Chapter One–An Overview of Organizational BehaviorOverviewManagers strive to make their organizations as effective and successful as possible. To do this they relyon assets such as financial reserves and earnings, technology and equipment, rawmaterials, information,and operating systems and processes. At the center of everything are the employees who work for theorganization. It is usually their talent, effort, skill, and ability that differentiates effective from lesseffective organizations. It is critical, then, that managers understand how the behaviors of their employeesimpact organizational effectiveness. In general, managers work to enhance employee performancebehaviors, commitment and engagement, and citizenship behaviors and to minimize various dysfunctionalbehaviors. A number of environmental, individual, group and team, leadership, and organizationalcharacteristics can make the manager’s work easier or more difficult depending on how well theyunderstand organizational behavior.This model will be more fully developed in Chapter 1 and will serveas a roadmap for your study of organizational behavior throughout this book.Regardless of their size, scope, or location, all organizations have at least one thing in common—they arecomprised of people.It is these people who make decisions about the strategic direction of a firm, it isthey who acquire the resources the firm uses to create new products, and it is they who sell thoseproducts. No matter how effectivea manager might be, all organizational successes—and failures—arethe result of the behaviors of many people. Indeed, no manager can succeed without the assistanceofothers.This book is about those people. It is also about the organization itself and the managers who operate it.Together, the study of organizations and the study of the people who work in them constitute the field oforganizational behavior. Our starting pointin exploring this field begins with a more detailed discussionof itThe primary purpose of this chapter is to introduce the field of organizational behavior. The chapterbegins by defining organizational behavior as the study of human behavior in organizational settings, theinterface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself. The four functionsthat make up the manager’s job—planning, organizing, leading, and controlling—are discussed. Then thechapter explores the various skills—technical, interpersonal, conceptual, and diagnostic—managers mustapply in organizations.The chapter then discusses human resource management. The strategic context oforganization behavior is discussed, including maintaining a competitive advantage, sources ofcompetitive advantage and types of business strategies. The next section providessome historical contexton organizational behavior, looking at scientific management, Hawthorne effect and the human relationsmovement.The chapter continuesby defining a system and systems perspective, the situationalperspective, and interactionalism. The chapter continuesby examining the outcomes—individual, groupand team, and organization—that are important for organizational effectiveness, including the scientificmethod and meta-analysis. The chapter concludes with a preview of the remaining text.Learning OutcomesAfterstudying this chapter, students should be able to:1.Define organizational behavior and describe how it impacts both personal and organizationalsuccess.Preview Mode
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