Transcript Organizational Behavior: An Overview

Chapter 1: Organizational
Behavior: An Overview
McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Copyright © 2010 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
What is Organizational Behavior?
• Organizational behavior (OB) is a field of study
devoted to understanding, explaining, and
ultimately improving the attitudes and behaviors
of individuals and groups in organizations.
• OB theories and concepts are derived from:
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industrial and organizational psychology
social psychology
sociology
anthropology
economics
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Integrative Model of Organizational
Behavior
• Individual Outcomes
» Job performance
» Organizational commitment
• Individual Mechanisms
» Job satisfaction
» Stress
» Motivation
» Trust, justice, and ethics
» Learning and decision making
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Integrative Model of Organizational
Behavior, cont’d
• Individual Characteristics
» Personality, cultural values, and ability
• Group Mechanisms
» Teams
» Leadership
• Organizational Mechanisms
» Organizational structure
» Organizational culture
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Does Organizational Behavior Matter?
• Resource-based view
» Financial resources (revenue, equity)
» Physical resources (buildings, machines)
» Other resources
– Knowledge, decision-making, ability, culture
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What Makes a Resource Valuable?
• Rare
» Resources, people
• Inimitable
» History
– A collective pool of experience, wisdom, and knowledge that
benefits the organization
» Numerous small decisions
– People make many small decisions day-in and day-out,
week-in and week-out
» Socially complex resources
– Culture, trust, reputation
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Research Evidence
• OB practices were associated with better firm
performance
• Firms who valued OB had a 19% higher survival
rate than firms who did not value OB
• Good people comprise a valuable resource for
companies
• There is no “magic bullet” OB practice – one thing
that, in-and-of itself, can increase profitability
» Rule of one-eighth
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How Do We Know
• Method of Experience – People hold firmly to some
belief because it is consistent with their own experience
and observations.
• Method of Intuition – People hold firmly to some belief
because it “just stands to reason”—it seems obvious or
self-evident.
• Method of Authority – People hold firmly to some belief
because some respected official, agency, or source has
said it is so.
• Method of Science – People accept some belief
because scientific studies have tended to replicate that
result using a series of samples, settings, and methods.
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Scientific Studies
• Theory
» A collection of assertions—both verbal and
symbolic—that specify how and why
variables are related, as well as the
conditions under which they should (and
should not) be related
» Tells a story and supplies the familiar who,
what, where, when, and why elements
found in any newspaper or magazine article
• Hypotheses
» Written predictions that specify relationships
between variables
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Scientific Studies, cont’d
• Correlation (r)
» Describes the statistical relationship between
two variables
» Can be positive or negative and range from 0
(no statistical relationship) to ± 1 (a perfect
statistical relationship)
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Social Recognition & Job Performance
• How often does social recognition lead to higher
job performance?
» OB in Sports
» Burger King study
» Correlation between social recognition
and job performance was .28
– Restaurants that received training in social
recognition averaged 44 seconds of drive- through time nine
months later versus 62 seconds for the control group locations.
» Correlation between social recognition and retention
rates was .20
– Restaurants that received training in social recognition had a 16
percent better retention rate than the control group
locations nine months later.
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Meta-analysis
• The best way to test a theory is to conduct many
studies, each of which is as different as possible
from the ones that preceded it.
• Meta-analysis takes all of the correlations found
in studies of a particular relationship and
calculates a weighted average (such that
correlations based on studies with large samples
are weighted more than correlations based on
studies with small samples).
» In OB research, a .50 correlation is considered
“strong,” a .30 correlation is considered “moderate,”
and a .10 correlation is considered “weak.”
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