Definition of organizations

An organization is a collection of people

working together in a division of labor to

achieve a common purpose.

Organizations as an open systems.

– Organizations obtain resource inputs from the environment.

– Organizations transform resource inputs.

– Organizations return transformed inputs to the environment as outputs in the form of goods and services.

Functions of management.– Planning.

• Defining goals, setting specific performance objectives, and identifying the actions needed to achieve them.

– Organizing.• Creating work structures and systems, and arranging resources

to accomplish goals and objectives.

– Leading.• Instilling enthusiasm by communicating with others,

motivating them to work hard, and maintaining good interpersonal relations.

– Controlling.• Ensuring that things go well by monitoring performance and

taking corrective action as necessary.

What is the nature of managerial work?

Managers:– Perform jobs that involve directly supporting

the work efforts of others.

– Help other people get important things done in timely, high-quality, and satisfying ways.

– Assume roles such as coordinator, coach, or team leader.

The management process

– An effective manager is one whose organizational unit, group, or team consistently achieves its goals while its members remain capable, committed, and enthusiastic.

– Key results of effective management:• Task performance.• Job satisfaction.

Managerial roles.– Interpersonal roles.

• Figurehead.• Leader.• Liaison.

– Informational roles.• Monitor.• Disseminator.• Spokesperson.

– Decisional roles.• Entrepreneur.• Disturbance handler.• Resource allocator.• Negotiator.

Managerial skills and competencies.

– A skill is an ability to translate knowledge into

action that results in a desired performance.

– Categories of skills:

• Technical.

• Human.

• Conceptual.

Technical skills

• An ability to perform specialized tasks.

• Derives from knowledge of expertise gained from education or experience.

• Proficiency at using select methods, processes, and procedures to accomplish tasks.

Human skills• An ability to work well with other people.

• Emerges as a spirit of trust, enthusiasm, and genuine involvement in interpersonal relationships.

• Self-awareness.

• Capacity for understanding and empathizing.

• Engages in persuasive communication.

• Deals successfully with conflicts.

Conceptual skills

• An ability to see and understand how the system works, and how the parts are interrelated.

• Used to:– Identify problems and opportunities.– Gather and interpret relevant information.– Make good problem-solving decisions.

– Technical skills are relatively more important at entry levels.

– Human skills are consistently important across all managerial levels.

– Conceptual skills are relatively more important at top management levels.

INTRODUCTION TO

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR (OB)

DEFINITION

ALDAG AND BRIEFOB is a branch of social sciences that seeks to build theories that can be applied to predicting, understanding and controlling CALLAHAN ET AL.OB is a subject of management activities with understanding, predicting and influencing individual behaviour in organizational setting. In other words OB is the study of what people think, feel and do in an around organization.

NATURE OF ORGANISATIONAL

BEHAVIOUR  

1. Field of study not a discipline

2. Interdisciplinary approach

3. An applied science

4. Normative and value oriented

5. Humanistic and optimistic

6. Oriented towards organizational objective

7. Total system approach

DISCIPLINE CONTRIBUTING OB

Traditional discipline

Psychology: Perception, Attitude, Job stress etc.

Sociology: Team dynamics, Communication

etc.

Anthropology: Corporate culture, Organizational rituals, Cross cultural dynamics

Political science: Inter group conflict, Coalition formation, Decision making, Organizational environment

 

Economics : Decision making, Negotiation,

Organizational power etc.

Industrial : Job design,

engineering Productivity,

Work measurements etc.

Emerging discipline Communication: Knowledge

management, Electronic mail, Corporate culture, Employee socialization etc.

Information system: Team dynamics, Decision making, Knowledge management etc.

Marketing: Knowledge management, Creativity, Decision making etc.

Women studies: Organizationalpower, Perception etc.

 

CHALLENGES IN OB

Globalization

Increased foreign assignmentsWorking with people from different culturesCoping with anti-capitalism backlashManaging people during the war on terror

Cross cultural dynamicsIt means people of different countries have different behavioural patterns.

what is culture?

Culture refers to the shared beliefs, values and norms of a group

Determinants of culture

• Cognitive schemas (Scripts and frames that mold our expectations and help us assign meaning and order to the stream of experience)

• Shared meanings (Common interpretations of events)

• Perceptions (How the world is, how things work. Implicit theories of the market, of management, of politics, of human nature)

• Prescriptions and Preferences (What the best way to do things is; What they want to happen

• Behavioral codes (How to dress, how to act, what kinds of things you can joke about, is it cool to be late?)

• Basic values (What is really important; what is evil)

• Myths and legends (Stories about the past: knowledge of the stories identifies you as belonging, and often the stories have hidden points like this is what happens to people who...)

• Heroes and heroines.

