Taylorism and Organizational Behaviour

Taylorism

• The theory of management analyzes and synthesizes workflows.

Shortcomings of Taylorism

• Repetitive work is boring and not conducive to developing new skills and experiencing achievement.
• Specialization can cause a loss of sight of tasks' significance.
• Strict rules might lead to doing the bare minimum or rebelling.
• Customer suggestions are ignored due to low-level consumer interaction.

Organizational Behaviour

• The field of behavioral science examines how individuals act, think, and feel in organizations.
• It studies individual and group processes.

Organizations

• Social inventions achieve common goals through group effort. Social Inventions are an important component of the coordinated presence of people. "Understanding people and managing them to work effectively"
• Goal Accomplishment occurs though “How organizations survive and adapt to change”.
• Group effort is the method to “How to get people to practice effective teamwork”.

Organizational Behavior

• This includes individuals' and groups' attitudes and behaviors in organizations.

Human capital

• Employees' knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs).

Social capital

• Social resources from participation in a social structure.

Goals of Organizational Behavior

• Predicting ethical decisions, innovative products, or sexual harassment.
• Explaining engagement, motivation, satisfaction, or resignation.
• Managing through others in organizations, "the art of getting things accomplished".
• Evidence-based Management translates scientific principles into organizational practices.

Classical vs. Human Relations Management

Classical Viewpoint(Scientific management/Taylorism):

• High specialization of labor.
• Intensive coordination.
• Centralized decision-making.
• Bureaucracy.

Human Relations Movement:

• Hawthorne studies demonstrate the importance of psychological factors at work.
• Advocates for more participative management styles focusing more on employee needs.
• Advocates for more interesting job design and employee participation in decisions with less centralized control.

Contingency Approach

• Management recognizes no single best way exists; the appropriate style depends on the situation.

Managerial Roles

• Informational: Monitor, Disseminator, and Spokesperson.
• Interpersonal: Figurehead, Leader, and Liaison.
• Decisional: Entrepreneur, Disturbance handler, Resource allocator, and Negotiator.

Managerial Activities

• Routine communications and traditional management.
• Networking and human resources management are also managerial activities.

Agendas

• Agenda setting, networking, and agenda implementation.

Contemporary Management Concerns

• Diversity (local and global aids to develop cultural intelligence, improve cross-cultural teamwork, and create inclusive workplaces that leverage diversity as a competitive advantage.
• Employee Health and Well-Being (examines stress management, motivation, and workplace design to foster well-being, engagement, and a positive organizational culture.
• Talent Management and Employee Engagement helps firms attract, develop, and retain people with the required skills.
• Alternative Work Arrangements
• Focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (an organization taking responsibility for its decisions' impact and actions on its stakeholders).

History of Organizational Behavior

• Turn of the 20th century saw goods often produced by skilled craftsmen from beginning to end.
• There was accumulation of resources and technology, but labor productivity remained low.

Early 1900s

• Characterized by rapid industrialization and factory work.
• The focus question was: "What can be done to get workers to do more in less time?"
• Scientific Management/Taylorism emerged.

1920s and 1930s

• The Human Relations Movement sought to understand what social factors influence the behavior of workers.
• Hawthorne studies the effects of interventions on performance.

Today

• Contingency Approach is defined as "if... then...".

Personality Traits

• Psychological characteristics influence how an individual interacts with their environment.
• These characteristics are relatively stable across situations and over time.

The Big Five Personality Traits

• Extraversion.
• Emotional Stability.
• Agreeableness.
• Conscientiousness.
• Openness to Experience.

Personality Traits Self-Monitoring

• High self-monitors use social cues to guide their own behavior.
• Low self-monitors do not use social cues to guide their own behavior.

Personality Traits Locus of Control

• External: Behavior is determined by fate, luck, and powerful people.
• Internal: Behavior determined by self-initiative, personal actions, and free will.

Personality Traits Self-Esteem

• Self-Esteem is the degree to which a person has a positive evaluation of themselves.
• High self-esteem has a positive relationship with job performance and job satisfaction.
• Low self-esteem is more susceptible to external influence, good at behavioral modeling and responds poorly to negative feedback.

Key Questions on Personality

• Can stable personality differences change? Yes, over a long period of time.
• How much do stable personality differences account for job performance and career success? Knowledge and skills (over 50%) are more important.
• With effort, personality traits can be altered.

Can Personality Change?

