OB Key Concepts & Challenges

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
Copyright © 2019, 2017, 2015, 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Module Content
Topic 1: Define Organizational Behavior
Topic 2: Attitudes & Job Satisfaction
Topic 3: Emotion, Personality & Values
Topic 4: Motivation & Leadership
Topic 5: Group Behavior
Topic 6: Organizational Structure & Culture
Topic 7: Organizational Change

Demonstrate the Importance of
Interpersonal Skills in the Workplace
Interpersonal skills are important because…
• ‘Good places to work’ have better financial performance.
• Better interpersonal skills result in lower turnover of quality
employees and higher quality applications for recruitment.
• There is a strong association between the quality of
workplace relationships and job satisfaction, stress, and
turnover.
• It fosters social responsibility awareness.

Describe the Manager’s Functions,
Roles, and Skills (2 of 4)
Exhibit 1-1 Minztberg’s Managerial Roles
Role Description
Interpersonal Blank
Figurehead Symbolic head; required to perform a number of routine duties of a legal
or social nature
Leader Responsible for the motivation and direction of employees
Liaison Maintains a network of outside contacts who provide favors and
information
Informational Blank
Monitor Receives a wide variety of information; serves as nerve center of
internal and external information of the organization
Disseminator Transmits information received from outsiders or from other employees
to members of the organization

[Exhibit 1-1 Continued]
Role Description
Spokesperson Transmits information to outsiders on organization’s plans,
policies, actions, and results; serves as expert on organization’s
industry
Decisional Searches organization and its environment for opportunities and
initiates projects to bring about change
Entrepreneur Responsible for corrective action when organization faces
important, unexpected disturbances
Resource allocator Makes or approves significant organizational decisions
Negotiator Responsible for representing the organization at major
negotiations
Source: H. Mintzberg, The Nature of Managerial Work, 1st ed., © 1973, pp. 92–93. Reprinted and electronically
reproduced by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., New York, NY.

• Management Skills
– Technical Skills – the ability to apply specialized
knowledge or expertise. All jobs require some
specialized expertise, and many people develop their
technical skills on the job.
– Human Skills – the ability to work with, understand,
and motivate other people.
– Conceptual Skills – the mental ability to analyze and
diagnose complex situations.

Define 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.

Complementing Intuition with
Systematic Study
• Systematic Study of Behavior
– Behavior generally is predictable if we know how the person
perceived the situation and what is important to him or her.
• Evidence-Based Management (EBM)
– Complements systematic study.
– Argues for managers to make decisions based on evidence.
• Intuition
– Systematic study and EBM add to intuition, or those “gut
feelings” about “why I do what I do” and “what makes others
tick.”
– If we make all decisions with intuition or gut instinct, we’re
likely working with incomplete information.

Big Data
• Background:
– The use of Big Data for managerial practices is a relatively
new area, but one that holds convincing promise.
• Current Usage:
– The reasons for data analytics include predicting any
event, detecting how much risk is incurred at any time,
and preventing catastrophes.
• New Trends:
– The use of Big Data for understanding, helping, and
managing people is relatively new but holds promise.
• Limitations:
– Use evidence as much as possible to inform your intuition
and experience.

Identify the Major Behavioral Science
Disciplines That Contribute to OB (1 of 4)
• Organizational behavior is an applied behavioral science
that is built upon contributions from a number of behavioral
disciplines:
– Psychology
– Social psychology
– Sociology
– Anthropology

Exhibit 1-3 Toward an OB
Discipline

• Psychology
– seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change
the behavior of humans and other animals.
• Social psychology
– blends the concepts of psychology and sociology.

• Sociology
– studies people in relation to their social environment
or culture.
• Anthropology
– is the study of societies to learn about human beings
and their activities.

Demonstrate Why Few Absolutes
Apply to OB
• There are few, if any, simple and universal principles that
explain organizational behavior.
– Contingency variables situational factors are variables
that moderate the relationship between the independent
and dependent variables.

Identify the Challenges and
Opportunities of OB Concepts (1 of 12)
Exhibit 1-4 Employment Options
Sources: Based on J. R. Anderson, E. Binney, N. M. Davis, G. Kraft, S. Miller, T. Minton-Eversole, . . . and A. Wright,
“Action Items: 42 Trends Affecting Benefits, Compensation, Training, Staffing and Technology,” HR Magazine (January
2013): 33; M. Dewhurst, B. Hancock, and D. Ellsworth, “Redesigning Knowledge Work,” Harvard Business Review
(January–February 2013): 58–64; E. Frauenheim, “Creating a New Contingent Culture,” Workforce Management (August
2012): 34–39; N. Koeppen, “State Job Aid Takes Pressure off Germany,” The Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2013, A8;
and M. A. Shaffer, M. L. Kraimer, Y.-P. Chen, and M. C. Bolino, “Choices, Challenges, and Career Consequences of
Global Work Experiences: A Review and Future Agenda,” Journal of Management (July 2012): 1282–1327.

