Organizational behavior (OB) refers to the study of individuals and their behavior at work. Organizational behavior refers to a multidisciplinary and multilevel research field that finds its origins in applied psychology, cultural anthropology, communication and sociology. In this summary, all areas are considered, yet there is a focus on applied social psychology. Applied psychology is the study of how people interact in groups. In addition, research in the areas of sociology and anthropology help us understand organizational culture and leading change. 

When and how did the study of organizational behavior emerge?

OB is a relatively young research field that originated in the human relations movement ignited by the Hawthorne studies, which led to a focus on the role of human behavior in organizations. The Hawthorne studies refer to two studies that were conducted by Elton Mayo between 1927 and 1932. In his first study, he experimented with the effects of lighting in power plants on worker productivity. Surprisingly, they found that productivity increased rather than decreased despite the lights being dimmed. The researchers decided to interview the workers. They learned that the workers appreciated the attention of the research team and felt that they were receiving special treatment. Productivity declined after the researchers left the plant. This is now called the Hawthorne effect, referring to a positive response in attitude and performance when researchers pay attention to a particular group of workers. 

The second study aimed to investigate a new incentive system. However, instead of the incentive system increasing workers' production, the social pressure from peers took over.
Peer pressure had far more impact on the productivity of the workers than salary increases. Workers formed small groups and set informal standards for production, requiring coworkers to reduce their production, so pay was more equal among the group members.

The researchers of the Hawthorne studies concluded that the human element in organizations is more important than previously thought. The researchers found that workers want attention. Based on these Hawthorne studies, the human relations movement followed and OB emerged as a distinct field of studies in the 1950s. In 1957 the term organizational behavior first appeared in a book by Chris Argyris. 

How to go from theory to practice?

OB is an applied science. First, the goals of science are as follows:

1. Description: what does the process look like?
2. Prediction: will the process occur again? And if so, when?
3. Explanation: why is it happening?

This chapter discusses the role that emotions and moods play in the workplace. In early OB literature, emotions and moods were largely ignored. It was assumed that employees left their feelings at home when they came to work. However, in the mid-1980's and the 1990s, organizational researchers began examining the effects of emotions and moods. The study of emotions and moods has revolutionized thinking about OB. In fact, by 2003, scholars referred to this research as the affective revolution in OB. Nowadays, it is argued that emotions and mood play an important role in the workplace. The remainder of this chapter focuses on how this is the case.

How are emotions and mood related?

Affect is defined as the range of feelings that employees experience at work. Affect consists of both emotions and mood. You can visualize this as a triangle, with affect on top and emotions and mood at the bottom. An arrow is drawn from affect to emotions and from affect to mood. State affect refers to feelings that are experienced in the short term. They fluctuate over time. In contrast, trait affect refers to stable individual differences. Emotions are triggered by specific events. They are short, but intense enough to disrupt a person's thinking. Emotions last only seconds or minutes. Some emotions are internal to a person, such as pride or love, whereas other emotions emerge in relationship with others, such as shame and guilt. Moods, on the other hand, are general feeling states that are not connected to a specific event. In addition, they are not intense enough to disrupt regular thought patterns or work. Emotions are more fleeting than moods. A felt emotion, for instance anger at your boss, may pass. Emotions are directed at another person or situation. Obviously, emotions and moods are related. For instance, being in a good mood can result in the experience of feeling happy (an emotion). 

What are the characteristics of the Affective Events Theory?

The Affective Events Theory (AET) provides a useful framework for the material that is covered in this chapter. The work environment, events, personality, and moods combine to evoke emotional responses, which can be both positive and negative. The AET can be visualized as follows:

A review of AET resulted in the following statements of what we know about affective events at work:

• Satisfaction is not an emotion.
• Events cause emotions.
• Affect-driven behaviors are different from judgment-driven behaviors.
• Affective experiences change over time.

People in organizations may see things differently, because they make perceptual errors. Perceptual errors are flaws in perception due to mental shortcuts that people make to simplify information that is processed. There errors have several implications on the workplace. They effect interpretations of the behavior of leaders and coworkers, they effect how job applicants are seen in interviews and they effect performance appraisals. Therefore, leaders need to be aware of these perceptual biases and guard against them.

What are the most studied biases in workplace studies?

The most studied biases in workplace settings can be remembered by the acronym PRACH, which stands for primacy, recency, availability, contrast and halo. Each of these will be discusses briefly below.

