Etextbook 978 0132729833 Managing Behavior in Organizations

eTextbook 978-0132729833 Managing
Behavior in Organizations
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/etextbook-978-0132729833-managing-behavior-in-or
ganizations/
BRIEF CONTENTS
Preface xiii
PART I Introduction 1
Chapter 1 The Field of Organizational Behavior 2
Chapter 2 Organizational Justice, Ethics, and Corporate
Social Responsibility 31
PART II Individual Behavior 65

Chapter 3 Individual Processes: Personality, Social Perception,
and Learning 66
Chapter 4 Coping with Organizational Life: Emotions and Stress 99
Chapter 5 Work-Related Attitudes: Prejudice, Job Satisfaction,
and Organizational Commitment 137
Chapter 6 Motivating People to Work 170
PART III Group Behavior 201

Chapter 7 Interpersonal Behavior in the Workplace: Conflict, Cooperation,
Trust, and Deviance 202
Chapter 8 Organizational Communication 236
Chapter 9 Group Processes and Work Teams 268
Chapter 10 Decisions Making by Individuals and Groups 297
Chapter 11 The Quest for Leadership 333
PART IV Organizational Processes 365

Chapter 12 Organizational Culture, Creativity, and Innovation 366
Chapter 13 Designing Effective Organizations 400
Chapter 14 Managing Organizational Change: Strategic Planning and
Organizational Development 435
Company Index 469

Name Index 471
Subject Index 473
vii
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Preface xiii
PART I Introduction 1
Chapter 1 The Field of Organizational Behavior 2

The Field of Organizational Behavior: What’s It All About? 4
OB Is Responsive to Socioeconomic Conditions 10
Historical Overview of the Field of OB 20
What Lies Ahead in This Book? 26
Chapter 2 Organizational Justice, Ethics, and Corporate Social Responsibility 31

Organizational Justice: Fairness Matters 33
Ethical Behavior in Organizations: What is It
and Why Does It Matter? 40
Why Do Some People Behave Unethically,
at Least Sometimes? 45
Ethics in the International Arena 50
Beyond Ethics: Corporate Social Responsibility 54
PART II Individual Behavior 65
Chapter 3 Individual Processes: Personality, Social Perception,

and Learning 66
Personality: What Makes Us Each Unique 68
Social Perception and Attribution: Understanding
and Judging Others 75
The Biased Nature of Social Perception 79
Learning: Adapting to the World of Work 84
Applications of Learning in Organizations 87
Chapter 4 Coping with Organizational Life: Emotions and Stress 99

Understanding Emotions and Mood 101
The Role of Emotions and Mood in Organizations 105
Managing Emotions in Organizations 109
Stress: Its Basic Nature 112
Major Causes of Stress in the Workplace 118
ix
x Contents
Adverse Effects of Organizational Stress 122

Reducing Stress: What Can Be Done? 124
Chapter 5 Work-Related Attitudes: Prejudice, Job Satisfaction,

and Organizational Commitment 137
Attitudes: What Are They? 139
Prejudice and Discrimination: Negative Attitudes
and Behavior Toward Others 141
Strategies for Reducing Workplace Prejudice: Managing
a Diverse Workforce 145
Job Satisfaction: Its Nature and Major Theories 150
Job Dissatisfaction: Consequences and Ways
to Reduce Them 153
Organizational Commitment: Attitudes Toward Companies 159
Chapter 6 Motivating People to Work 170

What Is Motivation? 172
Motivating by Enhancing Fit With an Organization 175
Motivating by Setting Goals 177
Motivation to Achieve Equity 181
Expectancy Theory: Believing You Can Get What You Want 185
PART III Group Behavior 201
Chapter 7 Interpersonal Behavior in the Workplace: Conflict, Cooperation, Trust,

and Deviance 202
Psychological Contracts: Our Expectations of Others 205
Trust in Working Relationships 207
Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Prosocial Behavior That Goes
Beyond Formal Job Requirements 211
Cooperation: Providing Mutual Assistance 215
Conflict: The Inevitable Result of Incompatible Interests 218
Deviant Organizational Behavior 224
Chapter 8 Organizational Communication 236

Communication: Its Basic Nature 238
Formal Communication in Organizations 241
Informal Communication: Beyond the Organization Chart 245
Communicating with and without Words: Verbal and Nonverbal
Communication 247
Improving Your Communication Skills 252
Communication in Today’s Global Economy 257
Contents xi
Chapter 9 Group Processes and

Work Teams 268
Groups at Work: Their Basic Nature 270
The Basic Building Blocks of Group Dynamics 272
Individual Performance in Groups 276
Teams: Empowered Work Groups 280
Chapter 10 Decisions Making by Individuals and Groups 297

A General, Analytical Model of Decision Making 299
The Broad Spectrum of Organizational Decisions 301
Factors Influencing Individual Decisions in Organizations 304
How Are Individual Decisions Made? 309
The Imperfect Nature of Individual Decisions 312
Group Decisions: Do Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth? 319
Techniques for Improving the Effectiveness of Decisions 323
Chapter 11 The Quest for Leadership 333

The Nature of Leadership 335
The Trait Approach to Leadership: Having the Right Stuff 338
Leadership Behavior: What Do Leaders Do? 341
Leaders and Followers 346
Contingency Theories of Leader Effectiveness 351
Leadership Development: Bringing Out the Leader
Within You 354
PART IV Organizational Processes 365
Chapter 12 Organizational Culture, Creativity, and Innovation 366

Organizational Culture: Its Basic Nature 368
Creating, Transmitting, and Changing Organizational Culture 375
Creativity in Individuals and Work Teams 382
Promoting Creativity in Organizations 385
The Process of Innovation 388
Chapter 13 Designing Effective Organizations 400

Organizational Structure: The Basic Dimensions
of Organizations 402
Departmentalization: Ways of Structuring Organizations 409
Organizational Design: Coordinating the Structural Elements
of Organizations 415
Interorganizational Designs: Joining Multiple Organizations 425
xii Contents
Chapter 14 Managing Organizational Change: Strategic Planning and

Organizational Development 435
The Prevalence of Change in Organizations 437
The Nature of the Change Process 439
Strategic Planning: Deliberate Change 444
Resistance to Change: Maintaining the Status Quo 450
Organizational Development Interventions: Implementing
Planned Change 455
Three Critical Questions About Organizational Development 461
Company Index 469

Name Index 471
Subject Index 473
PREFACE
Welcome to the sixth edition of Managing Behavior in Organizations. This book’s relatively di-
minutive size and paperback format make it clear that it is not intended to be an in-depth account
of the field of organizational behavior (OB, as it’s called). Instead of covering every surface of
the field’s terrain, this book may be considered a tour of the scientific and practical highlights of
OB housed in a succinct package.
It is with this in mind that I focus on the essential concepts and practices that students
really must know. Fortunately, the thousands of students to whom I have taught this material over
four decades in both physical and virtual university classrooms throughout the world have done
a fine job (albeit sometimes with painful bluntness) of letting me know precisely what is wheat
and what is chaff. It was with an eye toward answering their proverbial question, “What’s the
most important stuff?” that I wrote this book.
FOR WHOM IS THIS BOOK INTENDED?

