WHAT IS OB?

manager
An individual who achieves goals through other
people.
 organization
A consciously coordinated social unit, composed of
two or more people, that functions on a relatively
continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of
goals.
 Management Functions
twentieth century, French industrialist Henri Fayol
wrote that all managers perform five management
functions: planning, organizing, commanding,
coordinating, and controlling

Now it is 4 functions
Planning
Organizing
Leading
Controlling
 planning
defining an organizations goals,
establishing an overall strategy for achieving those
goals,
developing a comprehensive set of plans to integrate
and coordinate activities
 organizing
determining what tasks are to be done,
who is to do them,
how the tasks are to be grouped,
who reports to whom, and
where decisions are to be made
 leading
managers motivate employees,
direct their activities,
select the most effective communication channels,
or resolve conflicts among members
 controlling
monitoring, comparing, and potential correcting

management must monitor the organizations

performance
and compare it with previously set goals.
If there are any significant deviations, it is
managements job to get the organization back on
track
 Management Roles
1960s, Henry Mintzberg
managers perform ten different, highly interrelated
rolesor sets of behaviors
these ten roles are primarily
(1) interpersonal
(2) informational
(3) decisional
 Interpersonal Roles
Figurehead role
leadership role (hiring, training, motivating, and
disciplining employees)
liaison role (contacting others who provide the
manager with information) (internal Liaison, outside
Liaison)
 Informational Roles
monitor role (collect information from outside
organizations and institutions, typically by scanning
the news media (including the Internet) and talking
with other people to learn of changes in the publics
tastes, what competitors may be planning, and the
like)
disseminator role (Managers also act as a conduit
to transmit information to organizational members)
spokesperson role (they represent the
organization to outsiders.)
 Decisional Roles
entrepreneur role (managers initiate and oversee
new projects that will improve their organizations
performance)
disturbance handlers (managers take corrective
action in response to unforeseen problems)
resource allocators (managers are responsible for
allocating human, physical, and monetary resources)
negotiator role (they discuss issues and bargain with
other units to gain advantages for their own unit)
 Management Skills
Technical Skills
ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise
Human Skills
The ability to understand, communicate with, motivate,
and support other people, both individually and in groups
Conceptual Skills
mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations
 Effective versus Successful
Managerial Activities
Fred Luthans
Traditional management. (average managers)
Decision making, planning, and controlling.
Communication. (for satisfaction : effective managers)
Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork.
Human resource management.
Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and
training.
Networking. ( for faster promotion : successful managers)
Socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders.
Organizational behavior
A field of study that investigates the impact that
individuals, groups, and structure
have on behavior within organizations,
for the purpose of applying such knowledge
toward improving an organizations effectiveness.
 systematic study Evidence -based management
(EBM)
Looking at relationships,
attempting to attribute
causes and effects, and
drawing conclusions based
on scientific evidence. The basing of managerial
decisions on the best available
scientific evidence
intuition
A gut feeling not necessarily
supported by research.
Disciplines That Contribute to the
OB Field
Psychology (seeks to measure, explain, and
sometimes change the behavior of humans and other
animals )
Social Psychology (branch of psychology, blends
concepts from both psychology and sociology to
focus on peoples influence on one another)
Sociology (studies people in relation to their social
environment or culture)
Anthropology (study of societies to learn about
human beings and their activities)
 contingency variables
Situational factors: variables that moderate the
relationship between two or more variables.
Challenges and Opportunities for
OB
Responding to Economic Pressures
Responding to Globalization
Increased Foreign Assignments
Working with People from Different Cultures
Overseeing Movement of Jobs to Countries with Low-Cost
Labor
Managing Workforce Diversity
The concept that organizations are becoming more
heterogeneous in terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity,
sexual orientation, and inclusion of other diverse groups.
Improving Customer Service
Improving People Skills
Stimulating Innovation and Change
Coping with Temporariness
Working in Networked Organizations
Helping Employees Balance WorkLife
Conflicts
Creating a Positive Work Environment
Improving Ethical Behavior
positive organizational scholarship
also called positive organizational behavior
studies how organizations develop human
strengths, foster vitality and resilience, and unlock
potential
Reflected best-selfasking employees to think
about when they were at their personal best in
order to understand how to exploit their strengths
 ethical dilemmas and ethical
choices
Situations in which individuals are required to
define right and wrong conduct.
 model
An abstraction of reality. A simplified
representation of some real-world phenomenon.
 Inputs
Variables that lead to processes.
Inputs are the variables like personality, group
structure, and organizational culture that lead to
processes
These variables set the stage for what will occur in an
organization later
 Processes
Processes are actions that individuals, groups, and
organizations engage in as a result of inputs and that
lead to certain outcomes
 Outcomes
Outcomes are the key variables that you want to
explain or predict, and that are affected by some
other variables
 Attitudes and Stress
Employee attitudes are the evaluations employees
make, ranging from positive to negative, about
objects, people, or events.
Stress is an unpleasant psychological process that
occurs in response to environmental pressures
 Task Performance
The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at
doing your core job tasks.
 Citizenship Behavior
The discretionary behavior that is not part of an
employees formal job requirements, and that
contributes to the psychological and social
environment of the workplace
 Withdrawal Behavior
The set of actions that employees take to separate
themselves from the organization
 Group Cohesion
Group cohesion is the extent to which members of a
group support and validate one another at work.
 Group Functioning
Group functioning refers to the quantity and quality
of a groups work output

positive job attitudes can be associated with higher

levels of task performance, group cohesion should
lead to positive group functioning

group functioning in work organizations is more

than the sum of individual task performances
 Productivity
An organization is productive if it achieves its goals
by transforming inputs into outputs at the lowest
cost.
Thus productivity requires both effectiveness and
efficiency

effectiveness The degree to which an organization

meets the needs of its clientele or customers
efficiency The degree to which an organization can
achieve its ends at a low cost
 Survival
The degree to which an organization is able to exist
and grow over the long term.
The survival of an organization depends not just on
how productive the organization is, but also on how
well it fits with its environment