• Responding to economic pressure
– In tough economic times, effective management is an
asset.
– In good times, understanding how to reward, satisfy,
and retain employees is at a premium.
– In bad times, issues like stress, decision making, and
coping come to the forefront.

• Responding to globalization
– Increased foreign assignments.
– Working with people from different cultures.
– Overseeing movement of jobs to countries with low-
cost labor.
– Adapting to differing cultural and regulatory norms.

OB POLL Percentage of Men and Women Working
Sources: Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Women in the Labor Force: A Datebook,” 2014,
www.bls.gov/opub/reports/cps/women-in-the-labor-force-adatabook-2014.pdf; and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
“Economic News Release,” 2013, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.t02.htm.

• Managing workforce diversity
– Workforce diversity – organizations are becoming
more heterogeneous in terms of gender, age, race,
ethnicity, sexual orientation, and inclusion of
Workforce other diverse groups.

• Improving customer service
– Service employees have substantial interaction with
customers.
– Employee attitudes and behavior are associated with
customer satisfaction.
– Need a customer-responsive culture.

• Improving people skills
– People skills are essential to managerial effectiveness.
– OB provides the concepts and theories that allow
managers to predict employee behavior in given
situations.

• Working in networked organizations
– Networked organizations are becoming more
pronounced.
– A manager’s job is fundamentally different in networked
organizations.
– Challenges of motivating and leading “online” require
different techniques.

• Using social media at work
– Policies on accessing social media at work.
 When, where, and for what purpose.
– Impact of social media on employee well-being.

• Enhancing employee well-being at work
– The creation of the global workforce means work no
longer sleeps.
– Communication technology has provided a vehicle for
working at any time or any place.
– Employees are working longer hours per week.
– The lifestyles of families have changed—creating
conflict.
– Balancing work and life demands now surpasses job
security as an employee priority.

• Creating a positive work environment
– Positive organizational scholarship is concerned
with how organizations develop human strength, foster
vitality and resilience, and unlock potential.
– This field of study focuses on employees’ strengths
versus their limitations, as employees share situations
in which they performed at their personal best.

• Improving ethical behavior
– Ethical dilemmas and ethical choices are situations
in which an individual is required to define right and
wrong conduct.
– Good ethical behavior is not so easily defined.
– Organizations distribute codes of ethics to guide
employees through ethical dilemmas.
– Managers need to create an ethically healthy climate.

Three Levels of Analysis in This
Text’s OB Model
Exhibit 1-5 A Basic OB Model

Outcome Variables (1 of 6)
• Attitudes and stress
– Employee attitudes are the evaluations employees
make, ranging from positive to negative, about objects,
people, or events.
– Stress is an unpleasant psychological process that
occurs in response to environmental pressures.

• Task performance
– The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at
doing your core job tasks is a reflection of your level
of task performance.

• Organizational citizenship behavior
– The discretionary behavior that is not part of an
employee’s formal job requirements, and that
contributes to the psychological and social environment
of the workplace, is called organizational citizenship
behavior.

• Withdrawal behavior
– Withdrawal behavior is the set of actions that
employees take to separate themselves from the
organization.

• Group cohesion
– Group cohesion is the extent to which members of
a group support and validate one another at work.
• Group functioning
– Group functioning refers to the quantity and quality
of a group’s work output.

• Productivity
– An organization is productive if it achieves its goals by
transforming inputs into outputs at the lowest cost. This
requires both effectiveness and efficiency.
• Survival
– The final outcome is organizational survival, which is
simply evidence that the organization is able to exist
and grow over the long term.

Implications for Managers (1 of 2)
• Resist the inclination to rely on generalizations; some
provide valid insights into human behavior, but many
are erroneous.
• Use metrics and situational variables rather than
“hunches” to explain cause-and-effect relationships.
• Work on your interpersonal skills to increase your
leadership potential.

• Improve your technical skills and conceptual skills through
training and staying current with OB trends like big data
and fast data.
• OB can improve your employees’ work quality and
productivity by showing you how to empower your
employees, design and implement change programs,
improve customer service, and help your employees
balance work-life conflicts.