In preparing this book, I was mindful of the needs of my dual-tiered target audiences—learners
and those who are instructing them (i.e., students and teachers).
This book is aimed squarely at readers who have no special background or training in the
social sciences. It is designed to be read by students taking their first class in management or
organizational behavior. Specifically, these audiences include:
• Undergraduate students (in both two- and four-year colleges and universities)
• MBA students and those in related master’s-level programs
• Practicing managers and executives in corporate training programs
Because this book is a stand-alone guide to the essentials of OB, instructors who have ad-
opted previous editions have supplemented it with additional materials, such as cases, exercises,
and readings that reflect their particular approaches to teaching OB. In fact, rather than attempting
to be an all-inclusive package that dictates precisely what and how to teach, this book offers
instructors the ultimate flexibility. Whether an instructor is teaching OB using the case method,
an experiential approach, a seminar format, distance learning, or a traditional series of lectures,
students must have knowledge of the field’s basic assumptions, concepts, theories, research find-
ings, and applications. It is this substantive knowledge that I strive to deliver in this book.
A BALANCED APPROACH TO RESEARCH,

THEORY, AND PRACTICE
Many textbooks take intentionally narrow approaches to the subject matter they cover. Among
OB texts, some focus primarily on research and theory whereas others focus primarily on
managerial practice. In my opinion, these skewed orientations are misleading and do readers a
disservice insofar as they fail to reflect the true nature of the field of OB.
xiii
xiv Preface
By its very nature, OB is a deliberate blend of the scientific and the practical—an applied
science in the truest sense. And this carefully balanced orientation is reflected in this book.
Accordingly, I have prepared this book such that readers will come away with a firm understanding
of what should be done (and what currently is being done) to improve the functioning of
organizations and the satisfaction of people who work in them as well as the research and theory
that shed light on why these practices are effective.
This orientation may be found throughout this book, but a few illustrations will make
this explicit. Take Chapter 6, on motivation. Here, my treatment of the various classic theo-
ries of motivation is framed in terms of the central practical question: How do you motivate
employees? The same may be said for Chapter 12 on organizational culture, creativity, and in-
novation. Readers of this chapter come away with not only a fundamental appreciation for the
three concepts identified, but also a practical understanding of how to promote a culture in which
individual creativity flourishes and organizational innovation abounds. Virtually every chapter
captures this dual allegiance to theory and practice. Why? Because that’s what OB—hence, this
book—is all about!
MISSION: KEEPING ABREAST OF THE SHIFTING LANDSCAPE

Staying abreast of the ever-changing world of organizations is a full-time job. I know, because
it’s mine. For forty years, I have been a researcher, consultant, educator, and author probing into
the world of organizational behavior. At social gatherings, I have been known to define it as the
field that seeks to explain “what makes people tick” on the job. (By the way, to avoid ever being
asked to assist in the delivery of a newborn, I never refer to being in the field of “OB.”)
Over these years, various issues, topics, and theories once regarded as pivotal have faded
into the background and their coverage in this book has been either reduced accordingly or
deleted entirely. At the same time, new foci have received attention and now feature promi-
nently on these pages. Keen sensitivity to the field’s ebbs and flows has been critical to my
mission of characterizing OB as it exists today. Several core issues have stood the test of time
and are still covered in this book. However, what we know about them has changed—sometimes
dramatically—in light of accumulated research, and the book’s content has shifted accordingly,
along with their breadth of coverage.
I can say without fear of contradiction that the nature of organizations today has made it
more important than ever to pay attention to the topic of organizational behavior. The backdrop
against which contemporary organizations function demands keen awareness of the dynamics of
human behavior in organizations. Thanks to technology, the ways we work have been changing
at a dizzying rate. Demographic shifts have altered the nature of the workforce with respect to
members’ values, languages, and backgrounds, resulting in unprecedented challenges and oppor-
tunities for everyone. At the same time, economic forces have driven a roller-coaster of shifting
markets and unprecedented demands in the need for and availability of workforces. And as all
this has been occurring, reductions in trade barriers, and highly efficient and relatively inexpen-
sive transportation systems, and, of course, the ubiquity of the Internet, have made globalization
a fact of life for all businesses, large and small.
The bottom line is clear: as potent forces have been altering the nature of organizations and
the work people perform in them, so too has the field of organizational behavior been changing.
And this has made the field of OB more vital and dynamic than ever—and my mission of chroni-
cling it on these pages more challenging and exciting than ever.
Preface xv
NEW CONTENT
As you might imagine, the changing nature of OB has necessitated coverage of new topics in the
present edition. Some topics covered in the past are now more abbreviated; others are discussed
more extensively. Furthermore, quite a few topics appear in this edition for the first time. Among
those making their premiere appearance are the following:
• Office hoteling (Chapter 1) • Constructive versus destructive forms of

• Jellies (Chapter 1) organizational deviance (Chapter 7)
• Neurological responses to injustice • Cyberloafing (Chapter 7)
(Chapter 2) • Informal communication using social media (e.g.,
• Utilitarianism and natural rights perspectives Facebook, Twitter) (Chapter 8)
on ethics (Chapter 2) • Communicating in a multicultural workforce
• Ethical relativism and imperialism (Chapter 8)
(Chapter 2) • Peer-based normative control and peer-based
• Team halo effect (Chapter 3) rational control (Chapter 9)
• Novel approaches to fighting stress • Gainsharing (Chapter 9)
(Chapter 4) • Implicit favorite bias in decision-making (Chapter 10)
• Social support as a stress reducer • Hindsight bias and person sensitivity bias in
(Chapter 4) decision making (Chapter 10)
• Organizational demography • Servant leadership (Chapter 11)
(Chapter 5) • Core characteristics of organizational culture
• Business case for diversity (Chapter 5) (Chapter 12)
• Motivational fit approach (Chapter 6) • Immersion into Zappos’s organizational culture
• Emotion control and motivation (Chapter 12)
control (Chapter 6) • Reorganization of GM’s divisional structure
• Need satisfaction as a source (Chapter 13)
of rewards (Chapter 6) • Team-based organizations (Chapter 13)
• Swift trust (Chapter 7) • Action labs (Chapter 14)
These additions reflect growing interest in these topics in recent years. They were guided
by informal feedback from professors and students using the previous edition of this book, formal
feedback by reviewers, and my own assessment of what’s happening in the field of OB. I resisted
the temptation to include the latest fads. To have done otherwise would have triggered a depar-
ture from my mission of focusing on the essentials—in addition to dating the book prematurely
and diminishing its usefulness for readers. As such, changes in content were evolutionary instead
of revolutionary, and I trust that readers will welcome this approach.
NEW AND THOROUGHLY UPDATED FEATURES

