Human Behavior in the Organization

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CHAPTER 2: Managing People and Organizations

Learning Objectives:
 Explain managerial perspectives on organizational
behavior.
 Describe the manager’s job in terms of managerial
functions, roles, and skills.
 Describe the four main forces in the environment that post
the most opportunities and problems for organizations
today.
 Discuss how to manage for effectiveness from the
perspective of organizational behavior.

MANAGERIAL PERSPECTIVES ON ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Virtually all organizations have The reason for this is simple:

managers with titles like marketing
manager, director of public relations,
vice president for human resources,
and plant manager. But probably no
organization has a position called
organizational behavior manager.
organizational behavior is not an
organizational function or area.
By understanding organizational
behavior concepts, managers can better
understand and appreciate the behavior
of those around them. For example, most
managers in an organization are directly
responsible for the work-related behaviors
of a set of other people—their immediate
subordinates.

Management is defined as the process of

What Is Management?
working with and through others to achieve
organizational objectives in a changing
environment. The job of a contemporary
manager can be conceptualized in many
different ways. The most widely accepted
approaches, however, are from the perspectives
of basic managerial functions, common
managerial roles, and fundamental managerial
skills.

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MANAGERIAL FUNCTIONS

1.) Planning
 The managerial function of planning is the process of
determining the organization’s desired future position and
deciding how best to get there. The planning process at Sears,
Roebuck, for example, includes scanning the environment,
deciding on appropriate goals, outlining strategies for achieving
those goals, and developing tactics to execute the strategies.
Behavioral processes and characteristics pervade each of these
activities.
2.) Organizing
 The managerial function of organizing is the process of
designing jobs, grouping jobs into manageable units, and
establishing patterns of authority among jobs and groups of
jobs. This process designs the basic structure, or framework, of
the organization. For large organizations like Sears, the
structure can be extensive and complicated.
3.) Leading
 Leading is the process of motivating members of the
organization to work together toward the organization’s goals. A
manger must hire and train employees. Major components of
leading include motivating employees, managing group
dynamics, and leadership per se, all of which are closely related
to major areas of organizational behavior.
4.) Controlling
 A final managerial function, controlling, is the process of
monitoring and correcting the actions of the organization and its
people to keep them headed toward their goals. A manger has
to control costs, inventory, and so on.

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MANAGERIAL ROLES

Interpersonal Roles Informational Roles Decision Making Roles

Mintzberg’s interpersonal Mintzberg’s three Mintzberg identified four

roles are primarily social in informational roles decision-making roles. The
nature; that is, they are involve some aspects of entrepreneur voluntarily
roles in which the manger’s information processing. initiates change, such as
main task is to relate to The monitor actively innovations or new strategies,
other people in certain seeks information that in the organization. The
ways. The manager might be of value to the disturbance handler helps
sometimes many serve as organization in general or settle disputes between various
a figurehead for the to specific managers. parties, such as other mangers
organization. The manager who and their subordinates. The
transmits this information resource allocator decides who
to others is carrying out will get what—how resources in
the role of disseminator. the organization will be
The spokesperson distributed among various
speaks for the individuals and groups. The
organization to outsiders. negotiator represents the
organization in reaching
agreements with other
organizations, such as
contracts between
management and labor unions.

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MANAGERIAL SKILLS

1.) Technical Skills

 Technical skills are those skills necessary to accomplish
specific tasks within the organization. Assembling a
computer, developing a new formula for a frozen food
additive, and writing a press release each require
technical skills. Hence, these skills are generally
associated with the operations employed by the
organization in its production processes.
2.) Interpersonal Skills
 Interpersonal skills comprise the manager’s ability to
communicate with, understand, and motivate individuals
and groups. As we have already noted, managers spend
a large portion of their time interacting with others. Thus,
it is clearly important that they be able to relate to, and
get along with other people.
3.) Conceptual Skills
 Conceptual skills refer to the manager’s ability to think in
the abstract. A manger with strong conceptual skills is
able to see the “big picture.” That is, she or he can see
potential or opportunity where others see road-blocks or
problems. Managers with strong conceptual skills can
see opportunities that others miss.
4.) Diagnostic Skills
 Most successful managers also bring diagnostic skills to
the organization. Diagnostic skills allow the manager to
better understand cause-and-effect relationships and to
recognize the optimal solution to problems.

