Organizational behavior: Difference between revisions

Content deleted Content added

Inline

Revision as of 13:07, 13 April 2014

Organizational behavior (OB) is "the study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself." (p.4) ^[1] OB can be divided into micro OB (the study of individuals in organizations), meso OB (the study of work groups), and macro OB (the study of how organizations behave).^[2]According to Miner (2006) when organizational behavior began the overlap between the well established scientific field of organizational psychology was pronounced and there was even moves to try and incorporate industrial and organizational psychology into business schools in the United States^[3]There is still a lot of confusion worldwide as to the difference between organizational behavior and organisational psychology.

History

After the First World War, the focus of organizational behavior shifted to how psychological factors affected organizations, a transformation propelled by the identification of the Hawthorne Effect. Elton Mayo, headed the Hawthorne Studies at Harvard. In his classic writing in 1931, Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization, he advised managers to deal with emotional needs of employees at work. The Human Relations Movement focused on teams, motivation, and the actualization of the goals of individuals within organizations. When organizational behavior began there was very significant overlap with the well established field of industrial/organizational psychology.^[4]

The Second World War further shifted the field, as the invention of large-scale logistics and operations research led to a renewed interest in rationalist approaches to the study of organizations. Influential work was done by Herbert Alexander Simon and James G. March and the so-called "Carnegie School" of organizational behavior. Prominent scholars included Chester Barnard, Henri Fayol, Frederick Herzberg, Abraham Maslow, David McClelland, and Victor Vroom.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the field was strongly influenced by social psychology and the emphasis in academic study was on quantitative research. An explosion of theorizing produced Bounded Rationality, Informal Organization, Contingency Theory, Resource Dependence, Institutional Theory, and Organizational Ecology theories, among many others.

Starting in the 1980s, cultural explanations of organizations and change became an important part of study. Qualitative methods of study became more acceptable, informed by anthropology, and sociology.

Current state of the field

The study and teaching of organizational behavior can be found in organizational behavior departments and management departments that generally form part of business schools. Micro OB topics overlap with the field of industrial/organizational psychology, and are taught in psychology departments as well.

During the last 20 years, organizational behavior study and practice has developed and expanded through creating integrations with other domains:

Anthropology became an interesting prism to understanding firms as communities, by introducing concepts like Organizational culture, 'organizational rituals' and 'symbolic acts' enabling new ways to understand organizations as communities.
Leadership Understanding: the crucial role of leadership at various levels of an organization in the process of change management.
Ethics and their importance as pillars of any vision and one of the most important driving forces in an organization.
Aesthetics: Within the last decades a field emerged that focuses on the aesthetic sphere of our existence in organizations,^[5] drawing on interdisciplinary theories and methods from the humanities and disciplines such as theatre studies, literature, music, visual studies and many more.

Methods used

A variety of methods are used in organizational behavior, many of which are found in other social sciences.

Quantitative

Quantitative research involves the assigning of numbers to levels of variables of interest, generally using inferential statistics to analyze relationships among variables. Commonly used statistics include:

Computer simulation

Computer simulation is a prominent method in organizational behavior as well as strategic management.^[6] While there are many uses for computer simulation (including the development of engineering systems inside high-technology firms), most academics in the fields of strategic management and organizational behavior have used computer simulation to understand how organizations or firms operate. More recently, however, researchers have also started to apply computer simulation to understand individual behvaior at a micro-level, focusing on individual and interpersonal cognition and behavior^[7] such as team working.^[8]

Qualitative

Qualitative research consists of a number of methods of inquiry that generally do not involve the quantification of variables. Qualitative methods can range from the content analysis of interviews or written material to written narratives of observations. Some common methods include:

ethnography, which involves direct participant observation
single and multiple case analysis
grounded theory approaches
other historical methods

Topics

Counterproductive work behavior

Counterproductive work behavior or CWB consists of behavior by employees that harm or intended to harm organizations and people in organizations.^[9]

Decision making

Rational Decision-Making Model
Normative (concentrates on how decision should be made)
Descriptive (concerned with how the thinker came up with their judgement)
Prescriptive (Aim to improve decision making)

Employee mistreatment

There are several types of mistreatment that employees endure in organizations.

