Chapter 1 Notes: Organizational Behaviour and Management

Why You Need This Chapter

• Explore the relationship between organizations and management.
• Understand what happens when relationships are positive vs negative.
• Recognize that organizations and working environments/relationships are complex.
• Learn to Predict, Explain, and Manage organizational behavior.

What This Chapter Covers

• Why is OB important?
• What is management?
• What managers do?
• Where is management going?

Team Questions (Common Beliefs about OB)

• Effective organizational leaders tend to possess identical personality traits. (Question the belief)
• Nearly all workers prefer stimulating and challenging jobs. (Question generalization)
• Managers have a very accurate idea about how much their peers and superiors are paid. (Skeptical of transparency assumptions)
• Workers have a very accurate idea about how often they are absent from work. (Question perception accuracy)
• Pay is the best way to motivate employees and improve job performance. (Challenge the sole role of pay)
• Women are just as likely as men to become leaders in organizations. (Promotes gender equality in leadership potential)

What is OB?

• OB stands for Organizational Behaviour, explored in CH. 1 – PAR (pause-attribute-report? chapter reference)

OB Programs and Management Practices (Examples of Workplace Benefits and Development)

• Flexible work schedules:
  • flextime, telecommuting, job sharing, compressed workweek
• Compensation and rewards:
  • Stock options, profit-sharing plans, performance bonuses
• Training and development:
  • Extensive training and development programs, mentorship programs
• Work-life and support:
  • Family assistance programs, on-site fitness facilities, daycare, wellness programs, spending accounts
• Career development:
  • Career development programs, including career days, career plans, tuition subsidies
• Benefits and options:
  • Flexible or cafeteria-style benefit plans
• Social and well-being activities:
  • Monthly staff socials, family holiday parties, picnics, stress reduction programs, monthly all-employee meetings
• Diversity and inclusion:
  • Formal workplace diversity programs to encourage women and members of the Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) community
• Recognition:
  • Employee recognition and reward programs

OB Management Practices

Why OB? Goals and Foundations

• Hours spent at work; reflection on time invested in work over a lifetime.
• Why OB? It’s interesting, important, and makes a difference.
• Goals of OB:
  • Predicting organizational behavior
  • Explaining organizational behavior
  • Managing organizational behavior
• Evidence-based management

What is Management?

• CH. 1 – PAR (chapter reference)

The Evolution of Management (Key Schools)

• Classic View (1900):
  • High specialization of labour
  • Intense coordination
  • Centralized decision making
• Scientific Management (Frederick Taylor):
  • Idea: making people work harder is not as efficient as optimizing how work is done
  • Rejected rule-of-thumb job design; relied on research
  • Time and motion studies, optimal degrees of specialization, standardizing work tasks
• Bureaucracy (Max Weber):
  • Aimed to fix intuition and nepotism through:
  • Strict chain of command (report to one supervisor)
  • Selection criteria focused on technical skills, not nepotism
  • Detailed rules and regulations
  • Centralization of power at the top of the organization
  • Centralization and formalization to ensure predictability and efficiency

Hawthorne Studies and Human Relations Movement

• Hawthorne Plant of Western Electric, Chicago (1920-1930):
  • Investigated Fatigue, Rest pauses, Lighting, and their effects on productivity
• Key findings:
  • Psychological and social processes affect and impact work
  • The way work is organized can be dysfunctional
  • Resistance to management via informal group norms

Issues with Bureaucracy

• Employee alienation
• Limits on innovation and adaptation
• Resistance to change
• Minimum acceptable level of performance
• Employees lose sight of overall organizational goals

Evolution to the Human Relations Movement

• Hawthorne studies highlighted psychological and social impact on employees
• Human relations movement:
  • More people-oriented
  • More participative management styles
  • More responsive to employees’ needs
  • Called for:
  • More flexible management systems
  • More interesting job designs

Covid and Working From Home

• Case: Klick Health (COVID context)

Klick Health During Covid (Highlights)

• Employees created a safety measures hub on the company site
• Sourced and donated 400,000 masks to hospitals
• Delivered over 1,000 intubation boxes
• Provided two vans for mobile flu shots to employees’ homes
• Moved programs online; provided virtual tutoring and story time for employees with families
• Klick shop provided $500 per employee for home equipment
• Additional initiatives to support remote work and wellbeing

