Organizational
Behaviour
Introduction
What are organizations?
• Social inventions for accomplishing goals
through group effort.
– Social inventions: There is a fundamental
requirement the presence of people.
People interacting.
– Goals accomplishment: Organizations exist
to achieve goals. One overriding goal is
survival.
– Group effort: Individuals in organizations
are coordinated to achieve goals efficiently,
the result is a group effort.
What is Organizational Behaviour?
• A general term referring to the attitudes and
behaviours of individuals and groups in
organizations.
• The field of organizational behaviour involves the
systematic study of these attitudes and behaviours.
– Goals:
• Prediction
• Explanation
• Managing
Organizational behaviour - common
sense?
1. Workers who are more satisfied with their
jobs tend to be much more productive
than those who are less satisfied.
2. Effective organizational leaders tend to
possess identical personality traits.
3. Workers prefer stimulating, challenging
jobs.
4. Managers have a very accurate idea
about how much their peers and superiors
are paid.
Curious contradictions in common
sense:
• Look before you leap BUT He who hesitates is
lost.
• Better safe than sorry BUT Nothing ventured,
nothing gained.
• Two heads are better than one BUT If you want
something done right, do it yourself.
Our knowledge or lack of knowledge is
created by:
• Direct experience and overgeneralization
• Indirect experience (e.g. popular press) and fads
• Values
The historic progression of
organizational behaviour theory from yesterday to today
• Classical view
– Scientific Management
– Bureaucracy
• Human relations movement
– Hawthorne studies
The historic progression of
organizational behaviour theory from yesterday to today (cont.)
• The contingency approach (contemporary)
– No simple principle can be applied to all
situations
– There is no one best way, but one way is
not as equally effective as another. The
best way depends on the situation.
Working with the concept of
contingency:
• Consider how closely managers should
supervise the work of their subordinates.
– Get together with the people to your right and
left to form a group of 3. Come up with some
factors upon which the closeness of
supervision might be contingent. E.g. what
factors will determine how closely a
supervisor will monitor the work of an
employee (5 minutes)