Organizational BehaviorChapter 1Introduction to the filed of Organizational behavioral Organizational behavior (OB): the study of what people think, feel, and do in and around organizations.They study this topic at multiple levels of analysis:The individualThe teamThe organizationOrganizations: groups of people who work interdependently toward some purpose.Collective entities. Humans who interact with each other in an organized way.Requires some minimal level of:CommunicationCoordinationCollaborationMembers have a collective sense of purpose. This purpose isn’t always well defined and agreed on.Historical foundation s of organizational behavior OB emerged as a distinct field throughout the 1940s.During that decade, a few researchers began describing their research as organizational.Experts on other fields have been studying organizations for many centuries.Why study organizational behavior?Comprehend and predict workplace eventsThe field of organizational behavior uses scientific research to discover systematic relationships, which give us a valuable foundation for comprehending organizational life.It helps us predict and anticipate future events so we can get along with others, achieve our goals, and minimize unnecessary career risks.Adopt more accurate personal theoriesInfluence organizational events Organizations are deeply affected by the...

Organizational BehaviorChapter 3Perceiving ourselves and others in organizations Self-concept: an individual’s self-beliefs and self-evaluations.Defined at three levels:IndividualRelationalCollectiveSpecifically, we view ourselves in terms of our personal traits (individual), connections to friends and coworkers (relational)and memberships in entities (collective).Self-concept complexity, consistency and clarityAn individual’s self-concept can be described by three characteristicsComplexityThe number of distinct and important roles or identities that people perceive about themselvesSelf-expansion: increase complexityAlso the separation of those identitiesAlthough everyone has multiple selves, only some of those identities dominate their attention at one time.ConsistencyHigh consistency exist when the individual’s identities require similar personality traits, values, and other tributes.Depends on how closely the person’s identities require personal attributes that are similar to his or her actual attributes.ClarityThe degree to which a person’s self-concept is clear, confidently defined and stable.When we are confident about who we are, can describe our important identities to others, and provide the same description of ourselves across time.Clarity increases with age and is clearer when a person’s multiple selves have higher consistency.Effects of self-concept characteristics on well-being and behavior People tend to have better psychological well-being when they have fairly...

Organizational BehaviorChapter 5Foundations of employee motivationMotivation: the forces within a person that affect his or her direction, intensity and persistence of voluntary behavior. Employee engagement: individual emotional and cognitive motivation, particularly a focused, intense, persistent, and purposive effort toward work-related goals.An emotional involvement in, commitment to, and satisfaction with the work.Also high level of absorption in the work and self-efficacy.Most employees aren’t very engaged.Actively disengaged employees tend to be disruptive at work, not just disconnected from work. Drives: hardwired characteristics of the brain that correct deficiencies or maintain an internal equilibrium by producing emotions to energize individuals. (primary needs).Innate and universal.The starting point of motivation because they generate emotions.Needs: goal-directed forces that people experience.Motivational forces of emotions channeled toward particular goals to correct deficiencies or imbalances.The emotions we eventually become conscious aware of.Drives and emotions → needs → decisions and behaviorIndividual differences in needs Everyone has the same drives.People develop different intensities of needs in a particular situation.Self-concepts, social norms and past experience amplify or suppress emotions, thereby resulting in stronger or weaker needs.Need can be ‘...

Organizational BehaviorChapter 7Decision making and creativity Decision making: the conscious process of making choices among alternatives with the intention of moving toward some desired state of affairs.Rational choice decision making selects the best alternative by calculating the probability that various outcomes will occur from the choices and the expected satisfaction from each of those outcomes.Rely primarily on two pieces of information:The probability that each outcome will occurThe valence or expected satisfaction of each outcomeRational choice decision-making process Steps:To identify the problem or recognize an opportunityChoose the best decision processDiscover or develop possible choicesSelect the choice with the highest valueImplement the selected choiceEvaluate the selected choiceProgrammed decisions: follow standard operating procedures.They have been resolved in the past, so the optimal solution has already been identified and documented.Non-programmed decisions: require all steps in he decision model because the problems are new, complex, or ill-defined. Problems with problem identificationFive of the most widely recognized problems:Solution-focused problemsSome decision makers describe the problems as a veiled solution.They fail to fully diagnose the underlying causes that need to be addressed.Decisive...

