Running head: Moneyball Research Paper
Moneyball: Organizational Behavior
Matthew Sader
MGT 212
Dr. Rose Hair
February 19, 2014
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Moneyball: Organizational Behavior
Organizational behavior is the study of what people think, feel, and do in and
around organizations (McShane & Glinow, 2012). The behaviors that people exert within
any establishment affects how the organization operates. Organizations are described as
groups of people who work interdependently toward some purpose (McShane & Glinow,
2012). Whether it is a school, church, bank, or company, they all are groups of people
working toward a common purpose while using different behaviors. In the movie,
Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, a professional baseball team called the
Oakland Athletics display organizational behaviors that are evident throughout the film.
These behaviors that the Oakland Athletics show are behaviors that many other
organizations experience and are good examples of how these behaviors are incorporated
into an organization.
Moneyball is about the Oakland Athletics general manager, Billy Beane, trying to
turn around the team into a winning franchise. The team recently lost three key players to
other teams during the offseason and the upcoming season was looking as if it was going
to be rough. While trying to negotiate a trade with another baseball team, the Cleveland
Indians, Billy Beane meets an assistant who is employed with the Indians named Peter
Brand. Peter Brand is a very smart man; he graduated from Yale University and had a
degree in economics. Beane notices that the Indians listened to Brand while he was trying
to negotiate a trade with the team. Beane questioned why a professional sports franchise
would listen to an employee who is merely just an assistant. The Indians listened to
Brand because he has a brilliant mind and knows how to create a winning baseball team.
A few days later, Beane buys Brand from the Indians and names him as assistant general
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manager.
Peter Brand has an unconventional and innovative way of creating a winning
baseball team. Typically a team will evaluate the current team they have, decide what the
team needs, scout other players in free agency and on other teams, and from there try to
obtain the new players they want and need. Brand’s philosophy is that for a baseball team
to win, they must have players score runs and get on base while the other factors of
baseball are less important in this philosophy. Brand accomplishes creating a team that
fits this style by using computer-generated analysis that involves mathematical
calculations. This allows the team to figure out what players they need, which players are
“hidden gems”, and how to get the players at a cheap price. They need the players cheap
because the team is struggling financially. When the season starts, the teams struggles
and this new philosophy Beane and Brand are trying to implement is considered a failure
by many people. As the season progresses, the team starts winning more games and
eventually makes it far into the playoffs.
The Oakland Athletics eventually lose and fail to reach the World Series. This
was a failure in the eyes of the general manager, Billy Beane, yet him and Brand proved
that this new and unconventional method not only worked, but was successful too. The
new theory they used was called “Moneyball” (Zaillian & Sorkin, 2011) The
“Moneyball” method used within the organization shows how many organizational
behaviors are used everyday in all organizations around the world, even a baseball
franchise.
The general manager of the Oakland Athletics played a big role in the behavior of
the organization. Besides the owner of the team, Billy Beane had total control over what
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the organization decided to do. Beane, with help from Peter Brand, implemented the term
“Moneyball” as their team goal. Achieving this goal would have to do with their
organizational effectiveness, or how well a company can achieve their goal (McShane &
Glinow, 2012). These goals being: replace three key players they lost, make money, and
create a championship-winning baseball team. If the team achieves these goals then their
organizational effectiveness is good; if they do not achieve these goals, the effectiveness
is bad. The goals they set were good goals to set. They are, after all, what every team
wants to do, which is make money and win championships.
The “Moneyball” theory is at first criticized very much by the public and even
within the team itself, especially since the team has a rough start. Although the theory
was not working at first, Billy Beane and Peter Brand both had a perception of the theory
and stood by it the whole time. Perception is defined as the process of receiving
information about and making sense of the world around us (McShane & Glinow, 2012).
Beane and Brand’s perception of “Moneyball” is that they knew it was a good plan and
they knew it was going to work. It did not matter what the world was saying about the
plan, they stood by it and knew it was going to be successful.
Billy Beane’s personality and performance contributed to the “Moneyball” theory
and the team’s success. Performance of a task is defined as goal-directed behaviors under
the individual’s control that support organizational objectives (McShane & Glinow,
2012). A person’s performance is said to be calculated by a simple formula: performance
= person x situation (McShane & Glinow, 2012). Billy’s performance is fueled by his
aggressive and determined personality and the situation of the organization.
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Beanes’s personality can be said to have an extraversion personality dimension. A
person who has an extraversion dimension is said to be outgoing, talkative, energetic,
sociable, and assertive (McShane & Glinow, 2012). These traits fit Beane very well,
especially assertiveness, and are what allowed him to achieve the “Moneyball” goals he
is determined to reach. He has little empathy for the people around him so he was not
afraid to handle any situation, which is why he is considered an aggressive person.
The situation the team was in and Beane’s past are what made him become a
motivated and determined individual. Beane saw that no one was willing to give the
Oakland Athletics any chance that season to be considered a good team. They lost three
key players and had little money to work with. Beane was determined to prove all the
doubters wrong. Motivation represents the forces within a person that affects his or her
direction, intensity, and persistence of voluntary behavior (McShane & Glinow, 2012).
The “Moneyball” theory was the direction of the team, the assertive personality was his
intensity, and the determination to turn the Athletics around was his persistence.
The past of Billy Beane also contributed to the motivation within himself.
