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Chapter One
Understanding Organizational Behaviour
Objectives
Understanding the meaning of Organizational behaviour
Understanding the fundamental concepts connected with Organizational behaviour
Understanding the basic approaches of Organizational behaviour
Framing the study of Organizational behaviour
Understanding the goals of organizational behaviour.
Knowing the importance of Organizational behaviour for the managers.
INTRODUCTION
Mintzberg (1973) identified ten separate roles in managerial work, each role defined as an organised collection of behaviours belonging to an identifiable function or position. He separated these roles into three subcategories: interpersonal contact, information processing and decision making.
Interpersonal contact
FIGUREHEAD: the manager performs ceremonial and symbolic duties as head of the organisation;
LEADER: fosters a proper work atmosphere and motivates and develops subordinates;
LIASION: develops and maintains a network of external contacts to gather information;
Information processing
MONITOR: gathers internal and external information relevant to the organisation;
DISSEMINATOR: transmits factual and value based information to subordinates;
SPOKESPERSON: communicates to the outside world on performance and policies.
Decision making
ENTREPRENEUR: designs and initiates change in the organisation;
DISTURBANCE HANDLER: deals with unexpected events and operational breakdowns;
RESOURCE ALLOCATOR: controls and authorises the use of organisational resources;
NEGOTIATOR: participates in negotiation activities with other organisations and individuals.
Mintzberg next analysed individual manager's use and mix of the ten roles according to the six work related characteristics. He identified four clusters of independent variables: external, function related, individual and situational. He concluded that eight role combinations were 'natural' configurations of the job:
contact manager -- figurehead and liaison
political manager -- spokesperson and negotiator
entrepreneur -- entrepreneur and negotiator
insider -- resource allocator
real-time manager -- disturbance handler
team manager -- leader
expert manager -- monitor and spokesperson
new manager -- liaison and monitor
(Taken from http://www.provenmodels.com/88/ten-managerial-roles/henry-mintzberg/)
For performing these roles , skills required by the managers are:
Technical Skills-The ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise
Human Skills-The ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually and in groups
Conceptual Skills-The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations
The managers will be effective in these roles when he possesses the required skills, understands the organization and its employees properly. However some key facts about life at work:
Organizations are complex systems
Human behavior in organizations is sometimes unpredictable
Human behavior in an organization can be partially understood
There is no perfect solution to organizational problems.
Fundamental concepts connected with Organizational behavior
Fundamental concepts are basic principles that form a strong foundation for OB. OB has a set of fundamental concepts revolving around the nature of people and organizations.
The Nature of People
The six basic concepts relevant to the nature of people are:
Law of individual differences -Each person is substantially different from all others in terms of their personalities, needs, demographic factors and past experiences and/or because they are placed in different physical settings, time periods or social surroundings. This diversity needs to be recognized and viewed as a valuable asset to organizations.
Perception - Perception is the unique way in which each person sees, organizes and interprets things based on their background of individual differences. Each person reacts not to an objective world, but to a world judged in terms of his/her own beliefs, values and expectations. Sometimes it may lead to selective perception in which people tend to pay attention to only those things that are consistent with or reinforce their own expectations. Selective perceptions may lead to misinterpretation of single events at work or create a barrier in the search for new experience. Managers need to recognize the perceptual differences among the employees and manage them accordingly.
A whole person - People function as total human beings. People are physical, mental, social and spiritual beings and the organization actually employs the whole person rather than certain characteristics. There are spillover effects between the work life and life outside work and management’s focus should be in developing not only a better employee but also a better person in terms of growth and fulfillment. If the whole person can be developed , then benefits will extend beyond the firm into the larger society in which each employee lives.
Motivated behaviour - Individual’s behavior are guided by their needs and the consequences that results from their acts. In case of needs, people are motivated not by what others think they ought to have but by what they themselves want. Motivation of employees is essential to the operation of organizations and the biggest challenge faced by managers.
Desire for Involvement -Many employees actively seek opportunities at work to become involved in relevant decisions, thereby contributing their talents and ideas to the organization’s success. Consequently, organizations need to provide opportunities to the employees for meaningful involvement.
Value of the Person - People want to be treated with care, dignity and respect and increasingly they are demanding such treatment from their employers. They want to be valued for their skills and abilities and to be provided with opportunities to develop themselves.
