Introduction TO Organisational Behaviour PDF

Preview

Summary

Lecture notes from my Marketing Degree at Aston University ...

Description

INTRODUCTION TO ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR 100% coursework: case study (70%)- da consegnare entro il 12 gennaio look “assignments” in blackboard portfolio (30%) - da consegnare entro 17 dicembre textbook: Organizational Behaviour 2nd edition, Ray French CASE STUDY NOTES - Write an essay drawing on TWO of the copics covered on the module in relation to the case study - Use appropriate theory to explain your analysis and give clear examples from the case study to illustrate your observations - Make suggestions (based on theory and observations) about what could be done to resolve the problems (bits of it, you can’t solve everything) STRUCTURE Beginning – where you explain what you are going to talk about (which topics you will use, which aspects of the case you will address, and what you will conclude) Middle – where you talk about it (including relevant theory) End – where you summarise your arguments, draw conclusions and provide recommendations

TOPIC 1 – INTRODUCTION AND ORGANISATIONAL THEORY Organisational behaviour is the study of individuals and groups in organisations. Characteristics: - applied focus - contingency orientation

- rigorous study

ORGANISATIONS Definition: a collection of interacting and interdependent individuals who work towards common goals and whose relationship is determined according to a certain structure They are human creations not restricted to the commercial arena and can be formal or informal structures: - small shop - local supermarket - chain of supermarkets - international bank - government department Classic views of organisation structure: - ideal bureaucracy (Max Weber) - classic principles (Henri Fayol) - human organization (Rensis Likert) Principles of organisations Division of work – specialisation Scalar chain – hierarchy to enable lateral and vertical communication Unity of command – removes conflict Authority – rights and responsibilities crue to a role Types of authority: - charismatic – personal inspirational qualities - traditional – precedent and usage, custom and practice - rational, legal – normative rules BUREAUCRACY (Max Weber 1864-1925) We distinguish it in POWER (the ability to get things done by threats of force or sanction) and AUTHORITY (managing to get things done because ones orders were seen by others as justified or legitimate)

Characteristics:

-

impersonality hierarchy specialisation appointed officials remuneration full time career private/public split formal rules

ADMINISTRATIVE, Classic Principles (Henri Fayol 1841-1925) Management is identified as a skill rather than simply a natural talent. The role of management is: - to forecast and plan - to organise - to command - to coordinate - to control The classic principles are how most of the organisations operate. SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT (F.W. Taylor 1856-1917) Antagonism between management and workers due to: - the fallacious belief of the workers that any increase in output would inevitably result in layoffs and unemployment (if I work harder and faster, the work is produced in a shorter time and they don’t need other people to work) - defective systems of management made it necessary for workers to restric output in order to protect their own interests - inefficient, rule-of-thumb effort wasting work methods Principles of Scientific Management 1. The development of a true science of management so that the best method of performing each task could be determined. 2. The scientific selection of workers so that each worker would be given responsibility for the tas for which he or she was best suited 3. The scientific education and development of the worker 4. Intimate, friendly cooperation between management and labour 5. Consequences of Scientific Management

- assumes rational economic motivations (people work for money) - neglects the subjective side of work - failed to appreciate the interpretations of close supervision and control - ignored the psychological needs of workers Scientific management leads to… ALIENATION (Blauner 1964, Argyle 1989) - Powerlessness: loss of control over conditions of work, work processes, pace and methods - Meaninglessness: loss of significance of work activities - Isolation: loss of sense of membership of the work community - Self estrangement: loss of personal identity, of sense of work as a central life interest HUMAN RELATIONS MOVEMENT (Elton Mayo 1880-1949) While management studies tend to say that people work only for money, human relations movement disagrees. - Illumination studies: vary light level to establish “best” conditions - Relay Assembly Test Room: vary rest periods and refreshments - Interviewing programme: structured inquiry into work activity - Bank Wiring Observation Room: effectiveness of financial incentives Implications of Human Relations Theory - informal organisation as important as the formal organisation - informal group goals may be more important than formal group goals - human beings are social animals - workers perform better if given the opportunity to participate