The primacy effect or belief perseverance refers to the first impression. It refers to the well-known statement "you never get a second chance to make a first impression". Indeed, first impressions do matter. They matter a lot. Stereotypes play an important role in these first impressions one has about for instance a job applicant. What can be done to address the primacy effect? Research has demonstrated that when people are asked to justify their decisions to others, they are more likely to process all the information that is available to them. Thus, accountability influences a person's vigilance and improves processing of all the information that is presented. Second, the leader should be willing to hit the reset button and look at a situation as if they had no prior exposure to it. 

Not only do people remember what they experience first, they also remember the most recently presented items or experiences. This is referred to as the recency effect. For instance, if you hear a long list of names, you probably forget the ones in the middle, but you will remember those at the end. In a job interview for example, it is important to end on a positive note by showing the interviewer appreciation for their time. People can however improve their short-term memory by employing control processes that affect how information is stored and retrieved. Two of those techniques are rehearsal (repetition of information) and imaging (linking verbal information to visual images).

Availability bias is a form of bias in which a person's judgement is based upon what most readily comes into a person's mind. For example, when a person hears a list of names with 19 famous women and 20 less famous men, this

Four guidelines have been proposed for leaders to use power effectively in an organization. First, recognize that every organization has varying interests. The leader needs to first diagnose the political landscape. Second, figure out what point of view various individuals and units have on issues of concern. Third, understand that to get things done, you need power, so you need to understand where power comes from and how the sources of power can be developed. Fourth, understand the strategies and influence tactics through which power is developed and used in organizations.

What are the characteristics of power?

Power is the potential of one person or one group to influence another person or group. Having power does not mean one has to actually exercise it. For instance, it is an officer's potential power to write you a ticket and not the actual behavior of writing a ticket that slows you down. Influence, on the other hand, is the exercise of power to change the behavior, attitudes and values of an individual or group. In other words, influence is the power in use.

There are five bases of power in organizations. The first three are position power, they come from a person's position in the hierarchy. The last two are personal power, they come from the personal characteristics of the person and may have no relation with one's position in the organization.

1. Coercive power: the ability to push. It may include threats. Most leaders claim to have this power, although they rarely use it.
2. Reward power: the ability to provide incentives of other things that are valued, for instance pay raises, bonuses and promotions.
3. Legitimate power: the ability to make a request and get a response due to the nature of the roles between two people. Legitimate power is based upon the structural level in the organization and/or a feeling of obligation. 
4. Expert power: the ability to influence others due to knowledge or a special skill set or expertise.
5. Referent power: the ability to influence based upon other people's identification with the individual and the desire of the follower to emulate them. Referent power is based upon liking, respect and admiration. 

Three possible reactions of followers may result from these power bases.

1. Commitment (internalization): a strong effort made and enthusiastically carries out the request. Both attitudes and behavior change.
2. Compliance: willingness to complete the request, but in an apathetic manner, putting in minimal effort. Only behavior changes.
3. Resistance: refusal to do it. No change in behavior and attitude toward the request.

Common pathways are as follows: follower engagement level

The previous chapter discussed how motivation is related to work performance. In this chapter, the topic of motivation is extended by discussing concrete motivation applications. Leaders may, for example, use the reinforcement theory by adding pleasant events (positive reinforcement) or removing unpleasant events (negative reinforcement). Both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards can be used. These may even be combined via mechanisms such as extrinsic in service of intrinsic or motivation-work cycle math. Money may be used as a reward, but only if the following guidelines are followed:

• Define and measure performance accurately.
• Make rewards contingent on performance.
• Reward employees in a time manner.
• Maintain justice in the reward system.
• Use monetary rewards.

What are the characteristics of the reinforcement theory?

The reinforcement theory (also known as operant conditioning) is based upon the law of effect: past actions that led to positive outcomes tend to be repeated, while past actions that led to negative outcomes tend to diminish. This law of effect led to the development of the reinforcement theory, in which individual personality, thoughts, and attitudes do not motivate behavior. Instead, the psychologist B.F. Skinner found two kinds of reinforcers that increase behavior. First, positive reinforcement is a favorable event or outcome presented after the behavior. For example, praise or a bonus. Second, negative reinforcement is the removal of an unpleasant event or outcome after the display of a behavior. For example, ending the daily criticism when an employee shows up for work on time.

