Syed Ahad Rizvi Intro to Organizational Behaviour and Management MHR405 Chapter 1

MHR405 Chapter 1 Notes

Learning Objectives

 Define organizations and describe their basic characteristics.

 Explain the concept or organizational behaviour and describe the goals of the field.
 Define management and describe what managers do to accomplish goals.
 Contrast the classical viewpoint of management with that advocated by the human relations
movement.
 Describe the contingency approach to management.
 Explain what managers do – their roles, activities, agendas for action, and thought processes.
 Describe the four contemporary management concerns facing organizations and how
organizational behaviour can help organizations understand and manage these concerns.

What Are Organizations?

 Organizations are social inventions for accomplishing common goals through group effort.
 Key characteristics or organizations:
o Social inventions
o Goal accomplishment
o Group effort

Social inventions

 An essential characteristic of organizations is the coordinated presence of people, not things.

 The field of organizational behaviour is about understanding people and managing them to work
effectively.

Goal accomplishment

 All organizations have goals.

 Organizational survival and adaptation to change are important goals.
 The fields of organizational behaviour is concerned with how organizations can survive and
adapt to change.
 Certain behaviours are necessary for survival and adaptation.
 Innovation and flexibility are especially important for organizations.

Group Effort

 Organizations are based on group effort – the interaction and coordination among people to
accomplish goals.
 Much of the intellectual and physical work done in organizations is performed by groups.
 The field of organizational behaviour is concerned with how to get people to practice effective
teamwork.

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Syed Ahad Rizvi Intro to Organizational Behaviour and Management MHR405 Chapter 1

What is Organizational Behaviour?

 The attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups in organizations.

 How organizations can be structured more effectively.
 How events in the external environment affect organizations.

What Is Humans Resources Management?

 Programs, practices, and systems to acquire, develop, motivate, and retain employees in
organizations.
 Recruitment, selection, compensation, and training and development are common human
resources practices.
 Knowledge or organizational behaviour will help you understand the use and effectiveness or
human resource practices.

Why Study Organizational Behaviour?

 Organizational behaviour:
o Is interesting. It is about people and human nature and explains the success and failure
or organizations.
o Is important. It has a profound impact on managers, employees, and consumers.
o Makes a difference. It affects individuals’ attitudes and behaviour as well as the
competitiveness and effectiveness or organizations.
 Human capital
 Social capital

Management Practices of the Best Companies to Work for in Canada

 Flexible work schedules.

 Stock-options, profit -sharing, and bonuses.
 Opportunities for learning and development.
 Family assistance programs.
 Career development programs.
 Wellness and stress reduction programs.
 Employee recognition and reward programs.

Goals of Organizational Behaviour

 The field of organizational behaviour has three commonly agreed-upon goals:

o Predicting organizational behaviour and events.
o Explaining organizational behaviour and events in organizations.
o Managing organizational behavior.

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Syed Ahad Rizvi Intro to Organizational Behaviour and Management MHR405 Chapter 1

Predicting Organizational Behaviour

 In organizations, there is considerable interest in predicting when people will make ethical
decisions, create innovative products, or engage in sexual harassment.
 Through systematic study, the field of organizational behaviour provides a scientific foundation
that helps improve predictions or organizational events.

Explaining Organizational Behaviour

 Organizational behaviour is interested in determining why people are more or less motivated,
satisfied, or prone to resign.
 The ability to understand behaviour is a necessary prerequisite for effectively managing it.

Managing Organizational Behaviour

 Management is the art of getting things accomplished in organizations through others.

 If behaviour can be predicted and explained, it can often be managed.
 Predictions and explanation involves analysis while management is about action.
 Effective management involves evidence-based management.

Evidence-Based Management

 Involves translating principles based on the best scientific evidence into organizational practices.
 Making decisions based on the best available scientific evidence from social science and
organizational research rather than personal preference and unsystematic experience.
 The use of evidence-based management is more likely to result in the attainment of
organizational goals.

Early Prescriptions Concerning Management

 Attempts to prescribe the “correct” way to manage an organization and achieve its goals.
 Two basic phases to this prescription:
o The classical view and bureaucracy
o The human relations view

The Classical View

 The classical view advocates a high degree of specialization of labour, intensive coordination,
and centralized decision making.
 To maintain control, it suggest that managers have fairly few workers, except for lower-level
jobs where machine pacing might substitute for close supervision.

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Scientific Management

 Scientific management is Frederick’s Taylor’s system for using research to determine the
optimum degree of specialization and standardization of work tasks.
 Mainly concerned with job design and the structure of work on the shop floor.
 Involves the use of research to determine the optimum degree of specialization and
standardization.

Bureaucracy

 Bureaucracy is Max Weber’s ideal type of organization that includes:

o Strict chain of command
o Selection and promotion criteria based on technical competence
o Detailed rules, regulations, and procedures
o High specialization
o Centralization of power at the top of the organization
 Weber saw bureaucracy as an “ideal type” that would standardize behaviour in organizations
and provide workers with security and a sense of purpose.
 The classical view of management seemed to take for granted an essential conflict of interest
between managers and employees.

