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Module 1 – Introduction to Organizational Behavior

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the module, the student should be able to:

1. Discuss the importance of interpersonal skills.
2. Define organizational behavior (OB).
3. Explain the value of systematic study to OB.
4. Identify the major disciplines that contribute to OB.
5. List the important challenges and opportunities to managers in applying OB concepts.
6. Identify areas of analysis in OB.

The Importance of Interpersonal Skills

It is only in the late 1980s that human behavior and people skills were given important attention.
Business schools have recognized the significance of interpersonal skills in the effectiveness of
managers. Incorporating the organizational behavior concepts in the workplace resulted to various
important outcomes to the organization. Some of the important outcomes are: better financial
performance, lower turnover of quality employees, higher quality workplace relationships and
employee job satisfaction, lower stress and turnover; and can foster social responsibility awareness
among organizational members. Managers need not only have technical skills in order to succeed,
they must have people skills.

Organizational Behavior and Management

Definitions:

Manager: Someone who gets things done through other people. They make decisions, allocate
resources, and direct the activities of others to attain goals.
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.

Functions of Management:
P – planning
O – organizing
L – leading
C – controlling

Functions of Management
1. Planning requires a manager to:
a. Define goals (organizational, departmental, worker levels).
b. Establish an overall strategy for achieving those goals.
c. Develop a comprehensive hierarchy of plans to integrate and coordinate activities.
2. Organizing requires a manager to:
a. Determine what tasks are to be done.
b. Who is to be assigned the tasks.
c. How the tasks are to be grouped.
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d. Determine who reports to whom.

e. Determine where decisions are to be made (centralized/decentralized).
3. Leading requires a manager to:
a. Motivate employees.
b. Direct the activities of others.
c. Select the most effective communication channels.
d. Resolve conflicts among members.
4. Controlling requires a manager to:
a. Monitor the organization’s performance.
b. Compare actual performance with the previously set goals.
c. Correct significant deviations.
Management Roles:
According to Henry Mintzberg managers perform ten different, highly interrelated
roles or sets of behaviors attributable to their jobs.
1. Interpersonal Roles
a. Figurehead—duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature.
b. Leader—hire, train, motivate, and discipline employees.
c. Liaison—contact outsiders who provide the manager with information.
2. Informational Roles
a. Monitor—collect information from organizations and institutions outside their own.
b. Disseminator—a conduit to transmit information to organizational members.
c. Spokesperson—represent the organization to outsiders.
3. Decisional Roles
a. Entrepreneur—managers initiate and oversee new projects that will improve their
organization’s performance.
b. Disturbance handlers—take corrective action in response to unforeseen problems.
c. Resource allocators—responsible for allocating human, physical, and monetary
resources.
d. Negotiator role—discuss issues and bargains with other units to gain advantages for
their own unit.

Management Skills

Skills that differentiate effective from ineffective managers:

Technical Skills - The ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. All jobs require some
specialized expertise, and many people develop their technical skills on the job.
Human Skills - Ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually
and in groups. Many people are technically proficient but interpersonally incompetent.
Conceptual Skills - The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations.
Decision making, for example, requires managers to spot problems, identify alternatives that can
correct them, evaluate those alternatives, and select the best one.

What is Organizational Behavior?

Organizational Behavior: OB is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals,
groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such
knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness.
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What is the relevance of OB to personal and organizational success?

Understanding how people behave in the organizations will help a person work effectively with
and manage others. Effective interaction with other people is important for advancement in
organizations and for effective work performance. Knowing how people think and act, how to
motivate others, how to solve conflicts are among the important skills of successful people. OB
applies the knowledge gained about individuals, groups, and the effect of organizational structure
on behavior in order to make organizations perform more effectively. Appropriate application of
OB knowledge about individuals, groups, and the effect of organizational structure on worker
behavior can help companies create conditions that will make organizations more effective and
perform well.

Complementing Intuition with Systematic Study

We cannot depend on our commonsense to read others because it can often lead to erroneous
predictions. A more systematic approach will improve our ability to predict behavior.
Systematic Study of Behavior is a means to make reasonable predictions. It looks at relationship,
attempts to attribute causes, and bases our conclusions on scientific evidence.

