Organizational Behavior Outline
I.
Introduction
a. Definitions
i. Organization Behavior: The systemic study of actions and attitudes that people exhibit
within organizations. It is a multidisciplinary approach.
1. Organizational Behavior vs Organizational Theory: OB (micro) starts with the
individual, while OT (macro) starts with the overall structure.
ii. Theory X: People are naturally lazy, stupid, and only motivated by money. Therefore,
managers need to structure employee routines and reward them for performance.
1. “Scientific Management”
2. It is the manager’s job to make the worker more efficient
iii. Theory Y: Individuals have inherent worth in organizations and work can be as “natural”
as rest or play. Therefore, managers must improve group relations and give employees
self-direction and self-control.
1. People don’t dislike work itself, but the conditions
2. Managers need to create conditions that empower and motivate
iv. Theory Z: Organizations are clans and people respond to the unwritten rules of
organizations. Therefore, managers must be aware of the power of symbols and rituals in
organizations if they seek to make changes.
b. Assumptions Underlying Organizational Behavior
i. Human behavior is purposeful, not necessarily goal-oriented. (Motivation may not be
goal-oriented.)
ii. Behavior is not random, it is caused.
iii. Behavior can be changed by learning. (Name it, recognize it, tools to change it.)
iv. People should be valued as human beings, not as means to an end.
v. In public service, the needs of others take precedence over our own.
vi. Happier, fulfilled workers result in a better product.
c. Management Challenges and Opportunities for OB
i. Improve work quality and productivity
ii. Improve people skills
iii. Manage workforce diversity
iv. Empower people
v. Stimulate innovation and change
vi. Cope with “temporariness”
vii. Help employees balance work/life conflicts
viii. Declining employee loyalty
ix. Improve ethical behavior
d. Additional Level of OB in the Public and Nonprofit Sector
i. In common with For-Profit Sector
1. The Individual
2. Group Processes
3. Organizational Influences
ii. Unique to Public and Nonprofit
1. Governance in the Public Interest
e. Articles
i. Structure, Agency, and Social Transformation
1. Questioning understood practices leads to social change
a. Macro: Effect of same-sex marriage on the institution of marriage.
b. Micro: New way of doing something within an organization.
ii. The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster
1. Three Phases of Sensemaking
II.
a. Enactment: what’s out there, what’s observed
b. Selection: filtering one’s cues (from enactment) based on past experience;
even after new information comes in, we make sense of it based on our
past experiences
c. Retention: learn from our experiences; this affects what we look for later
(selection) and how we understand new information
2. Strategic vs Contextual Rationality
a. Strategic Rationality: logical, purposeful, cost/benefit analysis
b. Contextual Rationality: we explain the new based on the past; make sense
of something in the past by believing we made it happen/were in control
Individual Behavior
a. Know Thyself
i. By knowing ourselves and our employee we can attempt to structure organizational roles,
routines, and interactions to benefit both the employee and the organization.
b. Values and Attitudes
i. Values: basic convictions
ii. Attitudes: evaluative statements
1. Job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitment
2. Cognitive Dissonance: inconsistency between two or more of a person’s
attitudes, or a behavior and an attitude. We seek to minimize these.
a. In OB, this can help us predict the propensity to engage in both attitudinal
and behavioral change.
c. Personality
i. Personality Styles: The manner in which people gather and process information.
ii. Big 5:
1. Extroversion: comfort in relationships
2. Agreeableness: defer to others
3. Conscientiousness: reliability
4. Emotional Stability: ability to withstand stress
5. Openness o Experience: creativity/range of interest/ novelty
iii. Interpersonal Orientation: need for inclusion, control and affection in relationships
iv. Locus of Control: the extent to which we control our own destiny
v. Career Orientation: self-perceived talent, motive, or value that serves to guide, stabilize,
and integrate a person’s career
vi. Self-disclosure: what we reveal about ourselves to others through verbal and nonverbal
means
vii. Self-monitoring: ability to change to fit the situation
1. High self-monitoring can lead to inconsistency, which is negative in organizations
d. Perceptions and Attributions
i. Perception: influenced by the receiver’s attitudes, personality, motives, interests, past
experiences, and expectations, as well as the characteristics of the target and the
background.
ii. Attribution Theory:
Distinctiveness
Consensus
Consistency
Internal
Not Unique
Unique Response
Consistent Response
External
Unique
Similar Responses
Unusual Response
iii. Fundamental Attribution Error: underestimate external influences in our behavior and
overestimate internal influences in other’s behavior.