Abusive supervision

Abusive supervision is the extent to which a supervisor engages in a pattern of behavior that harms subordinates.^[10]

Bullying

Although definitions of bullying vary, it involves a repeated pattern of harmful behaviors directed toward and individual.^[11]

Incivility

Incivility consists of low-intensity discourteous and rude behavior with ambiguous intent to harm that violates norms for appropriate behavior in the workplace.^[12]

Sexual harassment

Sexual harassment is behavior that denigrates or mistreats an individual due to his or her gender, creates an offensive workplace, and interferes with an individual being able to do the job.^[13]

Groups and Teams

Job attitudes and emotions

Organizational behavior deals with employee attitudes and feelings.

Job satisfaction is the feelings one has about the job or facets of the job, such as pay or supervision^[14]
Organizational commitment is the extent to which employees feel attachment to their organization.^[15]
Emotional labor concerns the requirement that employees display certain emotions, like smiling at customers.^[16]

Leadership

There have been a number of approaches and theories that concern leadership. Early theories focused on characteristics of leaders, while later theories focused on leader behavior, and conditions under which individuals can be effective. Some leadership approaches and theories include:

Contingency theory says that good leadership depends on characteristics of the leader and the situation.^[17]

Leader-member exchange theory or LMX focus on relationships between individual supervisor-subordinate pairs.^[18]

Ohio State Leadership Studies identified the dimensions of consideration (showing concern and respect for subordinates) and initiating structure (assigning tasks and setting performance goals).^[19]^[20]

Path-goal theory is a contingency theory linking appropriate leader style to organizational conditions, and subordinate personality.^[21]

Transformational leadership theory concerns the behaviors leaders do that inspire followers to high levels of motivation and performance. Related to charismatic leadership that is part of transformational.^[22]

Managerial roles

In the late 1960s Henry Mintzberg, a graduate student at MIT undertook a careful study of five executives to determine what those managers did on their jobs. On the basis of his observations, Mintzberg classifies managerial roles into three categories: interpersonal roles; decisional roles; and informational roles^[23]

Motivation

Motivation that forces either internal or external to a person that arouse enthusiasm and resistance to pursue a certain course of action. According to Baron and Greenberg (2008):^[24] "Although motivation is a broad and complex concept, organizational scientists have agreed on its basic characteristics. Drawing from various social sciences, we define motivation as the set of processes that arouse, direct, and maintain human behavior toward attaining some goal"

There are many different motivation theories applied to organizations such as:

Equity theory^[25]
Expectancy theory^[26]
Maslow's hierarchy of needs^[27]
Incentive theory (psychology)
Organizational Justice theory^[28]
Frederick Herzberg two-factor theory^[29]
Theory X and Theory Y^[30] Douglas McGregor proposed that there are two perspectives managers can take concerning their subordinates that will influence how those subordinates will behave. The "Theory X" perspective is that employees are basically lazy and will not work unless they are closely supervised and forced. "Theory Y", on the other hand, assumes that employees are self-energized, committed, responsible and creative beings.

National Culture

National culture can have effects on the behavior of employees in organizations. This is exemplified by Geert Hofstede's Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory. In an ongoing research program, Hofstede has surveyed a large number of cultures and identified six dimensions of national culture that effect the behavior of individuals in organizations:^[31]

Power Distance
Individualism
Uncertainty Avoidance
Masculinity
Long Term Orientation

Organizational citizenship behavior

Organizational citizenship behavior or OCB is behavior that goes beyond assigned tasks and contributes to the well-being of organizations.^[32]

Organizational culture

Organizational culture emphasizes the culture of the organization itself. This approach presumes that organizations can be characterized by cultural dimensions such as beliefs, values, rituals, symbols, and so forth.^[33] Within this approach, the approaches generally consist of either developing models for understanding organizational culture or developing typologies of organizational culture. Edgar Schein developed a model for understanding organizational culture and identified three levels of organizational culture:

Artifacts and Behaviors
Espoused Values
Shared Basic Assumptions

Schein argued that if any of these three levels were divergent tension would result: if, for example, espoused values or desired behaviors were not consistent with the basic assumptions of an organisation it is unlikely that these values or behaviors would be rejected.

