Organizational Behavior
Chapter 7
Decision making and creativity
Decision making: the conscious process of making choices among alternatives with the intention of moving toward some desired state of affairs.
Rational choice decision making selects the best alternative by calculating the probability that various outcomes will occur from the choices and the expected satisfaction from each of those outcomes.
Rely primarily on two pieces of information:
Rational choice decision-making process
Steps:
Programmed decisions: follow standard operating procedures.
They have been resolved in the past, so the optimal solution has already been identified and documented.
Non-programmed decisions: require all steps in he decision model because the problems are new, complex, or ill-defined.
Problems with problem identification
Five of the most widely recognized problems:
Solution-focused problems
Some decision makers describe the problems as a veiled solution.
They fail to fully diagnose the underlying causes that need to be addressed.
Decisive leadership
Many leaders announce problems or opportunities before having a change to logically asses the situation. The result is often a misguided effort to solve an ill-defined problem or resources wasted on a poorly identified opportunity.
Stakeholder framing
Stakeholders provide (or hide) information in ways that makes the decision maker see the situation as a problem, opportunity, or steady sailing.
Perceptual defense
People sometimes fail to become aware of problems because they block out bad news as a coping mechanism.
Mental models
Decision makers are victims of their own problem framing due to existing mental models.
Mental models are visual or relational images in our mind of the external world.
Identifying problems and opportunities more effectively
One way to improve the process is by becoming aware of the five problem identification biases.
Another way is to create a norm of ‘divine discontent’. Decision makers with this mindset are never satisfied with current conditions, so they more actively search for problems and opportunities.
Or discussing the situation with colleagues and clients.
Rational choice paradigm assumptions | Observations from organizational behavior |
Goals are clear, compatible and agreed upon | Goals are ambiguous, are in conflict and lack full support |
Decision makers can calculate all alternatives and their outcomes | Decision makers have limited information-processing abilities |
Decision makers evaluate all alternatives simultaneously | Decision makers evaluate alternatives sequentially |
Decision makes use absolute standards to evaluate alternatives | Decision makers evaluate alternatives against an implicit favorite |
Decision makers use factual information to choose alternatives | Decision makers process perceptually distorted information |
Decision makers choose the alternative with the highest payoff | Decision makers choose the alternative that is good enough (satisfying) |
Bounded rationality: the view that people are bounded in their decision-making capabilities. Including:
Additional flaws are overlooked by bounded rationality.
Problems with information processing
People evaluate only a few alternatives and only some of the main outcomes of those alternatives.
Implicit favorite: a preferred alternative that the decision makes uses repeatedly as a comparison with other choices.
Sometimes, decision makers aren’t even aware of this favoritism.
Confirmation bias
Humans need to minimize cognitive dissonance.
Biased decision heuristics
Three of the most widely studies heuristic biases:
Clustering illusion: the tendency to see patterns from a small sample of events when those events are, in fact, random.
Problems with maximization
Satisficing: selecting an alternative that is satisfactory or ‘good enough’ rather than the alternative with the highest value.
Maximizing decision makes run into trouble where there are many alternatives, those alternatives have many features, and the quality of those features for each alternative is ambiguous.
When presented wit ha large number of choices, people often choose a strategy that is less cognitively challenging, they don’t choose at all.
Evaluating opportunities
Decision makers do not evaluate several alternatives when they find an opportunity.
An opportunity is usually experienced as an exciting and rare revelation, so decision makers often tend to have an emotional attachment to the opportunity.
Emotions and making choices
It is impossible for humans to make perfectly rational decisions.
The rational choice view completely ignores the effect of emotions in human decision making.
Emotions form early preferences
Our brain very quickly attaches specific emotions to information about each alternative, and our preferred alternative is strongly influences by those initial emotional markers.
Logical analysis also influences with alternative to choose, but it requires strong logical evident to change our initial preferences.
Even logical analysis depends on emotions to sway our decision.
Information produced from logical analysis is tagged with emotional markers that then motivate us to choose or avoid a particular alternative.
Emotions change the decision evaluation process
Mood and specific emotions influence the process of evaluating alternatives.
We pay more attention to details when in a negative mood. In a positive mood, we rely more on a programmed decision routine.
