BUS209: Organizational Behavior

The Changing Landscape of The Workplace

Emerging Trends in OB Research

• A. Generational Differences
• B. Workplace Incivility/Bullying
• C. Work-life Balance Initiatives
  
  

A. Generational Differences

• Baby Boomers – Individuals born between 1945 - 1962
• Generation X – Individuals born between 1963 - 1981
• Millennials – Individuals born between 1982 – 2000
  • Sometimes, this group is referred to as Generation Y
    
    

Generational Characteristics

• The Boomers
  • Strong work ethic (their job defines them –
  • workaholics)
  • Driven (focused)
  • Consensus builders
  • Optimistic
  • Strong relationship skills
  • Excellent team players (understand roles)
  • Buy now, pay later

• The X-ers
  • Strong work/life balance (they might say, life/work
  • balance)
  • Versatile (flexible)
  • Techno-literate
  • Skeptical/cynical
  • Multi-taskers
  • Value individual contributions
  • Save, save, save

• The Millennials
  • Self-confident/believe they can do anything (use to
  • praise)
  • Determined (focused)
  • Techno-dependent
  • Hopeful
  • Conditioned towards an entitlement mentality
  • Team oriented (everyone is a winner)
  • Earn to spend
    
    

Generations in the Workplace

• The Boomers

  • Hours = Badge of Honor
  • Loyal to the firm (if the firm is loyal to them)
  • Respect authority (within reason)
  • Love meetings, analysis and reports
  • Look for role models and mentors
  • Prefer face-to-face communication
    
  • Task/process focused
  • Uncomfortable with a challenge/question to their authority
  • Prefer to avoid conflict
  • Will not openly challenge/disagree with peers
  • Feedback only required once a year
  • Do not handle criticism well

• The X-ers

  • Hourly mentality difficult to accept
    • Their credo is: hours are unimportant, results/outcome are important.
  • Tell them what to do, not how to do it
  • Want autonomy they have not earned
  • Flexibility/freedom is integral to their productivity
  • View work, employment and the firm as a "contract"
    • It is the firm's responsibility to keep them engaged
  • Highly efficient
  • Embrace paperless and the use of technology
  • Have difficulty with authority
  • (rulebreakers/stretchers)
  • Challenge everything (routinely ask why)
  • Impatient when change is not immediately
  • implemented
  • Want to be managers/partners now
  • Mentors should be "advocates"
  • Poor people skills
  • Openly critical/confrontational
  • Believe their skill set will protect them (and define them)
  • Understand the staffing dilemma (leverage this to their advantage)
  • Need positive feedback on a regular basis
    •  Welcome "constructive" criticism

• The Millennials

  • Tracking hours makes no sense to them
    •  Willing to work if they are told why and/or if they make the commitment to the task or project
    •  Very receptive to the concept of value billing for services provided
  • They expect their work environment to be fun, stimulating and collegial
  • They wonder why more of the mundane tasks (entry level tasks they are asked to do) are not done through technology
  • Generally, they have unrealistic expectations related to their careers and the timeline for their career advancement
  • Mentors must be proactive and involved (they are essential for their success)
  • They expect and demand training
  • They have poor communication skills
    •  Except with each other
    •  Too dependent on e-mail and frustrated with face-to-face
  • Want to feel that they are contributing and thrive in a team approach/environment
  • Want feedback constantly and need to know what they are doing right and what needs to be corrected They are more like boomers in terms of work ethic and attitude towards work
  • They are more like X-ers in terms of technology utilization and career expectations

Hiring the Current Generation

• Website/Internet
• Colleges/Universities (Liberal Arts/Smaller)
  • Alumni
  • Current employees
  • Faculty and programs
  • Internships
• Electronic newsletters
• Young professional organizations
• Large regional

What They Want

• Interesting Work
• Variety
• Flexibility
• A teamwork approach to engagements
• Training (especially on "soft skills")
• Involved mentor programs
• Clear career paths and options
• An understanding of the firm's differentiation

What They Don't Want

• Pigeonholing (no evaluation of the best fit for them)
• No explanation of the firm's work/life balance
• Working for a workaholic
• Partners not being consistent
• Not learning from mistakes
• Too much emphasis on "busy season"
• To end up like their parents
  
  

Keeping/Motivating Them

• Rotate assignments (industries)
• Provide a training calendar (with course descriptions)
• Involve them in Practice Development early
• Ensure a team approach/concept
• Involve them in planning meetings
• Communicate career paths and options
• Utilize employee recognition programs
• Provide a mentor/advocate program