III.
iv. Self-serving Bias: Attribute one’s own success to internal factors and failures to external
factors.
v. Learning:
1. Shaping: trial and error; use of rewards
2. Modeling: setting examples, identifying exemplars
e. Emotions
i. Affect:
1. Emotions: reaction to an object
2. Mood: less intense than emotions and lack an external stimulus
ii. Emotion labor: an employee expresses organizationally desired emotions during
interpersonal transactions.
iii. Felt vs Displayed: displayed tend to be socially sanctioned, but do not always map onto
felt.
iv. Emotions can impact ability and selection, decision-making, motivation, leadership,
interpersonal conflict, and deviant workplace behaviors.
f. Creativity
i. The development of novel AND useful/appropriate ideas.
ii. Creativity is a function of the interaction among the person, the environment, and the
task; therefore we can all be creative.
iii. Four ways to foster creativity in organizations:
1. Challenging work
2. Supportive supervisor
3. Organizational and workgroup culture
4. Appropriate workload pressure and resources
g. Stress
i. Felt when you confront, opportunity, constraints, and demands
ii. Can be bad or good; without it, we would be dead
iii. Sources on the job:
1. Other people
2. Role ambiguity/conflict
3. Perceived workload
4. Nature of work
5. Physical working conditions
6. Organizational environment (politics/culture)
7. Home/work interactions
iv. Coping with/managing stress:
1. Lifestyle adjustments
2. Attitudes adjustments
3. Social support
4. Time management
5. Job redesign
6. Other organizational factors, eg EAPs
h. Articles
i. Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behavior Revisited: Personnel in the US and
in the Middle East
ii. Generation X and the Public Employee
iii. Putting People First for Organizational Success
Motivation/Public Sector Motivation
a. Definitions
i. Motivation: The willingness to do something; is conditioned by the ability to satisfy
some need for the individual.
ii. Need: A physiological or psychological deficiency that makes certain outcomes appear
attractive.
b. Classic Theories
i. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
1. Level 5: Self-actualization
2. Level 4: Esteem
3. Level 3: Social
4. Level 2: Safety
5. Level 1: Physiological
6. **Heuristic only; in reality, may try to satisfy higher need before lower need is
met
ii. The X,Y, & Z of Motivation
1. Theory X: Manager knows best and must motivate employee
2. Theory Y: Get employee to buy in, manager to self-motivate, make work easy as
play
3. Theory Z: Not only motivate individuals, but groups
iii. Two-Factor Theory (Herzberg)
1. Consider work in terms of opportunity costs, ie what are you giving up to work?
What do you get for this tradeoff?
2. Motivation: associated with job satisfaction (Theory Y)
a. Make job satisfying
3. Hygiene: associated with job dissatisfaction (Theory X)
a. Make choice of what you are giving up to work less dissatisfying (do NOT
make it satisfying; bring from bad to neutral
c. Contemporary Theories
i. Theory of Needs (McClelland): People have more than one need in jobs; managers need
to set conditions so employee can satisfy needs.
1. Need for achievement (drive to excel good for employee performance)
2. Need for power (need to make others conform good for managerial
performance)
3. Need for affiliation (desire for interpersonal relationships bad for managerial
performance)
ii. Goal Setting Theory
1. Y-ish
2. Specific goals are better than general goals
3. Employee buy in/involvement are necessary
iii. Reinforcement Theory
1. X-ish
2. A behavioral take on things; more effort exerted on task/goals that people receive
reinforcement on than those that aren’t reinforced.
