Organizational Behavior: Chapter 1 - Workplace trends, Anchors and Knowledge Management

Organizational Behavior

The study of what people think, feel and do in and around organizations.

Organizations

groups of people who work interdependently toward some purpose.

Globalization

Economic, Social, and cultural connectivity with people in other parts of the world.

Surface Level Diversity

The observable demographic or physiological differences in people, such as their race, ethnicity, gender, age, and physical differences.

Deep Level Diversity

Differences in the psychological characteristics of employees, including personalities, beliefs, values, and attitudes.

Work Life balance

The degree to which a person minimizes conflict between work and nonwork demands.

Virtual work

work performed away from the traditional physical workplace by using information technology.

organizational effectiveness.

a broad concept represented by several perspectives, including the organization's fit with the external environment, internal subsystems configuration for high performance, emphasis on organizational learning, and ability to satisfy the needs of the key stakeholders.

Open systems anchor

a perspective that holds that organizations depend on the external environment for resources, affect that environment though their output, and consist of internal subsystems that transform inputs to outputs.

organizational efficiency

the amount of outputs relative to inputs in the organizations transformations process.

organizational memory

the organization's capacity to acquire, share, use, and store valuable knowledge.

Intellectual capital

A company's stock of knowledge, including human capital, structural capital, and relationship capital.

Human Capital

the stock of knowledge, skills and abilities among employees that provide economic value to the organization.

Structural capital

knowledge embedded in an organization's systems and structures.

relationship capital

the value derived from an organization's relationships with customers, suppliers, and others.

Values

long-lasting beliefs about what is important in a variety of situations.

ethics

the study of principles or values that determine whether actions are right or wrong and outcomes are good or bad.

Corporate social Responsibility (CSR)

Organizational activities intended to benefit society and the environment beyond the firm's immediate financial interests or legal obligations.

What are the 3 major challenges facing organizations

Globalization
Increasing workforce diversity
Emerging employment relationships.

Consequence of diversity

Conflicts within the team can cause reductions in information sharing and morale.

Systematic Research Anchor

Study organizations using systematic research methods.

Multi Disciplinary Anchor

Import knowledge from other disiplines, not just create its own knowledge.

Contingency Anchor

Recongnize that effectiveness of an action may depend on the situation.

Multiple levels of analysis anchor.

Understand OB events from three levels of analysis: individual, Team, organization.