Chapter 1: What is Organizational Behavior?

Being a good manager requires strong interpersonal skills, as communication is crucial, as one must manage different types of resources: people, money, and time in order to achieve specific goals.

A Manager’s Four Main Functions

Planning function refers to setting goals, creating strategies, and preparation of plans that make different activities work coherently and effectively.

Organising function concerns tasks identification and division, assignment of tasks to individuals, setting reporting and decision- making systems.

Leading function relates to motivating workers and directing others’ actions, choosing communication canals and solving conflicts.

Controlling function refers to controlling others’ work outcomes and checking whether everything is being done as planned; and when necessary undertaking corrective actions.

Management roles

They can be divided into 3 main categories: interpersonal roles, informational roles and decisional roles. The concept was developed by Henry Mintzberg and is called Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles (below).

Summary Organizational change - An action-oriented toolkit by Cawsey et al. (2nd edition), donated to WorldSupporter

Chapter 1: Organizational change in today’s world

Organizational change: planned alterations of organizational components to improve the effectiveness of the organization.

These components include:

• Mission and vision
• Strategy
• Goals
• Structure
• Processes
• Technology
• People

Change drivers can be internal and external, managers should adapt to the organization’s environment. Some changes are very tangible and thus easier, others – such as a change in culture – are intangible and more difficult.

The focus of the book is on organizational change as a planned activity designed to improve the organization’s effectiveness.

The book has an active, action-oriented emphasis coupled with a deep understanding of organizations. The twin theme of knowing what to do and how to do it is the main approach in order to fill the knowing-doing gap that the authors believe to exist.

Environmental forces for change

Environmental forces may be a surprise where others are anticipated. We will discuss some environmental trends.

Social, cultural, and demographic environment

Demographic changes influence the social, cultural, and economic environment. The Western world has an ageing population which has financial consequences. When economies are poor, the fertility rate is high and there are many young dependents relying o working adults for sustenance. When fertility rates drop, the ratio of working adults to dependents increases, leading to surplus wealth.

Then all those people age and dependent, seniors become a larger percentage of the population. Other issues are gender, race, diversity, global warming, sustainability, and social responsibility.

Technologies

Data mining is the transformation of data into information. Technological forces result in shorter product development and life cycles. Technological breakthroughs can result in obsolescence. So change leaders should be aware of trends and be proactive.

Political changes

As organizations become global, they need to clarify their own ethical standards. They need to understand the law and determine what norms of behavior they will work to establish for their organizational members. The politics of globalization have created opportunities and issues. They influence market development and attractiveness, competitiveness, and pressures on boards and executives.

The economy

The lessons from the economic crisis concern risk management