Organizational Behavior
Robbins & Judge
Chapter 2
Foundations of Individual Behavior
Summary of Lecture 25
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What is organization
Different types of organizations
Defining OB
Why study OB
History of OB
Level of Analysis
Challenges in OB
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Challenges and Opportunities for OB
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Globalization
- Increased foreign assignments
- Coping with anti-capitalism backlash
- overseeing movement of jobs to low cost labour countries
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Managing people in crises places
Managing work force diversity
Total Quality Management
- Improving Customer Service
Improving People Skills
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Challenges and Opportunities for OB
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Stimulating Innovation and Change
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Coping with “Temporariness”
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Working in Networked Organizations
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Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts
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Creating a Positive Work Environment
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Improving Ethical Behavior
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Responding to coming labour shortages (In Western world)
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Empowering employees
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Learning Objectives
Ability and Dimensions of Ability
Biographical Characteristics
What is learning
Learning Theories
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Classical or respondent conditioning theory
- Operant or instrumental conditioning theory
- Social learning Theory
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Ability
“An individual’s capacity to perform the various tasks in
a job.”
Individuals are not equal in terms of their ability
Everyone has strengths and weaknesses that make
them to perform well in certain tasks and activities
Managers has to identify abilities of employees to use of
this knowledge to increase performance
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Ability
Ability made up of two sets of factors:
– Intellectual Abilities
– Physical Abilities
Intellectual Abilities:
- Needed to perform mental activities for thinking reasoning,
thinking and problem solving
- IQ test is used to measure intellectual abilities
- GMAT, SAT and GRE
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Dimensions of Intellectual Ability
Dimensions
Description
Job Example
Number aptitude
Ability to process arithmetic
Accountant
Verbal
Comprehension
Ability to understand read and heard,
relationship of words
Every Manager: Policy and
Rules
Perceptual Speed
Ability to identify visual similarities and Fire Investigator
differences quickly and accuracy
Inductive Reasoning
Ability to identify logical sequence
Market research: Sales
forecast
Deductive Reasoning
Ability to use logic to assess
implication of argument
Supervisor: Choosing
between two different
suggestions
Spatial Reasoning
Ability to imagine object look when
positions is changed
Interior decorator
Memory
Ability to recall and retain information
Sales person:
Remembering the names of
customers
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Dimensions of Intellectual Ability
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Cognitive
Social
Emotional
Cultural
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Nine Basic Physical Abilities
Strength Factors
Description
Dynamic strength
Exert muscular force continuously
Trunk strength
Exert muscular strength using trunk
Static strength
Exert force against external objects
Explosive strength
Expend a maximum energy in series of explosive
acts
Flexibility Factors
Extent flexibility
Moving trunk and back muscles
Dynamic flexibility
Rapid and repeated flexing movement
Other Factors
Body coordination
Coordinate simultaneous actions of different parts
Balance
Maintain equilibrium
Stamina
Prolonged effort
Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
2-10
Ability
• OB concerns explaining and predicting behavior
of people at work
• High Ability and Job fit = High Performance
• Abilities job fit also reduces job dissatisfaction
• Employees feel dissatisfied when abilities are
under utilized or lack of ability to perform job
(stress and pressure)
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Biographical Characteristics
Objective and easily obtained personal characteristics.
•Age
– Older workers bring experience, judgment, a strong work
ethic, and commitment to quality.
– Older workers less adaptive to change
– Older workers less likely to quit job (turnover) and low
absence rate (avoidable)
– General perception that productivity declines with age
– Age-Job satisfaction: In Professional jobs increase with age
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Biographical Characteristics
•Objective and easily obtained personal characteristics.
•Gender
– Few differences between men and women that affect job
performance (like physical ability)
– Should operate on assumption that there is no significant
difference in performance based on gender (consider
profession as well)
– Women have higher absenteeism rate
•Race (the biological heritage people use to identify
themselves)
– Issue of favoritism and perception bias based on race
– Differences exist, but mostly related to culture-based than
race-based.
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Biographical Characteristics
• Tenure
– People having long job tenure are more productive, less
absenteeism, lower turnover, and generally more satisfied.
• Religion
– No general effect on performance
– Do have affect on attitude towards different works
• National Culture:
- Cultural differences do have affect on individual behavior and work
related attitudes and behaviors
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Learning
“Any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a
result of experience
According to the behaviorists, learning can be defined as “the
relatively permanent change in behavior brought about as a
result of experience or practice.”
Learning is the acquisition of knowledge, skill, or values through
study, practice, or experience.
Learning components:
– It Involves Change
– Is Relatively Permanent
– Experience is required
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Learning Theories
•- Classical or respondent conditioning theory
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Operant or instrumental conditioning theory
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Social learning Theory
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Classical Theories
Classical conditioning was the first type of learning to
be discovered and studied within the behaviorist
tradition (hence the name classical) in early 1990s.
