Organizational Behavior summary
Chapter 1
What is organizational behaviour?
Organizational behaviour: the study of the structure and management of
organizations, their environments, and the actions and interactions of their individual
members and groups.
In many cases, a combination of factors explains the behaviour in question.
Organizational behaviour is shorthand for the activities and interactions of people in
organizations. Organizations populate our physical, social, cultural, political and
economic environment, offering jobs, providing goods and services, creating our built
environment, and contributing to the existence and fabric of communities. However, we
tend to take organizations for granted precisely because they affect everything that we
do.
What is an organization?
A social arrangement for achieving controlled performance in pursuit of collective
goals.
- Social arrangement: To say that organizations are social arrangements is simply
to observe that they are groups of people who interact with each other because
of their membership. This is not a distinctive feature.
- Collective goals: Common membership implies shared objectives.
Organizations are helpful where individuals acting alone cannot achieve
outcomes that are considered worthwhile pursuing. This is not a distinctive
feature.
- Controlled performance: The performance of an organization as a whole
determines its survival. The performance of a department determines the
resources allocated to it. The performance of individuals determines pay and
promotion prospects.
Controlled performance setting standards, measuring performance, comparing actual
with standard, and taking corrective action if necessary.
Organizations can mean different things to those who use them and who work in them,
because they are significant personal and social sources of:
• Money, physical resources, other rewards
• Meaning, relevance, purpose, identity
• Order, stability, security
• Status, prestige, self-esteem, self-confidence
• Power, authority, control.
Organizational dilemma how to reconcile inconsistency between individual needs and
aspirations, and the collective purpose of the organization.
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,The organizational behaviour field map
How can behaviour in organizations be explained? To answer this question
systematically, we will first develop a ‘field map’ (Figure 1.1). Organizations do not
operate in a vacuum, but are influenced by their wider context, represented by the outer
box on the field map. One approach to understanding context is ‘PESTLE analysis’. The
map explains two sets of outcomes; organizational effectiveness, and quality of
working life. There are four sets of factors which can explain those outcomes.
Our tendency to blame individuals is called the fundamental attribution error by Lee
Ross (1977).
Fundamental attribution error the tendency to explain the behaviour of others based
on their personality or disposition, and to overlook the influence of wider contextual
influences.
We need to be aware of how context affects behaviour, through less visible and less
obvious influences. Here are some possibilities:
- Context factors
- Individual factors
- Group factors
- Structural factors
- Management process factors
First, we almost always need to look beyond the person, and consider factors at
different levels of analysis: individual, group, organization, management, the wider
context. Second, it is tempting to look for the single main cause of behaviour. However,
behaviour can be influenced by many factors at the same time.
Third, while it is easy to address these factors separately, in practice they are often
linked. Fourth, we need to consider what we want to explain. One of the terms on our
field map, organizational effectiveness, is controversial. Stakeholders have different
ideas about what counts as ‘effective’.
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,Organizational effectiveness a multi- dimensional concept that can be defined
differently by different stakeholders.
Balanced scorecard an approach to defining organizational effectiveness using a
combination of quantitative and qualitative measures.
Quality of working life an individual’s overall satisfaction with their job, working
conditions, pay, colleagues, management style, organization culture, work–life balance,
and training, development and career opportunities.
The problem with social science
Natural and social science differ in what they want to describe. Natural science
describes an objective reality. Social science describes how people understand and
interpret their circumstances. Objective reality is stable. People’s perceptions change.
Goals of science:
- Description o How people understand and
interpret their circumstances.
Using observation, asking questions, study documents.
How can we observe learning?
- Explanation o How can we explain human
behavior?
Job satisfaction -> Good performance
Good performance -> Job satisfaction
- Prediction o Precise prediction is very difficult.
The focus is often on groups.
- Control / ability to change o Findings are often
designed to encourage change.
Explaining organizational behaviour
The natural sciences are based on an approach known as positivism. The term
‘scientific’ is often used to mean a positivist approach that is objective and rigorous,
using observations and experiments to find universal relationships.
Positivism a perspective which assumes that the world can be understood in
terms of causal relationships between observable and measurable variables,
and that these relationships can be studied objectively using controlled
experiments.
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, To measure something, you need an operational definition – a method for quantifying
the variable.
Operational definition the method used to measure the incidence of a variable
in practice.
Variance theory an approach to explaining organizational behaviour based on universal
relationships between independent and dependent variables which can be defined and
measured precisely.
In contrast, constructivism argues that many aspects of that so-called objective reality
are determined by us. ‘Reality’ depends on how we and others see it, on how we
construct it socially
Constructivism a perspective which argues that our social and organizational
worlds have no ultimate objective truth or reality, but are instead determined by
our shared experiences, meanings and interpretations.
Variance theory, therefore, is not going to get us very far. To understand organizational
issues, we have to use Process theory
Process theory an approach to explaining organizational behaviour based on
narratives which show how several factors, combining and interacting over time
in a particular context, are likely to produce the outcomes of interest.
Research and practice: evidence based management
Evidence-based management systematically using the best available research
evidence to inform decisions about how to manage people and organizations.
Human resource management: OB in action
Human resource management the function responsible for establishing integrated
personnel policies to support organization strategy.
Employment cycle
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