Mgc 2230 Notes

Week 1: Introduction to Organisational Behaviour

Readings CH.1

What is organisation behaviour?

➔ Organisational behaviour: the study of individuals and groups in organisations

◆ Applied focus: to help people and organisations achieve high performance levels, and to help ensure all members achieve satisfaction from their task contributions and work experiences.

◆ Contingency orientation: they recognise that behaviour may vary systematically depending on the circumstances and the people involved. Such as cultural differences → affect the way theories and concepts of management apply in different countries

◆ Emphasis on scientific inquiry: develop and empirically test generalisations about behaviour in organisations

● Controlled and systematic process of data collection

● The careful testing of proposed explanations

● Only acceptance of explanations that can be scientifically verified

◆ Performance equation: attributes x work effort x organisational support

● Performance is depends on the capacity to work, willingness to work and opportunity to work

● Three factors must be present for high performance to be achieved

◆ Whether performance is predictable

◆ Emotional intelligence: a form of social intelligence that allows us to monitor and shape our emotions and those of others

Why do organisations exist?

➔ Organisations are mechanisms through which many people combine their efforts and work together to accomplish more than any one person could alone

➔ A clear statement of purpose, or goal statement is important to guide the activities of an organisation and the members

➔ Division of labour: process of breaking the work to be done into specialised tasks that individuals or groups can perform → good division of labour = mobilise the work of many people to achieve its purpose

➔ Synergy: the creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts

◆ Organisation's division of labour

◆ Task specialisation

◆ Hierarchy of authority

◆ Effective managerial behaviour

➔ The McDonaldization effect

Organisations as open systems

➔ Human resources are the individuals and groups whose contributions enable the organization to serve a particular purpose

➔ Material resources

➔ Organisation works like an open system, they transform human and material resources (inputs) into products and services (outputs)

➔ Organisation’s survival depends on satisfying environmental demands

Managers in organisations

➔ Manager

➔ Work teams or unit is a task-oriented group that includes a manager and his or her direct reports

Effective managers

➔ Task performance: quality and quantity of work produced

➔ Human resources maintenance: attraction and continuation of a viable workforce

◆ Job satisfaction

◆ Job involvement

◆ Organisational commitment

◆ Absenteeism and turnover

◆ Performance

➔ Effective managers: maintains high levels of task accomplishments and a capable workforce over time

Managing task performance

➔ Productivity: any job must be done with the best use of available human and material resources

➔ Value-added managers: efforts clearly enable their work units to achieve high productivity and improve bottom-line performance

Human resource maintenance

➔ Quality of work life: overall quality of human experience in the workplace

◆ Participation

◆ Trust

◆ Reinformance

◆ Responsiveness

Emotional intelligence

➔ Emotional perception: enables individuals to cope with their social environment

➔ Providing critical information for understanding internal experiences and negotiating social environment

➔ The precision by which a person will identify and show emotions

➔ Integration, shifts cognitive processes to open up to new perspectives, creativity and problem-solving capabilities

➔ Emotional understanding, the understanding of emotional information and the combination of emotional information

➔ Open up feelings and develop growth

➔ Five key areas of emotional intelligence

◆ Self-awareness

◆ Self-regulation

◆ Motivation

◆ Empathy

◆ Social skills

The management process

➔ Planning, organising, leading and controlling

Contemporary themes in organisational behaviour

➔ Process re-engineering: fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve improvements in performance

1. Globalization

➔ Networks

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