3. Basic behavior modification (BF Skinner)
iv. Equity Theory
1. People compare their input/outcome ratios to
a. Others
b. System, and
c. Self
2. Relative in addition to absolute rewards are important.
v. Expectancy Theory
1. Attractiveness: the value of the potential outcome
2. Performance/Reward Linkage: perception of how tightly coupled these two are
3. Effort/Performance Linkage: the perceived probability that effort performance
d.
e.
f.
g.
4. If we are going to give people rewards, they have to want them and be able to
attain them
vi. Life Cycle Theories
1. People face different challenges and need different types of motivation depending
on life-stage
vii. Public Service Motivation
1. Rational, normative, and affective motivations to engage in public service rather
than private job
Seven Things to Think About with Motivation
i. Recognize individual differences
ii. Match people to jobs
iii. Use goals
iv. Ensure that goals are perceived as attainable
v. Individualize rewards
vi. Link rewards to performance
vii. Check the system for equity
Six Motivation Programs
i. MBO (Y-ish)
1. Based on goal setting theory
2. Nested goals from organization to individual level
3. Involves employee helping to set the goal and then being evaluated on it
ii. OB Mod (Neo-Taylorism)
1. Based on reinforcement theory
2. Identify performance related behaviors
3. Measure the behavior
4. Identify behavioral contingencies
5. Develop and implement intervention strategy
6. Evaluate performance improvement
iii. Employee Recognition Programs
1. Based on reinforcement theory
2. What happens when these become institutionalized? Do rewards lose meaning?
How do you keep them fresh?
iv. Employee Involvement Programs
1. Based on Theory Y/Two Factor Theory
2. Participative management (joint decision making)
3. Representative participation (small group represents workers in interactions with
management)
4. Problems
a. How do you prevent it from becoming institutionalized?
b. What about people that don’t like recognition?
v. Variable-pay programs
1. Based on expectancy theory
2. Links pay to performance
vi. Skills-based pay
1. Based on Maslow, nAch, reinforcement theory, and equity theory
2. Pay employees for skills, not for position
Motivation is Manipulation
i. It may actually destroy people’s natural interest in work
ii. A call to take Theory-Y seriously
iii. Continually utilizing extrinsic motivation can kill someone’s intrinsic motivation
Articles
i. Bringing Society In: Toward a Theory of Public-Service Motivation
IV.
ii. Motivating the Private vs Public Sector Managers
iii. The Motivational Bases of Public Service
Decision Making
a. Types of Decisions
i. Programmed
1. Repetitive and routine
2. Established procedure or decision rule
3. Easy to establish rule to follow when you must confront a decision
ii. Nonprogrammed
1. Occur infrequently and poorly structured
2. Can be certain (clear), risk (probability), uncertain (not enough info to assign
likelihoods)
3. Little experience in the particular situation and cannot fully define the problem
b. Decision Making Models (Graham Allison)
i. Model I: The Rational Model
1. Scientific method/logic of consequences
2. Can never actually meet the qualifications of this model because
a. We cannot identify all the possibilities
b. Even if we could identify all the possibilities, we can’t consider them all at
once
ii. Model II: The Organizational Process Model
1. Muddling through organizational rules/logic of action
2. Incremental decision-making
3. Look to the past and change a little in either direction
iii. Model III: The Governmental Process Model
1. Garbage can, games/players, bargains, compromises, resolution/flight/oversight
2. Organizations are not rational (chaos)
3. People, problems, and solutions flowing into the process
c. Heuristics: what we use to aid in making decisions
i. Availability Heuristic: people base their judgments on information that is readily
available (accepting first acceptable solution)
ii. Representative Heuristic: assess the likelihood of an outcome by matching it with a preexisting category (past experience)
iii. Escalation of Commitment: sunk costs; increasing commitment to a previous decision
despite negative information because you’ve invested so much time into researching a
solution, you don’t want to let it go
d. Techniques: Aids for Decision-Making
i. Focus groups
ii. Brainstorming
iii. Cost-benefit and Cost-effectiveness (no money amount on outcome) Analysis
iv. Nominal Group Technique
v. Logic Models
e. Organizational Constraints on Rational Decisions
i. Performance evaluation: people will make decisions based on what they are being
evaluated on
ii. Rewards system: repeat decisions and strategies that are rewarded
iii. System-imposed time constraints: deadlines
iv. Historical precedents: we’ve always done things this way, why do it differently?