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MANAGERIAL CHALLENGES
- Beyond its inherent pervasiveness in managerial work, organizational
behavior has several implications for various managerial, organizational, and
global challenges. From the managerial perspective, any number of critical
issues might be discussed, but we focus on four major challenges that affect
organizational behavior.
1.) The Changing Social and Cultural Environment
o Forces in the social and cultural environment are those that are due to
changes in the way people live and work—changes in values,
attitudes, and beliefs brought about by changes in a nation’s culture
and the characteristics of its people. National culture is the set of
values or beliefs that a society considers important and the norms of
behavior that are approved or sanctioned in that society. Organizations
must be responsive to the changes that take place in a society for this
affects all aspects of their operations.
A.) Developing Organizational Ethics and Well-Being
 Organizational ethics are the beliefs, moral rules, and values,
which guide managers and staff to behave so as to enhance the
well-being of the individuals and groups within the organization,
the organization itself, and the community. Unethical
organization behavior will damage the company’s reputation
and cost the company the goodwill of customers and
employees.
B.) An Increasing Diverse Work Force
 Diversity refers to differences in age, gender, race, ethnicity,
religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, and
capabilities/disabilities. The numbers of minorities and women
being hired by organizations is increasing; U.S. diversity is also
increasing. Diversity is an important issue because the
demographic composition of employees has changed drastically
as more minorities and female employees enter the workforce.

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To be successful, organizations need diverse employees as a
resource to improve performance.
2.) The Evolving Global Environment
o Managers must understand how cultural differences influence
organizational behavior in different countries. Management functions
become more complex as the organization’s activities expand globally,
and coordination of decision-making and organizational issues
becomes a necessity. Managers must understand the requirements of
foreign markets and how cultural differences impact organizational
issues such as compensation packages, evaluation, and promotion
policies.
A. Understanding Global Differences
 Companies must learn about many different kinds of
factors when they operate globally
1.) There are problems related to understanding organizational
behavior in different global settings. Organizational behavior
becomes especially complex at a global level because the
attitudes, aspirations, and values of the work force differ
from country to country.
2.) Problems of coordinating the activities of an organization to
match its environment become much more complex as an
organization’s activities expand across the globe.
3.) In many cases, global organizations locate in a particular
country abroad because this allows them to operate more
effectively, but in doing so, also has major effects on their
home operations.
B. Global Learning
 Global learning is the process of acquiring and learning the
skills, knowledge, and organizational behaviors and procedures
that have helped companies abroad become major global
competitors. To respond to the global challenge, more and more

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companies are rotating their employees to their overseas
operations so they can learn first-hand the problems and
opportunities that lie abroad. Expatriate employees are those
who live and work for companies located abroad. These
employees assist their organizations by:
1.) Learning about the sources of low-cost inputs and the best
places to assemble their products throughout the world.
2.) Expatriate managers in functions such as research and
development, manufacturing, and sales can take advantage
of their presence in a foreign country to learn the skills and
techniques those companies have to offer.

3.) Advancing Information Technology

o One kind of technology that is posing a major challenge for
organizations today is information technology. Information technology
(IT) consists of the many different kinds of computer and
communications hardware and software, and the skills designers,
programmers, managers, and technicians bring to them. IT is used to
acquire, define, input, arrange, organize, manipulate, store, and
transmit facts, data, and information to create knowledge and promote
organizational learning. Organizational learning occurs when members
can manage information and knowledge to achieve a better fit between
the organization and its environment.
A. IT and Organizational Effectiveness
 The Internet and the growth of intranets, a network of
information technology inside an organization that links its
members, have dramatically changed organizational behavior
and procedures. IT allows for the easy exchange of know-how
and facilitates problem solving.
B. IT, Creativity and Organizational Learning

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 Creativity is the generation of novel and useful ideas. One of
the outcomes of creativity is innovation, an organization’s ability
to make new or improved goods and services or improvements
in the way they are produced. Innovation is an activity that
requires the constant updating of knowledge and the constant
search for new ideas and technological developments that can
be used to improve a product over time.
4.) Shifting Work and Employment Relationships
o In recent years, changes on organizational behavior have taken many
forms with respect to work and employee relationships. Forms of
change include a shortening employment relationship because of
downsizing, the growth of a number of contingent or temporary
employees, outsourcing, and people no longer spending their entire
careers with one organization. One reason for this is layoffs.
Downsizing is the process by which organizations layoff managers and
workers to reduce costs. Employees that remain after a downsizing
often work under increased stress.
A. Other trends include the increasing use of empowered self-
managed teams and contingent or temporary workers, and
outsourcing.
1.) Empowerment is the process of giving employees throughout an
organization the authority to make important decisions and to be
responsible for their outcomes.
2.) Self-managed teams are work groups who have been
empowered, and given responsibility for leading themselves and
ensuring that they accomplish their goals.
B. As organizations have downsized, they have also increased the
number of contingent workers they work with to keep costs down.
1.) Contingent workers are people who are employed for temporary
periods by an organization and who receive no benefits such as
health insurance or pensions.

