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Chapter 1

What is Organizational Behavior?

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Learning Objectives

Demonstrate the importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace.

Describe the manager’s functions, roles, and skills.

Define organizational behavior (OB).

Show the value to OB of systematic study.

Identify the major behavioral science disciplines that contribute to OB.

Demonstrate why there are few absolutes in OB.

Identify the challenges and opportunities managers have in applying OB concepts.

Compare the three levels of analysis in this book’s OB model.

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The Importance of Interpersonal Skills

What is interpersonal skills?

Why it is needed?

It is very important but not enough … why?

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What Managers Do?

Manager

Organization

They get things done through other people

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

Planning Organizing

Leading Controlling

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What Managers Do?

Management Roles

Interpersonal Roles

Informational Roles

Decisional Roles

Figurehead Leader Liason

Monitor Disseminator Spokesperson

EntrepreneurDisturbance

HandlerResource Allocator

Negotiator

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What Managers Do?

Management Skills

Technical Skills

Human Skills

Conceptual Skills

The ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise

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

The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations

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What Managers Do?

Effective Versus Successful Managerial Activities

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Enter 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 organization’s effectiveness

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Complementing Intuition with Systematic Study

Systematic Study

Evidence Based Management

Looking at relationships, attempting to attribute causes and effects, and drawing conclusions based on scientific evidence

Basing managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence

Intuition A gut feeling not necessarily supported by research

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Disciplines that Contribute to the OB Field

Psychology

Social Psychology

The science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals

An area within psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology and that focuses on the influence of people on one another

Sociology

AnthropologyThe study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities

The study of people in relation to their social environment or culture

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There are Few Absolutes in OB

Why there are few absolutes in OB?

Because of situational factors that make the main relationship between two variables change … e.g., the relationship may hold for one condition but not

another

Contingency Variables

Situational Factors

Variable that moderate the relationship between two or more other variables

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Challenges and Opportunities for OB

1 Responding to Globalization

2 Managing Workforce Diversity

3 Improving Quality and Productivity

4 Improving Customer Service

5 Improving People Skills

6 Stimulating Innovation and Change

7 Coping with “Temporariness”

8 Working in Networked Organizations

9 Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts

10 Creating a Positive Work Environment

11 Improving Ethical Behavior

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Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model

A model

Abstraction of reality, or a simplified representation of some real-world phenomenon

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Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model

The Independent Variables (X) The Dependent Variables (Y)

The presumed cause of the change in the dependent variable (Y)

This is the variable that OB researchers manipulate to observe the changes in Y

This is the response to X (the independent variable)

It is what the OB researchers want to predict or explain The interesting variable!

X → Y → Predictive Ability

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Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model

The Dependent Variables The Independent Variables

Productivity

Absenteeism

Individual – Level Variables

Organization System – Level Variables

Turnover

Deviant Workplace Behavior

Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Job Satisfaction

Group – Level Variables

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Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model

Toward A contingency OB Model

Independent Variables (X)

Dependent Variables (Y)