soph_ Social Psychology in Organizations - 2020
Chapter 1 - What is an organisational behaviour?
Organizational behavior= study of individuals & their behaviours at work.
- multidisciplinary and multilevel research area that draws from applied psychology, cultural
anthropology, communication, and sociology
- OB originated with the human relations movement ignited by the Hawthorne studies (conducted
between 1927 and 1932), which led to a focus on the role of human behavior in organizations
Study: effects of lighting in the plants on worker productivity
- Productivity increased even though lights dimmed
- Workers appreciated attention of the research team & felt receiving special treatment
- Productivity declined after researchers left the plant:
Hawthorne effect: positive responses in attitudes and performance when researchers pay attention
to a particular group of workers
- social pressure from peers took over and had more impact on worker productivity than pay
increases. Workers formed into small groups and set informal standards for production, requiring
coworkers to reduce their production so pay was more equal among the group members.
Empathy wage: employers provide gifts to employees it elicits feelings of gratitude
The goal of OB as a field is to improve the functioning of the organization and how employees
experience their work.
The goals of science—any science—are as follows:
1) Description: What does the process look like?
2) Prediction: Will the process occur again? And when?
3) Explanation: Why is this happening
4) Control: Can we change whether or not this happens?
Evidence-based management (EBM): ability to translate research to practice
EBM improves a leader’s decisions by disciplined application of the most relevant and current
scientific evidence.
EBM= making decisions about the management of employees, teams, or organisations through the
conscientious, explicit and judicious use of 4 sources of info:
1. The best available scientific evidence- e.g., research published on OB
2. The best available organizational evidence- e.g., interviews or surveys completed by
people in an organization
3. The best available experiential evidence- e.g., the intuition of the leader and his or her
expert opinions
4. Organizational values and stakeholders’ concerns—stock price or
groups that focus on whether the organization employs environmentally friendly practices
How can leaders use these sources of evidence to make better decisions?
1) Leaders must have the ability, motivation and opportunity to practice EBLM
2) Leader involvement at all levels is essential for EBM to work in practice and collaboration
with researchers
,soph_ Social Psychology in Organizations - 2020
Standards applied by leaders using EBM to ask questions and challenge their thinking about their
organisations
1. Stop treating old ideas as if they were brand new. This has resulted in a cynical workforce
that may view innovations from leaders as short-term fads (e.g., positive changes such as
total quality management, teams, and engagement). Progress cannot be made by treating
old ideas as new ones; cynicism could be reduced by presenting ideas that have been able
to “stand the test of time” as best practices rather than new ideas.
2. Be suspicious of “breakthrough” studies and ideas. Question whether some new ideas in
management are really breakthroughs & be wary of claims about new management
principles that may be either over or understated
3. Develop and celebrate collective brilliance. Independent decision makers (not expert)
makes better predictions on the average compared to an expert decision maker. In a sense,
this is how the “ask the audience” lifeline works on the game show Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire? A contestant can ask the audience for the answer to a question and the
audience votes. The contestant then sees the percentages of people who chose each
answer. It’s interesting to see that often the audience is right. The contestant is thus
gathering the collective brilliance of a random group of decision makers. See the following
box for another method that may be used to develop collective brilliance: the Delphi
decision-making method.
4. Emphasize drawbacks & virtues
5. Use success (and failure) stories to illustrate sound practices but not in place of a valid
research method - company must be careful not to simply copy what they do in today’s
changing business environment
6. Adopt neutral stance towards ideologies and theories
In making important organisational decisions, leader may include info gathered from 1 or all 4 of
the sources. The leader must sort through all the info and determine the most relevant through
critical thinking - learning to question everything
What is critical thinking?
“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” - Critical thinking
is a mode of thinking about the problems we face where the problem solver improves the quality of
the process by taking control of it and applying rigorous standards.
The process described as 3 interrelated parts:
1) The elements of thoughts (reasoning)
2) The intellectual standards that applied to the elements of reasoning and
3) The intellectual traits associated with a cultivated critical thinker that result from the consistent
and disciplined application of the intellectual standards to the elements of thought
Critical thinking involves using justification, recognising relationships, evaluating the credibility of
sources, looking at reasons/evidence, drawing inferences, identifying alternatives, logical
deductions, sequences & order, and defending an idea
- Self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored and self-corrective thinking
Mitroff advice to managers who fall in the trap of solving the wrong problems by spelling out why
managers do it in the first place - 5 pathways to errors:
,soph_ Social Psychology in Organizations - 2020
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 1 technical and 1 human variation
in stating a problem
4) Setting the boundaries of a problem too narrowly by ignoring the system of the problem is
embedded in
5) Failing to think systematically by ignoring the connection between parts of the problem and its
whole
Mitroff provided basic questions that manager should be asking: What businesses are we in? What
is our mission? What should our mission be ? Who should our customers be?
The scientific method
Outcome variables in organisational behaviour
A. Performance: productivity
Organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB): worker’s willingness to go above and beyond what is
required in his or her job description to help others at work - extra role performance (performance
beyond the expectations of a person’s job description£) - predicts individual and organisational
Outcomes, also predicts employee performance, reward-allocation decisions and withdrawal-
related criteria (employee turnover intentions, actual turnover, absenteeism)
B. Work-related attitudes:
- Job satisfaction (measure by The Hoppock Job Satisfaction Blank)
- Loyalty or organisational commitment key attitude bc related to job satisfaction & one of
strongest predictors of turnover
- Organizational commitment: employee’s relationship with the organisation he or she works for
- Lack of loyalty: absenteeism, less motivated and lower performance
, soph_ Social Psychology in Organizations - 2020
- Employee engagement: a relatedly enduring state of mind referring to the simultaneous
investment of personal energies in the experience of performance of work
C. Employee wellbeing
Emotional exhaustion, psychosomatic health complaints, physical health symptoms
Weak leaders increases role stress and depletes employees’ psychological resources for coping
with the stress
Illegitimate task: outside of the boundaries of a person’s job predicted lower employee wellbeing
(lower self-esteem and job satisfaction with increased anger and depression)
D. Motivation
Extrinsic: rewards from organisations compensation system
Intrinsic: value of the work itself
Predicts productivity
Prosocial motivation: degree to which employees behave in a way that benefits society as a whole
E. Employee Withdrawal
Quitting: costly in money and time to recruit, hire and train replacements
Availability of outside employment opportunities
Thoughts of quitting related to lower job satisfaction and engagement
Levels of Analysis in Organizational Behaviour
Basic level: individual (personality experiences)
Group- and Team-level influences on individual behaviour
Organizational level
Industry level: comparison made across different industries
How OB research increases employee performance