THEORY X AND THEORY Y, DOUGAS MCGREGOR (1960)

He’s a psicologist. His theory are assumptions, choices: one can assume theory x approach or theory y approach. Theory X (pretty much in line with scientific management) says: - the average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if he can - because of the human characteristic of the dislike of work, most people must be coerced, controlled, directed, threatened with punishment to get them to pur forth adequate effort toward the achievement of organisational objectives - the average human being prefers to be directed wishes to avoid responsibility, has relatively little ambition, wants security above all Theory Y says: - the expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest - man will exercise self direction and self control in the service of objectives to which he is committed - commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards associated with their achievement - the average human being learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept but to seek responsibility - the capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity and creativity in the solution of organisational problems is widely distributed in the population LIKERT’S “HUMAN ORGANIZATION” He talks about: - supportive relationships - participation - overlapping work groups Against this he identifies four forms of organising: - System 1 (Exploitive Authoritative) - System 2 (Benevolent Authoritative) - System 3 (Consultative) - System 4 (Participative Group) SYSTEMS THEORY One development consequences of all this:

- Organisations are systems of different parts - Earlier theoretical approaches tended to view organisations as closed systems - Organisations are open to their environment - Organisations are open systems made of social and tehnical sub-systems Contingency Approaches - People are too complex for a simple general principles to explain or predict behaviour - Rejects prescriptive approach of “one best way” of doing everything - Tries to establish what conditions will lead to what types of outcome - Assumes interdependence between personal and situational factors which determines employee behaviour MECHANISTIC ORGANISATION (Burns & Stalker 1961) It’s very much in line with classical approach to management: - tasks broken down into specialism - each individual is a specialist - relationship between individual tasks and organisational goals not apparent - someone at the top is responsible for ensuring work is performed - technical methods, duties and powers precisely defined - vertical lines of integration and structured hierarchies - information flow up and instructions flow down - communication tends to be in the form of instructions and decisions They work quite well when everything is stable. But when things go a bit wacky, mechanistic organisation are slow to respond.

ORGANISMIC ORGANISATION In contrast we can think about organisation not as machines but as organisms, animals, creatures:

- jobs lose much of their formal definition - demarcation becomes impossible - responsibilities need to be constatly redefined through interaction with others participating in common tasks or solving common problems - network structure of control, expertise may be located at any point in the organisation - each individual has knowledge of the overall purpose and situation of the company, we understand what the business is about - lateral as well as vertical communication and little differentiation between different ranks - communication tends to be in the form of information and advice

TOPIC 2 – INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES There are lots of ways in which people vary one from another. THE TWO RULES OF BEHAVIOUR - People are all different, diversity (different environment, different religion, different experiences - People are all the same, fundamental similarities (same basic shape, think in similar way, produce sound in same way

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES - Personal attributes that vary from one person to another - Physical: what we look like - Physichological: how we generally enterprete the world, what we understand - Emotional: how we feel about things

What are individual differences? - Physical qualities - Demographic differences - Abilities

- Skills THE ONION MODEL Behaviour: we can measure it Knowledge: we can measure it but it’s limited Attitudes and beliefs: not measurable they are variable Values: much more stable Personality: not measurable, more stable than all the rest

