Organizational Behaviour: Trimester 1 IBA

19/10/2010
Anne Lieke Vonk

1Summary Organizational Behavior,

Stephen P. Robbins, Timothy A. Judge &
Timothy C. Campbell

Organizational Behaviour
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Summary
Chapter 1: What is organizational behaviour?
Managers make decisions, allocate resources, and direct the activities of others to attain
goals within organizations. An organization is a consciously coordinated social unit,
composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a
common goal or set of goals. Based on the work of French industrialist Henri Fayol,
managers can be said to perform four functions: planning, organizing, leading, and
controlling. Henry Mintzberg studied management roles, which he grouped under the
headings of interpersonal roles, informational roles, and decisional roles. Interpersonal roles
included symbolic, figurehead, and leadership roles; informational roles included
disseminator, monitor, and spokesperson roles; and decisional roles were comprised of
entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator roles. Robert Katz
identified the three essential management skills as technical, human, and conceptual. Lastly,
Fred Luthans and his colleagues found that managers engaged in four major activities. First,
managers participated in traditional management activities such as decision making,
planning, and controlling. Managers were also engaged in communication activities such as
exchanging routine information and processing paperwork. Luthans found that managers
also performed human resource management functions such as motivating, disciplining,
managing conflict, staffing, and training. Finally, managers engaged in networking
activities, through socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders. Organizational
behaviour is the field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and
structure have on behaviour within organizations for the purpose of applying such
knowledge toward improving an organization's effectiveness. It is a study of individuals,
groups and structure in a systematic way to make organizations work more effectively. Core
topics include motivation, leader behaviour, power, interpersonal communication, group
structure and processes, learning, attitude development, perception, change processes,
conflict, work design, and work stress. The text will use systematic study in an attempt to
explain and predict behaviour in organizations. Systematic study attempts to attribute cause
and effects, basing conclusions on scientific evidence by gathering data under controlled
conditions and measuring and interpreting it in a rigorous manner. The systematic study of
organizational behaviour concepts replaces popularly held, but erroneous preconceived
notions with data based on science-based study. The field of organizational behaviour is an
integration of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and social psychology There are many
challenges and opportunities that create a significant demand for understanding
organizational behaviour. Organizations are no longer constrained by national borders and
managers find themselves having to travel to different countries, work with people from
different cultures, and cope with anti-capitalism backlash. An area of growing importance is
the movement of jobs to countries with low-cost labour. Organizations also contend with
within country diversity caused by shifting demographics and immigration. In addition to
country diversity, diversity also includes race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion,

Organizational Behaviour: Trimester 1 IBA

19/10/2010
Anne Lieke Vonk

11
Frederick Herzberg’s two-factor theory suggests that there are two types of factors in the
workplace: hygiene factors and motivational factors. Hygiene factors are extrinsic factors,
such as supervision, pay, company policies, and working conditions. The absence of one or
more hygiene factors
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can lead to a state of dissatisfaction, but their presence does not lead to a greater desire to
excel at one’s job. Motivational factors are intrinsic factors, like advancement, recognition,
responsibility, and achievement, that are directly related to job satisfaction. The absence of
motivational factors does not cause dissatisfaction; rather, a state of neutrality. Herzberg
suggests that managers must make sure that hygiene factors have been addressed to move
employees from a state of “dissatisfaction” to a state of “no dissatisfaction” and must add
one or more motivational factors to move employees from “no satisfaction” to “satisfaction”.
McClelland’s theory of needs states that workers are motivated by three needs: need for
achievement, need for power, and need for affiliation. Individuals differ in the degree to
which a particular need motivates them. The best managers have been characterized as high
in Need for Power (nPow) and low in need for affiliation (nAff). Contemporary theories of
motivation, including cognitive evaluation theory, goal-setting theory, management by
objectives, and self-efficacy theory, represent the current state of the art in explaining
employee motivation. Cognitive evaluation theory suggests allocating extrinsic rewards for
behavior that had been previously intrinsically rewarding tends to decrease the overall level
of motivation. This theory appears to be well supported, particularly as it relates to tangible
rewards. However, verbal rewards seem to keep people focused on the task and encourage
them to do it better. An outgrowth of cognitive evaluation theory is self-concordance, which
considers the degree to which people’s reasons for pursuing goals are consistent with their
interests and core values. Goal-setting theory states that specific and difficult goals, with
feedback, lead to higher performance. Goal-setting theory presupposes that an individual is
committed to the goal. Behaviorally, this means that an individual believes she can achieve
the goal and wants to achieve it. Goal commitment is most likely to occur when goals are
made public, when the individual has an internal locus of control, and when the goals are
self-set rather than assigned. In addition, goals-setting theory is culture bound – it’s well
adapted to countries like the United States and Canada because its key components align
reasonably well with North American cultures. Management by objectives programs
emphasize participatively set goals that are tangible, verifiable, and measurable. Through
MBO, overall organizational objectives are converted into specific objectives for
organizational units and individual members. There are four ingredients common to most
MBO programs: goal specificity, participation in decision making, an explicit time period,
and performance feedback. Self-efficacy (also known as “social cognitive theory” or “social
learning theory”) refers to an individual’s believe that he or she is capable of performing a
task. The higher an individual’s self-efficacy, the more confidence he has in his ability to
succeed in a task. Individual with lower self-efficacy are more likely to lessen their effort or
give up all together. There are four ways that self-efficacy can be increased: enactive
mastery, vicarious modelling, verbal persuasion, and arousal. Verbal persuasion is
associated with the Pygmalion effect and the Galatea effect. The Pygmalion effect is a form
of a self-fulfilling prophesy where believing in something can make it true. The Galatea
effect, a workplace variant, occurs when high performance