Emotions shape how we evaluate information, not just which choice we select.
Emotions serve as information when we evaluate alternatives
We listen to our emotions to gain guidance when making decisions.
Most emotional experiences remain below the level of conscious awareness, but people actively try to be more sensitive to these subtle emotions when making a decision.
Intuition and making choices
Intuition: the ability to know when a problem or opportunity exists and to select the best course of action without conscious reasoning.
Some people rely more on intuition whereas others rely more on logical analysis when making decisions. But they never completely replace each other.
Intuition is both an emotional and a rapid nonconscious analytic process.
The gut feelings we experience are emotional signals that have enough intensity to make us consciously aware of them.
All gut feelings are emotional signals, but not all emotional signals are intuition.
Intuition involves rapidly comparing our observations with deeply held patterns learned trough experience. They are mental models. When a template fits or doesn’t fit the current situation, emotions are produced that motivate us to act.
Intuition signals that a problem or opportunity exist long before conscious rational analysis has occurred.
Intuition also relies on action scrips, programmed decision routines that speed up our response to pattern matches or mistakes.
Action scrips are generic, so we consciously adapt them to the specific situation.
Making choices more effectively.
Decision makers aren’t completely honest with themselves when evaluating the effectiveness of their decisions.
Postdecisional justification
Decision makers ignore or under-emphasize negative outcomes of the choice they make and overemphasize new information about its positive features.
Escalation of commitment
Escalation of commitment: The tendency to repeat an apparently bad decision or allocate more resources to a failing course of action.
Self-justification effect
People try to convey a positive public image of themselves.
Self-justification in decision making involves appearing to be rational and competent.
Self-enhancement effect
Self-enhancement: a person’s inherent motivation to have a positive self-concept.
Increases the risk of escalation of commitment.
When presented with evidence that a project is in trouble, the self-enhancement process biases our interpretation of the information as a temporary aberration from a otherwise positive trend line.
Mostly nonconsciously.
Prospect theory effect
A natural tendency to feel more dissatisfaction from losing a particular amount than satisfaction from gaining an equal amount.
Motivates us to avoid losses, which typically occurs by taking the risk of investing more in that losing project.
Escalation of commitment is the less painful option at the time.
Suck costs effect
The value of resources already invested in the decision.
People inherently feel motivate to invest more resources in projects that have sunk costs.
A variation is time investment.
Sunk costs can take the form of closing costs, the financial or nonfinancial penalties associated with shutting down a project.
Escalation of commitment is usually framed as poor decision making, but persistence may be the better choice under some circumstances.
Evaluating decision outcomes more effectively
Creativity: the development of original ideas that make a socially recognized contribution.
The creative process
Stages:
Characteristics of creative people
Organizational conditions supporting creativity
Activities that encourage creativity
Cornerstones of creativity in organizations:
Four types of creativity-building activities
Design thinking
A human-centered, solution-focused creative process that applies both intuition and analytical thinking to clarify problems and generate innovative solutions.
Four rules:
Employee involvement: the degree to which employees influence how their work is organized and carried out.
Also called participative management.
Has become a natural process in every organization, but the level of involvement varies with the situation.
Low level involvement occurs where employees are individually asked for specific information but the problem is not described to them.
Benefits of employee involvement
Employee involvement potentially improves decision-making quality and commitment.
It improves the identification of problems and opportunities.
Can potentially improve the number and quality of solutions generated.
Under specific conditions, it improves the evaluation of alternatives.
Involvement tends to strengthen employee commitment to the decision.
Contingencies of employee involvement
There is an optimal level of employee involvement, and that ideal level depends on the situation.
Four contingencies:
Introduction to the filed of Organizational behavioral - summary of chapter 1 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)
Organizational Behavior
Chapter 1
Introduction to the filed of Organizational behavioral
Organizational behavior (OB): the study of what people think, feel, and do in and around organizations.
They study this topic at multiple levels of analysis:
Organizations: groups of people who work interdependently toward some purpose.
Collective entities. Humans who interact with each other in an organized way.
Requires some minimal level of:
Members have a collective sense of purpose. This purpose isn’t always well defined and agreed on.
Historical foundation s of organizational behavior
OB emerged as a distinct field throughout the 1940s.
