Course Code: MCO-01

Course Title: Organisation Theory and Behaviour

Assignment Code: MCO-01/TMA/2009-10
1. What are various responsibilities of various level of management in an
organisation? Explain various functions and roles of managers.
Ans. In order to coordinate various activities in an organisation, various levels of management are
created. In general there are three levels of management:

Top management;
Middle-level management
Supervisory or junior level management.
Top level management consists of Board of Directors, Chairperson, Managing Director, and General
Managers of functional areas like production, marketing, finance, and human resource management. Top
level management gets involved in all activities like planning, organising, directing, and controlling,
however it focuses more on planning and organising than the other levels of management. The prime
concerns of top management include : enhancing shareholder values, providing vision and mission to
organisation, upholding overall objectives of the organisation, taking policy decisions, review of budget
and keeping organisation financially sound, maintaining progress, profit, and sustainability of the
organisation, communicating goals of organisation to all the members, protecting integrity, and guiding
the organisation through sound leadership. There are more requirements of conceptual skills than human
skills or technical skills at the level of top management.
Middle-level management acts with guidance of top management to accomplish the objectives of the
organisation. The prime concern of the middle management is to carry out organising function in more
detail, in order to keep top management free for doing planning level activities. Some of the functions of
middle management include: creating coordination and cooperation among various departments of the
organisation, to design and operate upon a system in the organisation which would keep various resources
in smooth flow as well as which would ensure motivation and morale of people working in the
organisation, to develop staff at various levels through training and developmental activities, and to
creatively control and guide the personnel at junior level in order to achieve bottom line results. There are
more requirements of human skills than conceptual or technical skills at the level of middle management.
At supervisory or junior level management, there is more requirement of technical skills than conceptual
skills or human skills. However in the modern era when role of service sector is increasing in the
economy, the importance of human skills is increasing at the level of middle management also. People at
junior level management are directly connected to the people who work at operational level. Hence junior
level management is more concerned with direction and control of activities than planning and organising
functions.
All three levels of management: top, middle, and junior play crucial roles in achieving the organisational
goal. The three levels differ only in terms of emphasis on certain activities. Top management is more
concerned with planning and overall organising, middle management is more concerned with detailed out
organising, and junior level is more concerned with directing and controlling. However now we are
witnessing appropriate empowerment at the level of middle level and junior level management, thus the
roles of these two levels are enhancing in the modern organisations.

Main functions of managers include following activities:

Planning (including creating vision, mission, goal setting, setting objectives);

Organising;
Staffing
Directing;
Communicating;
Decision making;
Controlling.

Planning : The planning function includes those activities, which lead to the definition of ends and the
determination of appropriate means to achieve the defined ends. Planning is the process by which a
manager anticipates the future and discovers alternative courses of action open to him. Vision refers to
creating and articulating a realistic, credible, attractive position of the future of an organisation or
organisational unit that grows out of and improves upon the present situation. Mission refers to the broad
purpose that the society expects the organisation to serve. Mission statements are broad and
Value-driven.
Goals refer to a future state or condition which contributes to the fulfillment of the mission of the
organisation; when they are realized. The goal is relatively more concrete than mission yet less concrete
than objectives.
Organising: Organising is the process by which the structure and allocation of jobs are determined. The
organising function includes all managerial activities, which are undertaken to translate the required
activities of plans into a structure of tasks and authority. The organising function involves four subfunctions:
Defining the nature and content of each job in the organisation;
Determining the bases for grouping the jobs together;
Deciding the size of the group;
Delegating authority to the assigned manager.
Staffing: It is the process by which managers select, train, promote, and retire subordinates. Staffing is
concerned with entire human resource planning activities done by managers.
Directing: It is the process by which actual performance of subordinates is guided toward common goals.
Supervising is one aspect of this function at lower levels of management.
Communicating: It is the process by which ideas are transmitted to others for the purpose of achieving a
desired result.
Decision-making: It is the process by which a course of action is consciously chosen from available
alternatives for the purpose of achieving a desired result.
Controlling: It is the process that measures current performance and guides it toward some
predetermined goal. The controlling function includes activities, which managers undertake to assure that