• Emblems (objects that have meaning, like group t-shirts, gold watches)

• Rituals

Dimensions of culture

High Context vs Low ContextMonochronic vs PolychronicFuture vs Present vs Past OrientationQuantity of TimePower DistanceIndividualism vs Collectivism

High Context vs Low Context A high context culture is one in which the

communicators assume a great deal of commonality of knowledge and views, so that less is spelled out explicitly and much more is implicit or communicated in indirect ways.

Example : Japan, France and Arabs A low context culture is one in which things are

fully (though concisely) spelled out. Things are made explicit, and there is considerable dependence on what is actually said or written.

Example : Germans

Monochronic vs Polychronic Monochronic cultures like to do just one thing

at a time. They value a certain orderliness and sense of there being an appropriate time and place for everything. They do not value interruptions.

Example : The Germans Polychronic cultures like to do multiple things at

the same time. A manager's office in a polychronic culture typically has an open door, a ringing phone and a meeting all going on at the same time.

Examples: The French and the Americans

Future vs Present vs Past Orientation

Past-oriented societies are concerned with traditional values and ways of doing things. They tend to be conservative in management and slow to change those things that are tied to the past. Past-oriented societies include China, Britain, Japan and most spanish-speaking Latin American countries.

Present-oriented societies they see the past as passed and the future as uncertain. They prefer short-term benefits.

Future-oriented societies have a great deal of optimism about the future. They think they understand it and can shape it through their actions. They view management as a matter of planning, doing and controlling (as opposed to going with the flow, letting things happen). The United States and, increasingly, Brazil, are examples of future-oriented societies.

Quantity of Time

In some cultures, time is seen as being a limited resource which is constantly being used up.

In other cultures, time is more plentiful, if not infinite

Power Distance

The extent to which people accept differences in power and allow this to shape many aspects of life

Individualism vs Collectivism Individualism stands for a society in which the

ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after himself or herself and his or her immediate family only.

Example: France, USA, Australia and Britain Collectivism stands for a society in which people

from birth onwards are integrated into strong cohesive in groups, which throughout people's lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty

Example: Central and South America and East Asia

DIFFERENCES IN CULTURESome examples of differences in culture:- You greet your Austrian client. This is the sixth

time you have met over the last 4 months. He calls you by your name . You think of him as a unfriendly sort of guy who doesn't want to get really friendly. That might be true in America, where calling someone Mr. Smith after the 6th meeting would probably mean something -- it is marked usage of language -- like "we're not hitting it off". But in Austria, it is normal.

A Canadian conducting business in Kuwait is surprised when his meeting with a high-ranking official is not held in a closed office and is constantly interrupted. He starts wondering if the official is as important as he had been led to believe, and he starts to doubt how seriously his business is being taken

A British boss asked a new, young American employee if he would like to have an early lunch at 11 am each day. The employee said 'Yeah, that would be great!' The boss immediately said "With that kind of attitude, you may as well forget about lunch!" The employee and the boss were both baffled by what went wrong. [In England, saying "yeah" in that context is seen as rude and disrespectful.

A Japanese businessman wants to tell his Norwegian client that he is uninterested in a particular sale. So he says "That will be very difficult." The Norwegian eagerly asks how he can help. The Japanese is mystified. To him, saying that something is difficult is a polite way of saying "No way in hell!".

Dave Barry tells the story of being on a trip to Japan and working with a Japanese airline clerk on taking a flight from one city to another. On being asked about it, the clerk said "Perhaps you would prefer to take the train." So he said "NO, I want to fly." So she said "There are many other ways to go." He said "yes, but I think it would be best to fly." She said "It would very difficult". Eventually, it came out that there were no flights between those cities.  

Workforce diversity

Workforce diversity is the presence of differences among the workforce based on:

• Gender.• Traditions• Language• Education• Cultural• Age, etc.

Workforce getting more heterogeneous sexually, racially, culturally, individually, etc.

Source of both innovation and conflict/communication problems

Need to cope with different styles of interaction, dress, presentation, physical appearance

Implication of Diversity

Fairnessand

Justice

Decision Makingand

PerformanceFlexibility

Newer organizational design • Direct communication across unit & firm

boundaries, ignoring chain of command • Cross-unit team structures • Outsourcing & downsizing • Strategic alliances with competitors and others

Now have firms that are your competitors, customers and collaborators all at the same time.

• Close coordination among firms (e.g., JIT systems) and information sharing (open computer systems)

Fewer detailed rules and procedures Greater autonomy, encouragement for initiative Customizable employment relationships:

telecommuting, job sharing, pay for skills. Lifetime employability, not lifetime employment Fewer levels of management, Workers empowered to make decisions Fewer differences in responsibility (not in pay)

across levels

• Increasing workforce aspiration

• Increasing quality consciousness

• Mergers and acquisition