f. Behavioral Framework
i. Define and verify the problem fully and accurately
ii. Use the problem to generate solutions (not garbage can model)
iii. Prevent premature evaluation of solutions (don’t satisfice)
V.
iv. Provide a climate that values disagreement (creativity)
v. When possible, gain consensus from all those affected by the decision
g. Ethics in Decision-making
i. Utilitarianism: total gains vs total losses; greatest good for the greatest number of people
ii. Rights-based: protecting individual rights
iii. Justice-based: sometimes you have to make someone worse off to make another better
off because it is the right thing to do, eg progressive tax
iv. Morals vs ethics
1. Morals: established codes of right/wrong (internal); principles you live by
2. Ethics: systems you use to put morals into practice
h. Articles
i. The Strategic Management of Accountability in Nonprofit Organizations: An Analytical
Framework
ii. Cross Pressures of Accountability: Initiative, Command, and Failure in the Ron Brown
Plane Crash
iii. Accounting for the Effects of Accountability
Working in Groups & Teams
a. Definitions
i. Groups: two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who come together to
achieve a particular objectives (come together for the individual, whereas teams come
together for the collective performance)
ii. Work Group: Share information to help individuals perform better
iii. Work Team: Shared responsibility for improving collective performance
b. Group Basics
i. Roles
ii. Norms: pressure to conform
iii. Cohesiveness: smaller group, shared goals, time together, status, competition with other
groups, group rewards, physical isolation
iv. Size: 5-12 people, diminishing marginal individual performance; social loafing
v. Composition: greater skills diversity leads to greater performance; greater demographic
diversity leads to lower performance initially then greater
vi. Status: differences within groups and equity
c. Group Advantages/Disadvantages
i. Individuals: speed, consistency of values, and accountability
ii. Groups: more information, diversity of views, higher quality decisions and greater
acceptance of a solution
iii. Groupthink: the norm for consensus overrides realistic appraisals of alternatives
1. Overestimate the group
2. Illusion of invulnerability
3. Close mind to information outside the group
4. Self-censorship
5. Direct pressure against those who disagree
6. Illusion of unanimity
iv. Groupshift: related to risk in decisions; usually towards riskier
d. Types of Teams
i. Top management: sets strategic vision
ii. Project: specific/limited mission advise, not implement
iii. Cross-functional: people from multiple work areas
iv. Process improvement: meets to improve a work process
v. Self-directed: decides how and when work will be accomplished (within organizational
rules/expectations/goals
vi. Virtual: use of IT to connect
VI.
e. Eight Measures of Effectiveness
i. Encouraging risk taking
ii. Interacting as equals and sharing leadership
iii. Using verbal and nonverbal listening skills
iv. Adhering to mission, vision, values of the division
v. Engaging in team building/development
vi. Using formal decision making and consensus building
vii. Holding team members accountable or responsible
f. Styles/Roles of Team Members
i. Contributor (task oriented)
ii. Collaborator (goal oriented)
iii. Communicator (process oriented)
iv. Challenger (pain in the ***)
g. Stages of Team Development
i. Forming (courting)
ii. Conforming (honeymoon)
iii. Storming (7-year itch)
iv. Performing (Silver jubilee)
h. Developing Team Effectiveness
i. Structure: problem-solving, creativity, tactical
ii. Size: @ 7
iii. Duration: temporary or permanent
iv. Diversity: personality, demographic, functional/organizational
v. Training: job skills, team/interactive skills, quality/action skills
i. Articles
i. Team Structure and Performance: Assessing the Mediating Role of Intra-team Process
and Moderating Role of Task Type
ii. Exploring the Black Box: An Analysis of Work Group Diversity, Conflict, and
Performance
iii. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams
Power and Communication
a. Communication: involves creating meaning, transmitting meaning, and deciphering meaning
i. Can be unintentionally ambiguous, can be intentionally/strategically ambiguous, is laden
with emotions, depend upon one’s frame of reference, is shaped by power in
organizations, is a tension between creativity and constraint.