actual outcomes are consistent with planned outcomes. Three basic conditions must exist to undertake
control:
Standards;
Information;
Corrective action.
The roles of managers are as follow:
A) Interpersonal Roles
In their interpersonal roles, managers act as figurehead, lead, and interact with members of the
organisation, within the department or outside the department. Now let us understand the three roles:
leading, liaison, and symbol/figurehead. Leading is one of the important roles of a manager. A manager
supervises a number of persons reporting to him/her. The manager is responsible for motivating and
directing the subordinates. Through the role of leading, a manager helps subordinates to visualize the plan
of action, and helps them to achieve the result through committed performance.
Liaison is another role of a manager. Liaison means maintaining a network of interaction with outsiders
who matter. For example a manager heading a production unit need to maintain relationship with external
members of the board, regulating authorities, government officials, police force, civil authorities etc.
Through this role a manager establishes contact with those who matter in managing the activities at hand.
A manager is the symbolic head of a firm, or of an unit, or of a department. You are aware of the role of
the head of a family. In the same way, a manager symbolizes the role of figurehead because he/she has to
perform a number of duties of legal or social nature.
B) Informational Roles
In their informational roles, managers seek information from others, provide information to others, and
provide information to people outside the organisation, in the capacity of representative of the
organisation. Now let us understand the three roles: monitoring, sharing information, and spokesperson.
A manager acts as nerve center for receiving all the external and internal information. Through the role of
monitoring, a manager receives information. The manager utilizes such information appropriately.
Once a manager has gathered information, he/she needs to share information among internal employees
for proper execution of work. Through meeting, e-mail, circular, notice, office order etc. a manager acts
as disseminator of information particularly to subordinates.
As a spokesperson, a manager is authorized to share information about the organisation to outsiders. The
manager may share information with outsiders about plans, strategies, and future direction of the
organisation. The sharing of information may be through conference, meeting the press, board meeting,
interview etc.
C) Decisional Roles
In their decisional roles, managers take proactive actions, sort out differences in opinion amicably,
allocate resources to various departments in optimum way, and negotiate implementation of new projects.
Now let us understand the four roles: taking initiative, handling disagreement, allocating resources, and
negotiating.
A manager is required to take initiative and should lead from the front. A manager analyzes the future

opportunities in the business, evaluates alternative opportunities, analyzes internal strength and
weaknesses of the organisation, and also calculates risks before implementing a new idea. In a way a
manager need to explore business opportunities through entrepreneurial skills.

Always going is not smooth in an organisation. At times due to various dissatisfactions among the
subordinates, conflicts may arise. A manager is responsible for handling conflict and disturbances in a
way that would reestablish the confidence of subordinates as well as good productive culture.
Disagreements are handled through periodical meetings, review sessions, collective bargaining, grievance
handling machinery etc.
Manager is custodian of organisational resource. He/she has to allocate resources to various departments
in optimum way. For allocating resources the manager has to do budgeting, scheduling of tasks,
authorization and sanctioning of resource, and approving of significant organisational decisions.
Negotiating is also an important role of a manager. Sometime manager has to negotiate with internal
employees on the matter related to rights, benefits, and sharing of revenue. This is done through internal
bargaining. Sometime negotiation is tripartite including, the management, the employees, and the
appropriate government (Central or the State Government). Negotiation is also done on matter related to
contract assignment, purchase of material etc. A manager plays important role in these activities.