The Human Relations Movement and a Critique of Bureaucracy

 The human relations movement began with the famous Hawthorne Studies of the 1920s and
1930s conducted at the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric

The Hawthorne Studies

 Concerned with the impact of fatigue, rest pauses, and lighting on employee productivity.
 The studies illustrated how psychological and social process affect productivity and work
adjustment.
 Suggest there could be dysfunctional aspects to how work was organized.
 One sign was resistance to management through strong informal group mechanisms such as
norms that limited productivity.

Critique of Bureaucracy

 The human relations movement called attention to certain dysfunctional aspects of classical
management and bureaucracy and noted several problems:
o Employee alienation
o Limits innovation and adaptation
o Resistance to chance
o Minimum acceptable level of performance
o Employees lose sight of the overall goals of the organization

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The Human Relations Movement

 Advocated more people-oriented and participative styles of management that catered more to
the social and psychological needs of employees.
 The movement called for:
o More flexible systems of management
o The design of more interesting jobs
o Open communication
o Employee participation
o Less rigid, more decentralized forms of control

Contemporary Management – The Contingency Approach

 The merits of both approaches are recognized today.

 Management approaches need to be tailored to fit the situation.
 The complexity of human behaviour means that an organizational behaviour text cannot be a
“cookbook”.
 The general answer to many of the problems in organizations is: “It depends.”
 Dependencies are called contingencies.
 The contingency approach to management recognizes that there is no one best way to manage.
 An appropriate management style depends on the demands of the situation.

What Do Managers Do?

 The field of organizational behaviour is concerned with what happens in organizations and what
managers actually do in organizations.
 Research has focuses on:
o Managerial roles
o Managerial activities
o Managerial agendas
o Managerial minds
o International managers

Managerial Roles

 Henry Mintzberg discovered a rather complex set of roles played by managers:

o Interpersonal roles – Have to do with establishing and maintaining interpersonal
relations. Include figurehead, leadership, and liaison roles.
o Informational roles – Are concerned with various ways managers receive and transmit
information. Include monitor, disseminator, and spokesperson roles.

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Syed Ahad Rizvi Intro to Organizational Behaviour and Management MHR405 Chapter 1

o Decisional roles – Deal with decision making. Include entrepreneur, disturbance,

resource allocation, and negotiator roles.

Managerial Activities

 Fred Luthans, Richard Hodgetts, and Stuart Rosenkrantz found that managers engage in four
basic types of activities”
o Routine communication (formal sending and receiving information)
o Traditional management (planning, decision making, controlling)
o Networking (interaction with people outside of the organization)
o Human resource management (motivating, reinforcing, disciplining, punishing,
managing conflict, staffing, training, and developing employees)
 All these managerial activities involve dealing with people.

Managerial Activities and Success

 Emphasis on these various activities is related to managerial success.

 Networking is related to moving up the ranks of the organization quickly.
 Human resource management is related to employee satisfaction and commitment and unit
effectiveness.

Managerial Agendas

 John Kotter studies the behaviour patterns of successful general managers and identified the
following categories of behaviour:
o Agenda setting
o Networking
o Agenda implementation
 A high degree of informal interaction and concern with people issues that were necessary for
the managers to achieve their agendas.
 Managers often found themselves dependent on people over whom they wielded no power.

Agenda Setting

 What they wanted to accomplish for the organization.

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Syed Ahad Rizvi Intro to Organizational Behaviour and Management MHR405 Chapter 1

 Almost always informal and unwritten and concerned with “people issues”.
 Agendas based on wide-ranging informal discussions with a wide variety of people.

Networking

 Established a wide formal and informal network of key people inside and outside of their
organization.
 The network provides managers with information and established cooperative relationships
relevant to their agendas.

Agenda Implementation

 Managers used networks to implement the agendas.

 They would go anywhere in the network for help.
 They employed a wide range of influence tactics.

Managerial Minds

 Herbert Simon and Daniel Isenberg explored how manager’s think.

 Experienced managers use intuition to guide many of their actions:
o To sense that a problem exists
o To perform well-learned mental tasks rapidly
o To synthesize isolated pieces of information and data
o To double-check more formal or mechanical analyses
 Good intuition is problem identification and problem solving based on a long history of
systematic education and experience.
 Enables the manager to locate problems within a network of previously acquired information.

International Managers

 The style in which managers do what they do and the emphasis they give to various activities
will vary greatly across cultures.
 Cultural variations in values affect both managers’ and employees’ expectations about
interpersonal interaction.
 Geert Hofstede showed how cross-cultural difference in values leads to contrasts in the general
role that managers play across cultures.
 National culture is one the more important contingency variables in organizational behaviour.
 The appropriateness of various leadership styles, motivation techniques, and communication
methods depends on where one is in the world.

