Managing People and Organizations
Managerial Perspectives on Organizational Behavior
Organizational behavior is not a designated function or area. Rather, it is a perspective or set of tools that all managers can use to carry out their jobs more effectively. A knowledge of organizational behavior helps managers to better:
– Recognize why others in the organization behave as they do.
– Interact with colleagues, peers, and coworkers.
– Understand individual needs, motives, behaviors, and feelings.
– Interact with suppliers, customers, and competitors.
Figure 2.1
Basic Managerial Functions
Basic Managerial Functions
Planning –The process of determining the organization’s desired future position and the best means to get there.
Organizing –The process of designing jobs, grouping jobs into units, and establishing patterns of authority between jobs and units.
Leading –The process of getting the organization’s members to work together toward the organization’s goals.
Controlling
–The process of monitoring and correcting the actions of the organization and its members to keep them directed toward their goals.
Basic Managerial Roles
Interpersonal Roles –Are primarily social in nature in which the manager’s main task is to relate to other people in certain ways.
Informational Roles
–Involve some aspect of information processing.
Decision-Making Roles
–Involve some aspect of decision-making.
Table 2.1 Important Managerial Roles
Critical Managerial Skills
Technical Skills
–Those skills necessary to accomplish specific tasks within the organization.
Interpersonal Skills
–Equip a manager with the ability to communicate with, understand, and motivate individuals and groups.
Conceptual Skills –Involve a manager’s ability to think in the abstract. A manager with strong conceptual skills is able to see the “big picture.”
Diagnostic Skills
–Allow managers to better understand cause-and-effect relationships and recognize the optimal solution to problems.
Figure 2.2 Managerial Skills at Different Organizational Levels
Organizational Challenges
1) Workforce Expansion and Reduction –
a) Downsizing
a) Downsizing
•Is the process of purposely becoming smaller by reducing the
size of the workforce or by shedding entire
divisions or businesses.
size of the workforce or by shedding entire
divisions or businesses.
–b) Expansion
•Is the process of growing an organization by expanding the workforce.
•During boom periods like the late 1990s, downsizing gave way in many sectors of the economy to growth and expansion.
3) Organizational Change
4) Information Technology (IT)
2) The New Workplace –
a) Workforce Diversity
a) Workforce Diversity
•The term “diversity” refers to differences among people.
•Diversity may be reflected along numerous dimensions, but most managers tend to focus on age, gender, ethnicity, and physical abilities and disabilities.
–
b) Characteristics of the New Workforce
b) Characteristics of the New Workforce
• In coping with the new workforce, managers face three main challenges:
– Create an environment attractive to today’s worker.
– Providing new and different incentives to keep people motivated and interested in their work.
– Build enough flexibility into the organization to accommodate an ever-changing set of lifestyles and preferences.
3) Organizational Change
–Simply put, an organization that fails to monitor its environment and to change to keep pace with that environment is doomed to failure.
4) Information Technology (IT) –a) Specific forms of hardware such as cellular phones and fax machines have made it easier than ever for managers to communicate with each other.
–b) At the same time, these innovations have increased the work pace for managers, cut into their time for thoughtful contemplation of decisions, and increased the amount of information they must process.
5) New Ways of Organizing –a) Many organizations are seeking greater flexibility and the ability to respond more quickly to their environment by adopting flat structures.
–
b) The increased use of work teams also goes hand-in-hand with this new approach to organizing.
b) The increased use of work teams also goes hand-in-hand with this new approach to organizing.
Environmental Challenges
1) Competitive Strategy
–a) A firm’s competitive strategy explains how it intends to compete with other firms in the same industry.
–b) Most firms adopt one of three competitive strategies:
•(i) Differentiation
–Firm makes its products and services “different” from others in the marketplace.
•(ii) Cost Leadership
–Firm works aggressively to push its costs as low as possible.
•(iii) Focus
–Firm targets products or services to meet the unique needs of a specific customer group.
2) Globalization –a) The globalization trend started soon after World War II.
–b) Managing in a global economy poses many different challenges and opportunities.
–c) An important consideration is how behavioral processes vary widely across cultural and national boundaries.
3) Ethics and Social Responsibility
–a) Individual ethics are that individual’s beliefs about what is right or wrong or good or bad.
–b) An organization’s social responsibility is its obligation to protect and contribute to the social environment in which it functions.
4) Quality and Productivity –a) More and more organizations are using quality as a basis for competition.
–b) Improving quality tends to increase productivity because making higher-quality products generally results in less waste and rework.
5) Manufacturing and Service Technology
–a) Managing manufacturing and service operations requires managers to keep abreast of new forms of technology and to make appropriate investments in new equipment.
–b) The service sector has become much more important.
Managing for Effectiveness
1) Three Basic Levels of Outcomes That Determine Organizational Effectiveness –a) Individual Behaviors
•Result from a person’s participation in an organization.
–b) Individual Attitudes
•Involve levels of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational involvement.
–c) Stress
•Stress is becoming an increasingly more important topic in organizational studies.