ii. Modes of Communication
1. Individual: can be oral (distortion), written (time consuming), nonverbal
(interpretation)
2. Organization
a. Formal/small group: chains, wheel, all-channel
b. The Grapevine: response to situations that are important, but there is
ambiguity that causes anxiety
c. Computer-aided: email, intra/extranet, video-conferencing
iii. Barriers to Effective Communication
1. Filtering: sender tailors communication
2. Selective perception: receiver hears/sees things selectively; based on personality
and experience
3. Information overload: more than we can process
4. Gendered Styles
a. Men: to convey authority status
b. Women: connection/intimacy
5. Emotions: impact what we say/how we hear
6. Language: culturally/demographically bound
iv. Supportive Communication
1. Problem oriented, not person oriented
2. Descriptive, not evaluative
3. Specific, not general
4. Conjunctive (build off of ideas; linear projection of discussion), not disjunctive
5. Validating, not demeaning
6. Owned (I made the decision), not disowned
7. Two way, not one way
v. Specialized Communications
1. Personal Counseling: acknowledging personal issue, but keep focus on how it
impacts work; it is up to the employee to address the issue
2. Meetings: Keys to effectiveness
a. Is it necessary
b. Develop/communicate a clear purpose
c. Develop an agenda
d. Start on time
e. Summarize accomplishments before adjourning
f. Distribute minutes afterward
vi. Six Cs of memo/report writing (start with your conclusions)
1. Clarity
2. Courtesy
3. Conciseness
4. Confidence
5. Correctness
6. Conversational tone
vii. Active Listening
1. Have a reason for listening
2. Suspend judgment initially
3. Resist distractions
4. Wait before responding
5. Rephrase what you listen to in your own words
6. Seek important themes
7. Use the thinking-speaking differential
b. Power: A potential to influence; latent and perceived
i. Politics: The exercise or use of power; active power
ii. Five Bases of Power
1. Coercive: dependent on fear
2. Reward: compliance leads to positive benefits
3. Legitimate: derives from structural position
4. Expert: expertise, special skill, or knowledge
5. Referent: identification with a person who has desirable resources or personal
traits; refer to someone of higher authority
iii. Power Factors
1. Dependency: importance and scarcity
2. Coalitions: individuals coalescing to increase collective power (task and resource
dependence, routine tasks)
3. Individual factors: authoritarians, high risk seeking, internal locus of control high
need for power, autonomy, security or status seeking, and high self-monitoring
(makes people seek out power; predisposition to accumulate power and be
involved in politics)
VII.
4. Organizational factors: low trust, role ambiguity, unclear performance evaluation
systems, zero-sum reward allocation practices, democratic decision making, high
pressure for performance, and self-serving senior managers (the need to coalesce
to create majority)
iv. Authority vs Power: Power is distributed throughout the organization
v. Power is not all negative
1. Managers must recognize, acquire, and use power to achieve organizational ends
2. Power is a scarce resource; it must be used wisely (ie pick your battles)
3. Use it ethically; do not violate the rights of others, conform to standards of equity
and justice, improve organizational decision making to achieve organizational
ends
vi. Nine Tactics Related to Power
1. Controlling the agenda
2. Controlling information and using ambiguity (increase dependence on you)
3. Forming coalitions
4. Co-optation (make part of process, not problem)
5. Using outside experts
6. Developing others (make dependent on you, loyalty)
7. Deal making (quid pro quo)
8. Incurring obligations
9. Selecting decision criteria
vii. Empowerment
1. Power is
a. Relational: dependency (importance/scarcity)
b. Motivational: based on motivational/expectancy belief states that are
internal to individuals
2. Empowering is not something you do to others, but rather a changed state that
others bring about in themselves (ie changed self-image and belief system)
a. A manager cannot empower someone, but only set the stage for someone
to empower themselves
c. Articles
i. Wages and Unequal Access to Organizational Power: An Empirical Test of Gender
Discrimination
ii. Outsourcing and Political Power: Bureaucrats, Consultants, Vendors and Information
Technology
iii. The Effects of Politics and Power on the Organizational Commitment of Federal
Executives
Leadership
a. Definitions
i. Leadership: the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of goals.
