Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

  • Upload
    mrgm

  • View
    212

  • Download
    0

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

  • 8/3/2019 Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

    1/13

    Robbins: Organizational Behavior

    Chapter One

    What Managers Do

    A. Importance of Developing Managers Interpersonal Skills

    1. Companies with reputations as a good place to worksuch as Pfizer, Lincoln Electric,Southwest Airlines, and Starbuckshave a big advantage when attracting high performingemployees.

    2. A recent national study of the U.S. workforce found that:

    Wages and fringe benefits are not the reason people like their jobs or stay withan employer.

    More important to workers is the job quality and the supportiveness of the workenvironments.

    3. Managers good interpersonal skills are likely to make the workplace more pleasant, whichin turn makes it easier to hire and retain high performing employees. In fact, creating amore pleasant work environment makes good economic sense.

    Definitions:

    Manager: Someone who gets things done through other people. They makedecisions, allocate resources, and direct the activities of others to attain goals.

    Organization: A consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more peoplethat functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals.

    B. Management Functions

    1. French industrialist Henri Fayol wrote that all managers perform five managementfunctions: plan, organize, command, coordinate, and control. Modern management scholars

    have condensed to four: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.2. Planning requires a manager to:

    Define goals (organizational, departmental, worker levels)

    Establish an overall strategy for achieving those goals

    Develop a comprehensive hierarchy of plans to integrate and coordinateactivities.

    3. Organizing requires a manager to:

    Determine what tasks are to be done

    Who is to be assigned the tasks

    How the tasks are to be grouped

    Who reports to whom

    Where decisions are to be made (centralized/decentralized)

    4. Leading requires a manager to:

    Motivate employees

    Direct the activities of others

    Select the most effective communication channels

    Resolve conflicts among members

    1

  • 8/3/2019 Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

    2/13

    Robbins: Organizational Behavior

    Chapter One

    B. Management Functions (cont.)

    5. Controlling requires a manager to:

    Monitor the organizations performance

    Compare actual performance with the previously set goals

    Correct significant deviations.

    C. Management Roles

    1. In the late 1960s, Henry Mintzberg studied five executives to determine what managers didon their jobs. He concluded that managers perform ten different, highly interrelated roles orsets of behaviors attributable to their jobs.

    The ten roles can be grouped as being primarily concerned with interpersonal relationships,

    the transfer of information, and decision making. (Exhibit 1-1)

    2. Interpersonal roles

    Figureheadduties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature

    Leadershiphire, train, motivate, and discipline employees

    Liaisoncontact outsiders who provide the manager with information. These maybe individuals or groups inside or outside the organization.

    3. Informational roles

    Monitorcollect information from organizations and institutions outside their own

    Disseminatora conduit to transmit information to organizational members

    Spokespersonrepresent the organization to outsiders

    1. Decisional roles

    Entrepreneurmanagers initiate and oversee new projects that will improve theirorganizations performance

    Disturbance handlerstake corrective action in response to unforeseen problems

    Resource allocatorsresponsible for allocating human, physical, and monetaryresources

    Negotiator rolediscuss issues and bargain with other units to gain advantagesfor their own unit

    D. Management Skills

    1. Robert Katz has identified three essential management skills: technical, human, andconceptual.

    2. Technical skills

    The ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. All jobs require somespecialized expertise, and many people develop their technical skills on the job.

    3. Human skills

    The ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually

    2

  • 8/3/2019 Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

    3/13

    Robbins: Organizational Behavior

    Chapter Oneand in groups, describes human skills.

    Many people are technically proficient but interpersonally incompetent.

    3

  • 8/3/2019 Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

    4/13

    Robbins: Organizational Behavior

    Chapter One

    D. Management Skills (continued)

    4. Conceptual skills

    The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations Decision making, for example, requires managers to spot problems, identifyalternatives that can correct them, evaluate those alternatives, and select the best one.

    E. Effective vs. Successful Managerial Activities

    1. Fred Luthans and his associates asked: Do managers who move up most quickly in anorganization do the same activities and with the same emphasis as managers who do thebest job? Surprisingly, those managers who were the most effective were not necessarilypromoted the fastest.

    2. Luthans and his associates studied more than 450 managers. They found that all managersengage in four managerial activities.

