MGT 321: Organizational

Behavior
Chapter 1: What is Organizational
Behavior
The Importance of Interpersonal
Skills
Before late 1980s, no business school realized the
importance of human behavior and people skill.
Sloan School of Management of MIT first emphasized
on the importance of interpersonal skills of managers.
Importance of developing interpersonal skills
Acquisition and retention of high performing employees
Behavioral Approach of management
Human relation movement
Hawthorne Studies
Industrial Philosophy of Humanism.
Technical and people skill both are equally important for
sustainability.
What Managers Do
Managers get things done through other
people
Make decisions
Allocate resources
Direct the activities
Management Functions

Planning Organizing Leading Controlling
Management Roles
Henry Mintzbergs management roles (1960)
Interpersonal
Figurehead (Symbolic Head of the organization or
department)
Leader (Responsible for motivation and direction)
Liaison (Maintains a network of outside contacts who
provide favors and information)
Informational
Monitor ( Serves as a nerve centre of internal and external
information of the organization)
Disseminator (Transmits information received from other
employees to members of the organization)
Spokesperson (transmits information to outside)
Management Roles (Cont.)
Decisional
Entrepreneur ( Initiates projects to bring about change)
Disturbance Handler (Responsible for corrective action
when organization faces important, unexpected
disturbance.
Resource Allocator (Makes and approves significant
organizational decisions)
Negotiator (Responsible for representing the
organization at major negotiations.

Management Skills
Technical Skills
The ability to apply specialized knowledge or
expertise.
Human Skills
The ability to work with, understand, and motivate
other people, both individually and in groups.
Conceptual Skills
The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex
situations.
Effective Vs. Successful Managerial
Activities
Organizational Behavior
Organizational Behavior (OB)
A field of study that investigates the impact that
individuals, groups, and structure have on
behavior within organizations, for the purpose of
applying such knowledge toward improving an
organizations effectiveness.
Disciplines that contribute to the OB
field
Psychology
The science that seeks to
measure, explain, and
sometimes change the
behavior of humans and
other animals.
Social Psychology
An area of psychology that
blends concepts from
psychology and sociology and
that focuses on the influence
of people on one another.
Sociology
Sociology studies people in
relation to their social
environment or culture.
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of
societies to learn about
human beings and their
activities.
Psychology
Psychologys contribution to OB
Learning, motivation, personality, emotions,
perception
Training, leadership effectiveness, job satisfaction
Individual decision making, performance appraisal
attitude measurement
Employee selection, work design, and work stress

Social Psychology
Social Psychologys contribution to OB
Behavioral change
Attitude change
Communication
Group processes
Group decision making
Sociology and Anthropology
Sociologys contribution to OB
Group dynamics
Work teams
Communication
Power
Conflict
Inter-group behavior
Anthropologys contribution to OB
Organizational culture
Organizational environment

Intuition and Systematic Study
Challenges and opportunities for OB
Responding to Globalization
Increased Foreign Assignments
Working with people from different cultures
Coping with Anticapitalism backlash
Overseeing movement of jobs to countries with
low-cost labor.
Managing people during the war on terror.
Challenges and Opportunities for OB
(Cont.)
Managing Workforce Diversity
Workforce diversity
Embracing diversity
Changing Demographics
Improving Quality and Productivity
Improving Customer Services
Improving People Skills

Developing an OB model
A model is an abstraction of reality: a
simplified representation of some real-world
phenomenon.
OB model has three levels of analysis:
Each level is constructed on the prior level
Individual
Group
Organizational Systems
Thank You!