Recommendations

• Establish and utilize an alumni program
• Involve seniors and supervisors in your efforts
• Establish both formal training programs and a rainmaker academy
• Overhaul your current mentor program
• Revisit your website (from a recruiting perspective and have new employees critique it)
• Explore flexible schedules

B. Workplace Incivility

• Defined as: "Characteristically rude and discourteous behavior"
  • Examples: Being interrupted when speaking; not being thanked; intentionally not holding open a door for someone, etc.
  • Intentional or unintentional
• Causes: Power dynamics; procedural unfairness; organizational structure
• Effects: Decreased job satisfaction, turnover, violence

Review of Literature: Workplace Incivility

• Workplace violence, incivility, and bullying all have their origins in the study of organizational citizenship behavior, more specifically,
• workplace deviance Workplace Deviance is "voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and in so doing threatens the well-being of an organization, its members, or both".
• Four quadrants of workplace deviance:

 1. Production Deviance (Behaviors that directly interfere with work)
 2. Property Deviance (The destruction of property)
 3. Political Deviance**(Mild interpersonal behavior)
 4. Personal Aggression (Harmful interpersonal behavior)

• Incivility is a negative issue and has varying degrees of intensity
  • Mild examples:
  • Not making another pot of coffee after last cup has been poured
  • not opening doors for people
  • not thanking someone
  • Extreme examples:
  • Rude comments
  • Verbal abuse
  • Harassment
• Usually starts with some sort of change (i.e. newemployee, change in ownership, new work groups)
• Causes:
  • Crowded working conditions
  • Excess stress
  • Power dynamics
• Occurrence:
  • 92% of current employees reported at least one incident of incivility in the past three years (American Management Association)
  • 80% of victims are women
    
  • Of those 80%, 50% are women over the age of 45 Incivility perpetrators are usually (77%) women between the ages of 20 and 45
    
    

Workplace bullying

• Sometimes referred to as "Escalated Incivility" or "Generalized Harassment".
• Workplace bullying refers to highly negative verbal and nonverbal communicative behaviors that are characterized by:
  
  • Repetition/frequency /duration(persistent)
  • Intentional
  • Escalated
  • Power
  • Adverse Effects
    
    

The Target's perspective – Research Findings

• Both men & women engage in bullying (women tend to bully more than men)
• Men are bullied by men/women are bullied by women
• Bullies are typically identified as managers or those with a higher org rank than the target
• Targets self-report they are college-educated (84%) & veteran's of the org (7 years)

Lack of research

• There is a large gap in research on workplace bullying:
  • The HR (ombudsman) perspective
  • The bully's perspective
  • Varying definitions
  • Overlap in the construct
    
    

Why does bullying happen in organizations?

• Salin's (2003) comprehensive review of literature identified three necessary organizational antecedents to bullying in the workplace:

Repercussions of workplace bullying

Individual:

• Psychological trauma
• Severe stress
• Physical health issues
• Negative self-identity which requires remediation

Organizational:

• Toxic organizational culture(recruiting issues, etc.)
• Absenteeism,
• High turnover
• Lower productivity
• Costly employee health effects
• Legal countermeasures by employees

WKB & the hr professional

• Defined WKB similarly to targets and academics but with important differences
• Complicated to identify and pin down bullying due to the myriad of behaviors associated with it, its subtle nature, and its varying degrees.
• Varying degrees: Based on repetition and the actual behaviors associated with the bullying.
  
• These HR professionals made sense of how and why bullying happens in organizations in a variety of ways.
• Roles:
  • The HR profs. felt they played a progressive, changing role in bullying situations, emotional laborer, powerful vs. powerless.
  • The HR profs. felt UM saw their role in bullying situations as: 1) a partner/resource, 2) "take care of it", 3) objective, third party, 4) and as a nag.
  • The HR profs. felt targets saw their role in bullying situations as: 1) "fix it" and 2) trusted listener.
• Do U.S. orgs use policies to address bullying?
  • 1 had an anti-bullying policy
  • 16 had policies they felt covered bullying (without labeling it as such)
  • 17 did not have a policy that covered bullying or did not know if they had a policy.
• What did these policies seem to be communicating?
• What did the HR professionals feel the policies communicated?
  