2. Discuss the operant conditioning theory of learning. How does it differ

with
the classical conditioning theory of learning?
Ans. According to operant conditioning theory, developed by psychologist
B.F. Skinner, people learn to perform that lead to desired consequences and
learn not to perform behavior that lead to undesired consequences.
Translated into motivation term, Skinners theory means that people will be
motivated to perform at a high level and attain their work goal to the extent
that high performance and goal attainment allow them to obtain outcome
they desire. Similarly, people avoid performing behavior that lead to
outcomes they do not desire. By linking the performance of specific behavior
to the attainment of specific outcomes, manager can motivate organisational
achieve its goals.
Operant conditioning theory provided four tools that managers can use to
motivate high performance and prevent workers from engaging in
absenteeism and other behavior that detract from organizational
effectiveness. These tools are positive reinforcement, negative
reinforcement,, punishment and extinction.
Positive Reinforcement: Positive reinforcement gives people outcomes
they desire when they perform organizationally functional behavior. These
desired outcomes called positive reinforcers, include any outcomes that a
person desire such as pay, praise or a promotion. Organizationally functional
behavior are behavior that contribute to organizational effectiveness; they

can include producing high-quality goods and services, providing high-quality

customer service and meeting deadlines. By linking positive reinforces to the
performance of functional behavior, manager motivate people to perform the
desired behavior.
Negative Reinforcement: Negative reinforcement also can encourage
member of an organization to perform desired or organizationally functional
behavior. Manager using negative reinforcement actually eliminate or
remove undesired outcomes once the functional behavior is performed.
These underside outcomes once the functional behavior is performed. These
undesired outcomes, called negative reinforcers, can range from a
managers constant nagging or criticism, to unpleasant assignments to the
ever-present threat of losing ones job. When negative reinforcement is used,
people are motivated to perform behavior because they want to stop
receiving or avoid undesired outcomes. Managers who try to encourage
sales-reinforcement. In this case, the negative reinforcement is the threat of
job loss, which is removed once the functional behavior are performed.
Whenever possible, managers should try to use positive reinforcement.
Negative reinforcement can make for a very unpleasant work environment
and even a negative culture in an organization. No one likes to be nagged,
threatened, or exposed to other kind of negative outcomes. The use of
negative reinforcement sometimes caused subordinated to resent manager
and try to get back them.
In classical conditioning a stimulus that already leads to a response is replaced by a different
stimulus. In operant conditioning a behaviour is picked out and either reinforced or punished to
make it more or less common. So you could say one acts to modify or replace the stimulus that
leads to a given response, and the other to modify or refine a response.
In terms of Pavlov's dog (classical) this meant replacing the smell of food, as the stimulus that
leads to salivation, with the sound of a bell instead so that eventually even with the sound of the
bell alone the dog has 'learned' to salivate. In terms of Skinner's cat (operant) the stimulus was
confinement and the natural behaviour was to explore the environment for an escape. Teaching
the cat to press the lever to get out can be seen as refining this behaviour with a reward. Here, of
course, the cat was not shown how to press the lever. It discovered it randomly on it's own. But
thereafter it did not waste much time before pressing the lever.
3. Examine various job redesign strategies. Do you think that they help in
improving the
organisational efficiency. Discuss.
Ans. Various Job Redesign Strategies are:
1) Job Enrichment:

Job enrichment is vertical expansion of jobs. According to Hackman and Oldham, an enriched job
organizes tasks to allow the worker to do a complete activity, increases the employees freedom
and independence, increases responsibility and provides feedback. Herzberg has suggested the
concept of job enrichment. Fred Luthans defined that job enrichment is concerned with designing
jobs that include a greater variety of work content; require a higher level of knowledge and skill;
give workers more autonomy and responsibility in terms of planning, directing and controlling
their own performance; and provide the opportunity for personal growth and a meaningful work
experience.
The job should be designed to provide opportunity for achievement, recognition, responsibility,
advancement and growth. The following are the characteristics of an enriched job:

Decision making power

Relationships
Opportunity for Learning
Freedom
Uniqueness
Resource Control
Communication
Achievement orientation
Responsibility
Accountability
Opportunity for personal growth and development
Feedback

Job enrichment is not a single time activity. It is a process containing certain activities. They are
combining tasks, creating natural work units, establishing relationships among personnel, expanding job
vertically and providing feed back channels. The advantages of job enrichment are:

Increase in quality and productivity

Enhanced motivation and job satisfaction
Development of additional skills
Less work load on employees
Enhanced creativity in employees
Increase in pay and perquisites
Decreased absenteeism and turnover
Less number of grievances
Optimum use of human energy
Increased social benefits due to increase in quality and productivity.