During that decade, a few researchers began describing their research as organizational.
Experts on other fields have been studying organizations for many centuries.
Why study organizational behavior?
Comprehend and predict workplace events
The field of organizational behavior uses scientific research to discover systematic relationships, which give us a valuable foundation for comprehending organizational life.
It helps us predict and anticipate future events so we can get along with others, achieve our goals, and minimize unnecessary career risks.
Adopt more accurate personal theories
Influence organizational events
Organizations are deeply affected by the external environment. They need to maintain a good organization-environment fit by anticipating and adjusting to changes in society.
Technological change
Technological change has always been a disruptive force in organizations, as well as in society.
Innovations dramatically boost productivity, but also usually displace employees and render obsolete entire occupational groups.
Not even top-level executives are immune to the effects of these transformational innovations.
Other technologies potentially improve productivity but more profoundly alter our relationships and patterns of behavior with coworkers, clients, and suppliers.
Other technologies aim to improve health and well-being.
Information technology is one of the most significant forms of technological change in recent times.
Some OB experts argue that information technology gives employees a stronger voice through direct communication with executives and broader distribution of their opinions to coworkers and beyond.
It also created challenges.
At a macro level, information technology has reconfigured entire organizations by integrating suppliers and other external entities into the transformation process.
Eventually, technology may render organizations less
.....read more Individual behavior, personality and values - summary of chapter 2 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 2
Individual behavior, personality and values
For most of the past century, experts have investigated the direct predictions of individual behavior and performance.
Person: individual characteristics
Situation: external influences on the individuals behavior
Another formula
Performance = ability X motivation
The skill-and-will model
AMO model
Ability-motivation-opportunity
Limited interpretation of the situation
MARS
Four variables
All factors critical influences on an individual’s voluntary behavior and performance
These are direct predictors of behavior on the workplace.
Employee motivation
Motivation: the forces within a person that affect his or her direction, intensity, and persistence of voluntary behavior.
Direction refers to the path along which people steer their effort. Motivation is goal-directed.
Intensity is the amount of effort allocated with the goal.
Persistence refers to the length of time that the individual continues to exert effort toward an objective. Employees sustain their effort until they reach their goal or give up beforehand.
Ability
The natural aptitudes and learned capabilities required to successfully complete a task.
Aptitudes are the natural talents.
Learned capabilities are the physical and mental skills and knowledge you have acquired. They tend to wane over time when not used.
Aptitudes and learned capabilities are the main elements of competencies.
Role perceptions
The degree to which a person understands the job duties assigned to or expected of him or her.
Role clarity exists in three forms:
Situational factors
Individual behavior and performance depend on the situation.
Two main influences:
Task performance
The individual’s voluntary goal-directed behaviors that contribute to organizational objectives.
Three types:
Perceiving ourselves and others in organizations - summary of chapter 3 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 3
Perceiving ourselves and others in organizations
Self-concept: an individual’s self-beliefs and self-evaluations.
Defined at three levels:
Specifically, we view ourselves in terms of our personal traits (individual), connections to friends and coworkers (relational)and memberships in entities (collective).
Self-concept complexity, consistency and clarity
An individual’s self-concept can be described by three characteristics
Effects of self-concept characteristics on well-being and behavior
People tend to have better psychological well-being when they have fairly distinct multiple selves (complexity), that are well established (clarity) and require similar personal attributes that are compatible with the individual’s character (consistency).
Self-concept complexity protects our self-esteem when some roles are threatened or damaged.
People tend to have better well-being when their multiple selves are in harmony with each other with the individual’s personality and values.
Also increases with clarity.
Self-concept has opposing effects on individual behavior and performance.
Employees with complex identities tend to have more adaptive decision making and performance.
Self-concept complexity often produces more diverse social networks.
Highly complex self-concepts require more effort to maintain and juggle, which can be stressful.
Self-concept clarity tends to improve performance and its considered vital for leadership roles.
Provides a clearer path forward.
Feel less threatened by interpersonal conflict.
But: inflexibility
Self-enhancement
A person’s inherent motivation to have a positive self-concept (and to others perceive him or her favorably) such as being competent, attractive, lucky, ethical and important.