  

C. Work-life/family Balance

• Does what happens in your personal life affect your work life and vice versa?
• Should organizations help us manage the relationship between work and home?
• What kinds of initiatives have organizations adopted to help achieve better balance?
• How has the relationship between paid work and home been viewed historically?

Social Histories of Work and Family: Sources of Information From Pre-industrial Societies

• Diaries
• Family letters
• Tombstones
• Sermons
• Publications
• Legal Documents
• Institutional records (school, hospital, business records)
• Songs
• Household architecture
  
  

Anne Bradstreet's Tombstone 1643

What does this document say about women's roles in colonial America and their power in the home and the community?

A Worthy Matron of unspotted Life
A loving Mother and obedient wife
A friendly neighbor, pitiful to poor
Whom oft she fed, and clothed with her store
To Servants wisely aweful, but yet kind
And as they did, so they reward did find
A true Instructor of her Family
The which she ordered with dexterity
The publick meetings ever did frequent
And in her Closet constant hours she spent
Religious in all her words and wayes
Preparing still for death til end of dayes
Of all her Children, Children lived to see

Then dying, left a blessed memory

Pre-industrial Work and Family

What was the household composition?
How were roles divided?
How did they intersect?
What were the rhythms of the day? When did work start and stop?
What were the main barriers to "success?"

• Prior to the Industrial Revolution, work was carried out by the entire family together, including children - this blurred the line between work and family
• Shared responsibility for work
• Women, however, were still also carrying the double burden or working and being the sole caretaker of their children
  
  

The Industrial Sustainable Approaches Revolution: From Integrated to Industrialized Society

• Wages become the family economic lifeline.
• Demise of cottage industries in exchange for factories and assembly lines
• "Unemployment" becomes a new concern.
• Time replaces tasks as the system of organizing work.
• Work became physically separated from the home - Emergence of ideology of separate spheres
• Family interests were seen as competing loyalties
• Entrenchment of segregated gender roles
  
  

Male-Breadwinner/Female-Caregiver Model of the 20th Century

• The mark of manhood became the ability to bring home a wage
• Women's work became defined as "non-productive"
• Cult of domesticity and new visions of femininity
  

What were the benefits and costs of this arrangement for women?

How about men, were their interests advanced or harmed by
this arrangement?

The Relationship Between Work and Life - Examining Past Constructs

• Boundary Management (separation/integration)
• Spillover (open systems perspective)
• Compensation (offset dissatisfaction in one role by seeking satisfaction in another role)
• Segmentation (intentional separation of work and family roles)
• Conflict (simultaneous pressures from work and family that are mutually incompatible)
• Balance (equally involved in and equally satisfied with work role and family role)
• Border Theory (work/family constitute different domains but they always influence one another - flexibility and permeability)
  

Beyond the Breadwinner/Homemaker model

• What challenges face working families today and how do they depart from the challenges faced at the mid 20th century?
  
  • Changing family structures
  • Changing work opportunities
  • Changing economy
  • Changing demographics
    
    
    
    
    
    

Forms of Work Diversity

• Industries/Sectors
  What is being produced
• Occupations/Jobs
  The tasks involved
• Organization size
  Small vs. large companies
• Employees
  The types of people performing work
• Contractual arrangements
  Compensation, security
• Schedules
  When work is performed
• Geography
  Where work is performed
• Corporate Campuses
  Help or hindrance with work/life balance?

Work-Family VS Work-Life

• Do you believe that companies treat employees differently if they leave work early to address family concerns (e.g., pick up a child) as opposed to personal concerns (e.g., leave early to go to the gym)?
• Why might organizations be more supportive of family reasons? Is it the value society places on family? Or, is it because obligations that involve children are seen as necessary?
• If two obligations are seen as "necessary," does it change the way that the organization treats family vs. non-family obligations? (For example, a person leaving early for a medical appointment vs. leaving early to pick up a sick child).
• Do you think organizations should treat family concerns (e.g., picking up a child from daycare) and non-family concerns (e.g., leaving early to further one's education) in the same manner?

Food For Thought…

• As mentioned in Cowan & Hoffman (2007), organizations need to articulate what they mean by "work-life balance" and how employees and managers alike, co-create these meanings (i.e. flexibility is not about telecommuting, flextime or job sharing but rather it's in reference to time, space, evaluation and compensation)
• Researchers studying work-life/family should not impose constructs on the study but rather, allow participants to define the relationship
• What does the term "work" really mean in 2010? Is it a place? A period of time? An activity? This needs further clarification

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