    Traditional managementDecision making, planning, and controlling. The averagemanager spent 32 percent of his or her time performing this activity.

    Communicationexchanging routine information and processing paperwork. Theaverage manager spent 29 percent of his or her time performing this activity.

    Human resource managementMotivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing,and training. The average manager spent 20 percent of his or her time performing thisactivity.

    Networkingsocializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders. The averagemanager spent 19 percent of his or her time performing this activity.

    3. Successful managersdefined as those who were promoted the fastest: (Exhibit 1-2)

    Networking made the largest relative contribution to success.

    Human resource management activities made the least relative contribution.

    4. Effective managersdefined as quality and quantity of performance, as well as,commitment to employees:

    Communication made the largest relative contribution.

    Networking made the least relative contribution.

    5. Successful managers do not give the same emphasis to each of those activities as doeffective managersit almost the opposite of effective managers.

    6. This finding challenges the historical assumption that promotions are based on

    performance, vividly illustrating the importance that social and political skills play in gettingahead in organizations.

    4

  • 8/3/2019 Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

    5/13

    Robbins: Organizational Behavior

    Chapter One

    F. A Review of the Managers Job

    1. One common thread runs through the functions, roles, skills, and activities approaches tomanagement: managers need to develop their people skills if they are going to be effective

    and successful.

    Enter Organizational Behavior

    Definition:

    Organizational Behavior: OB is a field of study that investigates the impact thatindividuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations for the purposeof applying such knowledge toward improving an organizations effectiveness.

    A. Organizational behavior is a field of study.

    1. OB studies three determinants of behavior in organizations: individuals, groups, andstructure.

    2. OB applies the knowledge gained about individuals, groups, and the effect of structure onbehavior in order to make organizations work more effectively.

    3. OB is concerned with the study of what people do in an organization and how that behavioraffects the performance of the organization.

    4. There is increasing agreement as to the components of OB, but there is still considerabledebate as to the relative importance of each: motivation, leader behavior and power,interpersonal communication, group structure and processes, learning, attitudedevelopment and perception, change processes, conflict, work design, and work stress.

    Replacing Intuition with Systematic Study

    A. Introduction

    1. Each of us is a student of behavior:

    A casual or commonsense approach to reading others can often lead to erroneouspredictions.

    You can improve your predictive ability by replacing your intuitive opinions with amore systematic approach.

    The systematic approach used in this book will uncover important facts andrelationships and will provide a base from which more accurate predictions of behaviorcan be made.

    Behavior generally is predictable if we know how the person perceived the situationand what is important to him or her.

    While peoples behavior may not appear to be rational to an outsider, there is reasonto believe it usually is intended to be rational by the individual and that they see theirbehavior as rational.

    5

  • 8/3/2019 Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

    6/13

    Robbins: Organizational Behavior

    Chapter One

    A. Introduction (cont.)

    2. There are certain fundamental consistencies underlying the behavior of all individuals thatcan be identified and then modified to reflect individual differences.

    These fundamental consistencies allow predictability.

    There are rules (written and unwritten) in almost every setting.

    Therefore, it can be argued that it is possible to predict behavior.

    3. When we use the phrase systematic study, we mean looking at gathered information undercontrolled conditions and measured and interpreted in a reasonably rigorous manner.

    4. Systematic study replaces intuition, or those gut feelings about why I do what I do andwhat makes others tick. We want to move away from intuition to analysis whenpredicting behavior.

    Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field

    A. Introduction

    1. Organizational behavior is an applied behavioral science that is built upon contributionsfrom a number of behavioral disciplines.

    2. The predominant areas are psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, andpolitical science.

    3. Exhibit 1-3 overviews the major contributions to the study of organizational behavior.

    B. Psychology

    1. Psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change thebehavior of humans and other animals.

    2. Early industrial/organizational psychologists concerned themselves with problems offatigue, boredom, and other factors relevant to working conditions that could impedeefficient work performance.

    3. More recently, their contributions have been expanded to include learning, perception,personality, emotions, training, leadership effectiveness, needs and motivational forces, jobsatisfaction, decision making processes, performance appraisals, attitude measurement,employee selection techniques, work design, and job stress.

    C. Sociology

    1. Sociologists study the social system in which individuals fill their roles; that is, sociologystudies people in relation to their fellow human beings.