Observed in many ways
Workplace emotions, attitudes, and stress - summary of chapter 4 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 4
Workplace emotions, attitudes, and stress
Emotions influence almost everything we do in the workplace.
Often occur before cognitive processes and, consequently influence them.
Emotions: physiological, behavioral, and psychological episodes experienced toward an object, person, or event that create a state of readiness.
Quite short.
Directed toward someone or something.
Emotions are experiences, they represent changes in our physiological state, psychological state and behavior.
Most of these emotional reactions are subtle, they occur without our awareness.
Moods are not directed towards anything in particular and tend to be long-term emotional states.
Types of emotions
All emotions have two common features.
Emotions, attitudes, and behavior
Attitudes are judgments, whereas emotions are experiences.
We experience emotions very briefly, whereas our attitude towards something or someone is more stable over time.
Beliefs
These are your established perceptions about the attitude object, what you believe to be true.
Each of these beliefs also has a valence, you have a positive or negative feeling about each belief.
Feelings
Represent your conscious positive or negative evaluations of the attitude object.
Most of the time, your beliefs about something or someone affect your feelings, but the reverse sometimes occurs. Your feelings about something can cause you to change your feelings about specific beliefs regarding that target.
Behavioral intentions
Your motivation to engage in a particular behavior regarding the attitude object.
Attitude-behavior contingencies
How emotions influence attitudes and behavior
Our brain tags incoming sensory information with emotional markers based on a quick and imprecise evaluation of whether that information supports or threatens our innate drives.
They are automatic and non-conscious.
The experienced emotions influence our feelings about the attitude object.
Generating positive emotions at work
Cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance: an emotional experience caused by a perception that our beliefs, feelings, and behavior are incongruent with one another.
Foundations of employee motivation- summary of chapter 5 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 5
Foundations of employee motivation
Motivation: the forces within a person that affect his or her direction, intensity and persistence of voluntary behavior.
Employee engagement: individual emotional and cognitive motivation, particularly a focused, intense, persistent, and purposive effort toward work-related goals.
An emotional involvement in, commitment to, and satisfaction with the work.
Also high level of absorption in the work and self-efficacy.
Most employees aren’t very engaged.
Actively disengaged employees tend to be disruptive at work, not just disconnected from work.
Drives: hardwired characteristics of the brain that correct deficiencies or maintain an internal equilibrium by producing emotions to energize individuals. (primary needs).
Innate and universal.
The starting point of motivation because they generate emotions.
Needs: goal-directed forces that people experience.
Motivational forces of emotions channeled toward particular goals to correct deficiencies or imbalances.
The emotions we eventually become conscious aware of.
Drives and emotions → needs → decisions and behavior
Individual differences in needs
Everyone has the same drives.
People develop different intensities of needs in a particular situation.
Self-concepts, social norms and past experience amplify or suppress emotions, thereby resulting in stronger or weaker needs.
Maslow’s needs hierarchy theory
A motivation theory of needs arranged in a hierarchy, whereby people are motivated to fulfill a higher need as a lower one becomes gratified.
Five categories, which Maslow called primary needs.
And
Two drives that did not fit within the hierarchy
Humans are motivated by several primary needs (drives) at the same time, but the strongest source of motivation is the lowest unsatisfied need.
But people have an ongoing need for self-actualization, it is never really fulfilled.
It is a growth need, it continues to develop even when temporarily satiated.
But
Maslow’s need hierarchy theory has been dismissed by most motivation experts.
Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation: motivation controlled by the individual and experienced from the activity itself.
Applied Performance Practices- summary of chapter 6 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 6
Applied Performance Practices
Money is much more than an object of compensation for an employee’s contribution to organizational objectives.
Money relates to our needs and our self-concept.
It generates a variety of emotions.
Money is a symbol of achievement and status, a motivator, and an influence on our propensity to make ethical or risky decisions.
To some extent, the influence of money on human thoughts and behavior occurs nonconsiously.
The meaning of money varies considerably form one person to the next.
The meaning and effects of money differ between men and women.
The meaning of money varies across cultures.
The motivational effect of money is due more to its symbolic value than to what it can buy.
Membership- and seniority-based rewards
Sometimes called pay for pulse.