Contemporary Management

• Contingency approach: “it depends”
• Contingencies are dependencies; there is no one best way to manage
• Management must depend on the demands of the situation

What Do Managers Do? (CH. 1 – PAR)

Managerial Roles (Mintzberg, 1968)

• Informational roles:
  • Monitor: scan internal and external performance, identify new ideas and trends
  • Disseminator: convey information (facts or preferences)
  • Spokesperson: send information to the external environment
• Interpersonal roles:
  • Figurehead: symbolic duties (entertaining clients)
  • Leadership: select, mentor, discipline employees
  • Liaison: maintain horizontal contacts inside and outside the organization
• Decisional roles:
  • Entrepreneur: turn problems into opportunities
  • Disturbance handler: deal with problems (conflicts or threats)
  • Resource allocator: deploy time and money
  • Negotiator: manage negotiations with other organizations or individuals

Managerial Activities (Luthans, Hodgetts, & Rosenkrantz, 1988)

• Distribution of time and focus:
  • Managing Conflict: 4\%
  • Exchanging Information: 15\%
  • Motivating/Reinforcing: 5\%
  • Staffing: 5\%
  • Handling Paperwork: 14\%
  • Training/Developing: 6\%
  • Socializing/Politicking: 9\%
  • Interacting with Outsiders: 10\%
  • Planning: 13\%
  • Controlling: 6\%
  • Decision Making: 11\%

Managerial Activities (Summary)

• Sending and receiving information
• Routine communication
• Planning, decision making, controlling
• Traditional management
• Networking: interaction with people outside the organization; politicizing with insiders
• Human Resource Management (HRM):
  • Motivating, reinforcing, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, training, developing employees

Where Is Management Going? (CH. 1 - PART 4)

• Focus on future directions and evolving practices in management

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (EDI)

• Diversity focus areas:
  • Minorities, women, Indigenous people, people with disabilities
• Common issues:
  • Segments not treated fairly
  • Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender, queer, and disabled communities
• Working internationally:
  • Different cultural norms

Employee Health and Well-Being

• Mental health at work
• Mindfulness; awareness of surroundings
• Workplace spirituality: meaning and purpose in work
• Organizational care; values centered on employees’ needs
• Positive organizational behaviour (POB):
  • Study and application of positive HR strengths that can be measured, developed, and managed
• Psychological capital (positive psychological state):
  • Self-efficacy, Optimism, Hope, and Resilience
• Thriving at work: a positive state of vitality and learning

Talent Management and Engagement

• Talent Management:
  • Attracting, developing, retaining, and deploying people with the right skills to meet current and future business needs
• Workplace Engagement:
  • A work-related state of mind characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption (opposite of burnout)

Alternative Work Arrangements

• Precarious work: risky, uncertain, and unpredictable work
• Gig employment: temporary jobs

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

• Adapting to new technology
• Improving workplace health and safety
• Employment transitions related to environmental policies
• Promoting EDI
• Ensuring work-from-home arrangements are safe, fair, and sustainable
• Providing a voice for self-employed Canadians
• Improving job stability and working conditions for gig workers
• Developing stronger and less paternalistic worker voice channels in small businesses
• Using social media safely and effectively as a tool of workers’ voice
• Improving Canada’s income security programs with worker input
• Anticipating upcoming challenges

Moving Forward (PART ONE: AN INTRODUCTION)

• Chapter 1: Organizational Behaviour and Management
• PART TWO: INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOUR
  • Chapter 2: Personality and Learning
  • Chapter 3: Perception, Attribution and Diversity
  • Chapter 4: Values, Attitudes and Work Behaviour
  • Chapter 5: Theories of Work Motivation
  • Chapter 6: Motivation in Practice
• PART THREE: SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR AND ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESSES
  • Chapter 7: Groups and Teamwork
  • Chapter 8: Social Influence, Socialization and Organizational Culture
  • Chapter 9: Leadership
  • Chapter 10: Communication
  • Chapter 11: Decision Making
  • Chapter 12: Power, Politics and Ethics
  • Chapter 13: Conflict and Stress
• PART FOUR: THE TOTAL ORGANIZATION
  • Chapter 14: Environment, Strategy and Structure
  • Chapter 15: Organizational Change, Development and Innovation
• ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR (repeated themes in the outline)

Thank You for Listening!