In addition to the topics just identified, I added new features and thoroughly updated all content.
These efforts may be seen in the several ways highlighted here.
xvi Preface
New and Updated Company Examples

Although the ever-shifting terrain surely will make some of my efforts in vain, readers will
find the book’s examples as current as possible. Companies’ practices come and go, as do their
leaders, and even their existences. With this in mind, I offer this blanket apology for any refer-
ences to such that are no longer applicable when this book is read.
New and Updated Practical Suggestions

In addition to updating company examples, readers should note that, however deemed necessary,
I also updated references to research, theory, and conclusions drawn from them. In some cases, this
required tweaking the nature of the practical advice our field is capable of offering. This is impor-
tant to note because in all cases, the practical recommendations offered on these pages are guided
by research findings. As such, they may be considered evidence-based, and their roots are valid.
Knowing that the practices advocated in this book are driven by objective, empirical research should
lead readers to accept them with confidence. And, unlike the recommendations found in some
books, they are neither drawn out of thin air, nor the result of potentially biased, casual observations.
New and Updated Pedagogical Features

Readers familiar with the previous edition of this book will be pleased to find that two particularly
popular features were retained but revised or updated as needed.
MAKING THE CASE One of the features of which I speak here is the chapter-opening case. I call
this Making the Case because it describes something going on in an organization that illustrates
OB in action—thereby “making the case” for it as a topic worth studying. The chapter-opening
cases in this book are either new to this edition or updated so as to ensure their continued relevance
and pedagogical value. Some of the new Making the Case sections are as follows:
• Edward Jones: Investing in People (Chapter 1)
• AIG: Bailout and Outrage (Chapter 2)
• Stressing Stress-Free Jobs at Kaiser Permanente (Chapter 4)
• Domino’s Pizza Takes a Bite Out of Turnover (Chapter 5)
• Three Decisions Made, Then Quickly Unmade (Chapter 10)
• The Woman Who Saved the Chicken Fajitas (Chapter 11)
• “Welcome to Google, Here’s Your Desk” (Chapter 12)
• Saving Campbell’s from the Soup (Chapter 14)
WINNING PRACTICES These sections call readers’ attention to current organizational practices
that illustrate one or more key OB concepts from each chapter. They provide close-up examples
of specific ways in which organizations have been using OB principles to improve a wide variety
of different aspects of organizational functioning. New sections in this edition are as follows:
• Feeling Sick? Your Doctor’s Probably Got An App for That (Chapter 1)
• Three Novel Approaches to Fighting the Battle Against Stress (Chapter 4)
• Companies Stretch Goals in Two Directions (Chapter 6)
• “Virtual Troops” Usher Girl Scouts into the Digital Era (Chapter 9)
• Challenges of Leading in a Digital World (Chapter 11)
• Organizational Culture for Sale (Chapter 12)
• Making Changes Stick: How Three Successful Organizations Do It (Chapter 14)
Preface xvii
RETURN OF POPULAR PEDAGOGICAL FEATURES

Back by popular demand are the most useful pedagogical features from the previous edition of
this book. These features appear at the front and back of each chapter.
Chapter-Opening Features
Preceding each chapter’s opening case are two features designed to alert readers to the nature
and significance of the material. These are as follows:
• Learning Objectives. At the beginning of each chapter, readers are provided with a list of
six specific things they should be able to do after reading that chapter. These all begin with
action words such as “define,” “describe,” “identify,” and “distinguish.”
• Three Good Reasons You Should Care About.… Understandably, today’s busy students
may be prone to challenge the relevance of material, asking what value it has to them.
Assuming that students are most receptive to learning about topics that have some recog-
nizable benefits to themselves, these sections begin each chapter by indicating precisely
why readers should care about the topic at hand.
End-of-Chapter Features Retained

At the close of each chapter are two different types of features designed to bring the material to
life for readers.
APPLYING THE MATERIAL The first type of feature is intended to help students recognize
and appreciate the practical implications of OB. Specifically, the following two features are
designed to do this:
• Back to the Case. The end of each chapter contains a Back to the Case section in which
readers are asked to answer three questions that require them to use the chapter material to
explain specific aspects of the case. This drives home the relevance of the field of OB as a
source of insight into the Making the Case sections.
• You Be the Consultant. These brief sections describe a hypothetical organizational prob-
lem and then challenge readers to draw on the material to find ways of solving it.
EXERCISES I have also retained the two skills-based exercises in each chapter that were so
popular in earlier editions of this book. These are as follows:
• Self-Assessment Exercise. These exercises are designed to give readers insight into key
aspects of their own individual attitudes and/or behavior relevant to the material covered.
• Group Exercise. These hands-on experiences require the joint efforts of small groups of
students so as to help illustrate thinking about key phenomena described in the text.
These exercises can be an important part of students’ learning experiences. They not only expose
students to some of the phenomena described in the text on a firsthand basis, but they also stimulate
critical thinking about those phenomena—and in ways that are intended to be highly engaging.
TEACHING AND LEARNING AIDS

This book is accompanied by very helpful teaching and learning aids for students and instructors
that have been prepared especially for this book.
xviii Preface
For Students
Students reading this book will benefit greatly by using several special features.
• Interactive Study Guide. The book’s companion Web site can be found at www.pearsonhighered
.com/greenberg. It contains a wide variety of features designed to help students organize and
study the material in this book and to gain further insight into it.
• Test questions. Each chapter includes a set of questions (multiple-choice, true–false, and
essay) based on the chapter material. To make the tests effective as a study aid, students
receive instant feedback on them. And to stimulate thinking about each question, helpful
“hints” are just a mouse-click away.
For Instructors
Professors who adopt this book have access to a complete set of instructional aids that consist of
the following items:
• Instructor’s Manual. Each chapter includes a chapter synopsis, lecture outline, and sug-
gested answers to end-of-chapter questions.
• The Test Item File. Twenty-five multiple-choice questions, twenty-five true–false ques-
tions, and five to seven short-answer/essay questions based on the material in each chapter
are included.
• TestGenerator. A comprehensive suite of software tools for testing and assessment is
included in the Test Manager package to facilitate the process of creating exams.
• PowerPoint Slides. More than 100 full-color slides are available from the password-protected
instructor’s section of this book’s Web site at www.pearsonhighered.com/greenberg.
To access these materials, instructors should contact their local Pearson sales representative.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: SOME SINCERE WORDS OF THANKS

