Title of the course: Organizational Behavior

Course Code: 633

Name of the Text Book: Organizational
Behavior
Authors: Robbins, Judge, & Vohra
Edition: 15th
Publisher: Pearson

1
Md Sahidur Rahman
PhD (Chittagong), MScR (Edinburgh), MSc (Dundee), PGD (London),
BCom (Hons), MCom (Dhaka)
Professor
Department of Management
University of Chittagong
Bangladesh 4331
Email: sahidur_cu@yahoo.com

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 Organizational
Behavior
15th Global Edition
Robbins, Judge, Vohra

Book Chap 1: What Is Organizational Behavior?

Syllabus Chap 1

1-3
 Chapter 1 Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter you should be able to:
• Demonstrate the importance of interpersonal skills in the
workplace.
• Describe the manager’s functions, roles and skills.
• Define organizational behavior (OB).
• Show the value to OB of systematic study.
• Identify the major behavioral science disciplines that contribute to
OB.
• Demonstrate why few absolutes apply to OB.
• Identify the challenges and opportunities managers have in applying
OB concepts.
• Compare the three levels of analysis in this book’s OB model.
1-4
 Demonstrate the Importance of
LO 1
Interpersonal Skills in the Workplace

Interpersonal Skills Result In…

– Understanding OB helping to determine manager

effectiveness
– Leadership and communication skills that are critical as
a person progresses in a career
– Lower turnover of quality employees
– Higher quality applications for recruitment
– Better financial performance
1-5
 Describe the Manager’s
LO 2
Functions, Roles And Skills
• Manager: Someone who gets things done through
other people in organizations.
– Organization: A consciously coordinated social unit composed of
two or more people that functions on a relatively continuous basis
to achieve a common goal or set of goals.
– Planning, organizing, leading, and controlling are the most often
studied.

• Mintzberg concluded that managers perform ten

different, highly interrelated roles or sets of
behaviors attributable to their jobs.
i1-6
 Describe the Manager’s
LO 2 Functions, Roles And Skills

Insert Exhibit 1.1

1-7
 Describe the Manager’s
LO 2 Functions, Roles And Skills

– 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--Ability to work with, understand, and
motivate other people, both individually and in
groups, describes human skills.
• Conceptual Skills--The mental ability to analyze and
diagnose complex situations.
1-8
 Effective Versus
LO 2
Successful Managerial Activities

• Luthans and associates found that all managers

engage in four managerial activities.
– Traditional management.
– Communication.
– Human resource management.
– Networking.

1-9
 Effective Versus
LO 2
Successful Managerial Activities

Insert Exhibit 1.2

1-10
 Define
LO 3
Organizational Behavior (OB.)
• 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.

1-11
 Show the Value to
LO 4 OB of 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 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.

1-12
 Identify the Major Behavioral Science
LO 5
Disciplines That Contribute to OB

• Organizational behavior is an applied

behavioral science that is built upon
contributions from a number of behavioral
disciplines.

1-13
 Identify the Major Behavioral Science Disciplines That Contribute to
LO 5 OB

Insert Exhibit 1.3

1-14
 Identify the Major Behavioral Science Disciplines That
LO 5 Contribute to OB

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

1-15
 Identify the Major Behavioral Science Disciplines That
LO 5
Contribute to OB
• Sociology
– Sociologists study the social system in which
individuals fill their roles; that is, sociology studies
people in relation to their fellow human beings.
• Anthropology
– Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about
human beings and their activities.

1-16
 LO 6 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.

1-17
 LO 6 Few Absolutes Apply to OB
Situational factors that make the main relationship
between two variables change—e.g., the relationship
may hold for one condition but not another.

1-18
 Identify the Challenges and
LO 7
Opportunities of OB Concepts

– Responding to Economic Pressure

• In economic tough 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 fore.

1-19
 Identify the Challenges and
LO 7
Opportunities of OB Concepts

– Responding to Globalization
• Increased Foreign Assignments
• Working with People from Different Cultures

1-20
 Identify the Challenges and
LO 7
Opportunities of OB Concepts

– Managing Workforce Diversity

• Workforce diversity acknowledges a
– workforce of women and men;
– many racial and ethnic groups;
– individuals with a variety of physical or
psychological abilities;
– and people who differ in age and sexual
orientation.
1-21
 Identify the Challenges and
LO 7
Opportunities of OB Concepts

– Improving Customer Service

• Today the majority of employees in
developed countries work in service jobs.
• Employee attitudes and behavior are
associated with customer satisfaction.