• Extraversion shows little discernable change.
• Emotional Stability increases mostly in young adulthood.
• Agreeableness and Conscientiousness increase over time.
• Openness to Experience has an inverted U shape.

Cognitive Intelligence

• An individual's overall ability to process, understand, and learn information.
• Verbal ability, Quantitative ability and Reasoning Ability.
• Measured by - Wonderlic Personnel Test (50 items, 12 minutes)

Emotional Intelligence

• The ability to understand and manage one's own and others' feelings and emotions.

Myths about emotions

• Emotions impede rational thinking.
• It is impossible to make good decisions when we feel emotions.

The reality of emotions

• Emotions are useful and functional.
• Identifying emotions.
• Using emotions to guide thinking.
• Understanding why emotions happen.
• Regulating emotions in oneself and others.
• Measured by - Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (141 items, Untimed)

Personality

• This is a relatively stable set of psychological characteristics that influences the way an individual interacts with their environment.

Dispositional Approach

• Individuals possess stable traits or characteristics that influence their attitudes and behaviors.

Situational Approach

• Characteristics of the organizational setting influence people's attitudes and behavior.

Interactionist Approach

• Individuals' attitudes and behaviors are a function of both dispositions and the situation.

Trait Activation Theory

• Traits lead to certain behaviors only when the situation makes the trait necessary.

Five-Factor Model (FFM) of Personality

• Extraversion: Sociable, talkative vs. Quiet, reserved.
• High extroverts enjoy social situations, while introverts avoid them. Extraversion is especially important for jobs with lots of interpersonal interaction.
• Emotional stability / Neuroticism: Stable, confident vs. Depressed, anxious.
• High emotional stability(low neuroticism) is self-confident, has high self-esteem, and is calm and secure. Lower emotional stability(high neuroticism, tends toward self-doubt, depression, and is prone to stress.
• Agreeableness: Tolerant, cooperative vs. Cold, rude. It contributes to positions that require interaction, helping, and nurturing, as well as teamwork and cooperation.
• Conscientiousness: responsible, dependable vs, impulsive, careless. People high in conscientiousness are likely to perform well in most jobs.
• There is a tendency toward hard work and achievement.
• Openness to experience: Curious, original vs. Conventional, conservative. People high in openness to experience are likely to do with jobs with learning and creativity.

Locus of Control

• A set of beliefs about whether one's behavior is controlled mainly by internal or external forces.

Self-Monitoring

• The extent to which people observe and regulate how they appear and behave in social settings and relationships.

Self-Esteem

• The degree to which a person has a positive self-evaluation.

Behavioral Plasticity Theory

• People with low self-esteem are more susceptible to external and social influences than those with high self-esteem.

Positive Affectivity (PA)

• A propensity to view the world (including themselves and other people) in a positive light.
• PA is the strongest predictor of employee engagement. It also increases job satisfaction, better performance and are more engaged in organizational citizenship behaviors.

Negative Affectivity (NA)

• Propensity to view the world (including themselves and other people) in a negative light,
• Experience higher levels of workplace stress, Lower job satisfaction, have Lower engagement and poorer job performance.

Proactive Personality

• A tendency to take personal initiative across activities and situations, positively changing one's environment.

General Self-Efficacy

• An individual's belief in their ability to perform successfully in challenging situations (motivational trait).

Core Self-Evaluations

• A broad personality concept including specific traits that reflect evaluations people hold about themselves and their self-worth.

Key traits form a person's core self-evaluation

• Self-esteem
• General self-efficacy
• Locus of control
• Neuroticism (emotional stability)

Learning

• A relatively permanent change in behavior due to practice or experience.

What Employees Learn

• Practical skills: Job-specific skills, knowledge, and technical competence.
• Intrapersonal skills: Problem-solving, critical thinking, learning about alternative work, and risk-taking processes.
• Interpersonal skills: Communication, teamwork, and how to resolve conflict.
• Cultural awareness: Understand the social norms, goals, business operations, company expectations, and priorities of organizations.

Operant learning

• A type of learning where a behavior changes based on its consequences.

Reinforcement

• The process by which stimuli strengthens behaviors.
• Positive reinforcement is applying/adding a stimulus that increases/maintains the probability of behavior.
• Examples are praise, food and money.
• Negative reinforcement is the removal of a stimulus that increases/maintains the probability of behavior.
• Negative reinforcers increase the probability of behavior.
• Examples include nagging and fines.