In contrast, punishment is the presentation of an adverse event or outcome that causes a decrease (instead of an increase) in the behavior. There are two kinds of punishment. First, punishment by application is the presentation of an unpleasant event or outcome to weaken the response it follows. For example, writing a letter to an employee's file for failing to meet a deadline. Second, punishment by removal is when a pleasant event or outcome is removed after certain behavior occurs. For example, withholding praise when an employee underperforms. 

To sum up:

• Positive reinforcement = pleasant event + event is added.
• Punishment by removal (extinction) = pleasant event + event is removed.
• Punishment by application = unpleasant event + event is added.
• Negative reinforcement = unpleasant event + event is removed.

The schedules of partial reinforcement refer to how often an applied reward (or punishment) predicts learning and motivation. The schedules are based on time (interval) or the number of times the response is given by the worker (ratio). In addition, the schedule can be fixed or variable (random). These two dimensions result in the following four possible outcomes:

• Fixed

Conflict reduces team performance. However, a little bit of conflict is good. In fact, Duarte and Davies (2003) point out an optimum level of conflict, characterized by constructive debate, improved decisions and high performance. Being emotionally intelligent is critical for resolving conflict and effective negotiation. In order to do this, a leader needs to be able to see the situation from the other party's point of view. This is also known as perspective taking, defined as the cognitive process in which an individual adopts another person's view to better understand their preferences, values and needs.

What are the causes of conflict in organizations?

Conflict is defined as the process that starts when one party perceives that he is negatively effected by another party. Conflict depends on perception. It does not always line up with reality.

There are three sources of organizational conflict:

1. Substantive conflict: this occurs when people have different opinions on key issues in the organization that effect them.
2. Affective conflict: a type of conflict that engenders strong emotions, such as anger or disgust. This may be due to personality differences or arguments.
3. Process conflict: sometimes, people disagree about the course of action to pursue, or the best way to operate even after a decision has been made. Process conflict reduces team performance.

Some specific examples of where conflict in organizations may originate are personality (differences), sensitivity or hurt, differences in perception and values, differences about facts, differences about goals and priorities, differences over methods, competition for scarce resources, competition for supremacy, misunderstanding and unfulfilled expectations.

Is conflict always bad?

Conflict isn't always a bad thing. In fact, Duarte and Davies (2003) found that there is a curvilinear relationship between task conflict and performance. They pointed out an optimum level of conflict, characterized by constructive debate, improved decisions and high performance. On the other hand, too little conflict is characterized by apathy and poor performance. Too much conflict is characterized by disruption and poor performance.

What are other causes of conflict?

Task versus relationship conflict

Task conflict focuses on the importance to keep in mind that the organization's goals and ensuring that unproductive conflict is resolved before

Diversity refers to differences between individuals at work on any attribute that may evoke the perception that the other person is different from the self. Diversity poses unique challenges for organizational behavior. In fact, these differences between individuals pose a challenge for leaders who must unite their followers in the pursuit of a common goal. Leadership is not possible outside of a community that is defined by shared values and vision. Nowadays, the millennials are the largest group in the general population. Due to their numbers and impact, employers need to transition from a boomer-centric workplace to a millennial-centric workplace. 

What are the similarities and differences of surface-level and deep-level diversity?

Surface-level diversity are the demographic attributes that we typically think of when we think of diversity, because they are observable to people. Surface-level diversity refers to differences among group members in overt, biological characteristics that are typically reflected in physical features. Examples are sex, race and age. Research shows that these attributes have mixed results in the prediction of job performance and work attitude. sometimes they are related to performance and sometimes they are not.

Deep-level diversity refers to differences among the attitudes, beliefs and values of individuals. Prior studies showed that diverse groups had poor outcomes. However, recent research indicated that this finding should be interpreted with caution. This is because when deep-level diversity is considered, diversity may actually contribute positively to work group functioning and effectiveness. In fact, the values and attitudes of employees may matter more than surface characteristics. 

Finally, an interesting diversity feature is age. Different generations have been shown to have different underlying mind-sets and this may be a source of conflict at the workplace. 

How will millennials affect organizations?

Generational differences have a key impact on the organization. They affect everything, including recruiting, building teams, dealing with change, motivating, managing, and productivity. Nowadays, four generations are at the workplace. 