Writing a book such as this is an endeavor one cannot undertake alone. Acknowledging this,
I welcome the opportunity to thank the many hard-working reviewers, publishing professionals,
and family members whose efforts have made this book possible.
Insightful Reviewers
To begin, I thank my colleagues who have provided valuable suggestions and comments in response
to various drafts of this and earlier editions of this book. These include:
• Richard Grover, University of Southern Maine
• Jeffrey Miles, University of the Pacific
• Michael Buckley, University of Oklahoma
• Suzyn Ornstein, Suffolk University
• William A. Walker, University of Houston
• Henry Moon, London Business School
• Raymond T. LaManna, New York Medical College
• Charles Albano, Fairleigh Dickinson University
• Leonard Glick, Northeastern University
• Joe Rode, Miami University
• John Coleman, University of Michigan
• Melody Wollan, Eastern Illinois University
Preface xix
• Barbara McKintosh, University of Vermont

• Pat Sherrer, Piedmont College
• John Watt, Purdue University
• Morgan Milner, Eastern Michigan University
• Diane Denslow, University of North Florida
• Diane O’Brien, Eastern Connecticut State University
Talented Publishing Professionals

Second, I wish to thank the many hard-working individuals whose efforts made this book
possible.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS I gratefully acknowledge several people for preparing the

materials at this book’s companion Web site. Specifically, I thank the talented staff members at
Ansr Source for creating the very useful Student Study Guide, Veronica Horton for writing the
Instructor Manual and making the beautiful PowerPoint slides, and Eileen Hogan for updating
the Test Item File.
EDITORIAL STAFF Editorial director, Stephanie Wall, and her assistant, Linda Albelli, pro-
vided the steadfast support, along with the “gentle reminders,” required to bring this book to
fruition. Stephanie’s contributions to shaping the form, tone, and direction of this book were
immeasurable. I also thank her for assembling the best management and organizational behavior
publishing team in the business.
Also working with me shoulder-to-shoulder on the many details that make this book a
reality was Sarah Holle, project manager. I’ve never known more committed and kinder editorial
staff. I am truly indebted to these outstanding professionals for lending their considerable talents
to this project.
PRODUCTION AND MARKETING STAFF I am also indebted to Ilene Kahn, my production

editor at Pearson Education, for guiding this book through the production process seemlessly.
Copyeditor Cindy Bond and Haylee Schwenk at PreMediaGlobal worked tirelessly at transform-
ing my ramblings into the coherent prose you have before you.
Nikki Jones, marketing manager, must be acknowledged for her insightful advice,
which helped me make key decisions at various stages of this project. I also thank Maggie
Moylan, director of marketing, for crafting a master plan for ensuring that this book reaches an
ever-widening audience.
Supportive Family
In conclusion, I wish to thank members of my family for their support and for accepting without
question my need to be isolated for long periods while I was working on this book. In Texas, Jack
(a.k.a. “Paw Dawg”), David, James, and Raquel, and in New York, Ben and Sue have always
been there for me. Their support has taken many forms and has been steadfast and invaluable.
As always, my wife Carolyn was with me every step of the way and has nurtured me with
her love. I know I’ve been fortunate to have her in my life for over three decades, and I don’t
take her for granted. So, thanks, pal. I also benefitted from the joys of having Pepper around the
house to sing, dance, and talk to me. As a parrot, he can also shred this book if he doesn’t like it
(or even if he does).
Jerald Greenberg
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jerald Greenberg has taught organizational behavior to thousands of students in universities

throughout the world over almost 40 years. Most of this time he was at The Ohio State
University’s Fisher College of Business, where he won awards for excellence in teaching.
He also has trained supervisors, managers, and executives in a wide variety of organizations.
Dr. Greenberg is well known for his many contributions to organizational behavior research,
especially his pioneering work on organizational justice. He has published widely on this topic
and is regarded to be one of today’s most influential management scholars. In recognition of
sustained research excellence, Dr. Greenberg has won many prestigious awards. Among these
are the Academy of Management’s “Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Management
Award” and the “Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award” from the Society for Industrial
and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). When he is not lecturing, conducting research, or writing
textbooks, Greenberg spends personal time in less successful endeavors—establishing his lack
of talent as a rock musician and rooting for some of the NFL’s most frustrating teams.
xxi
PART
I INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1 The Field of Organizational Behavior

Chapter 2 Organizational Justice, Ethics, and Corporate Social
Responsibility
1 THE FIELD OF ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, you will be able to:
1. DEFINE organizational behavior (OB).

2. DESCRIBE the major characteristics of the field of OB.
3. DISTINGUISH between the Theory X and Theory Y philosophies of management.
4. IDENTIFY the socioeconomic conditions that help shape the field of OB.
5. DESCRIBE the historical roots of the field of OB.
6. CHARACTERIZE the nature of the field of OB today.
THREE GOOD REASONS you should care about . . .

The Field of Organizational Behavior
1. Understanding the dynamics of behavior in organizations is essential to achieving personal
success as a manager, regardless of your area of specialization.
2. Principles of organizational behavior are involved in making people both productive and
happy on their jobs.
3. People can make or break their organizations, requiring successful companies to address a
wide variety of OB-related issues.
2
Chapter 1 • The Field of Organizational Behavior 3
Making the Case for…

The Field of Organizational Behavior
Edward Jones: Investing in People
With questionable practices and a global financial meltdown capturing headlines, it’s no secret
that the financial services industry has suffered in recent years. Although several once well-
known competitors have succumbed to the storm, Edward Jones, the 90-year-old investment
advising firm headquartered in St. Louis, didn’t close any of its 12,615 offices nor did it lay off
a single employee. In fact, it’s grown its pool of 37,000 U.S.-based employees by eight percent.
Even in difficult market conditions, the firm’s investment counselors have safeguarded—
and, in many cases, grown—their customers’ wealth. But the key to success at Edward Jones
goes beyond skillfully investing clients’ funds to wisely investing in the well-being of employ-
ees themselves. The company does this in several ways.
First, Edward Jones associates have strong incentives to work hard by earning opportuni-
ties to become limited or general partners in the firm. To date, some 12,000 associates have
done so. As company officials acknowledge, this encourages everyone to cooperate with one
another, building the sense that “we’re all in this together” and “when one person succeeds,
we all succeed.”
To help promote this success, Edward Jones employees are given extensive training
opportunities—95 hours per employee on average. The focus is on giving all associates—not
just investment advisors—all the tools they need to chart their own careers and to advance
along these paths. Not surprisingly, for eight consecutive years the firm has been recognized
by Training magazine as having one of the best training programs for employees. This is in
addition to earning top-ten rankings by Fortune magazine in recent years as one of the “top
companies to work for.”
Within Edward Jones, the firm’s success and the way it treats its employees are considered to
go hand-in-hand. The reasoning is straightforward: associates remain loyal to the firm because
it treats them so very well (voluntary turnover is below the industry average at 9 percent). The
resulting continuity allows customers to keep the same advisors for many years. This, in turn,
enables investment counselors to know their customers well and customers to trust their coun-
selors with their portfolios. This formula for success begets more success, as it attracts potential
advisors to the firm and allows it to be very particular about whom it accepts. In fact, over
350 people on average apply for each new position that opens up. And with over $500 billion in
clients’ money entrusted to the firm, there’s no such thing as being too selective.
It’s clear that Edward Jones is doing something special, not only in investing its clients’
money but also when it comes to investing in its own employees. The firm’s associates are not
only treated well but are given opportunities to shape their own destinies, both professionally and
financially. And this is something that you don’t find in all organizations. Edward Jones officials
are convinced that its sharp focus on people has been paying dividends in customers’—and the
firm’s—bottom lines.
As you might imagine, behind these successes lies a management team whose members
recognize the importance of the human side of work. After all, there can be no organizations
4 Part I • Introduction
without people. So, no matter how sophisticated Edward Jones’ investment research may be, it’s
the firm’s people that make the place special. With this in mind, it makes sense to realize that the
human side of work is critical to the effective functioning—and basic existence—of organiza-
tions. This people-centered orientation is embraced in the field of organizational behavior—the
topic of this book.
This chapter will introduce you to the field of organizational behavior. Specifically, I begin
by describing the field’s characteristics, the tools it uses to achieve its objectives, and the assump-
tions it makes about people. Following this, I present a capsule history of the field of organizational
behavior, tracing its roots from its origins to its emergence as a modern science. Finally, I close this
chapter by outlining what you can expect to find in the remainder of this book.
THE FIELD OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR: WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