Evidence-Based Management (EBM) - complements systematic study of making decisions

based on evidence.
Intuition – “gut feelings”
Big Data
Big data—the extensive use of statistical compilation and analysis—didn’t become possible until
computers were sophisticated enough both to store and manipulate large amounts of information.
This enabled them to create more targeted marketing strategies than ever before. This used in
detecting how much risk is incurred at any time; and preventing catastrophes large and small.
Currently, it is also used to predict human behavioral trends, and there is a good promise for
understanding, helping, and managing people in the future use of this big data. Although it will
always be limited in predicting behavior, curtailing risk, and preventing catastrophes.
Limitations: As technological capabilities for handling big data have increased, so have issues of
privacy. This is particularly true when data collection includes surveillance instruments.

Disciplines That Contribute to the OB Field

1. Psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the
behavior of human beings.
2. Social psychology blends the concepts of psychology and sociology.
3. Sociologist studies people in relation to their fellow human beings.
4. Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.

Challenges and Opportunities for OB

1. Responding to economic pressures
2. Continuing globalization
3. Managing workforce diversity
4. Improving customer service
5. Improving people skills
6. Social media
7. Enhancing employee well-being at work
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8. Innovation and change

9. Improving ethical behavior
10. Pandemics and calamities

The General OB Model by Robbins and Judge:

A model is an abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of some real-world phenomenon.
It proposes three types of variables:
1. Inputs are the variables like personality, group structure, and organizational culture that
lead to processes.
2. Processes - are actions that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in as a result of
inputs and that lead to certain outcomes. At the group level, they include communication,
leadership, power and politics, and conflict and negotiation. Finally, at the organizational
level, processes include human resource management and change practices.
3. Outcomes – are the key variables that you want to explain or predict, and that are affected
by some other variables.
 Individual-level outcomes – like attitudes and satisfaction, task performance,
citizenship behavior, and withdrawal behavior.
 Attitudes and stress
 Employee attitudes – are the evaluations employees make, ranging
from positive to negative, about objects, people, or events.
 Stress is an unpleasant psychological process that occurs in response to
environmental pressures.
 Task performance - The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing
your core job tasks is a reflection of your level of task performance.
 Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) – is the discretionary behavior that
is not part of an employee’s job descriptions for the welfare of the organization.
Evidence indicates organizations that have such employees outperform those that
don’t.
 Withdrawal behavior –actions that employees take to separate themselves from
the organization.
 Group-level - cohesion and functioning are the dependent variables.
 Group cohesion - is the extent to which members of a group support and validate
one another at work.
 Group functioning – refers to the quantity and quality of a group’s work output.
 Productivity - An organization is productive if it achieves its goals by
transforming inputs into outputs at the lowest cost. This requires both
effectiveness and efficiency.
 Organizational level – overall profitability and survival.
o Survival - The final outcome which is the evidence that the organization is able
to exist and grow over the long term.
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Three levels of analysis:

 Individual-level
o Making analysis on personal or biographical characteristics, personality
characteristics, ability, values, attitudes, personality and emotions.
 Group-level
o Analyzing how individuals in groups are influenced by what are expected of
them, what the group considers to be acceptable standards of behavior, how
they are attracted to each, work teams, communication, leadership, power and
politics and conflicts.
 Organizational-level
o Examining the design of the formal organization, organizational culture, human
resource policies and practices.
 The model proceeds from left to right, with inputs leading to processes, and processes
leading to outcomes.
 Notice that the model also shows that outcomes can influence inputs in the future.

Summary and Implications for Managers

 Managers need to develop their interpersonal, or people, skills to be effective in their jobs.
 Organizational behavior (OB) investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and
structure have on behavior within an organization, and it applies that knowledge to make
organizations work more effectively.
 Specific implications for managers are below:
1. Resist the inclination to rely on generalizations; some provide valid insights into
human behavior, but many are erroneous.
2. Use metrics and situational variables rather than “hunches” to explain cause-and-
effect relationships.
3. Work on your interpersonal skills to increase your leadership potential.
4. Improve your technical skills and conceptual skills through training and staying current
with organizational behavior trends like big data.
5. Organizational behavior can improve your employees’ work quality and productivity
by showing you how to empower your employees, design and implement change
programs, improve customer service, and help your employees balance work–life
conflicts.

Questions:
1. What is the importance of interpersonal or people skills in the workplace?
2. Why will learning about OB help you get a better career and be a better manager?

Sources: Robbins and Judge (2016), Organizational Behavior, 17th. Pearson.

Griffin, et al (2019), Organizational Behavior: Managing People and Organizations, 12th ed., Cengage.