First, the traditionalists (born before 1943), of which most but not all are retired, are also known as veterans, the World War II generation and the silent generation. They typically spend a lifetime career with one company (build a legacy). Their career goals are security and fair rewards. They have a part-time schedule and they prefer support in maintaining a work-life balance.

Second, the boomers, born just after the

When faced with organizational change, employee reactions may vary from resistance, compliance or commitment with change. Resistance to change has been associated with negative health, including insomnia and lower well-being. Leadership makes a difference: A study of planned organizational change in a hospital system found that authentic leadership influenced the processes of unfreezing, change and refreezing (Lewin's Three-Step Model of Organizational Change). For leaders, compassion is key, which refers to noticing, feeling, and understanding the suffering of a follower. Based upon this understanding, the leader takes action to alleviate the person's suffering. Leaders should promote compassionate organizational practices such as the prevention interventions that are discussed later in this chapter.

What are the forces driving organizational change?

There are many forces that may drive organizational change, such as:

• Workforce diversity: sex, race or ethnicity, cultural differences, LGBTQ, age or generation.
• The economy: recession, government policy, rising health care costs.
• Technology: mobile devices, social media, internet, security, robotics.
• Globalization: multinational corporations, political instability, fair trade, sustainability, outsourcing, emerging markets.
• Competition: global competition, mergers and acquisitions, customer standards, time to market.
• Life-threatening events: natural disasters, terrorism, pandemics.

Why is planned organizational change necessary?

The forces for organizational change have resulted in the need for organizations to be proactive instead of reactive in reading the environment they operate in. Planned organizational change can have a number of targets, including structure, technology, processes, teams and people. 

There are four types of planned organizational change:

• Incremental and reactive: putting out small fires, solve problems on a daily basis, quick fixes to short-term concerns.
• Incremental and proactive: tweaking, anticipate and plan, improve current ways of doing things, fine tune, guided evolution.
• Radical and reactive: stop the bleeding, crisis management, industry shakeups, economic turmoil, financial shocks.
• Radical and proactive: transformation, do things fundamentally differently, change of basic assumptions, revolution. 

Planned organizational change involves four organizational subsystems: formal organization, social factors, technology and physical setting. 

What is organizational development?

Organizational development (OD) is a collection of social psychology methods that are employed to improve organizational effectiveness and the well-being of employees. Examples of organizational development interventions are survey feedback, workout, process consultation,

This chapter provides an overview of organizational structure. Organizational structure refers to the rules, relationships, communication channels, and duties that allow members to work toward shared goals. Jobs are the building blocks of organizational structure. A job is defined as "a set of task elements grouped together under one job title and designed to be performed by a single individual." To obtain the most positive outcome, social and technical aspects of jobs in organizations must be optimized. This is socio-technical system design called. This way, jobs can be designed so that people are more motivated and satisfied, as well as perform better. 

What are the different types of organizational structures? 

Once jobs are specified, employees also need to understand reporting relationships and communication. Organizational charts provide important information about the power relationships and lines of communication built into an organization's structure. The most common organizational charts are:

• Functional organization: This structure organizes work into different functional areas or departments based upon specialized expertise. It organizes people into human resources, finance, accounting, marketing, and information systems. Large organizations have a chief executive officer (CEO) as well as a chief operating officer (COO). Vice presidents of the functional areas report to the CEO and COO. Because each area specializes in its work, this can cause silo mentality, where integration across functional areas is difficult. 
• Product organization (service or brand organization): This structure organizes work into units that are responsible for producing specific products or services. This type of structure is often seen in large organizations with very different products known as conglomerates. Within each product area, there are managers and employees in the functional areas (human resources, finance, accounting, marketing, and production). Also, decision-making is faster. A disadvantage is that there is a lot of duplication of effort, because each product line has its own functional areas. 
• Geographical organization: Such an organization organizes itself in different regions so that they are close to the customers. Disadvantages of this type of structure is that there is also a lot of duplication of effort and communication across units may be problematic. 
• Matrix organization: Here, functions and projects are combined. This structure is well-suited for organizations that are engaged in research and development (R&D), advertising, or management consulting. There is less duplication of effort and employees are exposed to both projects and functions, as a result of which skills and knowledge of the organization expands. However, there may be conflict between the horizontal and vertical departments, because employees have to report to two managers. A matrix organization is therefore difficult to manage, and can be costly. 
• Virtual