1. What is Organizational Behavior?
Chapter 1
What is Organizational Behavior?

2. Learning Objectives
Demonstrate the importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace.
Describe the manager’s functions, roles, and skills.
Define organizational behavior (OB).
Show the value to OB of systematic study.
Identify the major behavioral science disciplines that contribute to OB.
Demonstrate why there are few absolutes in OB.
Identify the challenges and opportunities managers have in applying OB concepts.
Compare the three levels of analysis in this book’s OB model.

3. The Importance of Interpersonal Skills
What is interpersonal skills?
Why it is needed?
It is very important but not enough … why?

4. What Managers Do? Manager Organization Management Functions Planning
They get things done through other people
Organization
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.
Management Functions
Planning
Organizing
Leading
Controlling

5. What Managers Do? Management Roles Interpersonal Roles
Figurehead
Leader
Liason
Informational Roles
Monitor
Disseminator
Spokesperson
Decisional Roles
Entrepreneur
Disturbance Handler
Resource Allocator
Negotiator

6. What Managers Do? Management Skills Technical Skills Human Skills
The ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise
Human Skills
The ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually and in groups
Conceptual Skills
The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations

7. Effective Versus Successful Managerial Activities
What Managers Do?
Effective Versus Successful Managerial Activities

8. Enter Organizational Behavior
A field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness

9. Complementing Intuition with Systematic Study
Looking at relationships, attempting to attribute causes and effects, and drawing conclusions based on scientific evidence
Evidence Based Management
Basing managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence
Intuition
A gut feeling not necessarily supported by research

10. Disciplines that Contribute to the OB Field
Psychology
The science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals
Social Psychology
An area within psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology and that focuses on the influence of people on one another
Sociology
The study of people in relation to their social environment or culture
Anthropology
The study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities

11. There are Few Absolutes in OB
Why there are few absolutes in OB?
Because of situational factors that make the main relationship between two variables change … e.g., the relationship may hold for one condition but not another
Contingency Variables
Situational Factors
Variable that moderate the relationship between two or more other variables

12. Challenges and Opportunities for OB1
Responding to Globalization 2
Managing Workforce Diversity 3
Improving Quality and Productivity 4
Improving Customer Service 5
Improving People Skills 6
Stimulating Innovation and Change 7
Coping with “Temporariness” 8
Working in Networked Organizations 9
Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts 10
Creating a Positive Work Environment 11
Improving Ethical Behavior

13. Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model
A model
Abstraction of reality, or a simplified representation of some real-world phenomenon

14. Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model
The Independent Variables (X)
The Dependent Variables (Y)
The presumed cause of the change in the dependent variable (Y)
This is the variable that OB researchers manipulate to observe the changes in Y
This is the response to X (the independent variable)
It is what the OB researchers want to predict or explain
The interesting variable!
X → Y → Predictive Ability

15. Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model
The Dependent Variables
The Independent Variables
Productivity
Individual – Level Variables
Absenteeism
Turnover
Group – Level Variables
Deviant Workplace Behavior
Organizational Citizenship Behavior
Organization System – Level Variables
Job Satisfaction

16. Independent Variables (X) Dependent Variables (Y)
Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model Toward A contingency OB Model
Independent Variables (X)
Dependent Variables (Y)
Three Levels