MGCR 222 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Job Satisfaction, Human Capital, Organizational Culture
5 Feb 2020
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Introduction Organization Behavior
Book Notes
Definition: Organization behavior is the study of human behavior in organizations. It is an
academic discipline devoted to understanding individuals, teams, interpersonal processes and
organization dynamics.
Challenges that members and organizations go through:
- Preferred jobs are hard to come by for college graduates
- Unemployment is high
- Jobs = struggles of desired lifestyle
Why learn about OB?
- Help you build solid job skills
- Expand potential career success in the dynamic, shifting and complex workplaces
Advantages:
- Great jobs
- Career success
- Overall life satisfaction
Smart workforce: communities of action whose members tackle constantly shifting projects
while sharing knowledge and skills to solve real and complex problems.
OB as a body knowledge vs OB as a pathway to career and life success.
Collaboration leaders are good at teamwork, information sharing, giving and receiving feedback,
providing peer support and recognizing the contributions of others.
→ help make the people-to-people connections that give life to collaborative organizations
Changes in what people expect and value:
- Importance of connections and networks: must build effective relationships face to face
and online
- Commitment to ethical behavior
- Broader views of leadership : new pressures and demands means everyone needs to have
leadership, it is no longer just managers.
- Emphasis on human capital and teamwork: knowledge, experience and commitment
- Demise of command-and-control
- Influence of information technology: behaviors, systems and processes are continuously
evolving.
- Respect for new workforce expectations: balance of work and nonwork responsibilities
- Changing concept of careers: special skill sets and continuous development.
- Concern for sustainability: decision making and goal setting
Science of organizational behavior:
Scientific understanding of individuals and groups in organizations, and of the performance
implications of organizational processes, systems, and structures.
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Anthropology
- Economics
- Political science
Why is OB unique? Desire to integrate the diverse insights of other disciplines and apply them to
the real world.
OB develops and test generations about behaviors in organizations.
Test models: simplified views of reality to identify major facts and forces
Link independent variables (ex. job satisfaction) and dependent variables (ex. Absenteeism, task
performance, ethical behavior, work stress, incivility, team cohesion and leadership
effectiveness)
1. Process of data collection is controlled and systematic
2. Proposed explanations are carefully tested
3. Explanation that only can be rigorously verified are accepted
- Field studies
- Laboratory studies
- Meta analyses
- Case studies
- Survey studies
Important aspects:
- Focus on application: how people perform in organizations
- Contingency thinking: behavior and practices must be trailered to fit the exact nature of
each situation. It’s not a recipe.
- Quest for evidence: making decisions on hard facts- what really works rather than
dangerous half-truths. Use the contingency approach.
- Cross cultural awareness: specific culture differences can affect such things as ethical
behavior, motivation, job satisfaction, leadership style and negotiating tendencies.
Learning is an enduring change in behavior that results from experience.
Lifelong learning is continuous learning from every day experiences. (conversations, seminars,
business meeting, counseling and advice)
Learning cycle :
- Initial experience
- Reflection
- Theory building : trying to explain what has happened, tested in behavior
- Experimentation.
OB in popular culture: the values we hold influence our ethical views.
Organizations and external environments
An organization is a collection of people working together in a division of labor to achieve a
common purpose.
Organizations are an open system: obtain resources from the environment and transform them
into goods and services that are returned to the environment.
Organizations are complex adaptive systems : the environment they interact with are constantly
evolving and changing.
***Although an organization should ideally operate in ways that best serve all stakehold- ers, the
realities are that conflicting interests add to the complexity faced by decision makers.
The internal environment of Organizations
People act differently depending on the context and the environment. Therefore, to understand
behavior = question how contextual factors influence it and in what ways.
How do our behaviors contribute to what is happening to us and around us, and in both positive
and negative ways?
Stronger contextual influence : organizational culture. (beliefs and values) – also known as the
character of the organization – helps understand what is right and wrong in terms of personal
behavior in that company.
Ex:
Document Summary
Definition: organization behavior is the study of human behavior in organizations. It is an academic discipline devoted to understanding individuals, teams, interpersonal processes and organization dynamics. Preferred jobs are hard to come by for college graduates. Expand potential career success in the dynamic, shifting and complex workplaces. Smart workforce: communities of action whose members tackle constantly shifting projects while sharing knowledge and skills to solve real and complex problems. Ob as a body knowledge vs ob as a pathway to career and life success. Collaboration leaders are good at teamwork, information sharing, giving and receiving feedback, providing peer support and recognizing the contributions of others. Help make the people-to-people connections that give life to collaborative organizations. Importance of connections and networks: must build effective relationships face to face and online. Broader views of leadership : new pressures and demands means everyone needs to have leadership, it is no longer just managers.
