Organizational Behavior_2

The Meaning of Organizational Behavior

Organizational Behavior (OB)

–The study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and of the organization itself.

The Importance of Organizational Behavior

–People as organizations

–People as resources

–People as people

Figure 1.1 The Nature of Organizational Behavior

The Historical Roots of Organizational Behavior

Scientific Management Era (early 1900s)

–Frederick W. Taylor

•Studied the efficiency and productivity of individual workers.

•Systematically studied jobs to eliminate soldiering.

•Promoted standardized job performance methods.

•Implemented piece-rate based incentive pay systems.

•Taylor’s innovations boosted productivity markedly.

Other Pioneers

–Frank and Lillian Gilbreth

–Henry Gantt

–Harrington Emerson

Scientific Management

Positive Attributes

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Facilitated job specialization and mass production.

–Demonstrated to managers their role in enhancing performance and productivity.

Negative Attributes

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Labor opposed scientific management because its explicit goal was to get more output from workers.

–Critics argued that Taylor’s methods and ideas would dehumanize the workplace and reduce workers to little more than drones.

–Theorists later argued that Taylor’s views of employee motivation were inadequate and narrow.

The Historical Roots of Organizational Behavior

Classical Organization Theory

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This perspective was concerned with structuring organizations effectively.

–Whereas scientific management studied how individual workers could be made more efficient, organization theory focused on how a large number of workers and managers could be organized most effectively into an overall structure.

Major Contributors to Classical Organization Theory

Henri Fayol

–French executive and engineer.

Lyndall Urwick

–British executive.

Max Weber

–German Sociologist.

–Proposed a “bureaucratic” form of structure based on logic, rationality, and efficiency that was assumed to be the most efficient (universal) approach to structuring for all organizations.

Table 1.1 Elements of Weber’s Ideal Bureaucracy

The Emergence of Organizational Behavior

1) Legacy of Scientific Management and Classical Organizational Theory

–Rationality, efficiency, and standardization were the central themes of both scientific management and classic organization theory.

–The roles of individuals and groups in organizations were either ignored or given only minimal attention.

2) The Hawthorne Studies (1927–1932)

–Focused attention on the role of human behavior in the workplace.

–Led directly to the emergence of organizational behavior as a field of study.

The Hawthorne Studies
1927–1932

Involved two studies conducted by Elton Mayo at Western Electric’s plant near Chicago:

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The effects of lighting on productivity.

–The effectiveness of a piecework incentive system.

The studies yielded surprising results:

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In the lighting study, productivity went up because the workers were singled out for special treatment.

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In the incentive system experiment, social pressures caused the workers to vary their work rates.

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As a result of the Hawthorne studies, researchers concluded that the human element in the workplace was more important than previously thought.

3) The Human Relations Movement

–People respond primarily to their social environment.

–Motivation depends on social, not economic needs.

–Satisfied employees work harder than dissatisfied employees.

–Douglas McGregor – Theory X and Theory Y

–Abraham Maslow – Hierarchy of needs

Toward Organizational Behavior: The Value of People

–Organizational behavior reached maturity as a field of study in the late 1950s .

Table 1.2 Theory X and Theory Y

Contemporary Organizational Behavior

Characteristics of the Field

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An Interdisciplinary Focus

•Synthesizes psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, engineering, and medicine.

–A Descriptive Nature

•OB’s primary goal is describing the relationship between behavioral variables (e.g., pay satisfaction and job performance).

•
OB cannot predict with certainty due to:

–Immaturity of the OB field.

–The complexities of studying human behavior.

–Lack of universally established definitions and measures.

Contextual Perspectives on Organizational Behavior

1) The Systems Perspective

–A system is an interrelated set of elements that function as a whole.

2) The Systems Approach

–Provides a framework for understanding how the elements of an organization interact among themselves and with their environment.

3) The Universal Perspective

–Suggests that whenever a manager encounters a problem, a universal approach exists that will lead to the desired outcome.

4) The Contingency Perspective

–Suggests that whenever a manager encounters a problem, the approach to use is contingent on other variables.

Figure 1.3 The Systems Approach to Organizations

5) Interactionalism: People and Situations

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First presented in terms of interactional psychology, this view assumes that individual behavior results from a continuous and multidirectional interaction between the characteristics of the person and the characteristics of the situation.

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Interactionalism attempts to explain how people select, interpret, and change various situations

Figure 1.4 Universal versus Contingency Approach