1. Takes place throughout the organization (and even across organizations with
citizens, clients, etc.)
2. Is a process, not a position
3. “Shared” leadership involves the skills of empathy, consideration, facilitation,
negotiation, and brokering
ii. History of Leadership
1. Trait theories: Leaders are born not made.
2. Behavioral theories: Leaders can be made, but there is one type of way for all
leaders to behave in all situations.
3. Contingency theories: Behavior is dependent upon the situation.
iii. Contemporary Leadership
VIII.
1. From Traits to Skills and Strategies: leaders build on fundamental management
skills; the ability to use power and influence effectively, the ability to
communicate and motivate others and the ability to work among diverse groups
2. Five Traits/Competencies
a. Intelligence and self-understanding
b. Self-confidence and self-esteem
c. High-energy and determination to succeed
d. Sociability
e. Integrity
3. Trust is key. It involves integrity, competence, consistency, loyalty, and
openness.
4. Five Practices of Credible Leaders
a. Challenging the process (learning and questioning what you are doing;
don’t necessarily have to change it)
b. Inspiring a shared vision
c. Enabling others to act
d. Modeling the way
e. Encouraging the heart
5. Types of Leaders
a. Transactional: exchange driven; help subordinates achieve goals
b. Transformational: relationship driven; a moral element; help subordinates
transcend individual self-interest to achieve organizational goals; both
leader and follower are changed.
i. Charismatic traits: self-confidence, vision, strong convictions to
the vision, extraordinary behavior, image as a change agent
iv. Values-Based Leadership
1. “Servant” leadership: not pursuing your own interest, but serving others.
Leadership is matter of how to be not how to do.
a. Listen carefully
b. Emphasize with others
c. Engage in healing broken relationships and spirits
d. Stewardship (Being accountable for what the institution does without
defining goals and objectives for others)
v. Team Leadership
1. Four Roles
a. Liaison with external constituencies
b. Trouble shooters
c. Conflict managers
d. Coaches
vi. Leadership in a Public Context
1. Policy Process: leaders challenge and mobilize community forces to face
problems and tackle tough issues. Coordinating diverse groups demands the skills
of facilitation, negotiation, and mediation.
2. Public Agencies: leaders conserve public service values: pursuing innovative
courses of action to maintain the strength, identity, and traditions of the
organization.
b. Articles
i. Leadership and Management Effectiveness: A Multi-Frame, Multi-Sector Analysis
ii. Assessing Leadership in the Public Sector
iii. Charismatic and Transformational Leadership in Organizations: An Insider’s Perspective
on These Developing Streams of Research
Managing Conflict and Negotiation
a. Definitions
i. Conflict: A process by which A purposely tries to stop B from accomplishing something
AND B is aware of this and is frustrated by the attempts.
1. Traditional: dysfunctional and ought to be avoided
2. Human relations: inevitable, so accept it
3. Interactionist: it is inevitable and desirable in organizations and ought to be
encouraged
a. Good (task and process, if resolved)
b. Bad (relationship, always)
b. Theories of Conflict
i. Systems Theory: Larger systems of interactions. Conflict and adaptation are inseparable
and necessary for system growth and development. (Fight over scarce resources.)
ii. Attribution Theory: Individual dispositions and ways of thinking impacts their behavior
in conflicts.
1. Other’s part (personality characteristics), Out part (environmental conditions)
iii. Social Exchange Theory: Conflict occurs when the rewards received are perceived to be
small compared to the cost of the relationship. (Cost/benefit analysis; if cost is greater
than the benefit, then conflict ensues.)
