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
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.