    2. Their greatest contribution to OB is through their study of groups in organizations,particularly formal and complex organizations.

    D. Social Psychology

    1. Social psychology blends the concepts of psychology and sociology.

    2. It focuses on the influence of people on one another.

    3. Major areahow to implement it and how to reduce barriers to its acceptance

    6

  • 8/3/2019 Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

    7/13

    Robbins: Organizational Behavior

    Chapter One

    E. Anthropology

    1. Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.

    2. Anthropologists work on cultures and environments; for instance, they have helped usunderstand differences in fundamental values, attitudes, and behavior among people indifferent countries and within different organizations.

    F. Political Science

    1. Frequently overlooked as a contributing discipline.

    2. Political science studies the behavior of individuals and groups within a politicalenvironment.

    There Are Few Absolutes in OB

    A. Introduction

    1. There are few, if any, simple and universal principles that explain organizationalbehavior.

    2. Human beings are complex. Because they are not alike, our ability to make simple,accurate, and sweeping generalizations is limited.

    3. That does not mean, of course, that we cannot offer reasonably accurate explanations ofhuman behavior or make valid predictions. It does mean, however, that OB concepts mustreflect situational, or contingency, conditions.

    4. Contingency variablessituational factors are variables that moderate the relationshipbetween the independent and dependent variables.

    5. Using general concepts and then altering their application to the particular situationdeveloped the science of OB.

    6. Organizational behavior theories mirror the subject matter with which they deal.

    Challenges and Opportunities for OB

    A. Introduction

    1. There are many challenges and opportunities today for managers to use OB concepts.

    B. Responding to Globalization

    1. Organizations are no longer constrained by national borders.

    2. Globalization affects a managers people skills:

    First, if you are a manager, you are increasingly likely to find yourself in a foreignassignment.

    Second, even in your own country, you are going to find yourself working with bosses,peers, and other employees who were born and raised in different cultures.

    Third, economic values are not universally transferable. Management practices need tobe modified to reflect the values of different cultures in which the organization operates.

    Managers are under pressure to keep costs down to maintain competitiveness. Moving

    7

  • 8/3/2019 Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

    8/13

    Robbins: Organizational Behavior

    Chapter Onejobs to low-labor-cost places requires managers to deal with difficulties in balancing theinterests of their organization with responsibilities to the communities in which theyoperate.

    C. Managing Workforce Diversity

    1. Workforce diversity is one of the most important and broad-based challenges currentlyfacing organizations.

    2. While globalization focuses on differences between people from different countries,workforce diversity addresses differences among people within given countries.

    3. Workforce diversity means that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in termsof gender, race, and ethnicity (Exhibit 1-5). It is an issue in Canada, Australia, South Africa,

    Japan, and Europe as well as the United States.

    4. A melting-pot approach assumed people who were different would automatically assimilate.

    5. Employees do not set aside their cultural values and lifestyle preferences when they cometo work.

    6. The melting pot assumption is replaced by one that recognizes and values differences.

    7. Members of diverse groups were a small percentage of the workforce and were, for themost part, ignored by large organizations. Today

    47 percent of the U.S. labor force are women

    Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians make up 28 percent but will grow to 49 percent by2050

    Labor force is aging. In 15 years, those 55 and older will make up 20% of the laborforce.

    8. Workforce diversity has important implications for management practice.

    Shift to recognizing differences and responding to those differences

    Providing diversity training and revamping benefit programs to accommodate thedifferent needs of employees

    D. Improving Quality and Productivity

    1. Almost every industry suffers from excess capacity. Excess capacity translates intoincreased competition, which forces managers to reduce costs and improve productivityand quality at the same time.

    2. Implementing quality management programs driven by the constant attainment ofcustomer satisfaction through continuous improvement (Exhibit 1-6).

    3. Process reengineering asks the question: How would we do things around here if we werestarting over from scratch?

    Every process is evaluated in terms of contribution to goals

    Rather than make incremental changes, often old systems are eliminated entirelyand replaced with new systems

    4. To improve productivity and quality, managers must include employees.

    E. Responding to the Coming Labor Shortage

    8

  • 8/3/2019 Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

    9/13

    Robbins: Organizational Behavior

    Chapter One1. If trends continue as expected, the U.S. will have a labor shortage for the next 10-15 years

    (particularly in skilled positions).