Topic 2
Attitudes and Job
Satisfaction

Contrast the Three Components of an
Attitude (1 of 2)
• Attitudes are evaluative statements—either favorable or
unfavorable—about objects, people, or events.
– They reflect how we feel about something.

Contrast the Three Components of an
Attitude (2 of 2)
Exhibit 3-1 The Components of an Attitude

Summarize the Relationship Between
Attitudes and Behavior (1 of 2)
• The attitudes that people hold determine what they do.
– Festinger: cases of attitude following behavior
illustrate the effects of cognitive dissonance.
– Cognitive dissonance is any incompatibility an
individual might perceive between two or more
attitudes or between behavior and attitudes.
• Research has generally concluded that people seek
consistency among their attitudes and between their
attitudes and their behavior.

Summarize the Relationship Between
Attitudes and Behavior (2 of 2)
• Moderating Variables:
– Attitude’s importance
– Correspondence to behavior
– Accessibility
– Presence of social pressures
– Whether a person has direct
experience with the attitude
• The attitude-behavior relationship
is likely to be much stronger if an
attitude refers to something with
which we have direct personal
experience.

Compare the Major Job Attitudes (1 of 5)
• Job Satisfaction
– A positive feeling about the job resulting from an
evaluation of its characteristics.
• Job Involvement
– Degree to which a person identifies with a job, actively
participates in it, and considers performance important
to self-worth.
– Psychological Empowerment
 Belief in the degree of influence over one’s job,
competence, job meaningfulness, and autonomy.

• Organizational Commitment
– Identifying with a particular organization and its goals
and wishing to maintain membership in the
organization.
– Employees who are committed will be less likely to
engage in work withdrawal even if they are dissatisfied,
because they have a sense of organizational loyalty.

• Perceived Organizational Support (POS)
– Degree to which employees believe the organization
values their contribution and cares about their well-
being.
– Higher when rewards are fair, employees are involved
in decision making, and supervisors are seen as
supportive.
– POS is important in countries where power distance
is lower.

• Employee Engagement
– The individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with, and
enthusiasm for the work.
– Engaged employees are passionate about their work
and company.

• Are these job attitudes really all that distinct?
– No, these attitudes are highly related; and while there
is some distinction, there is also a lot of overlap that
may cause confusion.

Define Job Satisfaction (2 of 5)
• Job Satisfaction
– A positive feeling about a job resulting from an
evaluation of its characteristics.
• Two approaches for measuring job satisfaction are
popular
– The single global rating.
– The summation of job facets.

• How satisfied are people in their jobs?
– Over the last 30 years, employees in the U.S. and most
developed countries have generally been satisfied with
their jobs.
 With the recent economic downturn, more workers
are less satisfied.
 Satisfaction levels differ depending on the facet
involved.
 There are cultural differences in job satisfaction.

Exhibit 3-4 Average Levels of Employee Job Satisfaction by Country
Source: Based on J. H. Westover, “The Impact of Comparative State-Directed Development on Working Conditions and
Employee Satisfaction,” Journal of Management & Organization 19, no. 4 (2013): 537–54.

Summarize the Main Causes of Job
Satisfaction
• What causes job satisfaction?
– Job conditions
 The intrinsic nature of the work itself, social
interactions, and supervision are important
predictors of satisfaction and employee well-being.
– Personality
 People who have positive core self-evaluations,
who believe in their inner worth and basic
competence, are more satisfied with their jobs than
those with negative core self-evaluations.

Summarize the Main Causes of Job
Satisfaction
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
– Corporate social responsibility (CSR): self-regulated
actions to benefit society or the environment beyond
what is required by law.
 Includes environmental sustainability initiatives,
nonprofit work, and charitable giving.
 Increasingly affects employee job satisfaction.
– CSR is particularly important for Millennials.
 But, not everyone finds value in CSR.

Outcomes of Job Satisfaction
• Job Performance
– Happy workers are more likely to be productive workers.
• OCB
– People who are more satisfied with their jobs are more likely
to engage in OCB.
• Customer Satisfaction
– Satisfied employees increase customer satisfaction and
loyalty.
• Life Satisfaction
– Research shows that job satisfaction is positively correlated
with life satisfaction.

Four Employee Responses to
Dissatisfaction
• Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB)
– Counterproductive work behavior: actions that
actively damage the organization, including stealing,
behaving aggressively toward coworkers, or being late
or absent.
– Absenteeism: the more satisfied you are, the less likely
you are to miss work.
– Turnover: a pattern of lowered job satisfaction is the
best predictor of intent to leave.
• Managers Often “Don’t Get It”

• Of the major job attitudes – job satisfaction, job
involvement, organizational commitment, perceived
organizational support (POS), and employee engagement
– remember that an employee’s job satisfaction level is the
best single predictor of behavior.
• Pay attention to your employees’ job satisfaction levels as
determinants of their performance, turnover, absenteeism,
and withdrawal behaviors.