To help you fully appreciate the material in this book, it’s useful to begin by explaining exactly
what the field of organizational behavior is all about. I do this here by describing the field’s defin-
ing characteristics.
Organizational Behavior: Its Defining Characteristics

The field of organizational behavior (or, OB, as it is commonly called) deals with human
behavior in organizations. Formally defined, organizational behavior is the multidisciplinary
field that seeks knowledge of behavior in organizational settings by systematically studying in-
dividual, group, and organizational processes.1 This knowledge is used both by scientists inter-
ested in understanding human behavior and by practitioners interested in enhancing organiza-
tional effectiveness and individual well-being.
In this book, I will highlight these dual purposes, focusing both on explaining the nature
of this scientific knowledge as well as how it has been—or may be—used for practical purposes.
This dual focus is fundamental to the field of organizational behavior because it is considered an
applied science. The definition of OB highlights four central characteristics of the field.
OB APPLIES THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD TO PRACTICAL MANAGERIAL PROBLEMS Our defi-

nition of OB refers to seeking knowledge and to studying behavioral processes. Although it is
neither as sophisticated as the study of physics or chemistry nor as mature as these disciplines,
the orientation of the field of OB is still scientific in nature. Thus, like other scientific fields, OB
seeks to develop a base of knowledge by using an empirical, research-based approach. That is, it
is based on systematic observation and measurement of the phenomena of interest.2 For an over-
view of some of the research techniques used in the field of organizational behavior, see Table 1.1.
Why is it so important to learn about behavior in organizational settings? To social
scientists, learning about human behavior on the job—“what makes people tick” in organiza-
tions, so to speak—is valuable for its own sake. After all, scientists are interested in the generation
of knowledge—in this case, insight into the effects of organizations on people and the effects of
people on organizations. This is not to say, however, that such knowledge has no value outside
of scientific circles. Far from it! OB specialists also apply knowledge from scientific studies, put-
ting it to practical use. As they seek to improve organizational functioning and the quality of
life of people working in organizations, as you will see throughout this book, they rely heavily
on knowledge derived from OB research. Thus, there are both scientific and applied sides to the
field of OB—facets that not only coexist but that complement each other as well. (Because we
have all experienced OB phenomena, it sometimes seems commonsensical, leading us to wonder
TABLE 1.1 Research Methods Used in Organizational Behavior: A Summary

The field of organizational behavior is based on knowledge derived from scientific research. The major
techniques used to conduct this research are summarized here.
Research Method Description Comments

Survey research Questionnaires are developed and administered This technique is the most
to people to measure how they feel about various widely used one in the
aspects of themselves, their jobs, and their field of OB.
organizations. Responses to some questionnaires
are compared to others, or to actual behaviors,
to see how various concepts are interrelated.
Experimental research Behavior is carefully studied—either in a This technique makes it
controlled setting (a lab) or in an actual company possible to learn about
(the field)—to see how a particular variable that cause–effect relationships.
is systematically varied affects other aspects of
behavior.
Naturalistic observation A nonempirical technique in which a scientist This technique is subject
systematically records various events and to the biases of the
behaviors observed in a work setting. observer.
Case study A thorough description of a series of events that Findings from case studies
occurred in a particular organization. may not be generalizable
to other organizations.
sometimes why the scientific approach is necessary. However, as you will see in the Group
Exercise on p. 28, common sense is not always a reliable guide to the complexities of human
behavior at work.)
OB FOCUSES ON THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS: INDIVIDUALS, GROUPS, AND ORGANIZATIONS

To best appreciate behavior in organizations, OB specialists do not focus exclusively on individu-
als acting alone. After all, in organizational settings, people frequently work together in groups
and teams. Furthermore, people—alone and in groups—both influence and are influenced by
their work environments. Considering this, it should not be surprising to learn that the field of
OB focuses on three interrelated levels of analysis—individuals, groups, and organizations.
The field of OB recognizes that all three levels of analysis must be considered to compre-
hend fully the complex dynamics of behavior in organizations. Careful attention to all three
levels of analysis is a central theme in modern OB and will be reflected fully throughout this
text (see Figure 1.1). Consider these particulars.
• I will describe how OB scientists are concerned with individual perceptions, attitudes, and
motives. This orientation, focusing primarily on the behavior of individuals, is known as
the micro approach to OB. As indicated in the lower left corner of Figure 1.1, I cover this
approach in Chapters 3–6 of this book.
• At the other extreme, the field of OB also examines organizations as a whole—the way they
are structured and operate in their environments and the effects of their operations on the
individuals and groups within them. As shown in the upper-right corner of Figure 1.1, this
so-called macro approach to OB is covered in Chapters 12–14.
Ch.12: Culture, Creativity, and Innovation

Organizations Ch.13: Organizational Structure
Ch.14: Organizational Change
Ch.7: Interpersonal Behavior

Primary Focus and Unit of Analysis
Ch.8: Communication
Ch.9: Groups and Teams
Ch.10: Decision Making
Ch.11: Power and Leadership
Groups (and
individuals
within them)
Ch.2: Ethics and Justice