Organizational Errors Involving Reinforcement

• Rewards can fail if organizations don't make rewards contingent on behaviors of interest as reinforcers.
• People have different preferences(across cultures, individuals and even time) for what motivates them; those differences should be not be neglected.

Neglecting important sources of reinforcement

• Providing quantitative/qualitative info on past performance will change/maintain performance.
• This informal acknowledgement, attention, praise, approval, or genuine appreciation for work well done.

Reinforcement Strategies

• Continuous- Fast Acquisition-Short
• Partial- Persistence-Long

Extinction

• The gradual dissipation of behavior following the termination of reinforcement.

Punishment

• The application of aversive stimulus decreases the probability that the behavior will occur. Ensure the selected punishment is aversive and punish without delay.
• Unwanted behaviors must not be rewarded before or after disciplinary measures are in place.
• Make sure desired conduct is not inadvertently punished.

Social Cognitive Theory

• Emphasizes the role of cognitive processes in learning and people's behavioral regulation.

Observational Learning

• Observational learning involves watching and mimicking the actions of others.

Self-Efficacy Beliefs

• Beliefs people have about how well they can perform a specific task.

Self-Regulation

• This involves learning principles to regulate one's behavior and collect self-observation data.

Ways to self regulate

• Observe models.
• Set goals.
• Rehearse.
• Reinforce oneself.

Organizational Behavior Modification

• Using learning principles can influence organizational behavior.

Employee Recognition Programs

• Officially recognize and reward employees for specific behavior. Peer recognition programs are formal programs in which employees publicly acknowledge, recognize, and reward their coworkers for outstanding work and performance.

Training and Development Programs

• Plan activities to facilitate skill acquisition to change behavior and improve performance.
• Focus on future job and responsibilities.
• Behavior modeling training (BMT) is a training method where trainees observe someone modeling the task; trainees will rehearse the modeled behavior.

Motivation

• The degree of persistent effort is directed toward a goal.

Equity theory

• Employees compare the inputs they invest in a job and the outcomes they receive from the job to the inputs and the outcomes of other workers.

Goal-setting theory

• Employees are motivated when attainable goals are present. These should be specific and challenging. Most effective when accepted and goals are most effective with frequent feedback.

Principles of Job Design

• Combine positions so employees can engage in entire job, provide employees with client relationships so that they will have the goal of client satisfaction, provide employees with more freedom and make sure they are self-sufficient.

Core Job Characteristics

• Autonomy, Skill variety, Task Identity. Task Significance, Feedback from Job.
• Increase autonomy.

Factors that contribute to job promotion

• Amount of Effort
• Persistence of Effort
• Direction of Effort

Benefits of "Pay":

• Motivation and personality are key factors in job satisfaction and performance. This directly affects motivation.

Benefits of "Production Jobs"

• Increased productivity and decreased turnover.

Disadvantages of "Production Jobs"

• Reduced quality and restriction of productivity. Reduced cooperation and differential opportunity.

Benefits of "Professional and Managerial Jobs":

• It is limited and is often a missed opportunity.

Disadvantages of "Professional and Managerial Jobs":

• There is a lack of differentiation amongst performance, small increases, and pay secrecy.

Dimensions of job performance

• Task Performance
• Organizational citizenship behavior
• Counterproductive work behavior

Types of managers

• Task performance dominates.
• Counterproductive performance dominates.
• Equal weight between task & counterproductive work.

Strong performers

• People who are intelligent, have emotional intelligence.

Personality Characteristics

• Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness

Motivation

• The extent to which consistent effort is directed toward a goal.

The elements of this include: Effort is the strength of someone's work-related behaviour, or the effort they exhibit on the job. Persistence is Persistence and consistency and Direction is whether workers channel steady effort in a way that benefits the organization with organizational goals.

Intrinsic Motivation

• Motivation stems from the worker/task relationship (usually self-applied) and generates feelings of achievement.

Extrinsic Motivation

• Motivation comes from the work environment (usually given by others); things such as pay and company policies.

The Key Aspects of Performance

• Performance: The extent to which a member contributes to the goals of the organization
• General Cognitive Ability: The capacity to use and process information
• Emotional Intelligence: Understanding and leadership in a company. This includes empathy and perceiving emotions accurately. This also includes an ability to assimilate emotion.

Process of Managing Emotions

• Using Emotions
• Understanding Emotions
• Managing emotions accurately, not only yourself but your employees.

Need Theories

• Motivational theories include people's needs and when they will work.