Organizational Behaviour: Trimester 1 IBA

19/10/2010
Anne Lieke Vonk

32
Organizational structures may be classified as mechanistic or organic. The mechanistic
model has extensive departmentalization, high formalization, a limited information network,
and little participation by low-level members in decision making. At the other end of the
scale, an organic organization uses flat, cross-hierarchal and cross-functional teams, has low
formalization, posses a comprehensive information network, and involves high participation
in decision making. The structure an organization chooses depends on its strategy. Common
strategies include innovation, cost minimization, and imitation. Innovators are most likely to
prefer the flexibility of an organic model, while those that choose a cost minimization
strategy are more suited to the mechanistic structure. Imitators combine the two structures.
Organization size also influences structure. As organizations increase in size, they tend to
become more mechanistic, although size affects structure at a decreasing rate. Once an
organization has around 2,000 employees, it’s already fairly mechanistic and additional
employees have minimal impact. Technology refers to how a firm converts its inputs to
outputs. Technologies may be differentiated by their degree of routines. Routine tasks are
associated with taller and more departmentalized structures, while the relationship is not
overwhelmingly strong. The degree of routineness is positively correlated with high
formalization or centralization when formalization is low. Structure is also affected by
environment, which is comprised of capacity, volatility, and complexity. Capacity refers to
the degree to which an environment can support growth; volatility refers to environmental
instability, and complexity refers to the degree of heterogeneity and concentration among
environmental elements. Taken together, these three components contribute to
environmental uncertainty. In scarce, dynamic, and complex environments, a more organic
structure is preferable. The more abundant, stable, and simple the environment, the more a
mechanistic structure will be preferred. Finally, there are individual differences in employee
preferences for structure. Generally, work specialization contributes to higher employee
productivity, but at the price of reduced job satisfaction. Negative behavioural outcomes
from high specialization are most likely to surface in professional jobs occupied by
individuals with high needs for personal growth and diversity. There is no evidence to
support a relationship between span of control and employee performance, in spite of the
intellectual or emotional appeal. There is a fairly strong relationship between
decentralization and job satisfaction, particularly for employees with low self-esteem.
Chapter 17: Organizational culture
 The origin of culture as an independent variable affecting an employee’s attitudes and
behaviour can be traced back more than 50 years to the notion of institutionalization. When
an organization becomes institutionalized, it takes on a life of its own, apart from its
founders or any of its members. In addition, it becomes valued for itself, not merely for the
goods or services it produces. Institutionalization operates to produce common
understandings among members about what is appropriate and meaningful behaviour.

Organizational Behaviour: Trimester 1 IBA

19/10/2010
Anne Lieke Vonk

38
Second, the organization’s structure must be flattened and the use of cross-functional teams
increased. Finally, the organizational culture must be reshaped to include risk taking,
openness, and growth. Stress is a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted
with an opportunity, constraint, or demand related to what he or she desires and for which
the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important. Stress can be caused by
environmental, organizational, and personal factors. Environmental factors include
economic uncertainties, political uncertainties, technological change or terrorism.
Organizational factors include task, role, and interpersonal demands. Finally, factors specific
to the individual, including their economic status, can contribute to stress. In addition, there
are individual differences in people’s ability to deal with stress – a situation that is highly
stressful for one individual may be comfortable for another. Individual differences of
perception, job experience, social support, belief in locus of control, self-efficacy, and
hostility have also been found to be relevant stress moderators. Stress can result in
physiological, psychological, and behavioural symptoms. At the individual level, employees
may manage stress through improving time management skills, engaging in physical
exercise, and learning relaxation techniques. Companies may attempt to reduce the negative
consequences of stress by providing wellness programs, goal setting increased
communication, and employee involvement.