1-22
 Identify the Challenges and
LO 7
Opportunities of OB Concepts

– 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.

1-23
 Identify the Challenges and
LO 7
Opportunities of OB Concepts

– Stimulating Innovation and Change

• Successful organizations must foster
innovation and master the art of change.
• Employees can be the impetus for innovation
and change or a major stumbling block.
• Managers must stimulate employees’
creativity and tolerance for change.

1-24
 Identify the Challenges and
LO 7
Opportunities of OB Concepts
– Coping with “Temporariness”
• Organizations must be flexible and fast in order to
survive.
• Managers and employees must learn to cope with
temporariness.
• Learning to live with flexibility, spontaneity, and
unpredictability.
• OB provides help in understanding a work world of
continual change, how to overcome resistance to
change, and how to create an organizational culture
that thrives on change.
1-25
 Identify the Challenges and
LO 7
Opportunities of OB Concepts

– Working in Networked Organizations

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

1-26
 Identify the Challenges and
LO 7
Opportunities of OB Concepts
– Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts
• 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.
1-27
 Identify the Challenges and
LO 7
Opportunities of OB Concepts

– Creating a Positive Work Environment

• Organizations have realized creating a positive work
environment can be a competitive advantage.
• Positive organizational scholarship or behavior
studies what is ‘good’ about organizations.
• This field of study focuses on employees’ strengths
versus their limitations as employees share
situations in which they performed at their personal
best.
1-28
 Identify the Challenges and
LO 7
Opportunities of OB Concepts

– Improving Ethical Behavior

• Ethical dilemmas are situations in which an
individual is required to define right and wrong
conduct.
• Good ethical behavior is not so easily defined.
• Organizations are distributing codes of ethics to
guide employees through ethical dilemmas.
• Managers need to create an ethically healthy
climate.
1-29
 LO 8 Three Levels of Analysis
in This Book’s OB Model

1-30 Exhibit 1-4

 Three Levels of Analysis
LO 8
in This Book’s OB Model
•Inputs
•Inputs are the variables like
personality, group structure, and
organizational culture that lead to
processes.
•Group structure, roles, and team
responsibilities are typically
assigned immediately before or
after a group is formed.

Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education

 LO 8 Three Levels of Analysis
in This Book’s OB Model
•Processes
•If inputs are like the nouns in
organizational behavior,
processes are like verbs.
•Processes are actions that
individuals, groups, and
organizations engage in as a
result of inputs and that lead to
certain outcomes.

Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education

 LO 8 Three Levels of Analysis
in This Book’s OB Model
•Outcomes
•Outcomes are the key
variables that you want to
explain or predict, and that
are affected by some other
variables.

Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education

 LO 8 Variables of Interest

• 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.
1-34
 LO 8 Variables of Interest

– 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 citizenship
behavior.
– Withdrawal behavior
• Withdrawal behavior is the set of actions that
employees take to separate themselves from the
organization.
1-35
 LO 8 Variables of Interest

• 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.

1-36
 LO 8 Variables of Interest

• 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 we will consider is organizational
survival, which is simply evidence that the organization
is able to exist and grow over the long term.

1-37
 LO 8 Variables of Interest

Insert Exhibit 1.5

1-38
 Managerial Summary

• Organizational behavior uses systematic study to

improve predictions of behavior over intuition
alone.
• Because people are different, we need to look at
OB in a contingency framework, using situational
variables to explain cause-and-effect
relationships.
• Organizational behavior offers specific insights
to improve a manager’s people skills.
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 Managerial Summary
• It helps managers to see the value of workforce diversity
and practices that may need to be changed in different
countries.
• It can improve quality and employee productivity by
showing managers how to empower their people, and help
employees balance work–life conflicts.
• It can help managers cope in a world of temporariness and
learn how to stimulate innovation.
• Finally, OB can guide managers in creating an ethically
healthy work climate.

1-40