Typologies of organizational culture identified specific organisational culture and related these cultures to performance^[34] or effectiveness^[35] of the organization.

Personality

Personality has to do with individual differences among employees in behavior patterns, cognition and emotion.^[36] The study of personality in organizations has generally focused on specific traits and their relationship to other variables. One of the most popular approaches to the study of personality is from the framework of Big Five personality traits or Five Factor Model that describes personality in five dimensions.

Stress

Occupational stress concerns the imbalance between the demands (aspects of the job that require mental or physical effort) and resources that help cope with demands.^[37]

Work-family

Chester Barnard recognized that individuals behave differently when acting in their organizational role than when acting separately from the organization.^[38] Work-family conflict is when the demands of family and work are in some way incompatible so that doing one interferes with doing the other.^[39]

Organization theory

Organization theory is concerned with explaining the organization as a whole or populations of organizations. The focus of organizational theory is to understand the structure and processes of organizations and how organizations interact with industries and societies. Within business schools, Organization Theory or OT is considered a separate specialization in Management from OB.

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is most commonly attributed to Max Weber. Weber argued that bureaucracy was the application of rational-legal authority to the organisation of work: through the application of rationality, bureaucracy was the most technically efficient form of organisation.^[40] Charles Perrow has extended this work, showing the continuing application of bureaucratic concepts to the study of organisations. Perrow argues that all organizations can be understood in terms of bureaucracy and that organizational failures are more often a result of insufficient application of bureaucratic principals.^[41]

Weber's principals of bureaucratic organisation:

A formal organizational hierarchy
Management by rules
Organization by functional speciality and selecting people based on their skills and technical qualifications
An "up-focused" (to organization's board or shareholders) or "in-focused" (to the organization itself) mission
Purposefully impersonal to apply the same rules and structures to all people

Economic theories of organization

Institutional theory

Organizational ecology

Organizational ecology models apply concept from evolutionary theory to the study of populations of organisations, focusing on birth (founding), growth and change, and death (firm mortality). In this view, organizations are 'selected' based on their fit with their operating environment.

Organization structures and dynamics

Scientific management

Scientific management or Taylorism is an approach to management based on principles of engineering, focusing on incentives and other practices shown to work empirically.

Systems theory

The systems framework is also fundamental to organizational theory as organizations are complex dynamic goal-oriented processes.^[43] One of the early thinkers in the field was Alexander Bogdanov, who developed his Tectology, a theory widely considered a precursor of Bertalanffy's General Systems Theory, aiming to model and design human organizations. Kurt Lewin was particularly influential in developing the systems perspective within organizational theory and coined the term "systems of ideology", from his frustration with behavioural psychologies that became an obstacle to sustainable work in psychology (see Ash 1992: 198-207). The complexity theory perspective on organizations is another systems view of organizations. German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927 - 1998) developed a sociological system theory and describes organisations - alongside interactions and society - as one of three main entities.

The systems approach to organizations relies heavily upon achieving negative entropy through openness and feedback. A systemic view on organizations is transdisciplinary and integrative. In other words, it transcends the perspectives of individual disciplines, integrating them on the basis of a common "code", or more exactly, on the basis of the formal apparatus provided by systems theory. The systems approach gives primacy to the interrelationships, not to the elements of the system. It is from these dynamic interrelationships that new properties of the system emerge. In recent years, systems thinking has been developed to provide techniques for studying systems in holistic ways to supplement traditional reductionistic methods. In this more recent tradition, systems theory in organizational studies is considered by some as a humanistic extension of the natural sciences.

Organizational behavior journals

Academy of Management Journal^[44]
Academy of Management Review^[45]
Administrative Science Quarterly^[46]
Harvard Business Review
Human Resource Management^[47]
Human Resources Management Review^[48]
Journal of Business and Psychology^[49]
Journal of International Business Studies
Journal of Management Studies
Journal of Management
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
Organization Science
Organization Studies
Sloan Management Review

