Chapter 1: What Is Organizational Behavior?

The Rise and Fall of WeWork's CEO

• Adam Neumann sought to reinvent work, leading to WeWork's rapid success.
• WeWork offered services, such as IT, finance, and legal assistance, making starting a business easier.
• Neumann's vision and charisma fueled WeWork's growth, though his unorthodox leadership style caused problems.
• The company's culture was described as "work hard, party hard," with free beer and frequent parties, which led to allegations of racial discrimination and sexual assault.
• WeWork postponed its IPO in 2019 due to losses close to $2 billion and concerns about its business model and leadership structure.
• Neumann stepped down as CEO after pressure from SoftBank, followed by Miguel McKelvey's exit.
• The challenges at WeWork highlight that organizational crises affect more than just leadership, including groups, teams, and the entire organization.

Management and Organizational Behavior

• Organizational Behavior (OB) studies how individuals and groups behave in organizations and how to improve effectiveness.
• Business schools now recognize the importance of interpersonal skills in determining managers' and employees' effectiveness.
• A knowledge of OB and interpersonal skills is critical for workplace success and career advancement.
• Communication, problem-solving, and influence skills are crucial for career advancement.
• A lack of interpersonal skills is the reason why numerous employees fail to advance.
• The knowledge and practice of OB helps individuals to think analytically, make better decisions, communicate effectively, and act with social responsibility.
• Applying OB principles can lead to critical organizational outcomes like superior financial performance and retaining high-performing employees.
• Positive work relationships are linked to improved job satisfaction, reduced stress, and lower turnover rates.
• Emphasizing OB promotes awareness of environmental, social, and sustainability performance.
• Understanding OB helps manage negative aspects like unethical behavior, violence, discrimination, and theft.

Defining Work-Related Roles

• Workers are individuals who contribute to the accomplishment of work goals, whether alone or in groups.
• Managers get things done through other people by making decisions, allocating resources, and directing activities.
• An organization is a consciously coordinated social unit of two or more people functioning continuously to achieve a common goal.
• New hires often enter management positions without adequate training, leading to increased job demands and less supervision.

Key Responsibilities of Managers

• Managers engage in four activities: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
• Planning involves defining goals, establishing strategy, and developing coordinated plans.
• Organizing involves designing the work unit's structure, determining tasks, and establishing reporting relationships.
• Leading involves motivating employees, directing activities, selecting communication channels, and resolving conflicts.
• Controlling involves monitoring performance, comparing it to goals, and correcting deviations.
• Mintzberg identified ten managerial roles: interpersonal, informational, and decisional.
• Interpersonal roles include being a figurehead, leader, and liaison.
• Informational roles include monitoring, disseminating, and acting as a spokesperson.
• Decisional roles include being an entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator.

Management Skills Essential for Success

• Technical skills include applying specialized knowledge or expertise.
• People skills include the ability to understand, communicate with, motivate, and support others.
• Conceptual skills include the ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations.
• Luthans' study identified four managerial activities: traditional management, communication, human resources management, and networking.
• Networking contributed most to the success of managers, while communication contributed most to the effectiveness of managers
• Networking and political skills can be important for getting ahead in organizations.

Defining Organizational Behavior

• Organizational behavior (OB) studies the impact of individuals, groups, and structure on behavior within organizations.
• OB is concerned with job attitudes, absenteeism, employee turnover, productivity, performance, and management.
• Core topics include performance, citizenship, diversity, job attitudes, personality, motivation, justice, groups, communication, leadership, conflict, and organizational culture.