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2.) Contingent workers may work by the day, week, or month
performing some functional task, or they may contract with the
organization for a fee to perform a specific service to the
organization.
3.) It is estimated that 20 percent of the U.S. work force today consists
of part-time employees.
4.) Part-time employees pose a special challenge to managers
because they cannot be motivated by the prospect of rewards such
as job security, promotion, or a career within an organization.
C. Organizations are increasing the amount of outsourcing being
done.
1.) Outsourcing is the process of employing people and groups
outside the organization, or other organizations, to perform specific
jobs or types of work activities that used to be performed by the
organization itself.
2.) Jobs like bookkeeping, computer support, or web design are often
performed by freelancers—independent individuals who contract
with an organization to perform specific tasks.
D. Many of the changes that have occurred within organizations with
respect to creative employment practices have occurred to meet
the challenges presented by domestic and global competitors.

MANAGING EFFECTIVENESS
- A final set of issues we address in this chapter relates to the consequences of
management. More specifically, what are the outcomes of different types of
and approaches to management? Three basic levels of outcomes determine
organizational effectiveness: individual-, group-, and organization-level
outcomes. Developing management skills provides some additional
perspectives on the importance of these outcomes.

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1.) Individual Level Outcomes
o Several different outcomes at the individual level are important to
managers. Given the focus of the field of organizational behavior, it
should not be surprising that most of these outcomes are directly or
indirectly addressed by various theories and models.
2.) Individual Behaviors
o First, several individual behaviors result from a person’s participation in
an organization. One important behavior is productivity. Productivity,
as defined in terms of an individual, is an indicator of an employee’s
efficiency and is measured in terms of the products or services (or
both) created per unit of input.
3.) Individual Attitudes
o Another set of individual-level outcomes influenced by managers
consists of individual attitudes. Levels of job satisfaction or
dissatisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational
involvement are all important in organizational behavior.
4.) Stress
o Stress is another important individual-level outcome variable. Given its
costs, both personal and organizational, it should not be surprising that
stress is becoming an increasingly important topic for both researchers
in organizational behavior and practicing managers.
5.) Group and Team Level Outcomes
o Another set of outcomes exists at the group and team level. In general,
some of these outcomes parallel the individual-level outcomes just
discussed. For example, if an organization makes extensive use of
work teams, team productivity and performance are important outcome
variables. On the other hand, even if all the people in a group or team
have the same or similar attitudes toward their jobs, the attitudes
themselves are individual-level phenomena. Individuals, not groups,
have attitudes.
6.) Organizational Level Outcomes

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o Finally, a set of outcome variables exists at the organization level. As
before, some of these outcomes parallel those at the individual and
group levels, but others are unique. For example, we can measure and
compare organizational productivity. We can also develop organization
level indicators of absenteeism and turnover. But financial performance
is generally assessed only at the organization level.

REFERENCES:

Jones, G.R. and Gorge, J.M. Understanding and Managing

Organizational Behavior, https://g.co/kgs/3u5fqv

Griffin, Ricky W. and Gregory Moorehead, Organizational Behavior,

Managing People and Organizations. South-Western Cengage
Learning. 2014

Newstrom, John W., Organizational Behavior, Human Behavior at Work;

wMcGraw Hill Companies Inc., 2011.

LINKS
TOPICS LINKS FOR VIDEO
Managerial Perspectives on https://youtu.be/wPGYL42ITEc
Organizational Behavior
Managerial Functions https://youtu.be/aWV8w-coyhM

Managerial Roles https://youtu.be/XFShUgphzHU

Managerial Skills https://youtu.be/5n4josMijng

Managerial Challenges https://youtu.be/SiNdqPbd22Q

Managing Effectiveness https://youtu.be/maTQCD3p78Y

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