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Introduction to Organizational Behavior What is organizational behavior? * The attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups in organizations. * HOW satisfied people are with their Jobs, how committed they feel towards goals of the organization, how supportive Jobs are of promoting women or minorities in management positions. * Includes the study of how events in the external environment affect organizations. Goals of B * Predicting organizational behavior. * Anticipate how others feel when you do something. * Ex.
How proofs react to a finished assignment, when salespeople and politicians are telling us the truth about a new product or the state of the nation. * Explaining organizational behavior and events in organizations. * Why do events occur? * Determining why people are more/or less motivated, satisfied, or prone to resign. * Ex. People may resign because they’re dissatisfied with their pay, because they are discriminated against or because they have failed to respond appropriately to an organizational crisis. * Managing organizational behavior. * The art of getting things accomplished in organizations.
We can often make sensible action to manage if we can truly understand the reasons for high quality service, ethical behavior, etc. History of B * People have always tried to find the “correct” way of managing an organization and achieving its goals. 1. The Classical View of B * Classical viewpoint advocated high specialization of labor, intensive coordination and centralized decision making. * Suggested that, to maintain control, managers should have fairly few workers, except for lower-level Jobs where machine pacing might sub for close supervision.
Frederick Taylor (1856-1915), “father of Scientific Management”: * Advocated the standardization of Job design rather than informal “rules of thumb” to determine optimum degree of specialization and standardization. * Extended Scientific Management to supervisors, where supervisors would specialize in particular Tunnels (Atonally Tournaments). Disciplinarian. Ex. One malign trail workers, one ml * Max Weber (1864-1920) “Bureaucracy: * Advocated bureaucracy as a mean of rationally managing complex organizations (rather than via intuition, favoritism, and nepotism).
Bureaucracy has the following characteristics: I. Highly structured it. Centralization of power iii. Single supervisor; chain of command ‘v. Rules and regulations 2. The Human Relations View of B * Human relations movement is a critique of the classical view; supported MGM styles that were more participative and more oriented towards employee needs. * Mayo and the Hawthorne studies v. Hawthorne Plants of Western Electric Co. Study (1927-29) I. Five female employees v’. Relay Assembly Room it. Effects of length of workday & week, & use of rest periods on productivity & fatigue iii.
Initial conditions: 48 hours/ week (Monday- Saturday, 9-5), no breaks * Several problems with classical view: a) Strict specialization incompatible with human needs for growth and achievement employee alienation from organization and clients. B) Strong centralization and reliance on formal authority fails to take advantage of creativity from lower-level members organization fails to learn from mistakes, innovation and adaptation threatened. C) Strict rules members would adapt to only the minimum acceptable level of performance that rules specify Ex.
You can only process 8 claims a day. 8 claims becomes the norm, even though higher levels of performance are possible. Overall goals of organization 3. Contingency View of B * No best way to manage. D) Strong specialization employees lose sight of * Much of contemporary research offers answers to organizational problems by saying: “It depends. ” * An appropriate management style depends on interactions (e. G. , context x behavior or the person x situation). * National culture and ethnic diversity have proven to be some of the most important contingency variables in B research.