Organisational Behaviour

Week 1- 27/02/2008

Slides available
at:http://202.205.89.79/download/
 Lecture plan
►Structure of the course

►Issues to explore in the course

►Historical overview
 Structure of the course
► 20-Week long
► Office hours: Monday 3:30-4:30 in my office
room
► Assessment:

►Class attendance/Participation 10%

►Mid-Term Exam 20%
►Coursework 30%
►Final Exam 40%

Any
question?
 SOME RECOMMENDED
SOURCES
Organization Studies
Organizational Science
Organization Behaviour

Human Relations
Harvard Business Review
Introduction to Organizational behaviour
Research in Organizational Behavior
Economists, Financial times…
(Most of them are available at
http://202.112.175.35:8081/journal/index.jsp)
 Issues to explore in the
course

Organizational behaviour (OB)

“the study of human behaviour in

organizational
contexts with a focus on individual and
group
processes and actions” (pp.2)
 Issues to explore in the course

Hong Kong stock exchange, 1994

Issues to explore in the course
“An entitative approach [to
organisations] fails to represent what it
means to be human, misrepresents the
qualities of the relational processes and,
more
generally, grossly distorts
the relationships between
person and organisation”
(Hoskings and Morley 1991:IX)
 Issues to explore in the
course
“The relationship between a person
and a context involves
accommodation (changing oneself)
and assimilation (changing the
context)… people are both products
of their contexts and participants in
the shaping of those contexts.”
(Hoskings and Morley, 1991:5)

Any Question?
 Historical
overview
The notion of an organisation as an imperative,
absolute entity, is the direct outcome of historical
transformations occurred in Europe and North
America from the end of the 18th century onwards:
Before the 19th Century:
► Experience of Artisan work (e.g. Ironsmith)
 Technical skills, personal competence and craft pride
constitutive of the working process.

Industrial revolution in the 19th Century

 Close relationship between the subject of work and his/her
activity was lost
Historical overview
Early 20th Century: ‘Classical approach’
Advent of scientific management (F.W. Taylor)

 Aim: controlling labour through science

 Far-reaching process of establishing control and
surveillance: to discipline the mind and body of the
productive subject was the central concern.
 Deconstruction of the task from ‘within’
 Rigid control over time and body movements
 Conception and execution as separate domains in
hierarchical relationships

Technology for social control

Historical overview
 Historical overview
Hawthorne Studies and the Human Relations
Movement (Elton Mayo, 1923-1933)

 Hawthorne studies: environment and productivity?

 Results: organizations are social systems, not just technical
economical systems
 Groups, teamwork, different job roles, human relations are
of great significance in organizations
 We are motivated by many needs
 Leadership should be modified to include concepts of
human relations

A new discipline of human behaviour and, by extension,

Organisational behaviour. (1960s)
Historical overview
Systems Rationalist approach
Modern Approach

Organisation (open system view)

inputs Transformation process outputs

1. The organization seen as an open socio-technical

system.
2. The existence of subsystems which interact with
one another.
3. Management is a distinct subsystem which is
responsible for direction and coordination of all
other subsystems.
Historical overview

Symbolic-Interpretative
perspective

Andreas Gursky’s The factory

► People’s subjectivity in relation to organisational processes.
► Political and cultural nature of social relations.
► Social construction of organisational reality, co-creation of the
phenomenon you are seeking to study.
 To explore in the course

BY INTRODUCING
DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
TO THE UNDERSTANDING
OF PEOPLE AND
ORGANISATIONS, WE
HOPE:

TO STIMULATE YOUR SEARCH

FOR NEW KNOWLEDGE,
CREATIVITY AND SKILLS AS
ORGANISATIONAL
PRACTITIONERS