Leadership & OB

DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCE

MANAGEMENT

METHODIST UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

DR EVANS SOKRO
 Organisational Behaviour
• Organisational Behaviour is the study of individuals and
groups in organisations
• It is primarily concerned with the psychosocial, interpersonal
and behavioural dynamics in organisations
• Organisational behaviour examines how individuals, groups
and structure impact behaviour of people within
organisation
 Characteristics of Organisational
• Applied focus – help people and organisations achieve
high performance levels
• Contingency orientation – identify how situations can
be understood and managed in ways that
appropriately respond to their unique characteristics
(e.g., culture differences)
• Emphasis on scientific enquiry – uses scientific
methods
 Performance Equation
• Effective performance of any organisation depends on employees’
capacity to work, willingness to work and opportunity to work

• Job performance = attributes x work effort x organisational support

 Why do Organisations exist
• Produce product or services

• To help people and businesses realise their full potentials

• Maximise income and provide long-term sustainable returns

 Who is an Effective Manager?

Task performance

Human resource maintenance

 The Management Process
• Planning

• Organising

• Leading

• Controlling
 Key Issues Affecting Organisations
• Globalisation - the process of becoming more internationally in
scope, influence or application
• Global management skills and competencies include a strong and
detailed understanding of international business strategy, cross-
cultural management, international marketing, international finance,
managing e-business and the internet, managing the virtual
workplace, etc
 Attributes of the global manager
Negotiate effectively in different business environments
Solve problems quickly
Understand different government policies
Manage and create sustainable environment
Be culturally sensitive and adaptive
• The Changing nature of work
• Technology
• Knowledge management
• The changing nature of work force (culture, age and
gender)
• Work-life balance
• Employers seeking a more flexible, adaptable workforce
• Ethics and social responsibility
 The Changing Nature of Employer-Employee
Relations
Work-life balance – workers seeking balance between their work and
other aspects of their lives. Some of the ideas include:
Negotiating flexible start and finish times
Allowing staff to use work mobile phones for emergency family
reasons
Discouraging weekend work and closing late in the office except in
exceptional circumstances
Allowing leave without pay for cultural purposes
• Outsourcing – the transfer of jobs from one country to another

• Casualisation of the workforce – number and schedule of work hours vary

and there is little or no job security

• Telecommuting – working from a location other than the organisation’s

office

• Ethics and Values – Ethical behaviour is behaviour that is morally accepted

as “good and “right” as opposed to “bad” and “wrong” in a particular
social context
 Why study organisational behaviour?

Personal responsibility and prerequisite for career success

Learn from workplace experiences

Prepares you to understand and handle challenging work

situations
 Personality, Perception, Attitude and Work
Behaviour
• Personality represents the overall profile or
combination of characteristics that captures the
unique nature of an individual as that individual reacts
and interact with others
• It combines a set of physical and mental
characteristics that reflect how a person looks, thinks,
acts and feels
• Personality refers to an individual’s unique pattern of
thoughts, feelings and behaviours that persists over time and
across situations
• It is personality that leads us to act in consistent and
predictable ways in different situations over extended period
of time
The concept of personality implies that
• Our behaviour differs in significant ways
• Our behaviour reflects our personality instead of the
situation
• Our personality to some extent is as a result inheritance
rather than a reflection of life experiences
• Our personality to some extent changes as we grow older
 Personality Determinants
• Nature / Nurture controversy

• Heredity

• Environment
 Personality Traits
The ‘big five personality dimensions that have been linked
with behaviour in organisations
• Extroversion-Introversion – the degree to which individuals
are oriented to the social world of people, relationships and
events, as opposed to the inner world
• Conscientiousness – the extent to which individuals are
organised, dependable and detailed focus versus disorganise,
less reliable
• Agreeableness – the extent to which individuals are
compliant, friendly, reliable and helpful, vrs disagreeable,
argumentative and uncooperative
• Emotional stability – the degree to which individuals are
secured, resilient and calm, versus anxious, reactive and
tending to mood swings
• Openness to experience – the extent to which individuals are
curious, open, adaptable and interested in wide range of
things, versus resistant to change and new experience
Individual differences and workplace diversity
• Values

• Attitudes

• Perception
 Values
• Values can be defined as broad preferences
concerning appropriate courses of action or
outcomes. They reflect a person’s sense of right or
wrong, or what ought to be