Ch.3: Personality, Learning, and Attribution
Ch.4: Emotions and Stress
Ch.5: Work-Related Attitudes
Ch.6: Motivation
Individuals
Micro Macro
Name Given to Approach
FIGURE 1.1 Levels of Analysis in the Field of Organizational Behavior
As indicated by the dashed line shown here, the topics studied in the field of OB (and hence, this
book) vary along a continuum ranging from those focusing primarily on the behavior of individuals
(known as the micro approach) to ones focusing primarily on organizations (known as the macro
approach). Between these extremes, OB also focuses on the behavior of groups within organizations.
The various chapters embracing these approaches are identified as they fall along this continuum.
• Between these two extremes, and sharing some characteristics of each, is the behavior of
individuals in groups and of groups themselves. For example, in Chapters 7–11, I will de-
scribe such phenomena as how people communicate, make decisions, and influence others.
It is important to recognize that the lines between these approaches are not clear-cut, nor
are they meant to be. Instead, they reflect the broad continuum of foci (indicated by the dashed
line in Figure 1.1) that characterizes the field of OB.
OB IS MULTIDISCIPLINARY IN NATURE When you consider the broad range of issues and
approaches taken by the field of OB, it is easy to appreciate the fact that the field is multidisci-
plinary in nature. By this, I mean that it draws on a wide variety of social science disciplines.
Rather than studying a topic from only one particular perspective, the field of OB is likely to con-
sider a wide variety of approaches. These range from the highly individual-oriented approach of
psychology, through the more group-oriented approach of sociology, to issues in organizational
quality studied by management scientists.
For a summary of some of the key fields from which the field of OB draws, see Table 1.2.
If, as you read this book, you recognize some particular theory or approach as familiar, chances
are good that you already learned something about it in another class. What makes OB so spe-
cial is that it combines these various orientations together into a single—very broad and very
exciting—field.
OB SEEKS TO IMPROVE ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE AT

WORK In the early part of the twentieth century, as railroads opened up the western portion of
the United States and the nation’s population rapidly grew (it doubled from 1880 to 1920!), the
demand for manufactured products was great. New manufacturing plants were built, attracting
waves of new immigrants in search of a living wage and laborers lured off farms by the employ-
ment prospects factory work offered. These individuals found that factories were gigantic, noisy,
hot, and highly regimented—in short, brutal places in which to work. Bosses demanded more
and more from their employees and treated them like disposable machines, replacing those who
quit or who died from accidents with others who waited outside the factory gates.
TABLE 1.2 The Multidisciplinary Roots of OB

OB is a unique multidisciplinary field that draws on several different sciences. The most important parent
disciplines are listed here, along with some of the OB topics with which they are associated and the
chapters in this book where they are discussed.
Discipline Relevant OB Topics Associated Chapters

Psychology Perception Chapter 3
Learning Chapter 3
Personality Chapter 3
Emotions Chapter 4
Stress Chapter 4
Attitudes Chapter 5
Physiology Motivation Chapter 6
Decision making Chapter 10
Sociology Group processes Chapter 9
Teams Chapter 9
Anthropology Group processes Chapter 9
Communication Chapter 8
Political science Leadership Chapter 11
Organizational culture Chapter 12
Economics Interpersonal conflict Chapter 7
Organizational power Chapter 11
Negotiation Chapter 7
Management science Decision making Chapter 10
Organizational power Chapter 11
Technology Chapter 13
Organizational change Chapter 14
Clearly, the managers of a century ago held very negative views of employees. They assumed
that people were basically lazy and irresponsible, and they treated workers with disrespect. This
very negativistic approach, which has been around for many years, reflects the traditional view
of management called the Theory X orientation. This philosophy of management assumes that
people are basically lazy, dislike work, need direction, and will only work hard when they are
pushed into doing so.
Today, however, if you asked corporate officials to describe their views of human nature,
you’d probably find some more optimistic beliefs. Although some of today’s managers still think
that people are basically lazy, many others would disagree, arguing that it’s not that simple. They
would claim that most individuals are just as capable of working hard as they are of “goofing off.”
If employees are recognized for their efforts (such as by being fairly paid) and are given an oppor-
tunity to succeed (such as by being well trained), they may be expected to work very hard without
being pushed. Thus, employees may put forth a great deal of effort simply because they want to.
Management’s job, then, is to create those conditions that make people want to perform as desired.
This approach, which assumes that people are not intrinsically lazy but willing to work
hard when the right conditions prevail, is known as the Theory Y orientation. This philosophy
assumes that people have a psychological need to work and seek achievement and responsibility.
In contrast to the Theory X philosophy of management, which essentially demonstrates distrust
for people on the job, the Theory Y approach is strongly associated with improving the quality of
people’s work lives (for a summary of the differences, see Figure 1.2).
The Theory Y perspective prevails within the field of organizational behavior today. It as-
sumes that people are highly responsive to their work environments and that the ways they are
treated will influence the ways they will act. In fact, OB scientists are very interested in learning
Theory X Theory Y
(traditional approach) (modern approach)
Orientation Accepting, promotes
Distrusting toward betterment
people of human resources
Assumptions
Need to achieve
Basically lazy about
and be responsible
people
Low Interest in High

(disinterested) working (very interested)
Conditions Work when

Work when
under which people appropriately trained
pushed
will work hard and recognized
FIGURE 1.2 Theory X Versus Theory Y: A Summary

The traditional Theory X orientation toward people is far more negativistic than the contemporary
Theory Y approach, which is widely accepted today. Some of the key differences between these
management philosophies are summarized here.
exactly what conditions will lead people to behave most positively—that is, what makes work
both productive for organizations and enjoyable for the people working in them. (Do your own
assumptions about people at work more closely match a Theory X or Theory Y perspective? To
find out, complete the Self-Assessment Exercise on p. 27.)
After reading this section, you may find yourself wondering about productivity and profit-
ability. After all, the primary reason why businesses exist is to make a profit. What does all this
talk about people have to do with the bottom line? The answer is simple. Yes, OB is concerned
about the profit of organizations. In fact, making organizations more profitable is one of the
field’s key objectives. However, the way it goes about doing this is different than in other areas of
business. OB doesn’t deal with the design of machines used in manufacturing; it doesn’t address
a company’s accounting and marketing procedures; and it has nothing to say about the pricing
strategies that help sell products and services. Instead, OB seeks to make organizations more
profitable by addressing the treatment of people and the way work is done. As you read this book,
you will see exactly how vital this mission is and how the field goes about meeting it.
OB ASSUMES THAT THERE IS NO “ONE BEST” APPROACH What’s the most effective way to
motivate people? What style of leadership works best? Should groups of individuals be used to
make important organizational decisions? Although these questions are quite reasonable, there is
a basic problem with all of them. Namely, they all assume that there is a simple, unitary answer—
that is, one best way to motivate, to lead, and to make decisions.
Today’s specialists in the field of OB reject this simplistic approach and agree that there
is no one best approach to such complex phenomena. To assume otherwise is not only overly
simplistic and naive but, as you will see, also grossly inaccurate. When it comes to studying
human behavior in organizations, there are no simple answers. Instead, OB scholars embrace
a contingency approach—an orientation that recognizes that behavior in work settings is the
complex result of many interacting forces. This orientation is a hallmark of modern OB, and
you will see it throughout this book. Consider, for example, how an individual’s personal char-
acteristics (e.g., personal attitudes and beliefs) in conjunction with situational factors (e.g., an
organization’s culture, relations between coworkers) may all work together when it comes to
influencing how a particular individual is likely to behave on the job.
Reflecting the popularity of the contingency approach, explaining OB phenomena often
requires saying, “it depends.” As our knowledge of work-related behavior becomes increasingly
complex, it is difficult to give “straight answers.” Rather, it is usually necessary to say that people
will do certain things “under some conditions” or “when all other factors are equal.” Such phrases
provide a clear indication that the contingency approach is being used. In other words, a certain
behavior is “contingent upon” the existence of specific conditions. And OB scientists are always
striving to identify and understand these conditions.
Why Does OB Matter?

