Organizational Behavior

Dr. Awatif Ghazy

 Chapter 1
Introduction to Organizational Behavior
 1.Define organizational behavior(OB)
 2.Identify the primary behavioral disciplines
contributing to OB
 3.Describe the three goals of OB
 4.List the major challenges and opportunities for
managers to use OB concepts
 5.Discuss why workforce diversity has become
an important issue in management
 6.Discuss how a knowledge of OB can help
managers stimulate organizational innovation
and change
 Problems:
 Bosses’poor communication skills
 Employees’lack of motivation
 Conflicts between team members
 Overcoming employee resistance to a
company reorganization
 Similar concerns
 Help managers,and potential
managers,develop these people skills
 What Managers Do?
 A.Management Function:
 Henri Fayol----Planning
 Organizing
 Commanding
 Coordinating
 Controlling
 Today----planning, organizing,
 leading, controlling
 B.Management Roles: (Henry Mintzberg)
 Interpersonal Roles
• Figurehead,Leader,Liaison
 Informational Roles
• Monitor,Disseminator,Spokesperson
 Decisional Roles
• Entrepreneur,Disturbance handler,
• Resource allocator,Negotiator
 C.Management Skills:
 Technical Skills
 Human Skills
 Conceptual Skills
 Effective Versus Successful Managerial
Activities
 Fred Luthans A S E
 1.Traditional management 32% 13% 19%
 2.Communication 29% 28% 44%
 3.Human resource management 20% 11% 26%
 4.Networking 19% 48% 11%

 This finding challenges the historical assumption that

promotions are based on performance, and it illustrates
the importance of networking and political skills in
getting ahead in organizations.
 Enter Organizational Behavior
 Organizational Behavior (OB) is 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.
 It studies three determinants of behavior
in organizations: individuals, groups, and
structure.
 In addition, OB applies the knowledge
gained about individuals, groups, and the
effect of structure on behavior in order to
make organizations work more effectively.
 OB is concerned with the study of what
people do in an organization and how their
behavior affects the organization’s
performance.
 Specifically with employment-related
situations
 Jobs,work, absenteeism, employment
turnover , productivity, human
performance, and management
 The core topics:
• Motivation,
• Leader behavior and power,
• Interpersonal communication,
• Group structure and processes,
• Learning,
• Attiude development and perception,
• Change processes,
• Conflict,
• Work design,
• Work stress.
 Contributing Disciplines
 Organizational behavior is an applied behavior
science that is built on contributions from a
number of behavior disciplines.
 the predominant areas :
• psychology,
• social psychology,
• sociology,
• anthropology,
• political science
 Psychology----individual
• learning, motivation, personality, emotions,
• perception, training, job satisfaction, leadership
effectiveness,
• individual decision making, performance
appraisal, attitude measurement, employee
selection,
• work design, work stress
 Social psychology----group
• Behavioral change, attitude change,
• communicate,
• group processes,
• group decision making
 Sociology
• Communication, power, conflict, intergroup
behavior, ----group
• formal organization theory,
• organizational technology,
• organizational change,
• organizational culture ----organization
system
 Anthropology
• Comparative values,
• comparative attitudes,
• cross-culture analysis, ----group
• organizational culture,
• Organizational enviroment,
• Power ----organization system
 Political science
• Conflict,
• Intraorganizational politics, ----group
• Power ----organization system
 Goals of OB
 Explanation
• If we are to understand a phenomenon,we must
begin by trying to explain it. We can then use
this understanding to determine a cause.
 Prediction
• It seeks to determine what outcomes will result
from a given action.
 Control
• The control objective is frequently seen by manager as
the most valuable contribution the OB makes toward
their effectiveness on the job.
Challenges and Opportunities for OB

 1.Responding to Globalization
• Increased foreign assignments
• Working with people from different cultures
• Coping with anticapitalism backlash
• Overseeing movement of jobs to countries with
low-cost labor
• Managing people during the war on terror
 2.Managing workforce diversity
• Workforce diversity:
 Gender, race, national origin, age, disability,
• Embracing diversity
• Changing demographics

 Workforce diversity can increase creativity

and innovation in organizations as well as
improve decision making by providing
different perspective on promble.
 3.Improving quality and productivity
• “Almost all quality improvement comes via
simplification of design, manufacturing, layout,
processes, and procedures.”----Tom Peters
• Today’s managers understand that success of
any effort at improving quality and productivity
must include their employees.
 4.Improving people skills
 We’ll present relevant concepts and theories
that can help you explain and predict the
behavior of people at work.
• Learn a ways to motivate people
• How to be a better communicator
• How to create more effective teams
 5.Empowering people
• Decision making is being pushed down to the
operating level, where workers are being given the
freedom to make choices about schedules and
procedures and to solve work-related problems.
• Self-management team
• Managers are empowering emplyees.
• Managers-how to give up control
• Emplyees-how to take responsibility for their work
and make appropriate decisions
• Leading style, power relationships, the way work is
designed, the way organizations are structured
 6.Stimulating innovation and change
• Today’s successful organizations must foster
innovation and master the art of change or they’ll
become candidate for extinction.
• An organization’s employees can be the impetus
for innovation and change or they can be a
majors stumbling block.
• The challenge for managers is to stimulate their
employees’ creativity and tolerance for change.
 7.Coping with “temporariness”
• Managing today would be more accurately
described as long periods of ongoing change,
interrupted occasionally by short periods of stability!
• The actual jobs that workers perform are in a
permanent state of flux.
• So workers need to continually update their
knowledge and skills to perform new job
requirements.
 8.Helping employees balance work/life
conflicts
• A number of forces have contributed to blurring the
lines between employee work and personal lives.
• First, the creation of global organizations means
their world never sleeps.
• Second, communication technology allows
employee to do their work at home, in their car, or
on the beach in Tahiti.
• Third, organizations are asking employees to put in
longer hours.
• Finally, fewer families have only a single
breadwinner.
 9.Declining employee loyalty
• Beginning in the mid-1980s, in response to
global competition, unfriendly takeovers,
leveraged buyouts, and the like, corporations
began to discard traditional policies on job
security, seniority and compensation.
• An important OB challenge will be for managers
to devise ways to motivate workers who feel
less committed to their employers, while
maintaining their organizations’ global
competitiveness.
 10.Improving ethical behavior
• Members of organizations are increasingly
finding themselves facing ethical dilemmas,
situations in which they are required to define
right and wrong conduct.
• In recent years, the line differentiating right from
wrong has become even more blurred.
• Managers and their organizations are writing
and distributing codes of ethics to guide
employees through ethical dilemmas.
The plan of this book

Organization system
level

Group
level

Individual
level
 Individual behavior
• values, attitudes, perception, and learning
• the role of personality and emotions
• motivation issues
 Group behavior
• Group behavior model
• Ways to make teams more effective
• Communication issues and group decision
making
• Leadership, trust, power, politics, conflict and
negotiation
 Organizational behaviors
• Culture, structure, ….