• They represents global beliefs that guide actions and

judgements across a variety of situations
 Sources of values
• People develop their values as a result of learning and
experiences they encounter in the cultural setting in
which they live
• Many values have their roots in early childhood and
the way in which a person was raised
• They are deep-seated and difficulty to change
 Types of values
• Achievement – getting things done and working hard
to accomplish difficult things in life
• Helping and concern for others – helping others and
showing concern
• Honesty – telling the truth and doing what is right
• Fairness – being impartial and doing what is fair for all
concerned
 Attitudes
• An attitude is a predisposition to respond in a positive
or negative way to someone or something in your
environment
• When you say that you ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ someone or
something, you are expressing an attitude
• It expresses a person’s positive or negative feelings
about various aspects of their job and / or work
environment
 Components of Attitudes
• Cognitive components of an attitude are the beliefs,
opinions, knowledge or information a person possesses
• Affective components represent the specific feelings
regarding the personal impact of the antecedents
• The behavioural components are the intentions to behave in
a certain way based on a person’s specific feelings or
attitudes
ABC model of an attitude
Job-related attitudes
• Job satisfaction – degree to which an individual feels
positively or negatively about work
• Organisational commitment – the degree to which a
person strongly identifies with, and feels a part of, the
organisation
• Job involvement – degree to which a person is willing
to work hard and apply effort beyond normal job
expectation
 Perception
• Perception is the process through which people receive,
organise and interpret information from their environment

• Through perception, people process information inputs into

decisions and actions
Factors influencing the perceptual process
• The perceiver – the person’s motives, past experiences,
values, attitudes and personality

• The setting – physical, social and organisational context

• The perceived – characteristics of the perceived such as

contrast, intensity, size, motion and repetition
 Review Questions
1. What are the factors that accelerate organisational change today?

2. What is an effective manager? What are the competences an

effective global manager requires?

3. Describe and explain the individual performance equation

4. Name the factors that influence the perceptual process and explain
each of them
 Motivation and Empowerment
• Work motivation refers to the forces within an individual that
account for the level, direction and persistence of effort
expended at work
• Levels – the amount of effort a person puts forth
• Direction – what a person chooses when presented with a
number of alternatives
• Persistence – how long a person sticks with a given action
 Theories of Motivation
There are two main approaches to the study of motivation:
1. Content theories – these theories are primary concerned
with what is within the individuals or their environment
that energies and sustains behaviour
2. Process theories – strive to provide an understanding of the
cognitive processes that act to influence behaviour
It seeks to understand the thought processes that take place
in the minds of people and that act to motivate their
behaviour
 Content theories
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory
• This theory identifies higher-order needs (self-actualisation
and esteem) and lower-order needs (social, safety and
physiological)
• Maslow suggests that some needs are more important than
others and must be satisfied before the other needs can
serve as motivators
• For example the physiological needs must be satisfied before
the safety needs are activated (satisfaction-progression
process)
To what extent does Maslow’s theory apply only
to Western culture?
 Alderfer’s ERG Theory
This theory is a modification of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. ERG
theory is more flexible than Maslow’s theory in three basic ways:
First, the theory collapses Maslow’s five need categories into three
– Existence needs relate to a person’s desire for physiological and
material well-being
Related needs represent the desire for satisfying interpersonal
relationships
Growth needs relate to the desire for continued personal growth
and development
• Second, this theory proposes ‘frustration-regression’
principle as opposed to Maslow’s ‘satisfaction-progression
process’
• Third, while Maslow argued that a person focuses on one
need at a time, ERG theory contends that more than one
need may be activated at the same time
 McClelland’s Acquired Needs Theory
• David McClelland suggested three needs that he feels are
important for understanding individual behaviour
• The Need for Achievement – the desire to understand something
better, solve problems or master a complex tasks
• Need for Affiliation – the desire to establish and maintain friendly
or warm relations with others
• Need for Power – the desire to control others, influence their
behaviour or be responsible for others
These three needs are acquired over time, as a result of life experiences
 Herzberg’s two-factor theory
• The two-factor theory also known as the motivator-hygiene
theory distinguishes between sources of work dissatisfaction
(hygiene factors) and satisfaction (motivators)
• Job dissatisfaction occurs when the hygiene factors are
either absent or insufficient. They include company policy
and administration, supervision, employee-supervisor
relationship, working conditions, salary and status
• When hygiene factors are poor or absent, the dissatisfied
employee complain about poor supervision, poor benefits,
etc
• The motivators are responsibility, achievement, recognition,
advancement and the work itself
• Motivation factors lead to positive mental health; they
challenge people to grow, contribute to the work
environment and invest themselves in the organisation
 Process theories
• Equity Theory
• Adam’s Equity theory is based on the phenomenon of social
comparison
• It presents the idea that motivation is affected when people
feel that work outcomes are unfair or inequitable, due to
social comparison in the workplace
Resolving felt inequities
• Change work inputs (e.g., reduce performance efforts)
• Change the outcomes (rewards) (e.g., ask for salary
increase)
• Leave the situation (e.g., quit the job)
• Psychologically distort the comparisons (rationalise
the inequity is only temporary and will be resolved in
the future)
 Expectancy Theory
• This theory argues that work motivation is determined
by individual beliefs about effort-performance
relationships and the desirability of various work
outcomes from different performance levels
• The three key terms in the theory are:
• Expectancy – the probability that the individual
assigns to work effort being followed by a given level
of achieved task performance. Thus, the belief that
effort leads to performance
• Instrumentality – is the belief that performance is
related to reward
• Valence – is the value or importance an individual
places on a particular reward
 Group and Group Dynamics
• Groups are collections of two or more people who work with
one another regularly to achieve one or more common
goals.
• In a true group, members consider themselves mutually
dependent to achieve common goals, and they interact with
one another regularly to pursue those goals over a sustained
period of time
 Types of Group in Organisations
• Formal groups – official groups that are designed by formal
authority to serve a specific purpose
• Formal groups can be classified into:
1. Permanent formal work groups (officially created to
perform specific function on an ongoing basis
2. Temporary formal work groups are created for a specific
purpose or to solve a specific problem or to perform a defined
task
• Informal groups are groups that emerged unofficially and are
not formally designated as part of the organisation
• While they might not seem important to the organisation,
these informal group links may affect member’s behaviour in
a positive or negative ways
• Two common types of informal groups are Friendship groups
and Interest groups
Purposes of groups in Organisations
• Groups can help to meet organisational needs