References

^ Moorhead, G., & Griffin, R. W. (1995). Organizational behavior: Managing people and organizations (5th edition). Boston. Houghton Mifflin.
^ Wagner, J. A., & Hollenbeck, J. R. (2010). Organizational Behavior: Securing Competitive Advantage. New York City: Routledge.
^ Miner, J.(2006) Organizational behavior 3: Historical orgins, theortetical foundanations and the future. Wiley.
^ Miner, J.(2006) Organizational behavior 3: Historical origins, theoretical foundations and the future. Wiley.
^ Taylor, S. & Hansen, H. (2005) ‘Finding form: looking at the field of organizational aesthetics’ Journal of Management Studies 42 (6): 1211–1231
^ Harrison, Lin, Carroll, & Carley, 2007
^ Hughes, H. P. N., Clegg, C. W., Robinson, M. A., & Crowder, R. M. (2012). "Agent-based modelling and simulation: The potential contribution to organizational psychology". Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 85(3), 487–502. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8325.2012.02053.x
^ Crowder, R. M., Robinson, M. A., Hughes, H. P. N., & Sim, Y. W. (2012). The development of an agent-based modeling framework for simulating engineering team work. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics – Part A: Systems and Humans, 42(6), 1425–1439. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TSMCA.2012.2199304
^ Spector, P. E., & Fox, S. (2005). The Stressor-Emotion Model of Counterproductive Work Behavior Counterproductive work behavior: Investigations of actors and targets (pp. 151-174). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; US.
^ Tepper, B. J. (2000). "Consequences of abusive supervision". Academy of Management Journal, 43(2), 178-190. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1556375
^ Rayner, C., & Keashly, L. (2005). Bullying at Work: A Perspective From Britain and North America. In S. Fox & P. E. Spector (Eds.), Counterproductive work behavior: Investigations of actors and targets. (pp. 271-296). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association.
^ Andersson, L. M., & Pearson, C. M. (1999). "Tit for tat? The spiraling effect of incivility in the workplace". Academy of Management Review, 74, 452-471.
^ Rospenda, K. M., & Richman, J. A. (2005). Harassment and discrimination. In J. Barling, E. K. Kelloway & M. R. Frone (Eds.), Handbook of work stress (pp. 149-188). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
^ Balzer, W. K. & Gillespie, J. Z. (2007). Job satisfaction. In Rogelberg, S. G. (Ed.). Encyclopedia of industrial and organizational psychology Vol. 1 (pp. 406-413). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
^ Allen, N. J. Organizational commitment. In Rogelberg, S. G. (Ed.). Encyclopedia of industrial and organizational psychology Vol. 2 (pp. 548-551). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
^ Ashkanasy, N. M., HÃ¤rtel, C. E. J., & Daus, C. S. (2002). "Diversity and emotion: The new frontiers in organizational behavior research". Journal of Management, 28(3), 307-338.
^ Fiedler, F. E. (1978). The contingency model and the dynamics of the leadership process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 59-112). New York: Academic Press.
^ Graen, G. B., Novak, M. A., & Sommerkamp, P. (1982). "The effects of leader-member exchange and job design on productivity and satisfaction: Testing a dual attachment model". Organizational Behavior & Human Performance, 30(1), 109-131. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073%2882%2990236-7
^ Fleishman, E. A., & Harris, E. F. (1962). Patterns of leadership behavior related to employee grievances and turnover. Personnel Psychology, 15, 43-56.
^ Levy, P. E. (2006). Industrial/organizational psychology: Understanding the workplace. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
^ House, R. J., & Mitchell, T. R. (1974). Path-goal theory of leadership. Contemporary business, 3, 81-98.
^ Bass, B. M., Avolio, B. J., & Atwater, L. E. (1996). The transformational and transactional leadership of men and women. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 45, 5-34.
^ Robbins, S. P. (2009). Organizational behaviour. Cape Town, Pearson.
^ Baron, Robert A., and Greenberg, Jerald. Behavior in organizations – 9th edition. Pearson Education Inc., New Jersey: 2008. p.248
^ Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 276-299). New York: Academic Press.
^ Vroom, V. H. (1964). Work and motivation. New York: John Wiley.
^ Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370-396.
^ Greenberg, J. (1987). A taxonomy of organizational justice theories. Academy of Management Review, 12, 9–22.
^ Herzberg, F. (1968, January/February). One more time: How do you motivate employees? Harvard Business Review, 52-62.
^ McGregor, D. M. (1960). The human side of enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill.
^ Hofstede, Geert, Gert Jan Hofstede and Michael Minkov.Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. 2010
^ Organ, D. W. (1988). Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome. Lexington, MA, England: Lexington Books/D C Heath and Com.f
^ Shein, Edgar (1992). Organizational Culture and Leadership: A Dynamic View. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
^ Kotter, John and Heskett, James L. (1992) Corporate Culture and Performance, Free Press; ISBN 0-02-918467-3
^ Denison, Daniel R. (1990) Corporate culture and organizational effectiveness, Wiley.
^ Michel, W., Shoda, Y., & Smith, R. E. (2004). Introduction to personality: Toward an integration. New York: John Wiley
^ Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., Nachreiner, F., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2001). The job demands-resources model of burnout. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 499-512. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.3.499
^ Barnard, C.I. (1938), The Functions of the Executive, Cambridge: Harvard University Press
^ Greenhaus, J. H., & Beutell, N. J. (1985). Sources and conflict between work and family roles. Academy of Management Review, 10(1), 76-88.
^ Weber, Max. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated by A.M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons. London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1947.
^ Perrow, Charles (1972). Complex Organizations: A Criticial Essay. (Third edition, 1986). McGraw-Hill Publishers.
^ French, J. R. P., Jr., & Raven, B. (1959). The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in social power (pp. 150-167). Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research.
^ Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1978). The social psychology of organizations 2ed. New York City: John Wiley.
^ http://amj.aom.org/
^ http://amr.aom.org/
^ http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/Administrative-Science-Quarterly.aspx
^ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291099-050X
^ http://www.journals.elsevier.com/human-resource-management-review/
^ http://www.springer.com/psychology/personality+%26+social+psychology/journal/10869