Sample rewards | Advantages | Disadvantages |
Fixed pay | May attract applicants | Doesn’t directly motivate performance |
Most employee benefits | Minimized stress of insecurity | May discourage poor performers from leaving |
Paid time off | Reduces turnover | ‘golden handcuffs’ may undermine performance |
Job status-based rewards
Companies measure job worth through job evaluation.
Job evaluation: systematically rating the worth of jobs within an organization by measuring the required skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.
Sample rewards | Advantages | Disadvantages |
Promotion-based pay increase | Tries to maintain internal equity |
Decision making and creativity- summary of chapter 7 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 7
Decision making and creativity
Decision making: the conscious process of making choices among alternatives with the intention of moving toward some desired state of affairs.
Rational choice decision making selects the best alternative by calculating the probability that various outcomes will occur from the choices and the expected satisfaction from each of those outcomes.
Rely primarily on two pieces of information:
Rational choice decision-making process
Steps:
Programmed decisions: follow standard operating procedures.
They have been resolved in the past, so the optimal solution has already been identified and documented.
Non-programmed decisions: require all steps in he decision model because the problems are new, complex, or ill-defined.
Problems with problem identification
Five of the most widely recognized problems:
Solution-focused problems
Some decision makers describe the problems as a veiled solution.
They fail to fully diagnose the underlying causes that need to be addressed.
Decisive leadership
Many leaders announce problems or opportunities before having a change to logically asses the situation. The result is often a misguided effort to solve an ill-defined problem or resources wasted on a poorly identified opportunity.
Stakeholder framing
Stakeholders provide (or hide) information in ways that makes the decision maker see the situation as a problem, opportunity, or steady sailing.
Perceptual defense
People sometimes fail to become aware of problems because they block out bad news as a coping mechanism.
Mental models
Decision makers are victims of their own problem framing due to existing mental models.
Mental models are visual or relational images in our mind of the external world.
Identifying problems and opportunities more effectively
One way to improve the process is by becoming aware of the five problem identification biases.
Another way is to create a norm of ‘divine discontent’. Decision makers with this mindset are never satisfied with current conditions, so they more actively search for problems and opportunities.
Or discussing the situation with colleagues and clients.
Team dynamics - summary of chapter 8 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 8
Team dynamics
Teams: groups of two or more people who interact with and influence each other, are mutually accountable for achieving common goals associated with organizational objectives, and perceive themselves as a social entity within an organization.
All teams exist to fulfill some purpose.
Team members are held together by their interdependence and need for collaboration to achieve common goals.
Team members influence each other.
A team exist when it members perceive themselves as a team.
Each type of team in an organization can be distinguished by three characteristics:
Informal groups
Why do informal groups exist?
Informal groups and organizational outcomes
Informal groups potentially minimize employee stress. This improves employee well-being.
Informal groups are the backbone of social networks.
In many situations, people are potentially more motivated when working in teams than when working alone.
The challenges of teams
Process losses: resources (including time and energy) expended toward team development and maintenance rather than the task.
Amplified when more people are added or replace others on the team.
Brooks’s law: the principle that adding more people to a late software project only makes it later.
Social loafing
Social loafing: the problem that occurs when people exert less effort (and usually perform at a lower level) when working in teams than when working alone.
A motivational process loss.
More pervasive when:
Communicating in teams and organizations - summary of chapter 9 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 9
Communicating in teams and organizations
Communication: the process by which information is transmitted and understood between two or more people.
Communication flows through one or more channels (also called media) between the sender and receiver.
The sender forms a message and encodes it.
The encoded message is transmitted to the intended receiver.
The receiver senses and decodes the incoming message into something meaningful.
In most situations, the sender looks for evidence that the other person received and understood the transmitted message.
Communication is not a free-flowing conduit, the transmission of meaning from one person to another is hampered by noise.
Influences on effective encoding and decoding
Effective communication depends on the sender’s and receiver’s ability, motivation, role clarity, and situational support to efficiently and accurately encode and decode information.
Four main factors influence the effectiveness of the encoding-decoding process
Two main types of channels
Problems with email and other digital message channels
Four top complaints:
Workplace communication through social media
Social media are more conversational and reciprocally interactive between sender and receiver, resulting in a sense of community.