• Measure employee job attitudes objectively and at
regular intervals to determine how employees are
reacting to their work.
• To raise employee satisfaction, evaluate the fit between
the employee’s work interests and the intrinsic parts of
his/her job to create work that is challenging and
interesting to the individual.
• Consider the fact that high pay alone is unlikely to create
a satisfying work environment.

Topic 3
Emotions, Personality & Values

Differentiate Between Emotions and
Moods (1 of 7)
Exhibit 4-1 Affect, Emotions, and Moods

Differentiate Between Emotions
and Moods (3 of 7)
Moral Emotions
• Moral emotions: emotions that have moral implications
because of our instant judgement of the situation that
evokes them.
– Our responses to moral emotions differ from our
responses to other emotions.
– Moral emotions are developed during childhood.
– Because morality is a construct that differs between
cultures, so do moral emotions.

Moods (4 of 7)
Exhibit 4-2 The Structure of Mood

Moods (5 of 7)
OB Poll Emotional States
*Respondents in 148 countries worldwide during 2014 were asked whether they experienced five positive (well-rested,
treated with respect, enjoyment, smiling and laughing, learning or doing something interesting) and five negative emotions
(anger, stress, sadness, physical pain, worry) daily. Source: Based on J. Clifton, “Latin Americans Lead World in
Emotions,” Gallup (August 27, 2015), http://www.gallup.com/poll/184631/latin-americans-leadworld- emotions.aspx.

and Moods (6 of 7)

and Moods (7 of 7)
• Do emotions make us ethical?
– Research on moral emotions questions the previous
belief that emotional decision making is based on
higher-level cognitive processes.
– Our beliefs are shaped by our groups, resulting in
unconscious responses and a shared moral emotion.
 This may allow us to justify purely emotional
reactions as rationally ethical just because we share
them with others.

Identify the Sources of Emotions
and Moods (1 of 4)
• Personality
– Moods and emotions have a trait component.
– Affect intensity: how strongly people experience
their emotions.
• Time of Day
– There is a common pattern for all of us.
 Happier in the midpoint of the daily awake period.
• Day of the Week
– Happier toward the end of the week.

and Moods (2 of 4)
• Weather
– Illusory correlation – no effect.
• Stress
– Even low levels of constant stress can worsen moods.
• Social Activities
– Physical, informal, and dining activities increase
positive moods.

and Moods (3 of 4)
• Sleep
– Poor sleep quality increases negative affect.
• Exercise
– Does somewhat improve mood, especially for
depressed people.

and Moods (4 of 4)
• Age
– Older people tend to focus on more positive stimuli
than younger adults.
• Sex
– Women tend to be more emotionally expressive, feel
emotions more intensely, have longer-lasting moods,
and express emotions more frequently than men.

Show the Impact Emotional Labor
Has on Employees (1 of 2)
• Emotional labor: an employee’s expression of
organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal
transactions at work.
• Types of Emotions
– Felt: the individual’s actual emotions.
– Displayed: required or appropriate emotions.
 Surface acting: hiding feelings and foregoing
emotional expressions in response to display rules.
 Deep acting: trying to modify true inner feelings
based on display rules.

Show the Impact Emotional Labor
Has on Employees (2 of 2)
• Emotional dissonance: Inconsistencies between the
emotions people feel and the emotions they project.
– Long-term emotional dissonance is a predictor for job
burnout, declines in job performance, and lower job
satisfaction.

Describe Emotional Intelligence (1 of 2)
• Emotional Intelligence:
A person’s ability to:
– Perceive emotions in the self and others.
– Understand the meaning of these emotions.
– Regulate one’s emotions accordingly in a cascading
model.

Describe Emotional Intelligence (2 of 2)
Exhibit 4-5 A Cascading Model of Emotional Intelligence
Source: Based on D. L. Joseph and D. A. Newman, “Emotional Intelligence: An Integrative Meta-Analysis and Cascading
Model,” Journal of Applied Psychology 95, no. 1 (2010): 54–78.

Apply Concepts About Emotions and
Moods to Specific OB Issues (1 of 4)
• Selection
– EI should be a hiring factor, especially for social jobs.
• Decision Making
– Positive emotions can lead to better decisions.
• Creativity
– Positive mood increases flexibility, openness, and
creativity.