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{original research|date=September 2010}}
-'''Organizational behavior''' (OB) is "the study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself." (p.4) <ref>Moorhead, G., & Griffin, R. W. (1995). Organizational behavior: Managing people and organizations (5th edition). Boston. Houghton Mifflin.</ref> OB can be divided into micro OB (the study of individuals in organizations), meso OB (the study of work groups), and macro OB (the study of how organizations behave).<ref>Wagner, J. A., & Hollenbeck, J. R. (2010). Organizational Behavior: Securing Competitive Advantage. New York City: Routledge.</ref>According to Miner (2006) when organizational behavior began the overlap between the well established scientific field of [[organizational psychology]] was pronounced and there was even moves to try and incorporate industrial and organizational psychology into business schools in the United States<ref> Miner, J.(2006) Organizational behavior 3: Historical orgins, theortetical foundanations and the future. Wiley.</ref>
+'''Organizational behavior''' (OB) is "the study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself." (p.4) <ref>Moorhead, G., & Griffin, R. W. (1995). Organizational behavior: Managing people and organizations (5th edition). Boston. Houghton Mifflin.</ref> OB can be divided into micro OB (the study of individuals in organizations), meso OB (the study of work groups), and macro OB (the study of how organizations behave).<ref>Wagner, J. A., & Hollenbeck, J. R. (2010). Organizational Behavior: Securing Competitive Advantage. New York City: Routledge.</ref>According to Miner (2006) when organizational behavior began the overlap between the well established scientific field of [[organizational psychology]] was pronounced and there was even moves to try and incorporate industrial and organizational psychology into business schools in the United States<ref> Miner, J.(2006) Organizational behavior 3: Historical orgins, theortetical foundanations and the future. Wiley.</ref>There is still a lot of confusion worldwide as to the difference between organizational behavior and organisational psychology.
 ==History==

v t e Aspects of organizations
Topics	Architecture Behavior Blame Capital Cells Chart Citizenship behavior Climate Commitment Communication Complexity Conflict Culture Design Development Diagnostics Dissent Ecology Effectiveness Technik Ethics Field Hierarchy Identification Intelligence Justice Lernen Life cycle Machiavellianism Narcissism Network analysis Ombudsman Patterns Perceived support Performance Psychology Resilience Retaliatory behavior Safety Space Storytelling Structure Theory Workshop
See also	History of organizations Organization studies Outline of organizational theory
See also templates Aspects of corporations Aspects of jobs Aspects of occupations Aspects of workplaces