Organizational BehaviorChapter 9Communicating in teams and organizationsCommunication: the process by which information is transmitted and understood between two or more people. CoordinationIn addition to coordination, communication is critical for organizational learning. It is the means through which knowledge enters the organization and is distributed to employees.A function of communication is decision making.It also changes behavior.Communication supports employee well-being. Communication flows through one or more channels (also called media) between the sender and receiver.The sender forms a message and encodes it.The encoded message is transmitted to the intended receiver.The receiver senses and decodes the incoming message into something meaningful.In most situations, the sender looks for evidence that the other person received and understood the transmitted message.Communication is not a free-flowing conduit, the transmission of meaning from one person to another is hampered by noise.Influences on effective encoding and decodingEffective communication depends on the sender’s and receiver’s ability, motivation, role clarity, and situational support to efficiently and accurately encode and decode information.Four main factors influence...

Organizational BehaviorChapter 11Conflict and negotiation in the workplace Conflict: the process in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party.Conflict is ultimately based on perceptions. It exists whenever one party believes that another might obstruct its efforts, regardless of whether the other party actually intends to do so.Is conflict good or bad?Conflict can have negative consequences under some circumstances:Reducing employee performance by consuming otherwise productive timeStressfulIncreases job dissatisfactionPeople who experience conflict tend to reduce their information sharing and other forms of coordination with each other.Conflict fuels organizational politicsConflict may undermine team cohesion and performanceBenefits of conflict Optimal conflict perspective: organizations are most effective when employees experience some level of conflict, but becomes less effective with high levels of conflict.Conflict energizes people to debate issues and evaluative alternatives more thoroughly.They probe and test each other’s way of thinking to better understand the underlying issues that need to be addressed.Moderate levels of conflict prevent organizations from becoming nonresponsive to their external environment.When team members have a dispute or competition with external sources, this...

Organizational Behavior Chapter 13Designing organizational structuresOrganizational structure: the division of labor as well as the patterns of coordination, communication, workflow, ad formal power that direct organizational activities.Two fundamental processes in organizational structure:Division of laborCoordinationFour main elements of organizational structure:Span of controlCentralizationFormalizationDepartmentalizationContingencies of organizational design:External environmentOrganizational sizeTechnologyStrategy Division of labor Division of labor: the subdivision of work into separate jobs assigned to different people.Subdivided work leads to job specialization.Job specialization increases work efficiency.Coordination of work activities When people divide work among themselves, they require coordinating mechanisms to ensure that everyone works in concert.Coordination is so closely connected to division of labor that the optimal level of specialization is limited by the feasibility of coordinating the work. An organization’s ability to divide work among people depends on how well those people can coordinate each other.Coordination tends to become more expensive and difficult as the division of labor increases.Coordinating mechanisms:Informal communicationAll organizations rely on informal communication as a coordinating mechanism.Includes sharing information on mutual tasks as well as forming common mental models so that employees synchronize work activities using the same mental road map.Vital in nonroutine and...

Organizational BehaviorChapter 15Organizational changes Organizations operate as open systems that need to keep pace with ongoing changes in their external environment.Successful organizations monitor their environments and take appropriate steps to maintain a compatible fit with new external conditions.Employees in successful companies embrace change as an integral part of organizational life.Force field analysis: Kurt Lewin’s model of systemwide change that helps change agents diagnose the forces that drive and restrain proposed organizational change.One side of the force field model represents driving forces that push organizations toward a new state of affairs.The other side of Lewin’s model represents the restraining forces that maintain the status quo. Resistance to change.Stability occurs when the driving and restraining forces are roughly in equilibrium, they are of approximately equal strength in opposite directions.Change occurs by unfreezing.Unfreezing: the first part of the change process, in which the change agent produces disequilibrium between the driving and restraining forces.Moving to a desired conditionRefreezing: the latter part of the change process, in which systems and structures are introduced that reinforce and maintain the desired behaviors. Resistance to change takes...