    2. The labor shortage is a function of low birth rates and labor participation rates (immigrationdoes little to solve the problem).

    3. Wages and benefits are not enough to keep talented workers. Managers must understand

    human behavior and treat employees properly.

    F. Improving Customer Service and People Skills

    1. The majority of employees in developed countries work in service jobsjobs that requiresubstantive interaction with the firms customers. For example, 80 percent of U.S. workersare employed in service industries.

    2. Employee attitudes and behavior are directly related to customer satisfaction. OB canassist management in creating a customer responsive culture.

    3. People skills are essential to managerial effectiveness.

    4. OB provides the concepts and theories that allow managers to predict employee behavior ingiven situations.

    G. Empowering People

    1. Today managers are being called coaches, advisers, sponsors, or facilitators, and in manyorganizations, employees are now called associates.

    2. Increasing number of organizations is using self-managed teams. Managers are puttingemployees in charge of what they do. There is a blurring between the roles of managersand workers; decision making is being pushed down to the operating level, where workersare being given the freedom to make choices about schedules and procedures and to solvework-related problems.

    3. Managers are empowering employees.

    They are putting employees in charge of what they do.

    Managers have to learn how to give up control.

    Employees have to learn how to take responsibility for their work and make appropriatedecisions.

    H. Stimulating Innovation and Change

    1. Successful organizations must foster innovation and master the art of change.

    Employees can be the impetus for innovation & change or a major stumbling block

    Managers must stimulate employees creativity & tolerance for change.

    I. Coping with Temporariness

    1. Organizations must be flexible and fast in order to survive. Evidence of temporarinessincludes:

    Jobs continually redesigned

    Tasks being done by flexible work teams rather than individuals

    Company reliance on temporary workers

    Subcontracting

    2. Workers need to update knowledge and skills:

    9

  • 8/3/2019 Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

    10/13

    Robbins: Organizational Behavior

    Chapter One

    Work groups are also in a continuing state of flux

    Organizations are in a constant state of flux.

    3. Managers and employees must learn to cope with temporariness.

    Learn to live with flexibility, spontaneity, and unpredictability.

    OB provides help in understanding a work world of continual change, how toovercome resistance to change, and how to create an organizational culture that thriveson change.

    J. Working in Networked Organizations

    1. Networked organizations are becoming more pronounced

    2. Managers job is fundamentally different in networked organizations. Challenges ofmotivating and leading online require different techniques.

    K. Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts

    1. The creation of the global workforce means work no longer sleeps. Workers are on-call 24-hours a day or working non-traditional shifts.

    2. Communication technology has provided a vehicle for working at any time or any place.

    3. Employees are working longer hours per weekfrom 43 to 47 hours per week since 1977.

    4. The lifestyles of families have changes creating conflict: more dual career couples andsingle parents find it hard to fulfill commitments to home, children, spouse, parents, andfriends.

    5. Balancing work and life demands now surpasses job security as an employee priority.

    L. Improving Ethical Behavior

    1. In an organizational world characterized by cutbacks, expectations of increasing workerproductivity, and tough competition, many employees feel pressured to engage inquestionable practices.

    2. Members of organizations are increasingly finding themselves facing ethical dilemmas inwhich they are required to define right and wrong conduct.

    3. Examples of decisions employees might have to make are:

    Blowing the whistle on illegal activities

    Following orders with which they do not personally agree

    Possibly giving inflated performance evaluations that could save an employees job

    Playing politics to help with career advancement, etc.

    4. Organizations are responding to this issue by:

    Writing and distributing codes of ethics

    Providing in-house advisors

    Creating protection mechanisms for employees who reveal internal unethicalpractices

    5. Managers need to create an ethically healthy environment for employees where they

    10

  • 8/3/2019 Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

    11/13

    Robbins: Organizational Behavior

    Chapter Oneconfront a minimal degree of ambiguity regarding right or wrong behaviors.

    Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model

    A. Overview

    1. A model is an abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of some real-worldphenomenon. (Exhibit 1-7the OB model)

    2. There are three levels of analysis in OB:

    Individual

    Group

    Organizational Systems Level

    3. The three basic levels are analogous to building blocks; each level is constructed upon theprevious level.

    4. Group concepts grow out of the foundation laid in the individual section; we overlaystructural constraints on the individual and group in order to arrive at organizationalbehavior.