• The major theorist in the development of classical
conditioning is Ivan Pavlov
• Theory proposes that learning that takes place when
the learner recognizes the connection between an
unconditioned stimulus and a conditioned stimulus.
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Classical Conditioning Theory
Pavlov was studying the digestive system of dogs and
became intrigued with his observation that dogs deprived
of food began to salivate when one of his assistants
walked into the room.
He began to investigate this phenomena and established
the laws of classical conditioning.
Skinner renamed this type of learning "respondent
conditioning” since in this type of learning, one is
responding to an environmental antecedent.
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Classical Conditioning
• A type of conditioning in which an individual responds
to some stimulus that would not ordinarily produce
such a response.
• Unconditioned Stimulus:
Food
• Unconditioned Response:
Saliva
• Conditioned Stimulus:
Bell
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Classical Conditioning Theory
• General model
– Stimulus (S) elicits =>Response (R)
Stimulus
Response
Classical conditioning starts with a reflex (R): an
•innate, involuntary behavior.
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Classical Conditioning
•- This involuntary behavior is elicited or caused
• by an environmental event.
For example, if air is blown into your eye, you blink.
You have no voluntary or conscious control over
whether the blink occurs or not.
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Classical Conditioning Theory
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The specific model for classical conditioning is:
A stimulus will naturally (without learning) elicit or
•bring about a reflexive response
• Unconditioned Stimulus (US) elicits >
• Unconditioned Response (UR)
Food
UNS
> Salivation
UCR
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Stimulus
• Unconditioned Stimulus: Anything that produces an
unconditioned response.
• Unconditioned response: The Reaction occurred
due to the occurrence of UC stimulus.
• Conditioned Stimulus: A neutral stimulus that, as a
result of being paired with an unconditioned stimulus,
elicits a response.
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Classical Conditioning Theory
The specific model for classical conditioning is:
• Neutral Stimulus (NS) -- does not elicit the
response of interest
NS
No Response
This stimulus (sometimes called an orienting stimulus as it
elicits an orienting response) is a neutral stimulus since it
does not elicit the unconditioned (or reflexive) Response.
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Classical Conditioning Theory
The Neutral/Orienting Stimulus (NS) is repeatedly paired
with the Unconditioned/Natural Stimulus (US).
 Bell Was Conditioned with the presentation of food.
Whenever the food was presented before that Pavlov
rang bell.
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Classical Conditioning Theory
The Neutral Stimulus (NS) is transformed into a
•Conditioned Stimulus (CS). (Bell is transformed
•into a conditioned stimulus)
•That is, when the CS is presented by itself, it elicits or
•causes the CR (which is the same involuntary
•response as the UR. (only at the bell dog salivated
•even without presenting food)
- The name changes because it is elicited by a
• different stimulus.
• This is written CS elicits > CR.
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Classical Conditioning Theory
•In the area of classroom learning, classical
•conditioning is seen primarily in the conditioning of
•emotional behavior.
For example: Things that make us happy, sad,
angry, etc. become associated with neutral
stimuli that gain our attention.
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Classical Conditioning Theory
For example, the school, classroom, teacher, or
subject matter are initially neutral stimuli that gain
attention.
Activities at school or in the classroom
automatically elicit emotional responses and
these activities are associated with the neutral
or orienting stimulus
After repeated presentations, the previously
neutral stimulus will elicit the emotional
response
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Classical Conditioning Theory
Example:
• 1 Child is beaten at school
•
2 Child feels bad when beaten
3 Child associates being beaten and school
• 4 Child begins to feel bad when she thinks of school
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Classical Conditioning Theory
Note: In order to extinguish the associated feeling,
bad and thinking of school, the connection between
school and being beaten must be broken.
Eidy on Eid bring memories of childhood
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Operant Conditioning Theory
Operant conditioning is the study of the impact of
consequences on behavior.
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Social Learning Theory
Individuals learn by observing others what
happens to other or by telling something or through
direct experience
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Managerial Implications
• Three Individual Variables:
– Ability
• Influences level of performance
• Managers need to focus on achieving job-ability fit means to
consider ability in selection, promotion, and transfer decision.
• Fine-tune job to better fit to incumbent’s abilities. Job
redesign, change of equipment, reorganize task with group of
people etc.
– Biographical Characteristics
• Manager should not use in management decisions: can
possible be source of bias.
– Learning
• Observable change in behavior = learning.
• Remember positive reinforcement is powerful tool
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Robbins and Judge (2008): Organizational Behavior, Pearson, Prentice Hall
Summary
Ability and Dimensions of Ability
Biographical Characteristics
What is learning
Learning Theories
-
Classical or respondent conditioning theory
- Operant or instrumental conditioning theory
- Social learning Theory
Process of Influence
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