Now that you know the nature of the field, I will give you a preview of things to come by showing
you the importance of just a few of the ways in which the field of OB matters to people and com-
panies. With this in mind, I pose a question that asks you to draw on your personal experiences:
Have you ever had a job where people didn’t get along, nobody knew what to do, everyone goofed
off, and your boss was—well, putting it politely—unpleasant? I can’t imagine that you liked work-
ing in that company at all. In contrast, think of another position in which everyone was friendly,
knowledgeable, hardworking, and pleasant. That’s probably more to your liking. In such a situa-
tion you are likely to be interested in going to work, doing your best, and taking pride in what you
do. At the heart of these differences are all issues that are of great concern to OB scientists and
practitioners—and, as a result, they are the ones that will be covered in this book.
“Okay,” you may be asking, “in some companies, things are nice and smooth, but in others,
relationships are rocky—does it really matter?” As you will see throughout this book, the answer is
a resounding yes! For now, here are just a few highlights of specific ways in which OB matters to
people and the organizations in which they work.
• Companies whose managers accurately appraise the work of their subordinates enjoy lower
costs and higher productivity than those that handle their appraisals less accurately.3
• People who are satisfied with the way they are treated on the job are generally more pleas-
ant to their coworkers and bosses and are less likely to quit than those who are dissatisfied
with the way others treat them.4
• People who are carefully trained to work together in teams tend to be happier and more produc-
tive than those who are simply thrown together without any definite organizational support.5
• Employees who believe they have been treated unfairly on the job are more likely to steal
from their employers and to reject the policies of their organizations than those who be-
lieve they have been fairly treated.6
• People who are mistreated by their supervisors on the job experience more mental and
physical illnesses than those who are treated with kindness, dignity, and respect.7
• Organizations that treat employees well with respect to pay and benefits, opportunities, job
security, friendliness, fairness, and pride in company are, on average, twice as profitable as
the Standard & Poor’s 500 companies.8
• Companies that offer good employee benefits and that have friendly conditions are more
profitable than those that are less people oriented.9
By now, you might be asking yourself: Why, if OB is so important, is there no one person in
charge of it in an organization? After all, companies tend to have officials who are responsible for
other basic areas such as finance, accounting, marketing, and production. Why not OB? If you’ve
never heard of a vice president of OB or a manager of organizational behavior, it’s because organi-
zations do not have any such formal posts. So then, back to the question: Who is responsible for
organizational behavior?
In a sense, the answer is everyone! Although OB is a separate area of study, it cuts across all
areas of organizational functioning. Managers in all departments have to know how to motivate
their employees, how to keep people satisfied with their jobs, how to communicate fairly, how to
make teams function smoothly, and how to design jobs most effectively. In short, dealing with
people at work is everybody’s responsibility on the job. So, no matter what job you do in a com-
pany, knowing something about OB is sure to help you do it better. This is precisely why it’s vitally
important for you to know the material in this book.
OB IS RESPONSIVE TO SOCIOECONOMIC CONDITIONS

As the world changes, so too does the field of OB. In fact, many of the phenomena that OB scien-
tists study are influenced by the ever-shifting nature of socioeconomic conditions—that is, changes
in people and the business environment. In other words, ongoing changes in people and their en-
vironments take center stage in the field of OB. After all, people affect their environments (e.g.,
productive individuals strengthen the economy) and those environments affect people (e.g., foreign
competition changes the nature of work performed). With this in mind, it is useful to recognize the
changing conditions to which OB scientists and practitioners must be sensitive. Here, I begin by
describing a fundamental fact of life in OB—namely, that organizations are dynamic in nature.
OB Recognizes the Dynamic Nature of Organizations

Thus far, our characterization of the field of OB has focused more on behavior than on organiza-
tions. Nonetheless, it is important to point out that both OB scientists and practitioners do pay
a great deal of attention to the nature of organizations themselves. Under what conditions will
organizations change? How are organizations structured? How do organizations interact with
their environments? Questions such as these are of major interest to specialists in OB. But, before
we can consider them (as we will do in Chapters 13 and 14), we must first clarify exactly what we
mean by an organization.
Formally defined, an organization is a structured social system consisting of groups and
individuals working together to meet some agreed-upon objectives. In other words, organizations
consist of structured social units, such as individuals and/or work groups, who strive to attain a
common goal. Typically, we think of making a profit as the primary goal of an organization—and
indeed, for most business organizations, it is. However, different organizations may be guided
by different goals. For example, charitable organizations may focus on the objective of helping
people in need, political parties may be interested in electing candidates with certain ideas, and
religious organizations may strive to save souls. Regardless of the specific goals sought, the struc-
tured social units working together toward them may be considered organizations.
OB scientists conceive of organizations as dynamic and ever-changing entities. In other
words, they recognize that organizations are open systems—that is, self-sustaining systems that
use energy to transform resources from the environment (such as raw materials) into some form
of output (e.g., a finished product).10 Figure 1.3 summarizes some of the key properties of open
systems.
As this diagram makes clear, organizations receive input (i.e., raw materials) from their
environments and continuously transform it into output (i.e., products or services). This output
gets transformed back to input, and the cyclical operation continues. Because of the abstract na-
ture of this description, let’s now consider a real example, such as how organizations may tap the
External Environment
Subsystem
Subsystem
Inputs Outputs
• Raw materials Organization
• Human resources • Products/services
Transforming inputs
• Financial resources • Job performance
to outputs
• Information • Profits and losses
• Equipment
Subsystem
Subsystem
Feedback
FIGURE 1.3 Organizations as Open Systems