c. Sources of Interpersonal Conflict
i. Personal differencesperceptions and expectations
ii. Informational deficienciesmisinformation and misrepresentation
iii. Role incompatibilitygoals and responsibilities
iv. Environmental stressresource scarcity and uncertainty
d. Sources of Organizational Conflict
i. Functional conflict (differing perspectives)
ii. Functional overlap (turf battles)
iii. Hierarchical (equity, equality, status)
e. Stages of Conflict
i. Potential opposition (personal, informational, role, environmental)
ii. Cognition and personalization (awareness by at least two parties)
iii. Behavior (competition, collaboration, avoida nce, accommodation, compromise)
iv. Outcomes (functional: avoid groupthink; dysfunctional: organization dissolves)
f. Conflict Escalation Model (Knowing where you are can help stem the process)
i. Hardening
ii. Debates and polemics
iii. Actions rather than words
iv. Images and coalitions
v. Loss of face
vi. Strategies of threat
vii. Limited destructive blows
viii. Fragmentation of the enemy
ix. Together with the abyss
g. Strategies for Conflict Management
i. Ombudsperson
ii. Mediation
iii. Trained facilitators
h. Negotiation
i. A process by which two or more parties exchange goods/services and attempt to agree on
an exchange rate for them.
ii. Barriers: irrational escalation of commitment, the mystical fixed pie, anchoring and
adjustments (wedded to initial position and only willing to move incrementally), framing
IX.
negotiations, availability of information, the winners curse (could I have gotten more?),
overconfidence
i. From Positions to Principles
i. Positional approach (Traditional labor union negotiations)
1. Take a position
2. Develop a desired solution
3. Argue for your position
4. Make concessions until a compromise is reached
ii. Principled approach (What are the principles we agree on?)
1. Separate people from problems
2. Focus on interests not positions
3. Generate many possibilities before deciding what to do
4. Base results on an objective standard
j. Articles
i. Managing Your Boss
ii. A Conflict Resolution Approach to Public Administration
iii. Distinguishing the Effects of Functional and Dysfunctional Conflict on Strategic
Decision Making: Resolving a Paradox for Top Management Teams
Managing Change/Changing Management
a. Why Change is Difficult
i. People develop standard ways of coping with their environments and proposed changes
may be seen as undermining the security that their past practices afford.
ii. People may experience change in terms of personal and psychological loss.
iii. We expect the routine to be happening; have to overcome accepting everything on its
face.
b. Three BIG Ideas on Handling Change
i. Clarify and communicate the problems inherent in the status quo
ii. Involve people throughout the organization in the change process
iii. Recognize that people involved in change simply need time
c. Inhibitors
i. Individual level: time to learn, break habits, and adjust to new roles
ii. Organizational: money, resources, time for red tape, time to get a buy in
d. Classic Approaches
i. Force Field Analysis (Lewin)
1. Driving forces (trying to increase)
2. Restraining forces (trying to decrease)
a. Resistance can be positive
i. Provides a degree of stability and predictability to behavior
ii. A source of functional conflict
b. Resistance can be negative when it hinders adaptation and progress
c. It is easier to reduce restraining forces than increase driving forces
ii. Cultural Approach
1. Open systems and Organizational learning (developing a culture of change);
dependents with in the organization; domino effect/interactions; change can’t be
contaminated (single vs double loop)
2. Combining these two
a. A commitment to values not structures
b. Serving the public (building a sense of community within the organization
and cooperation outside the organization
c. Empowerment and shared leadership
d. Pragmatic incrementalism
e. A dedication to public service
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.
f. Culture becomes a way of doing things; limits how we look at things
g. Strategies not plans; looking for opportunities instead of just focusing on
completion of current project
Two Current Approaches
i. Structural Change: management reorganization
1. Breaking down silos (maybe barriers between sectors?)
ii. Process Change: organization development (OD-humanistic/democratic values drivenorganizations don’t change, people change)
1. Respect for people
2. Trust and support
3. Power equalization
4. Confrontation
5. Participation
6. When we focus on structure we sometimes lose sight of the process and values
Five Steps to Bring About Change
i. Assess the organization, the environment, and the need for change
ii. Plan strategically and pragmatically
iii. Build support for change via conversation and modeling
iv. Implement specific changes, but don’t lose sigh of bigger picture/other opportunities
v. Institutionalize the changes
The Politics of Change
i. Rules and procedures developed for a reason (red tape was created for a reason)
1. Must consider internal and external stakeholders
ii. Changes in political leadership
1. Both facilitates and impedes change
iii. Change-over can inhibit changes in civil service because they are resistant to implement
new ideas because we don’t know who will be in charge next.