The Nature of Organizations
The three key concepts related to the nature of organizations are:
Social systems - Sociology tells that organizations are social systems. Just have people have psychological needs they also have social roles and status. Their behavior is influenced by their group as well as their by their individual drives. Two types of social systems exist side by side in the organization- the formal (official ) social system and the informal social system- each influencing and getting influenced by the other.
Mutual Interest -There is a mutuality of interest between the organization and its employees. Organization needs employees to reach its objectives and people need organizations to help them reach individual objectives. Mutual interest provides a superordinate goal – one that can be attained only through the integrated efforts of individuals and their employees.
Ethics - Ethics is the use of moral principles and values to affect the behavior of individuals and organizations with regard to choices between what is right and wrong. In order to ensure a higher standard of ethical performance by managers and employees companies have established codes of ethics, publicized statements of ethical values and set up internal procedures to handle misconduct. Since Organizational behavior involves people, ethical philosophy is involved in one way or another in each action they take. When organization’s goals and actions are ethical, individual, organizational and social objectives are more likely to be met.
Basic approaches of Organizational behaviour
The four basic approaches of OB are:
Human Resources ( supportive) approach- Employee growth and development toward higher levels of competency, creativity and fulfillment are encouraged and supported because people are the central resource in any organization and society.
Contingency approach-Different managerial behaviours are required by different environments for effectiveness.
Results-oriented approach-Outcomes of organizational behavior programs are assessed in terms of their efficiency.
Systems approach- All parts of an organization interact in a complex relationship. Systems approach takes an across- the board view of people in organizations and analyses issues in terms of total situations and as many factors as possible that may affect people’s behaviour.
Framing the study of Organizational behaviour
The study of OB involves
A. The Organization’s Environment
- Decision-Making Process—the dynamics, variety and techniques of both individual and group decision-making.
- Organizational Change and Development Processes—planned attempts to implement change that will improve overall individual, group, and organizational performance. It involves the study of Organizational structure and Design and Managing change and Innovation.
Basic OB Model
Model is an abstraction of reality and a simplified representation of some real-world phenomenon.
Three theoretical frameworks- the cognitive, behavioristic and social learning frameworks form the basis of an organizational behavior model. The cognitive approach is based on the expectancy, demand and incentive concepts. Edward Tolman has made significant contributions to this approach. Behavioristic framework focuses on observable behaviors. Ivan Pavlov and John B.Watson were the pioneers of the behavioristic theory. They explained human behavior on the basis of the connection between stimulus and response. The social learning approach incorporates the concepts and principles of both the cognitive and behavioristic frameworks. In this approach, behavior is explained as a continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioral and environmental determinants. The organization behavior model (S, O, B, C) has incorporated the best aspects from the three frameworks of human behavior. In this model, the letters S, O, B, C represent situation, organism, behavior and consequences, respectively. Allbert Bandura, Julian Rotter, Salancik and Pfeffer are the main proponents of this framework.
In the OB Model there are some dependent variables like productivity, absenteeism, turnover, job satisfaction, deviant workplace behaviour, organizational citizenship behaviour etc -the reasons of which people try to understand. The cause of these outcomes like with some variables at individual, group and individual level-these variables are called independent variables. In the context of the organizational environment the independent variables at different levels interact between and amongst each other giving rise to a complex dynamics which leads to the various outcome variables as mentioned above. For this reason there are few absolutes in OB as everything is contingent on situation and what holds good for one situation may not hold good for another situation. For further reading please refer ( Exhibit from Organizational Behaviour, Stephen P. Robbins, Timothi A.Judge and Seema Sanghi, 12th^ ed, PHI, pp 39)
The goals of organizational behaviour.
The four goals of Organizational behavior are:
To describe systematically how people behave under variety of conditions
To understand why people behave as they do
Predicting future employee behavior
Control at least partially and develop some human activity at work.
Importance of Organizational behaviour for the managers
Organizational behavior provides a useful set of tools at five levels of analysis.
It helps managers to look at the behavior of individuals within an organization.
It aids their understanding of the complexities involved in interpersonal relations, when two people (two coworkers or a superior-subordinate pair) interact.
Organizational Behaviour is valuable for examining the dynamics of relationships within small groups, both formal teams and informal groups.
When two or more groups need to coordinate their efforts, managers become interested in the intergroup relations that emerge.
Organizations can also be viewed and managed as whole systems that have inter organizational relationships.
