What Is Organizational Behavior?

Organizational Behavior - People Centered & Ethical

What's Your Work Experience?

• People Centered?
  •  Job Security
  • Careful Hiring (culture)
  • Employee Empowerment
  • Performance Pay
  • Training (learning organization)
  • Less status, more team
  • Trust (everything)

Even at your ages, you have some variation of work experience. The research is clear that people centered organizations perform better, are more adaptable, less stressful and create greater long term (and often short term) return on investments.

 This text was adapted by Saylor Academy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without attribution as requested by the work's original creator or licensor.

Organizational Behavior (OB)

Research & Practice

• Individual
• Group
• Organization:
  •  "A system of consciously coordinated activities or forces of two or more people" (Chester I. Bernard)
    
    
    

Organizational Behavior (OB) is a multidisciplinary field trying to figure out to better understand and manage people at work.  Why? Higher Performance and Profit, even if the organization is a non-profit by registration with the state or federal government.   The three basic levels are individual, group and organization, and just in case you needed a definition of organization there's one here, but by that even the mafia is an organization.  They have structure, leadership, products, assets, liabilities, and profits and losses. 

Organization Background

Whether it was a science or not, OB and OD have always existed, we just weren't necessarily studying it and creating terms and definitions.

Society & Org Development

From individual craftspersons and farmers to mass production factories to the assembly line.  Remember the video from Tuesday about the company in China with 800,000 employees that makes I-phones, I-pads, Kindles, Nooks, etc??

OB & Org Design Connection

Organizations have moved from your standard hierarchal doe what I say because of my title and your standard org chart with lots of departments that don't work well together and fight over limited resources to a more networked environment, communities of collaboration (IPC story). Now of course, not everyone's gotten the memo by any means yet, and particularly in this country we are still way to top down, and lack of people focused among many businesses.

Networked Organizations

In many cases today organizations are global in nature and structure, and employees are networked together. 

OB Life Long Learning

OB- Related skills are the ticket to ride the virtuous career spiral

OB combines knowledge from many different disciplines in such a way as to help us better understand and manage people at work, but the focus here is really you.  Your ability to intelligently and efficiently gain clarify a wide body of knowledge and be able to both communicate it to others and to apply it to your life.  And by that I mean both personal and professional.  We often try to separate the two, but they are forever intertwined, and we simply can not be two completely different people without ending up conflicted and failing.  What career field you intend to go into, or even how often that changes, because it will, the knowledge and skills you're going to learn in this class apply to every organization because nobody works alone.  Not even professional golfers and single's tennis players.  They have coaches, managers, dieticians, strength trainers, agents, etc that they interact with on a daily basis to continually improve.

 OB-OD Brief History

• 1776 Adam Smith
• 1820's - Railroad
• 1900's Assembly Lines (Ford)
• 1930's Human Relations Mayo Follett; Barnard.
• 1940's - Deming
• 1950's Hawthorne Legacy
• 1960's McGregor (X&Y)
• 1980's –Total Quality Management
• 1980's Six Sigma
• 1990's Reeingineering
• 2000 Lean Six Sigma

The Fact is that over 70% of these efforts FAIL to improve performance or stakeholder value!

Organizational Behavior as a specific field has only been around for roughly 40 years.  The foundation of modern business is built upon Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) which is online for free to read.  As we moved out the agrarian, craftsman and feudal society structures there's a major move in the railroad industry as their built across the country in division of labor.

The Reality of the American Workforce

What percentage of the American workforce do NOT utilize their full
capabilities on the job?

1. 10%
2. 35%
3. 50%
4. 75%

Jason Fried: Why Work Doesn't Get Done At Work

What do you think?

True (A) or False (B)?

1. Effective managers tend to have high skills mastery.  
   • True
2. Derailed managers underestimate their skills mastery.
   • False, in fact they overestimate it indicating they are not a self-aware as they could be in identifying their developmental areas
3. Effective female and male managers have significantly different skill sets.
   • False, no actually they are quite similar

McGregor Theory X & Theory Y

McGregor's work as a management consultant led him to formulate two contrasting sets of assumptions to describe how managers perceive their employees.  McGregor believed that managers traditionally perceive their employees using Theory X assumptions, assumptions that  employees inherently dislike work, that they have to be pushed into doing work, and that they prefer to be told what to do rather than think for themselves. 

McGregor believed that managers would be able to accomplish more if they perceived their employees as possessing the characteristics of his Theory Y assumptions.  Clearly, if managers assume that employees enjoy challenging and mentally stimulating work and that they will be committed to objectives they believe in, then leaders would manage their employees in a way that allows their employees to be self-directed and act autonomously to figure out the best way to do things.

Total Quality Management (TQM)

Reengineering

Reengineering Flow:

1. Step 1: Debugging
   • If there are problems in existing systems
2. Step 2: Indirect outcome
   • Prevention of future problems
   • Reduction in future costs
3. Step 3: Responses to customer needs
   1. Enhancement of functions
   2. New development and integration of systems
   3. Enhancement of performance
   4. Downsizing
   5. Operational improvement
   • Direct outcome
     • Deliverables
     • Reduced costs of deliverables
       

Six Sigma (Lean Six Sigma)

In Japanese, the definition of Kaizen is "improvement" and particularly, "Continuous Improvement"-- slow, incremental but constant.