• Groups can satisfy the needs of their individual members

• In order to function, and continue to function, a group must

achieve two things:
• Task performance and group maintenance
 Group Behaviour
• Norms of behaviour - the standards that a work group uses
to evaluate the behaviour of its members. These norms may
be written or unwritten, verbalised or not verbalised, implicit
or explicit.
• Group cohesion – the ‘interpersonal glue’ that makes
members of a group stick together. Group cohesion can
enhance job satisfaction for members and improve
organisational productivity
• Social loafing – the failure of a group member to contribute
personal time, effort, thoughts, or other resources to the
group
• Loss of individuality – a social process in which individual
group members lose self awareness and its accompanying
sense of accountability, inhibition and responsibility for
individual behaviour
Disruptive behaviour
These are the behaviours that harms the group process:
• Lack of direction or uncertainty of purpose
• Being overly aggressive towards other members
• Infighting
• Lack of respect and/or trust for each other
• Withdrawing and refusing to cooperate with others
• Talking too much about irrelevant matters
• Trying to compete for attention or recognition
 Factors that influence group effectiveness
• Work team structure – issues relating to goals and
objectives, operating guidelines, performance measures and
role specification
• Work team process – managing cooperative behaviours and
competitive behaviours
• Diversity – relates to how individuals contribute in diverse
ways for effective performance (e.g., contributor,
collaborator, communicator and the challenger)
• Creativity
Characteristics of an effective group
• A sense of urgency and direction
• A broad sense of shared responsibility
• A higher level of commitment and trust among members
• A balance in satisfying individual and group interest
• A climate that is cohesive yet does not stifle individuality
• Ability to deal with minority opinions effectively
• Ability to confront differences and deal with conflict
 Stages of group development
• Forming stage – the first stage with primary concern of
initial entry of members to the group
• Storming – second stage of group development which is
marked by a period of high emotion and tension among
group members
• Norming – agreement and consensus; clear roles and
responsibilities; facilitation
• Performing – clear vision and purpose; focus on goal
achievement; Delegation
• Adjourning – task completion; good feeling about
achievements; recognition
 Assignment
Q1. Grp 1, 3 & 5; Q2. Grp 2 & 4; Q3. Grp 6 & 7
1. Why is human resource maintenance important to effective
management? What negative effects on business performance
may result from manager’s neglect of people issues?

2. What challenges might there be in motivating (a) older workers

who are nearing retirement and (b) highly talented younger
workers? Consider strategies for attracting and retaining such
workers in your answer.

3. Discuss the importance of personality traits in recruiting and

selecting individuals for vacant positions.