Each type of social media serves a unique combination of functions.
Enterprise social media can improve knowledge sharing and socializing among employees under some conditions.
Power and influence in the workplace - summary of chapter 10 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 10
Power and influence in the workplace
Power: the capacity of a person, team or organization to influence others.
Managers typically have more power, whereas employees have weaker countervailing power.
Sometimes employees have more power than their bosses.
Power is derived from four sources:
Four contingencies of power:
Tree sources of power originate mostly form the power holder’s formal position or informal role
Two other sources of power originate mainly from the power holder’s own characteristics
Legitimate power
Legitimate power: an agreement among organizational members that people in certain roles can request certain behaviors of others.
This perceived right or obligation originates from formal job descriptions as well as informal rules of conduct.
Legitimate power has restrictions.
It gives the power holds only the right to ask others to perform a limited domain of behaviors. This domain is the zone of indifference.
The size of the zone of indifference increases with the level of trust in the power holder.
Some values and personality traits also make people more obedient to authority.
The organization’s culture represents another influence on the willingness of employees to follow orders.
Norm of reciprocity: a felt obligation and social expectation of helping or otherwise giving something of value to someone who has already helped or given something of value to you.
It is a form of legitimate power.
Legitimate power through information control
A particularly potent form of legitimate power occurs where people have the right to control information that others receive.
Conflict and negotiation in the workplace - summary of chapter 11 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 11
Conflict and negotiation in the workplace
Conflict: the process in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party.
Conflict is ultimately based on perceptions. It exists whenever one party believes that another might obstruct its efforts, regardless of whether the other party actually intends to do so.
Is conflict good or bad?
Conflict can have negative consequences under some circumstances:
Benefits of conflict
Optimal conflict perspective: organizations are most effective when employees experience some level of conflict, but becomes less effective with high levels of conflict.
There are various types of conflicts with different consequences.
The two dominant types are:
Separating task form relationship conflict
Separating task form relationship conflict is not easy.
Three conditions potentially minimize the level of relationship conflict during task conflict episodes:
Sources of conflict.
At some
Leadership in organizational settings- summary of chapter 12 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 12
Leadership in organizational settings
Leadership: influencing, motivating, and enabling others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members.
Shared leadership
Shared leadership: the view that leadership is a role, not a position assigned to one person. Consequently, people within the team and organization lead each other.
Shared leadership typically supplements formal leadership. Employees lead along with the formal manager, rather than replace the manager.
Shared leadership flourishes in organizations where the formal leaders are willing to delegate power and encourage employees to take initiative and risks without fear of failure. (a learning orientation culture).
Also collaborative rather than competitive.
The most popular leadership perspective is transformational leadership.
Transformational leadership: a leadership that explains how leaders change teams or organizations by creating, communicating, and modeling a vision for the organization or work unit and inspiring employees to strive for that vision.
Four elements:
Develop and communicate a strategic vision
The heart of transformational leadership is a strategic vision.
Vision: a positive image or model of the future that energizes and unifies employees.
Sometimes this vision is created by the leader, at other times it is formed by employees or other stakeholders and then adopted and championed by the formal leader.
An effective strategic vision has several identifiable features:
A strategic vision is necessarily abstract for two reasons:
A strategic vision’s effectiveness depends on how leaders convey it to followers and other stakeholders.
Designing organizational structures - summary of chapter 13 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 13
Designing organizational structures
Organizational structure: the division of labor as well as the patterns of coordination, communication, workflow, ad formal power that direct organizational activities.
Two fundamental processes in organizational structure:
Four main elements of organizational structure:
Contingencies of organizational design:
Division of labor
Division of labor: the subdivision of work into separate jobs assigned to different people.
Subdivided work leads to job specialization.
Job specialization increases work efficiency.
Coordination of work activities
When people divide work among themselves, they require coordinating mechanisms to ensure that everyone works in concert.
Coordination is so closely connected to division of labor that the optimal level of specialization is limited by the feasibility of coordinating the work. An organization’s ability to divide work among people depends on how well those people can coordinate each other.
Coordination tends to become more expensive and difficult as the division of labor increases.