2) Job Enlargement:
Job enlargement refers to making the job with a variety of tasks. In the recent past, there has been an
increase in the number and variety of jobs performed by the employees in the organisations. When the
employee feels that the job he is currently performing is less challenging, oversimplified, lack diversity
and less meaningful, the answer is perhaps job enlargement. Thus, Job enlargement is the horizontal
expansion of jobs to include more variety of tasks within the scope of the job. For instance, a worker is

assigned with the job of counting the finished products, finds it boring and repetitive; the job can be
enlarged by including certain tasks connected to the job. They are checking the products before counting,
packing and delivering the products at the finished goods warehouse. etc. The following are the potential
benefits of job enlargement:
Reduction in the Level of Boredom
Utilization of Skills
Quality and Efficiency
Job Enjoyment
Feedback
Job enlargement has the following drawbacks:

Job enlargement enhances the training costs.

Job enlargement needs introduction of new systems. This may considerably reduce the
productivity of employees.
It creates a feeling of overburden of tasks among the employees.
Job enlargement requires retrenchment of redundant employees.

3) Job Rotation:
Job rotation refers to the periodical shifting of an employee from the existing job to another job at the
same level of skill requirements. It is also known as cross training. The need for job rotation arises
out of over routinised jobs, boring jobs, non-challenging jobs and jobs with poor achievement
orientation. If an employee is performing one aspect of the job, job rotation helps him to perform all
tasks in the job. The benefits of job rotation are :

Reduction of boredom and employee turnover.

Better diversification and development of wide range of skills that helps building competent
employees.
Greater challenges in the job leading to variety of jobs.
Increased flexibility of jobs providing scope for better job scheduling.
Greater adaptability to change.
Increased motivation and job satisfaction.

Some of the drawbacks of job rotation are :

Increased costs of training in all related jobs.

Cost of time overruns in performing the job increases.
Decrease in the productivity because of rotation of the jobs.
Greater disruptions in social contacts as frequent rotation require adjustment to social groups.
Increased monitoring and controlling of employees require additional costs of supervision.

4) Job Reengineering:
Job reengineering is another technique of job redesign. It refers to redesigning jobs based on feed
back. Jobs are performed continuously. The reactions, level of satisfaction and contribution to the
goals are evaluated continuously. There may be discrepancies in the organisational objectives, job
goals and finally outcomes of the jobs. Thus, jobs should be reengineered to make them suitable to

employees. Job reengineering is defined as reallocation of jobs to achieve congruence of goals of

individual and organisation.
The following are the principles of job reengineering:

Allocation of jobs according to employees interest.

Employees preferring routine jobs are allowed to perform routine jobs.
Low skilled employees are given jobs requiring low skills.
Achievement oriented employees are given challenging jobs.

Several factors are considered in the process of job reengineering. They are : information system,
government policies, organisational policies, technology, competition, appraisal of costs and benefits and
prospective challenges.
Job reengineering is an important technique of job redesign in the modern organisations. It has a number
of potential benefits. Some of them are : improved customer service, increased growth opportunities,
improved decision making, and learning skills, easy and comfortable attainment of tasks, effective inter
personal interaction, inter personal communication and improved inter personal relationships.