    B. The Dependent Variables

    1. Dependent variables are the key factors that you want to explain or predict and that areaffected by some other factor.

    2. Primary dependent variables in OB:

    Productivity

    Absenteeism

    Turnover

    Organizational citizenship Job satisfaction

    C. Productivity

    1. It is achieving goals by transferring inputs to outputs at the lowest cost. This must be doneboth effectively and efficiency.

    2. An organization is effective when it successfully meets the needs of its clientele orcustomers

    Example: When sales or market share goals are met, productivity also depends onachieving those goals efficiently

    3. An organization is efficient when it can do so at a low cost. Popular measures of efficiency include: ROI, profit per dollar of sales, and output perhour of labor.

    4. Productivity is a major concern of OB: What factors influence the effectiveness andefficiency of individuals, groups and the company?

    D. Absenteeism

    1. Absenteeism is the failure to report to work.

    11

  • 8/3/2019 Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

    12/13

    Robbins: Organizational Behavior

    Chapter One2. Estimated annual cost per employee: $789 in U.S., $694 in the U.K. Neither includes costs

    associated with lost productivity, additional costs of for overtime, replacements, etc.

    3. All absences are not bad. For instance, illness, fatigue, or excess stress can decrease anemployees productivityit may well be better to not report to work rather than performpoorly.

    E. Turnover

    1. Turnover is the voluntary and involuntary permanent withdrawal from an organization.

    2. A high turnover rate results in increased recruiting, selection, and training costs; costsestimated at about $34,100 for a programmer and $10,445 for a lost sales clerk.

    3. Average turnover in the U.S. is 15 percent.

    4. All organizations have some turnover and the right people leavingmarginal and sub-marginal employees can be positive.

    5. Turnover often involves the loss of people the organization does not want to lose.

    F. Organizational citizenship

    1. Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is discretionary behavior that is not part of anemployees formal job requirements, but that nevertheless promotes the effectivefunctioning of the organization.

    2. Desired citizenship behaviors include:

    Helping others on their team

    Volunteering for extra job activities

    Avoiding unnecessary conflicts

    Respecting rules and regulations

    Tolerating occasional work-related impositions.

    G. Job satisfaction

    1. Job satisfaction is the difference between the amount of rewards workers receive and theamount they believe they should receive.

    2. Unlike the previous three variables, job satisfaction represents an attitude rather than abehavior.

    3. It became a primary dependent variable for two reasons:

    Demonstrated relationship to performance factors

    The value preferences held by many OB researchers

    4. Managers have believed for years that satisfied employees are more productive, however:

    Much evidence questions that assumed causal relationship

    It can be argued that advanced societies should be concerned not just with thequantity of life, but also with the quality of life

    Ethically, organizations have a responsibility to provide employees with jobs that arechallenging and intrinsically rewarding.

    H. The Independent Variables1. Organizational behavior is best understood when viewed essentially as a set of increasingly

    12

  • 8/3/2019 Chapter1 - Manual - BUS301

    13/13

    Robbins: Organizational Behavior

    Chapter Onecomplex building blocks: individual, group, and organizational system.

    2. The base, or first level, of our model lies in understanding individual behavior.

    3. Individual-level variables:

    People enter organizations with certain characteristics that will influence their

    behavior at work.

    The more obvious of these are personal or biographical characteristics such as age,gender, and marital status; personality characteristics; an inherent emotionalframework; values and attitudes; and basic ability levels.

    There is little management can do to alter them, yet they have a very real impact onemployee behavior.

    Four other individual-level variables: perception, individual decision making,learning, and motivation.

    4. The middle level of our model lies in understanding behavior of groups.

    5. Group-level variables:

    The behavior of people in groups is more than the sum total of all the individualsacting in their own way.

    People behave differently in groups than they do when alone.

    People in groups are influenced by:

    a. Acceptable standards of behavior by the group

    b. Degree of attractiveness to each otherc. Communication patternsd. Leadership and powere. Levels of conflict

    6. The top level of our model lies in understanding organizations system level variables

    7. Organizational behavior reaches its highest level of sophistication when we add formalstructure.

    8. The design of the formal organization, work processes, and jobs; the organizations humanresource policies and practices, and the internal culture, all have an impact.

    13