PERSONALITY Personality represents the overall profile, or combination of characteristics that captures the unique nature of a person as that person reacts and interacts with others. It is how a person feels, thinks, and behaves. Determinants: nature vs nurture. Heredity (genetic) or environment (cultural, social, situational) ? The “Big Five” : we can analize personality in terms of five dimension 1. Open to Experience (broad-minded, creative) / Closed to Experience 2. Conscientious (ambitious, self-disciplined) / Expedient 3. Extroversion (active, sociable) / Introversion 4. Agreeable (trusting, helpful) / Hostile (less trusting etc) 5. Neuroticism (anxious, worried, insecure) / Stability (calm, relaxed) Personality and Work Behaviour: - The relationship between personality and work is very much dependent upon the nature of work. - Conscientiousness: it is most consistently related to job performance over most jobs, better performance, longevity - Openness to experience: people tend to be more creative, more likely to be effective leaders, more comfortable with ambiguity - Extraversion: they tend to be higher in job and life satisfaction, experience and express more positive feelings, more likely to

emerge as leaders, perform better in jobs that require social interaction - Agreeableness: only slightly related to satisfaction, more likely to be chosen as friends/partners, more compliant and rule obeying, better in interpersonal jobs, less likely to engage in organisational deviance, lower levels of career success - Neutoricism: tend to be low in job and life satisfaction POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE SIDES OF THE BIG FIVE

FREUD & THE DYNAMICS OF PERSONALITY Freud highlights the extend to which a lot of our actions are shaped by things we don’t even realize. He suggests we have three different levels that outcome our personality: - the conscious: thoughts and perceptions - the pre-conscious: memories and stored information - the unconscious: phobias, traumas, sexual urges, anxieties The Dark Triad: there are three personality types which are difficult to deal with - Machiavellanism - Psychopathy - Narcisissim

Machiavellanism: - pragmatic, mantains personal distance, believes that ends justify means - more effective when interact directly with others, they don’t bother about what other people are feeling - good in jobs that require bargaining skills Psychopaty: - lack of concern for both other people and social regulatory mechanism - impulsivity, lack of guilt or remorse - emotionally shallow - skilled impression managers, glib and charismatic - associated with job performance and CWB (controproductive work behaviour) Narcissism: - likes to be the centre of attention, grandiose sense of importance, requires constant admiration, has a sense of entitlement and is arrogant - treat others as inferior, tend to be selfish and exploitative - rated as worse leaders, negatively related with OCB (organization citizens behaviour)

SKILLS AND ABILITIES Ability is an individual’s capacity to perform the various tasks in a job: - physical abilities and biographical characteristics - cognitive / intellectual abilities - social abilities

Cognitive abilities: INTELLIGENCE - the capacity to do mental activities, thinking reasoning and problem solving - ability to carry out ‘mental operations’, manipulate data, solve problems, interpret information, etc - how much is inherited?

There are significant correlations between different dimensions support existence of an underlying intelligence construct General Mental Ability (GMA), or factor g. There are also a variety of dimensions: - number aptitude - verbal comprehension - perceptual speed - inductive reasoning - spatial visualisation - memory Conceptions of intelligence (I): - pure speed: simple information processing - choice speed: time needed to make a choice - speed of lexical access: retrieving information from L-T memory - speed of reasoning processes: higher order information processing Emotional intelligence (EI): - ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge and to reflectively regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth - fourt types of skills: self-awareness (aware of my own emotion), self-management (can i manage my emotion), social awareness (being aware of others’ emotion), relationship management (behave differently towards others) - different approaches co-exist, sometimes seen as a trait or as an ability

Criticism: - generic approach, different jobs different emotional needs - there are issues in definition and measurement - link between EI and job performance not reliable - populist claims are somewhat exagerated, but recent metaanalytical evidence has shown some relationships between EI and work performance

ATTITUDES AND VALUES They are evaluative statements or judgements concerning objects, people or events. We have three components: - cognitive, description of or belief about how things are e.g. My pay is low - affective, how i feel about it e.g. I am angry because may pay is low - behavioural, intensions to behave in a certain way e.g. I am going to look for another job JOB ATTITUDES: JOB SATISFACTION There are a variety of job attitudes that we regularly investigate: - positive feeling about a job, resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics - influenced by work itself, pay, advancement opportunities, supervision, coworkers and personality - pay is positively related with happiness and satisfaction, up to a level. Other benefits are more strongly related with job satisfaction JOB ATTITUDES: EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT Individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for the work s/he does. It is characterised by three constructs: - vigour (excited about my work, enjoying doing it) - dedication (effort in achieving the task, being dedicated well to the job) - absorption (so asborved in my work) - negatively associated with burnout and turnover intentions and positively associated with performand and OCB JOB ATTITUDES: ORGANISATIONAL COMMITMENT Extent to which an employee wishes to maintain membership of the organisation. We can explore organisational commitment from three different approaches:

- affective commitment, emotional attachment to the organisation and to its values - normative commitment, obligation to stay in the organisation for moral or ethical reasons - continuance commitment, perceived value of staying in the organisation compared to leaving PERCEPTION AND EVALUATION AT WORK Attribution theory: a group of theories that describe how people explain the causes of behaviour Main attributional dimension is: - internal (characteristic of the person) - external (factor external to the person) Other dimensions include stability (over time) and generalisable to other situations. There are attributional biases that we share: - fundamental attribution error, the tendency to over-attribute behaviour to internal rather than external causes (we think that people behave that way because they meant to) - actor-observer effect, the tendency to attribute the behaviour of others to internal causes and to attribute one’s own behaviour to external causes - self-serving attribution, the tendency to take credit for successes and avoid blame for failures This is influenced by whether you like or dislike someone. This changes the pattern of attribution for good and poor performance. Liked target: good performance attributed to internal factors (eg.skilled at job) poor performance attributed to external factors (eg.was unwell) Dislike target: good performance attributed to external factors (eg.luck) poor performance attributed to internal factors (eg.unmotivated) PERCEPTUAL SHORTCUTS

Biases : “halo” effect (good first impression), “horns” effect (bad first impression), “similar-to-me” effect (we like people who look like us) Stereotypes: belief that all members of the group share similar traits and behaviours These are important factors in our job life.

TOPIC 3: MOTIVATION & JOB SATISFACTION Motivation can be described as: - the degree to which an individual wants and chooses to engage in certain specific behaviours - the set of processes that arouse, direct and mantain human behaviour toward attaining some goals Motivation preceeds performance. However, it is possible sometimes that performance preceeds motivation (e.g. I am good at that job, I want to do more). Three components: - direction, what people will do - intensity, with what effort - persistence, for how long DEVELOPMENT OF MOTIVATION THEORY 1. Early Ideas (Taylor & Mayo) 2. Content Theories (Maslow & Alderfer, Herzberg) 3. Process theories (Expectancy theory, Equity theory, Goal Setting theory) Early ideas: what motivates people to perform ( economic motive and social motive ) Content theories: assume that everyone has the same set of needs, and focuse on what motivates people Process theories: focuse more on individual’s cognitive processes, how does motivation work?

CONTENT THEORY - MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS (1954)

We have to fulfill our Lower Order needs, and then the Higher.

Basic needs that we must fulfill are: - physiological - safety Higher ones are: - love - esteem - self-actualisation CRITICISM OF MASLOW’S THEORY - Suggestion of a fixed order: “ a satisfied need is no longer a motivator” - Work is not the only way to satisfy needs - Individual differ in values, they differ in what they seek to achieve - Lack of predictive value: the model doesn’t say at what extend we need to bring the needs before passing at next stage - Research support weak

CONTENT THEORY- ALDERFER’S ERG MODEL (1972) He suggests that there are three core needs that we need to fulfill: 1. Existence – sustaining human existence and survival (physiological and safety needs)

2. Relatedness – relationship to the social environment (safety, social and esteem needs) 3. Growth – the development of potential (self esteem and self actualisation)

CONTENT THEORY – HERZBERG MOTIVATOR-HYGIENE THEORY/TWO FACTOR THEORY (1959) He asked people what they found satisfying in their job and he came out with two factors: 1. Hygiene factors – (supervision, salary, environment, policies, colleagues) typycally extrisinc to the job, improving them reduces dissatisfaction 2. Motivating factors – (responsibility, recognition, promotion, achievement) typycall intrinsic to the job, improving them i...