The open systems approach is characteristic of modern-day thinking in the field of OB. It assumes that
organizations are self-sustaining—that is, that they transform inputs to outputs in a continuous fashion.
Sources: Based on suggestions by Scott, 2007, and Katz & Kahn, 1978; see Note 10.
human resources of the community by hiring and training people to do jobs. These individuals
may work to provide a product in exchange for wages. They then spend these wages, putting
money back into the community and allowing more people to afford their companies’ products.
This, in turn, creates the need for still more employees, and so on. If you think about it this way,
it’s easy to realize that organizations are dynamic and constantly changing.
The dynamic nature of organizations can be likened to the dynamic relationship between
people and their environments. When we breathe, we take in oxygen and transform it into carbon
dioxide. This, in turn, sustains the life of green plants that emit oxygen for people to breathe. The
continuous nature of this open system—the so-called oxygen-carbon dioxide life cycle—characterizes
not only life but the existence of organizations as well.
OB Responds to Advances in Technology

Since the industrial revolution, people had performed carefully prescribed sets of tasks—known
as jobs—within large networks of people who answered to those above them—hierarchical ar-
rangements known as organizations. This picture, although highly simplistic, does a good job
of characterizing the working arrangements that most people had during much of the twentieth
century. However, today, in the twenty-first century, the essential nature of jobs and organizations
as we have known them is changing, and the major catalyst is rapidly advancing computer tech-
nology, especially the use of the Internet and wireless technology.11 As you might imagine, this
state of affairs has important implications for organizations—and, hence, the field of OB. (For a
close-up look at how one particular group, medical doctors, have made successful use of technol-
ogy in the form of iPads, see this chapter’s Winning Practices section on p. 13.)
As more work is shifted to digital brains, some work that was once performed by human
brains becomes obsolete. At the same time, new opportunities arise as people scurry to find their
footing amid the shifting terrain of the high-tech revolution. The implications of this for OB are
considerable. We will now review some of the most prominent trends in the world of work that
have been identified in recent years.
AUTOMATION AND DOWNSIZING Technology has made it possible for fewer people to do
more work than ever before. Automation, the process of replacing people with machines, is not
new, of course; it has gone on, slowly and steadily, for centuries. Unlike the gradual process of
automation, advances in information technology (IT) are occurring so rapidly today that the very
nature of work is changing as fast as we can keep up. With this, many jobs are disappearing, leav-
ing organizations (at least the most successful ones!) smaller than before.12
This also occurs in product manufacturing. For example, at GE’s Fanuc Automation plant
in Charlottesville, Virginia, circuit boards are manufactured by half as many employees as re-
quired before updating the facility.13 We also see this in the auto industry, where the number
of workers required on an assembly line has dropped by 8.5 percent at the same time that the
number of vehicles manufactured has risen by 5 percent. 14 Put simply, fewer people are re-
quired to do more work than ever before. Interestingly, it is not only blue-collar, manual-labor
jobs that are eliminated but white-collar, mental-labor jobs as well. In many places, middle
managers are no longer needed to make decisions that can now be made by computers. It’s little
wonder that middle managers, while only 10 percent of the workforce, make up 20 percent of
recent layoffs.
As these figures suggest, organizations have been reducing the number of employees need-
ed to operate effectively—a process known as downsizing.15 Typically, this involves more than
just laying off people in a move to save money. It is directed at adjusting the number of employees
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI
Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)
The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.
NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA
I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.
MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]
MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY
With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
BRAZIER
Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT
SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB
CUTTING THE EDGE

FINISHING THE BOTTOM
LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING
FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE
TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL
NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK
DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG
REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

BEATING THE BARK
WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT
MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN

Etextbook 978 0132729833 Managing Behavior in Organizations

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Etextbook 978 0132729833 Managing Behavior in Organizations

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

eTextbook 978-0132729833 Managing

PART II Individual Behavior 65

PART III Group Behavior 201

PART IV Organizational Processes 365

Company Index 469

Chapter 1 The Field of Organizational Behavior 2

Chapter 2 Organizational Justice, Ethics, and Corporate Social Responsibility 31

PART II Individual Behavior 65

Chapter 3 Individual Processes: Personality, Social Perception,

Chapter 4 Coping with Organizational Life: Emotions and Stress 99

Adverse Effects of Organizational Stress 122

Chapter 5 Work-Related Attitudes: Prejudice, Job Satisfaction,

Chapter 6 Motivating People to Work 170

PART III Group Behavior 201

Chapter 7 Interpersonal Behavior in the Workplace: Conflict, Cooperation, Trust,

Chapter 8 Organizational Communication 236

Chapter 9 Group Processes and

Chapter 10 Decisions Making by Individuals and Groups 297

Chapter 11 The Quest for Leadership 333

PART IV Organizational Processes 365

Chapter 12 Organizational Culture, Creativity, and Innovation 366

Chapter 13 Designing Effective Organizations 400

Chapter 14 Managing Organizational Change: Strategic Planning and

Company Index 469

FOR WHOM IS THIS BOOK INTENDED?

A BALANCED APPROACH TO RESEARCH,

MISSION: KEEPING ABREAST OF THE SHIFTING LANDSCAPE

• Office hoteling (Chapter 1) • Constructive versus destructive forms of

NEW AND THOROUGHLY UPDATED FEATURES

New and Updated Company Examples

New and Updated Practical Suggestions

New and Updated Pedagogical Features

RETURN OF POPULAR PEDAGOGICAL FEATURES

End-of-Chapter Features Retained

TEACHING AND LEARNING AIDS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: SOME SINCERE WORDS OF THANKS

• Barbara McKintosh, University of Vermont

Talented Publishing Professionals

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS I gratefully acknowledge several people for preparing the

PRODUCTION AND MARKETING STAFF I am also indebted to Ilene Kahn, my production

Jerald Greenberg has taught organizational behavior to thousands of students in universities

Chapter 1 The Field of Organizational Behavior

After reading this chapter, you will be able to:

1. DEFINE organizational behavior (OB).

THREE GOOD REASONS you should care about . . .

Making the Case for…

THE FIELD OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR: WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

Organizational Behavior: Its Defining Characteristics

OB APPLIES THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD TO PRACTICAL MANAGERIAL PROBLEMS Our defi-

TABLE 1.1 Research Methods Used in Organizational Behavior: A Summary

Research Method Description Comments

OB FOCUSES ON THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS: INDIVIDUALS, GROUPS, AND ORGANIZATIONS

Ch.12: Culture, Creativity, and Innovation

Ch.7: Interpersonal Behavior

Ch.2: Ethics and Justice

OB SEEKS TO IMPROVE ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE AT

TABLE 1.2 The Multidisciplinary Roots of OB

Discipline Relevant OB Topics Associated Chapters

Low Interest in High

Conditions Work when

FIGURE 1.2 Theory X Versus Theory Y: A Summary

Why Does OB Matter?

OB IS RESPONSIVE TO SOCIOECONOMIC CONDITIONS