TQM vs. Six Sigma

Fast Fact

Key differences between traditional Total Quality Management (TQM) and Six Sigma

Management Evolution

Effective management practices have gone through a transformation because of changes in technology, focus on services, and globalization.  This table highlights some of the key roles of managers and contrasts how they've been handled in the past compared to how management today and in the future will look.  And just for clarification purposes, management is not leadership.  They are completely different animals that we'll talk about in another chapter.

First, Break all the Rules

1. I know what is expected of me at work.

2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.

3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.

4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.

5. My supervisor, or someone at  work, seems to care about me as a person.

6. There is someone at work who encourages me development.

7. At work, my opinions seem to count.

8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.

9. My associates or fellow employeesm are committed to doing quality wrok.

10. I have a best friend at work.

11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.

12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

Changing Minds

1. Reason
2. Research
3. Resonance
4. Redescriptions:
5. Resources and Rewards
6. Real World Events
7. Resistances

Reason: Allowing members to understand the need for change.

Research:  Providing important information that supports the reason.

Resonance:  The understanding of change must reach to the core beliefs of members.

Redescriptions:  The basis for change must be expressed in multiple forms (numbers, graphics, etc.).  Schein suggests that the stories which bind members together are the most important.

Resources and Rewards:  Members must have the tools they need to complete the change, and a reward for success (beyond simply keeping your job).

Real World Events:  Change will not be successful if it doesn't relate to real life and what's occurring outside of the organization.
Resistances: Every human comes from their personal paradigms and resistance to change is inevitable, but can be overcome.

Corporate Social Responsibility

This pyramid is important because it triangulates three major trends:

1) economic globalization,

2) expanding CSR expectations, and

3) the call for improved business ethics.

This CSR pyramid advises organizations to:

• Make a profit consistent with expectations for international business
• Obey the law of the host countries as well as international law
• Be ethical in its practices, taking host-country and global standards into consideration
• Be a good corporate citizen, especially as defined by the host country's expectations.

Ethics in American Business

1. Occasional observed unethical behavior C. 62%
2. Job applicants misinformed about financial condition of company D. 64%
3. Applicants who lied about their work histories B. 44%
4. Applicants who lied about their education E. 41%
5. Applicants who lied about their credentials/licenses A. 23%

Moral Principles David Hodgson

• Dignity of human life
• Autonomy
• Honesty
• Loyalty
• Fairness
• Humaneness
• The common good

You could probably add more, depending on your values, beliefs and philosophy.

Improving Ethics

• Model the Way
• Screen Potential
• Employees
• Develop and enforce
• a meaningful code of
• ethics
  • Equally distributed
  • Supported
  • Specific

• Training
• Reinforce
• Create structure
• Eliminate the need for whistle-blowing.
  (Remember Gardner?)
  

Specific actions that can be taken to improve organizational ethics are listed here.

Behave ethically yourself – no one will take your interest in ethical decisions seriously if you don't act ethically yourself (and it may even encourage unethical behavior)

Screen potential employees – there is a big push recently because of some very unfortunate cases where employees who were abusive in prior jobs ended up seriously harming or murdering their coworkers at their next job.  Therefore, it is important to do what you can, legally, to find out about the person you are hiring by checking references and police records.

Develop a Meaningful Code of Ethics – A company should put in writing what it's expectations are with regard to moral decisions.  These really help employees who may be in a tough situation concerning financially helping the company vs. harming another constituent

What constitutes a meaningful code of ethics?

• They are distributed to every employee
• They are firmly supported  by management
• They refer to specific practices and ethical dilemmas likely to be encountered by target employees
• They are evenly enforced with rewards for compliance and strict penalties for noncompliance
  

Provide ethics training – Communicate this code of ethics through training and regular communication

Reinforce ethical behavior – Also, don't let unethical behavior go unchecked – it sends a message that it's ok,

Create positions, units, and other structural mechanisms to deal with ethics – some companies have a chief ethics officer to oversee ethics programs and conduct periodic checks and audits of business practices.  Boeing, for example, has implemented this in response to several breaches of ethics that have cost the company billions of dollars.

Eliminate need for whistle-blowing – organizations can reduce the need for whistle-blowing by encouraging free and open expression of dissenting viewpoints and providing fair grievance procedures and/ore anonymous ethics hot lines.

Course Structure

A Topical Model for What Lies Ahead

This course is divided into four parts that flow logically from a focus on the individual, to groups, and then the organization as a whole.  The context of studying organizational behavior is provided in part one, where we will add to what we've studied in this chapter to examine the topics of ethics, diversity, culture, and international OB.

In Part 2, represented  in the top circle, we will examine the Individual behavior topics of personality, values, attitudes, perceptions, and motivation.

In Part 3, represented in the middle circle, we will look at the group and social processes of decision making, group dynamics, teams, conflict, and negotiation.

Finally, in Part 4, represented in the bottom circle, we will examine the organizational processes of communication, influence, leadership, and change.

The Bottom Line is YOU!

Companies today aren't managing their employee's careers; knowledge workers must, effectively, be their own chief executive officers. It's up to you to carve out your place, to know when to change course, and to keep yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span 50 years. To do these things well, you'll need to cultivate a deep understanding of yourself - not only how you learn, [but] how you work with others, what your values are, and where you can make the greatest contribution. Because only when you operate from strengths can you achieve true excellence.