Process Skills Related to Managing Change
i. Litany of the course: communication, motivation, negotiation, etc.
ii. Effective listening
iii. Empathetic understanding
iv. Employee participation and involvement
1. Managers must be secure enough to trust/use suggestions made by others
Changing Management
i. Normative Context of DDA (How we SHOULD do things)
1. A focus on citizenship
a. Democratic values; democratic governance and public service
b. Citizens not customers
2. Multiculturalism and Diversity
a. Ethnocentric to ethnorelative
i. Awareness and acceptance of differences
ii. Self-awareness
iii. Dynamics of differences
iv. Knowledge of the client’s culture
v. Adaptation of skills
ii. Towards the New Public Services
1. Consistency between how we treat employees and how our organization treats
citizens
a. Participation, engagement, and empowerment to increase responsibility
and commitment
2. The New Public Service
a. Serve rather than steer
X.
XI.
b. The public interest in the aim, not a by-product
c. Think strategically, act democratically
d. Serve citizens, not customers
e. Accountability is not simple
f. Value people not productivity
g. Value citizenship and public service above entrepreneurship
3. Is this too narrow a definition of public service
j. Matching Values and Practice
i. Focus on justice, fairness, equity; not just efficiency and effectiveness
k. Articles
i. The Tyranny of Change: Organizational Development Revisited
ii. Recent Literature on Leading and Managing Change in Public Service
Organization Theory and Pubic Organization-Environment Interaction
a. Theory creates a reality—what we should look at must be willing to not confirm observations,
that is where the objectivity comes in.
b. Currently, public policy is framed at a volunteeristic point of view; empowering people to make
the right decisions. We tend to look at things more at the micro-level.
c. Articles
i. Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
ii. Analyzing the Environment of Public Organization
iii. Organizational Structure, Design, Technology, and Information Technology
Managing Boundaries
a. Where does one organization end and another or the environment begin?
b. From Command and Control to Policy Networks
i. Interactions between government agencies many groups/interests in “singular”
substantive policy arenas
c. Traditional External Relations
i. BIG ideas: know your audience and be proactive
ii. Legislature
1. Responsiveness (accountability); Advise
iii. Working with the Media
1. Conduit for information exchange between government and citizens; hold
government accountable
iv. Making effective presentations
d. New Skills of External Relations
i. Involve citizens in the work of government
1. Service Quality Programs
a. Ask citizens about expectations
b. Establish a system for measuring progress toward service improvement
objectives
c. “Customer” service may be too narrow—prefer client (for direct service)
and citizen (for anyone with an interest)
2. Information, dialogue, partnership, delegation, control
a. Civic education, volunteer opportunities, leadership development, citizen
advisory panels
ii. Habits of Mind
1. Seeing citizens as citizens
2. Sharing authority
3. Reducing personal and organizational control
4. Trusting in the efficacy of collaboration
5. Balancing experiential knowledge with scientific and professional knowledge
iii. Collaborating with Others
1. Service integration
2. Community involvement strategy
3. Partnering (cooperating, coordinating, collaborating)
e. Articles
i. Involvement in Boundary-Spanning Activity: Mitigating the Relationship between Work
Setting and Behavior
ii. Managing Across Boundaries
iii. Governing the Hollow State
1. Hollowed state: the degree of separating between a government and the services
it funds.
2. Principal-Agent Theory: agents are perceived as having distinct tastes (limited
risk taking or expensive effort), which the agents pursue as rational maximizing
entities. The job of the principal is to anticipate the logical responses of agents
and to determine incentives that the agents find to be in their own best interest and
take the best logical responses.
3. Social Dilemmas: a situation that occurs when individuals in interdependent
situations face choices in which the maximization of short-term self-interest
yields outcomes leaving all participants worse off than good alternatives.
4. Stability: the network has not been changed recently in any key structural
component, neither has the master contract with the state been rebid.