Throughout the movie, Beane looks back into his past revealing what made him become
the individual he was. When Beane graduated from high school, he was considered one
of the best baseball prospects and was offered to become a player in the MLB rather than
enrolling in college. Beane took that option and joined the MLB. After he joined, he had
not performed well and was eventually considered a failure (Zaillian & Sorkin, 2011).
This angered Beane knowing he could not live up to the expectations the world expected
of him. He now turns that anger from the past into his motivation to make the Oakland
Athletics a championship-winning team.
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The performance caused by the motivation of Beane and the situation of the
Athletics affects the organization in tremendous ways. The MARS Model can help
further explain this. The MARS Model shows how certain variables affect the behavior
and results of an organization (McShane & Glinow, 2012). Motivation, ability, and role
perceptions are what MARS stands for and all influence the organization (McShane &
Glinow, 2012).
The motivation Beane installed in the organization helped the team become a very
successful baseball club during that season. Without the motivation, the team probably
would not have went deep into the playoffs and set the longest winning streak in MLB
baseball history (Zaillian & Sorkin, 2011).
The ability the team had also aided in the team’s success. Everyone thought the
Athletics had a bad team because they could only afford cheap players. The “Moneyball”
theory helped the team afford players who were good players even though they were
cheap. The team had the competencies to win. Competencies are personal characteristics
that lead to superior performance (McShane & Glinow, 2012). The team had the ability to
win and have a superior performance over other teams.
Lastly in the MARS Model is the role perception. Role perceptions are beliefs
about what behavior is required to achieve the desired result (McShane & Glinow, 2012).
The team believed that the “Moneyball” theory is what was needed to achieve the desired
result, which is to make the Athletics a successful, championship-winning team.
Motivation plays a huge part throughout Moneyball. The other components stated
so far played a big role in the film, yet motivation stood out amongst them all. To Billy
Beane, motivation was what drove him to accomplish the organization’s goals. In an
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article by the Human Capital Magazine regarding motivation in the workplace, it stated
that motivation is personal; it is about working with and for people you trust and respect
(Miller , 2014). This is exactly what Beane had in his workplace. His motivation came
within himself; the motivation came from the team’s situation and from his past. He was
highly motivated personally to turn the Athletics around. He also worked with people he
trusted and respected. Peter Brand, who was by Beane’s side throughout the whole
movie, was someone who Beane trusted and respected. With Brand’s trust and respect,
this helped Beane bring in players to the team who he also trusted and respected.
There were moments in the film where the players were satisfied with poor
performance; they were happy, yet not motivated. When Beane saw that the players were
satisfied with being a losing team, he was very angry with the team. Beane stormed into
the locker room, saw the team was happy and dancing after a lose, yelled angrily at the
team, and told them to never be happy with losing. In the article stated earlier, it had a
comment Aristotle made about workplace motivation and it read, “the aim of the wise is
not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain” (Miller , 2014). Beane was not trying to avoid
the pain of a loss. Beane took losing very seriously and was trying to give the team
motivation to win and never accept losing.
A large amount of the motivation that came from Beane was spread throughout
the organization. Being the general manager of the team, it was somewhat part of his job
to motivate the team. It is said that a manager has a direct and profound influence over
workplace pleasure and workplace pain (Miller , 2014). Any environment a manager
creates, he or she can either intentionally or unintentionally create motivation (Miller ,
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2014). Beane created workplace pleasure by intentionally motivating the team to win and
never accept the pain of losing.
A real life example of how motivation influences a workplace can be found in an
article by Forbes Magazine. The magazine states that high-performing companies do a lot
to motivate their employees (Lipman, 2014). The four main forms of motivation stated in
the article were career development, empowerment, rewards and recognition, and
leadership (Lipman, 2014). These companies all use these forms to create a better
workplace with motivated employees.
Employees who are offered with the following have a better workplace and are
often much more motivated: availability of long-term career opportunities and training,
open and supportive cultures that encourage new ideas and empower staff, reward
benefits and non-monetary recognition, and leaders who have the ability to communicate
to everyone and make decisions that are consistent with company values (Lipman, 2014).
It has been stated again and again throughout this reading, the goal of the Oakland
Athletics was to turn around the team and create a championship-winning franchise.
What the people thought, felt, and did throughout the organization all went towards
accomplishing that goal. The organizational behaviors the people exerted in the film,
Moneyball, affected the organization in many ways. Their theory “Moneyball”
represented the team’s goal and motivation was a major factor that helped make the team
a better overall organization, which was further exemplified in the Forbes article. Terms
such as the MARS Model also helped identify the behaviors showed in the film.
Organizational behavior is everywhere in the workplace and the film, Moneyball, is just
one example of what happens everyday in the world.
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References
Lipman, V. (2014, February 14). New Study Shows How High-Performing Companies
Motivate Their People. Retrieved February 23, 2014, from Forbes :
http://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2014/02/14/new-study-shows-howhigh-performing-companies-motivate-their-people/
McShane, S. L., & Glinow, M. V. (2012). Organizational Behavior. New York City,
New York, United States of America: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Miller , J. (2014, February 12). Opinion: Motivation in the workplace. Retrieved
February 22, 2014, from Human Capital Magazine: http://www.hcamag.com/hrnews/opinion-motivation-in-the-workplace-183963.aspx
Pitt, B., Horovitz, R., Luca, M. D. (Producers), Zaillian, S., Sorkin, A. (Writers), &
Miller, B. (Director). (2011). Moneyball [Motion Picture]. United States of
America: Columbia Pictures.