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Syed Ahad Rizvi Intro to Organizational Behaviour and Management MHR405 Chapter 1

Some Contemporary Management Concerns

 Four issues which organizations and managers are currently concerned:

o Diversity – Local and Global
o Employee Health and Well-being
o Talent Management and Employee Engagement
o Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Diversity – Local and Global

 The Canadian workforce is becoming increasingly culturally diverse.

 Many organizations have not treated certain segments of the population fairly in many aspects
of employment.
 Global business has increased and so has the need to understand how workers and customers in
other countries are diverse and culturally different.
 What does diversity have to do with organizational behaviour?
 Organizational behaviour is concerned with issues that have to do with the management of a
diverse workforce and how to benefit from the opportunities that a diverse workforce provides.

Employee Health and Well-Being

 Increased concerns over job security, increasing job demands, and work-related stress.
 Absenteeism and turnover are on the rise.
 Increasing stress levels and poorly designed jobs are major causes.
 Negative effect on employee physical and psychological health and well-being.
 Work-life conflict is a major stressor and cause of absenteeism.
 Increasing awareness of mental health problems in the workplace.
 Organizations have begun to focus on mental health and to create more positive work
environments.
 What does employee health and well-being have to do with organizational behaviour?
 Organizational behaviour is concerned with creating positive work environments that contribute
to employee health and wellness.
 Many organizations are now focusing on creating a psychologically healthy workplace.

Healthy and Productive Work Environment

 Practices that create a psychologically healthy and productive work environment:

o Employee involvement
o Health and safety
o Employee growth and development
o Work-life balance
o Employee recognition
 Communication is also important and is the foundation for the five psychologically healthy
workplace practices.

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Workplace Spirituality

 Workplace spirituality refers to workplaces that provide employees with meaning, purpose, a
sense of community, and a connection to others.
 It is about providing employees with a meaningful work-life that is aligned with their values.
 Employees have opportunities for personal growth and development, and they feel values and
supported.

Positive Organizational Behaviour

 The study and application of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological
capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance
improvement.
 The psychological capacities that can be developed in employees are known as psychological
capital or PsyCap.

Psychological Capital (PsyCap)

 An individual’s positive psychological state of development that is characterized by

o Self-efficacy – One’s confidence to take on and put in the necessary effort to succeed at
challenging tasks.
o Optimism – Involves making internal attribution about positive events in the present
and future and external attributions about negative events.
o Hope – Persevering toward one’s goals, and when necessary making changes and using
multiple pathways to achieve one’s goals.
o Resilience – One’s ability to bounce back or rebound from adversity and setbacks to
attain success.
 Each of the components of PsyCap are states not traits; they are positive work-related
psychological resources that can be changes, modified, and developed.
 PsyCap is positively related to employee and well-being, job attitudes, and job performance, and
negatively related to employee anxiety, stress, and turnover intentions.
 PsyCap interventions (PCI) can be used to develop employees’ PsyCap.

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 Organizations can improve employee health and well0being developing employees’ PsyCap.

Talent Management and Employee Engagement

 Talent management refers to an organization’s processes for attracting, developing, retaining,

and deploying people with the required skills to meet current and future business needs.
 The management of talent has become a major organizational concern that requires the
involvement of all levels of management.
 Work engagement refers to a positive work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigour,
dedication, and absorption.
 It has been reported that only one-third of workers are engaged.
 Engaged workers have more positive job attitudes and higher job performance.
 Employee engagement is considered to be key to an organization’s success and
competitiveness.
 What does talent management and employee engagement have to do with organizational
behaviour?
 Organizational behaviour provides the means for organizations to be designed and managed in
ways that optimize the attraction, development, retention, engagement, and performance of
talent.

Corporate Social Responsibility

 Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to an organization taking responsibility for the impact
of its decisions and actions on its stakeholders.
 It extends beyond the interest of shareholders to the interests and needs of employees and the
community in which it operates.
 External CSR: Practices aimed at the local community, the environment, and consumers.
 Internal CSR: Practices and activities that are focused on the internal workforce.
 What does a focus on social responsibility have to do with organizational behaviours?
 Many CSR issues have to do with organizational behaviour (e.g., treatment of employees, work-
family balance, employee well-being).
 CSR also involves environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, and a concern for the
environment and green initiatives.
 An organization’s CSR activities are policies are associated with financial performance as well as
employee attitudes, engagement, and performance.
 CSR also has implications for the recruitment and retention of employees.
 Organizational behaviour can help organizations become more socially responsible.

Summary and Road Map

 Organizational behaviour involves three levels of analysis: the individual level, the group level,
and the organizational level.
 The factors within each level influence individual and group attitudes and behaviours.
 Each level can influence the factors and processes at the other levels.
 All three levels of organizational behaviour as well as individual and group attitudes and
behaviours influence organizational performance.

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