4)Explain various levels of conflict. How do these levels influence the

organisational
efficiency? Discuss with examples.
Ans.
5. Write short notes on :a) Departmentalisation:
b) Role of Reinforcement: Reinforcement theory is the process of shaping behavior by
controlling the consequences of the behavior. In reinforcement theory a combination of rewards
and/or punishments is used to reinforce desired behavior or extinguish unwanted behavior. Any
behavior that elicits a consequence is called operant behavior, because the individual operates on
his or her environment. Reinforcement theory concentrates on the relationship between the
operant behavior and the associated consequences, and is sometimes referred to as operant
conditioning.
Behavioral theories of learning and motivation focus on the effect that the consequences of past
behavior have on future behavior. This is in contrast to classical conditioning, which focuses on
responses that are triggered by stimuli in an almost automatic fashion. Reinforcement theory
suggests that individuals can choose from several responses to a given stimulus, and that
individuals will generally select the response that has been associated with positive outcomes in
the past. E.L. Thorndike articulated this idea in 1911, in what has come to be known as the law
of effect. The law of effect basically states that, all other things being equal, responses to stimuli
that are followed by satisfaction will be strengthened, but responses that are followed by
discomfort will be weakened.

B.F. Skinner was a key contributor to the development of modern ideas about reinforcement
theory. Skinner argued that the internal needs and drives of individuals can be ignored because
people learn to exhibit certain behaviors based on what happens to them as a result of their
behavior. This school of thought has been termed the behaviorist, or radical behaviorist, school.
c) Concept of Organisational Culture: Culture is the pivot of any group or society. It
determines the way members interact with one another and with outsiders. Stoner, Freeman and Gilbert
have described culture, as the complex mixture of assumptions, behaviours, stories, myths, metaphors,
and other ideas that fit together to define what it means to be a member of a particular society. However
scope of this chapter is limited to the study of culture within the
organisation.
When an organisation takes on a life of its own, apart from any of its members, and acquires immortality,
the organisation is said to be institutionalised. When an organisation takes on institutional permanence,
acceptable modes of behaviour become largely self-evident to its members. So an understanding of what
makes up an organisations culture, and how is it created, sustained, and learnt will enhance our ability to
explain and predict the behaviour of people at work. Organisational culture is described as the set of
important understandings, such as norms, values, attitudes, and beliefs, shared by organisational
members. According to the recent understanding about organisational culture, system of shared meaning
among members, is the essential core of organisational culture.
According to Eliott Jacques, an organisational culture is the customary or traditional ways of thinking and
doing things, which are shared to a greater or lesser extent by all members of the organisation, which new
members must learn and at least partially accept in order to be accepted into the service of the firm.

According to various studies, following are the primary characteristics of an organisations

culture:

Innovation and Risk Taking

Attention to Detail

Outcome Orientation

People Orientation

Team Orientation

Aggressiveness

Stability

Individual Autonomy

Structure

Support

Identity

Performance-Reward

Conflict Tolerance

Attitude Towards Change

Focus

Standard and Values

Rituals

Openness, Communication, and Supervision

Market and Customer Orientation

Excitement, Pride, and esprit de corps

Commitment

d) Resistance to change: Resistance to change is an attitude or behaviour that shows

unwillingness to approve a particular change. This resistance is to be overcome for successful change.
Sometimes resistance to change serves as a feedback to reconsider the proposed change. Thus resistance
to change can also be used for the benefit of the organisation.
The essence of constructive approach to resistance is to consider objections raised and make suitable
amendments and educate the employees about the proposed change. Resistance can be overt, implicit,
immediate and differed. When it is overt and immediate, the management can take immediate remedial
steps to deal with such resistance. Implicit resistance may result in loss of loyalty, loss of motivation,
increased mistakes, increased absenteeism etc. In course of time, similarly differed resistance creates
problem to the management particularly when substantial amounts have already been invested in carrying
out the change.

Resistance to change may be introduced by the organisation, the individual or both.

Course Code: MCO-03
Course Title: Research Methodology and Statistical Analysis
Assignment Code: MCO-03/TMA/2009-10
1. a) What do you mean by a hypothesis? Discuss the different types of
hypothesis.

Ans.