and
the further conclusions to which it tends.
The process has been described as having three interrelated parts:
1. The elements of thought (reasoning).
2. The intellectual standards that applied to the elements of reasoning.
3. The intellectual traits associated with a cultivated critical thinking that result
from the consistent and disciplined application of the intellectual standards to
the elements of thought.
Critical thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored and self-
corrective thinking. It requires rigorous standards of problem solving and a
,commitment to overcome the inclination to think that we have all of the answers. The
skills that are needed for critical thinking are: logic, reflection, dual processing,
attention to detail and decision making.
Mitroff provides advice to managers who fall into the rap of solving the wrong
problems by spelling out why managers to it in the first place:
1. Picking the wrong stakeholders by not paying attention to who really cares
about the problem
2. Selecting too narrow a set of options by overlooking better, more creative
options
3. Phrasing a problem incorrectly by failing to consider at least one ‘technical’
and one ‘human’ variation in stating a problem
4. Setting the boundaries of a problem too narrowly by ignoring the system the
problem is embedded in
5. Failing to think systematically by ignoring the connection between parts of the
problem and its whole
The scientific
method
Research is an ongoing process that
begins with observations that lead to
interesting questions. Next,
hypotheses and testable predictions are
formulated. Data are collected to test
these predictions and are ten refined,
altered, expanded, or rejected (center of
the figure). Based on these results,
additional observation, and the
research cycle continues.
Next, the types of outcome variables typically studied in OB research will be
reviewed.
Outcome variables in organizational behavior
Performance
Job performance: productivity (or job performance) is one of the most important
outcomes in OB. Performance can be actual performance as collected in
organizational records or it may be rated by supervisors and/or peers.
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB): is the worker’s willingness to go
above and beyond what is required in his or her job description to help others at
work. OCB is often studied as an important performance outcome variable, it has also
been shown that OCB predicts individual and organizational outcomes.
, Work-related attitudes
Job satisfaction: is an important outcome variable.
Organizational commitment: loyalty to an organization, is another key attitude
that has proven to be important because it is related to job satisfaction and is one of
the strongest predictors of turnover.
Another contemporary outcome variable that is gaining research attention is
employee engagement. It can be defined as a relatively enduring state of mind
referring to the simultaneous investment of personal energies in the experience or
performance of work.
Employee well-being
Employee well-being: having a weak leader increases stress and depletes
employee’s well-being. Being asked to do illegitimate tasks, predicted lower
employee well-being. Well-being has emerged as an important outcome variable in
OB.
Motivation
Extrinsic motivation is based on the rewards from the organization’s compensation
system such as pay and bonuses. Intrinsic motivation is related to the value of the
work itself. Prosocial motivation is a new concept of motivation that assesses the
degree to which employees behave in a way that benefits society as a whole.
Employee withdrawal
An employee quitting the organization is costly in terms of the money and time spent
to recruit, hire, and train replacements. There is much research in OB on the reasons
why employees think about quitting (Turnover intentions) and actual turnover.
The availability of outside employment opportunities is a factor, but thoughts of
quitting may be related to other outcomes such as lower job satisfaction and
engagement.
Absenteeism is another costly form of employee withdrawal, since workers may not
come to work when they are dissatisfied and there are few alternative jobs available.
Levels of analysis in organizational behavior
Individual behavior in an organization may be influenced by processes at different
levels in the organization. The most basic level is individual level. Also group- and
team-level influences individual behavior. Additional influences on individual
behavior may come from the organizational level. there is also the industry level
of analysis where comparisons are made across different industries. All levels may
influence employee performance in organizations, and this is discussed in the next
section.
How OB research increases employee
performance
Understanding OB has strong influences on employee performance. Thus,
understanding behavior in organizations is every manager’s job.
Some managers engage in behaviors that decrease employee performance. A reason
why mangers do this is because they hold subconscious assumptions regarding