Coordinating mechanisms:
Vital in nonroutine and ambiguous situations.
Liaison roles, expected to communicate and share information with coworkers in other work units. Integrator roles, people are responsible for coordinating a work process by encouraging employees in each work unit to share information and informally coordinate work activities.
Form of coordination | Description | Subtypes/ strategies |
Informal communication | Sharing information on mutual tasks. Forming common mental models to synchronize work activities | Direct communication Liaison roles Integrator roles Temporary teams |
Formal hierarchy | Assigning legitimate power to individuals, who then use this power to direct work processes and allocate resources | Direct supervision Formal communication channels |
Standardization | Creating routine patterns of behavior or output | Standardized skills Standardized processes Standardized output |
Organizational culture- summary of chapter 14 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 14
Organizational culture
Organizational culture: the values and assumptions shared within an organization.
Shared values and assumptions relate to each other and are associated with artifacts.
Values: stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences for outcomes or courses of action in a variety of situations. Conscious perceptions about what is good or bad, right or wrong.
Shared values: values that people within the organization or wok unit have in common and place neat the top of their hierarchy of values.
Shared assumptions: nonconscious, taken-for-granted perceptions or ideal prototypes of behavior that are considered the correct way to think and act toward problems and opportunities.
Espoused versus enacted values
Espoused values: the values that corporate leaders hope will eventually become the organization’s culture, or at least the values they want others to believe guide the organization’s decisions and actions.
Usually socially desirable.
Enacted values: when they actually guide and influence decisions and behavior. Values put into practice.
Content of organizational culture
Organizations differ in the relative ordering of shared values. (cultural content).
Problems
In reality, an organizational culture is typically blurry and fragmented.
Organizational subcultures
When discussing organizational culture, we are really referring to the dominant culture.
Dominant culture: the values and assumptions shared most consistently and widely by the organization’s members.
Organizations are composed of subcultures, located throughout their various divisions, geographic regions, and occupational groups.
Some subcultures enhance the dominant culture by espousing parallel assumptions and values.
Others differ from, but do not conflict the dominant culture.
Countercultures embrace values or assumptions that directly oppose the organization’s dominant culture.
It is also possible that some organizations consist of subcultures with no decipherable dominant culture at all.
Subcultures, particularly countercultures, potentially create conflict and dissension among employees.
But they also serve two important functions:
Artifacts: the observable symbols and signs of an organization’s culture.
.....read more Organizational changes - summary of chapter 15 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)Organizational Behavior
Chapter 15
Organizational changes
Organizations operate as open systems that need to keep pace with ongoing changes in their external environment.
Successful organizations monitor their environments and take appropriate steps to maintain a compatible fit with new external conditions.
Employees in successful companies embrace change as an integral part of organizational life.
Force field analysis: Kurt Lewin’s model of systemwide change that helps change agents diagnose the forces that drive and restrain proposed organizational change.
Stability occurs when the driving and restraining forces are roughly in equilibrium, they are of approximately equal strength in opposite directions.
Resistance to change takes many forms, ranging from over work stoppages to subtle attempts to continue the old ways.
Subtle resistance is more common than overt resistance.
Resistance is a common and natural human response.
Resistance is a form of conflict, but change agents unfortunately sometimes interpret that disagreement as relationship conflict.
Perversely, the change agent’s conflict-oriented response to resistance tends to escalate the conflict, which often generates even stronger resistance to the change initiative.
A more productive approach is to view resistance to change as task conflict.
From the task conflict perspective, resistance is a signal either that the change agent has not sufficiently prepared employees for change or that the change initiative should be altered or improved.
Employees might not feel sufficiently strong urgency to change, or they might feel the change strategy is ill-conceived.
Or they lack confidence to change or believe that change will make them worse of than the current situation.
Resistance is also a form of voice, so discussion potentially improves procedural justice through voice, as well as decision making through involvement.
By redirecting initial forms of resistance into constructive conversations, change agents can increase employee
Introduction to organisational psychologyIn this bundle, summaries are bundled concerning the first year psychology course organisational psychology.
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Organisational behavior Talla Gull contributed on 19-04-2020 06:51
im am very interested to be part and parasol of this. it help me more than i have learned .
thankyou
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