• Motivation
– Positive mood affects expectations of success.
 Feedback amplifies this effect.
• Leadership
– Emotions are important to acceptance of messages
from organizational leaders.
• Negotiation
– Emotions can affect negotiations.

• Customer Service
– Emotions influence customer service.
 Influences repeat business and customer
satisfaction.
– Emotional contagion: “catching” emotions.
• Work-Life Satisfaction
– A good day at work tends to be followed by a good
mood at home and vice versa.
 This usually dissipates overnight.

• Deviant Workplace Behaviors
– Negative emotions lead to workplace deviant
behaviors.
 Actions that violate norms and threaten the
organization.
• Safety and Injury at Work
– Don’t do dangerous work when in a bad mood.

Describe Personality, the Way It Is Measured,
and the Factors that Shape It (1 of 4)
• Defining Personality
– Personality is a dynamic concept describing the
growth and development of a person’s whole
psychological system.
– The sum of ways in which an individual reacts to and
interacts with others.

• Measuring Personality
– Managers need to know how to measure personality.
 Personality tests are useful in hiring decisions and
help managers forecast who is best for a job.
– The most common means of measuring personality
is through self-report surveys.

• Personality Determinants
– Is personality the result of heredity or environment?
– Heredity refers to those factors that were determined
at conception.
 The heredity approach argues that the ultimate
explanation of an individual’s personality is the
molecular structure of the genes, located in the
chromosomes.

• Early research tried to identify and label enduring
personality characteristics.
– Shy, aggressive, submissive, lazy, ambitious, loyal,
and timid.
 These are personality traits.

Strengths and Weakness of the MBTI
and Big Five Model (1 of 7)
• The most widely used personality framework is the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
• Individuals are classified as:
– Extroverted or Introverted (E or I)
– Sensing or Intuitive (S or N)
– Thinking or Feeling (T or F)
– Perceiving or Judging (P or J)
 INTJs are visionaries.
 ESTJs are organizers.
 ENTPs are conceptualizers.

• The Big Five Model
– Extraversion
– Agreeableness
– Conscientiousness
– Emotional stability
– Openness to experience

Exhibit 5-1 Traits That Matter Most to Business Success at Buyout
Companies
Most Important Less Important
Persistence Strong oral communication
Attention to detail Teamwork
Efficiency Flexibility/adaptability
Analytical skills Enthusiasm
Setting high standards Listening skills
Source: Based on S. N. Kaplan, M. M. Klebanov, and M. Sorensen, “Which CEO Characteristics and Abilities Matter?” The
Journal of Finance 67, no. 3 (2012): 973–1007.

Exhibit 5-2 Model of How Big Five Traits Influence OB Criteria

• The Dark Triad
– Machiavellianism: the degree to which an individual is
pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes
that ends can justify means.
– Narcissism: the tendency to be arrogant, have a
grandiose sense of self-importance, require excessive
admiration, and have a sense of entitlement.
– Psychopathy: the tendency for a lack of concern for
others and a lack of guilt or remorse when their actions
cause harm.

• An emerging framework to study dark side traits:
– First, antisocial people are indifferent and callous
toward others.
– Second, borderline people have low self-esteem
and high uncertainty.

– Third, schizotypal individuals are eccentric and
disorganized.
– Fourth, obsessive compulsive people are
perfectionists and can be stubborn, yet they attend
to details, carry a strong work ethic, and may be
motivated by achievement.
– Fifth, avoidant individuals feel inadequate and hate
criticism.

CSE, Self-Monitoring, and Proactive
Personality
• Other Personality Traits Relevant to OB
– Core Self-Evaluation: bottom line conclusions
individuals have about their capabilities,
competence, and worth as a person.
– Self-Monitoring: measures an individual’s ability
to adjust his or her behavior to external, situational
factors.
– Proactive Personality: people who identify
opportunities, show initiative, take action, and
persevere until meaningful change occurs.

The Situation, Job Search, and
Unemployment
• What personality characteristics predict job search
behaviors among the unemployed?
– Conscientiousness and extraversion are the two
strongest predictors of job search behavior,
 Self-esteem and self-efficacy (parts of CSE) are
also important.

The Situation, Personality, and
Behavior (1 of 3)
• Situation strength theory: indicates that the way
personality translates into behavior depends on the
strength of the situation.
– The degree to which norms, cues, or standards
dictate appropriate behavior.
 Clarity
 Consistency
 Constraints
 Consequences

OB Key Concepts & Challenges

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to OB Key Concepts & Challenges

Similar to OB Key Concepts & Challenges (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

OB Key Concepts & Challenges