The Importance of Systematic Study

• Systematic study is looking at relationships, attributing causes and effects, and drawing scientific conclusions
• Evidence-based management (EBM) involves making managerial decisions based on the best available scientific evidence.
• Systematic study and EBM add to intuition and provide reliable predictions

The Role of Big Data and AI

• The utilization of statistical compilation and analysis started in 1749.
• Big data and AI is used in business, and started with online retailers' marketing schemes.
• Online retailers began to track and act on customer preferences.
• Amazon uses statistics to develop algorithms to forecast book preferences and base its purchases on customer feedback.
• Data-driven management has the potential to identify drivers of performance, develop theories of causality, and test them.
• Big data is applied in managing change, making effective decisions, predicting events, detecting risks, and preventing catastrophes.
• Big data aids technology companies Google and Facebook to predict user behavior for advertising, insurance firms to assess drivers' risk of accidents, allowing museums like the Solomon R. Guggenheim to cater to guests
• Kroger gathers information from 55 million customers who have royalty cards and sells the data to vendors who stock shelves; Twitter sells millions of tweets
• The utilization of big data to comprehend, aid, and oversee personnel is recent and comparable to the air we inhale.
• Changes in the way work is done will have more to do with technology improvements than with any other element
• Companies are emphasizing consistent data to guide business decisions in real time
• Huge amount of info are acquired, but artificial intelligence is beginning to be used
• The present emphasis has been on machine learning, a subset of AI where software is trained to do a task and also learn and improve from inbound feedback
• Limitations as technological capabilities for handling big data have increased, appropriate application has increased

Ethical and Practical Considerations of AI

• Machines can fail to capture the bigger picture, or ignore limits
• The machine learning needs to be supervised to avoid predictions and decision making
• Big Data is capped in behavior prediction, risk cutting, and catastrophes
• Leadership relies on hunches, and sometimes outcomes are excellent, using Big Data and AI can contribute to sound decision making
• OB has assisted in making better decisions and easier natural biases.

Disciplines Contributing to OB

• OB is an applied behavioral science drawing from psychology, social psychology, sociology, and anthropology.
• Psychology focuses on the individual level of analysis. -Industrial/organizational Psychologists studies fatigue, boredom, working conditions, learning, perception, personality, emotions, leadership effectiveness, job satisfaction, decision-making, and attitudes.
• Social psychology focuses on people's influence on one another. -Social psychologists also measure, understand, and influence, attitude, commination, and building trust
• Sociology studies how people in social environment/culture relate. -Sociologists studies organizational culture, theory, technology, commination, power, and conflict
• Anthropology studies societies to learn about human beings and activities.

Understanding the Absence of Absolutes in OB

• Because people are not alike, our ability to make simple accurate generalizations about ourselves is limited
• OB concepts must reflect situational or contingency relations.
• OB was developed by applying general concepts to a particular situation, person, or group.

Facing Current Management Challenges and Opportunities

• Diversity can strengthen workforce and create promising opportunities, but how can they recognize that?
• Understand legal requirements in each country, how can they adapt and accommodate each other
• Since organizations and leaders are increasingly connected across the globe, it is more important to globalize the process

Technology and Social Media

• Technology affect business; organizations are dealing with social media in work.
• Managers should adopt evidence based policies for protection of employees and have balance.
• Social Media affect peoples mood, and they report decreased satisfaction of lives
• Remote workers tend to feel not part of a team.
• There are workers that feel burnout or have long hours and high stress from heavy workload

CSR and Ethical Behavior

• Companies are experiencing corporate cutbacks, tough competition - pressure to cut corners, break rules, and questionable practices
• Workers are pressured to make ethical decisions to do right or wrong. What are the things they should uncover, do they follow orders Unethical behavior; Any actions that violates widely accepted moral norms
• Integrity, encouragement from leaders will influence workers to be ethical, equal treatments are important
• Corporate Social Responsibly, (CSR) is actions benefited by self regulating the environment beyond what is required of raw
• It makes a change, it is a good action for the environment and workers such as; happier employees, worker attitudes, performances

Positive Work Environments and The Gig Economy

• Positive Organizational Scholarship studies organizations develop human strength, hostility, resilience, and potential.
• It seeks to help practitioners create positive work environment for employees.
• “employees are more important to a job”
• A New era of work when people work independent and autonomously - instead of the other way around
• Changes in the worker experience have transformed such as; financial instability, autonomy.

A basic OB Model

• Inputs lead to processes which then lead to outcomes which can influence inputs . This highlights broad reaching and great affect of OB initiatives in organizations future
• Inputs include personality, diversity, and values to processes such as decision making, perceptions, and emotions to outcomes that can be attitudes, stress. Also, the team responsibilities and group are also affected, its level of inputs