Organizational Behavior Introduction PDF

TOPIC 1: INTRODUCTION OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR (MGT548) THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERPERSONAL SKILLS Incorporating OB principles into the workplace can yield many important organizational outcomes. - Companies known as good places to work—such as Adobe, LinkedIn, Fast Enterprises, World Wide...

TOPIC 1: INTRODUCTION OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR (MGT548) THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERPERSONAL SKILLS Incorporating OB principles into the workplace can yield many important organizational outcomes. - Companies known as good places to work—such as Adobe, LinkedIn, Fast Enterprises, World Wide Technology, Bain & Company, Google, the Boston Consulting Group, and Facebook2 —have been found to generate superior financial performance. - Developing managers’ interpersonal skills helps organizations attract and keep high performing employees, which is important because outstanding employees are always in short supply and costly to replace. - Strong associations exist between the quality of workplace relationships and employee job satisfaction, stress, and turnover. - Social Awareness relationships among coworkers and supervisors were strongly related to: - Overall job satisfaction. - Lower stress at work - Lower intentions to quit. Positive work relationships help employees to: - Flourish (Grow/develop healthy/vigorous way) - Leading to improvements in job - Life satisfaction - Positive emotions at work - Perceptions that one’s work has meaning. - Increasing the OB element in organizations can foster social responsibility awareness. Accordingly, universities have begun to incorporate social entrepreneurship education into their curriculum to train future leaders in addressing social issues within their organizations. This is especially important because there is a growing need for understanding the means and outcomes of corporate social responsibility (CSR). ** To be success in today’s competitive and demanding workplace organization not only focus on technical skills alone but also good people skills. MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR Managers is that they get things done through other people - Make decisions - Allocate resources - Direct the activities of others to attain goals. Due to challenges and demanding job of manager like: - Lack of training - Lack of readiness to lead - Increase in job demand - Others Organization- Consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals. Like: - Manufacturing - Service firms - Schools - Hospitals - Churches - Military units - Nonprofits (police departments/federal government agencies) Manager plays the role to ensure organizational goal can be achieved. OB will help you get there. Manager’s primary activities. The work of managers can be categorized into four different activities: (Management function) - Planning- Encompasses defining an organization’s goals, establishing an overall strategy for achieving those goals, and developing a comprehensive set of plans to integrate and coordinate activities. (Goal/strategy) - Organizing- Includes determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made. (organizing/coordinating) - Leading-Management’s job to direct/encourage/motivate/communicate/resolve conflicts.  - Controlling. Ensure that the activities are going as they should, management must monitor the organization’s performance and compare it with previously set goals. If there are any significant deviations, it is management’s job to get the organization back on track. This monitoring, comparing, and potential correcting. (Monitoring) COMPLEMENTING INTUITION WITH SYSTEMATIC STUDY This casual approach to reading others can often lead to erroneous predictions, but using a systematic approach can improve your accuracy. Systematic approach in this text is the belief that behavior is not random. Rather, we can identify fundamental consistencies underlying the behavior of all individuals and modify them to reflect individual differences. These fundamental consistencies are very important. Why? Because they allow predictability. Behavior is generally predictable, and the systematic study of behavior is a way to make reasonably accurate predictions. When we use the term systematic study, we mean looking at relationships, attempting to attribute causes and effects, and basing our conclusions on scientific evidence—that is, on data gathered under controlled conditions and measured and interpreted in a rigorous manner. Evidence-based management (EBM) complements systematic study by basing managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence. For example, We want doctors to make decisions about patient care based on the latest available evidence, and EBM argues that managers should do the same, thinking more scientifically about management problems. A manager might pose a question, search for the best available evidence, and apply the relevant information to the question or case at hand. You might wonder what manager would not base decisions on evidence, but most management decisions are still made “on the fly,” with little to no systematic study of available evidence. Systematic study and EBM add to intuition, or those “gut feelings” about what makes others (and ourselves) “tick.” Of course, the things you have come to believe in an unsystematic way are not necessarily incorrect. Jack Welch (former CEO of General Electric) noted, “The trick, of course, is to know when to go with your gut.” But if we make all decisions with intuition or gut instinct, we are likely working with incomplete information—like making an investment decision with only half the data about the potential for risk and reward. Relying on intuition is made worse because we tend to overestimate the accuracy of what we think we know. Surveys of human resources managers have also shown that many managers hold so-called commonsense opinions regarding effective management that have been flatly refuted by empirical evidence. We find a similar problem in chasing the business and popular media for management wisdom. The business press tends to be dominated by fads. As a writer for The New Yorker put it, “Every few years, new companies succeed, and they are scrutinized for the underlying truths they might reveal. But often there is no underlying truth; the companies just happened to be in the right place at the right time.” Although we try to avoid it, we might also fall into this trap. It is not that the business press stories are all wrong; it is that without a systematic approach, it is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. *** USING SYSTEMATIC APPROACH HELP US TO PREDICT BEHAVIOR MORE ACCURATE AS COMPARED TO OUR INTUITION BECAUSE ALL THE PREDICTION ARE BASED ON EVIDENCE NOT RELY ON GUT/ FEELING OR COMMONSENSE LIKE INTUITION DOES. DISCIPLINE TO OB * 4 Disciplines- Disciplines That Contribute to OB OB is an applied behavioral science built on contributions from several behavioral disciplines, mainly: - Psychology - Social psychology, - Sociology  - Anthropology. (Refer to Exhibit 1.3 page 47) Psychology’s contributions have been principally at the individual or micro level of analysis, while the other disciplines have contributed to our understanding of macro concepts such as group processes and organization. Exhibit 1-3 is an overview of the major contributions to the study of organizational behavior. Psychology Psychology seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals. Contributors to the knowledge of OB are learning: - Theorists - Personality theorists - Counselling psychologists - Industrial - Organizational psychologists Early industrial/organizational psychologists studied: - Problems of fatigue - Boredom - Working conditions that could impede(delay/hinder/prevent) efficient work performance - Learning - Perception - Personality - Emotions - Training - Leadership effectiveness - Needs - Motivational forces - Job satisfaction - Decision-making processes - Performance appraisal - Attitude measurement - Employee-selection techniques  - Work design - Job stress. Social Psychology Social psychology, generally considered a branch of psychology, blends concepts from both psychology and sociology to focus on people’s influence on one another. One major study area is change: - How to implement it and how to reduce barriers to its acceptance - Ensuring, understanding, and changing attitudes - Identifying communication patterns - Building trust. - Group behavior - Power - Conflict. Sociology While psychology focuses on the individual, sociology studies people in relation to their social environment or culture. Sociologists have contributed to OB through their study of group behaviors: - In organizations, particularly formal and complex organizations. Perhaps most important, sociologists have studied - Organizational culture - Formal organization theory and structure - Organizational technology - Communications - Power - Conflict. Anthropology Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities. Anthropologists’ work on cultures and environments has helped us understand differences: - Fundamental values - Attitudes - Behavior among people in different countries and within different organizations.  - Organizational culture - Organizational climate - Among national cultures CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES EMPLOYMENT OPTIONS- PG 49 Economic Pressures When the U.S. economy plunged into a deep and prolonged recession in 2008, virtually all other large economies around the world followed suit. Layoffs and job losses were widespread, and those who survived the ax (tool to cut) were often asked to accept pay cuts. When times are bad, as they were during the recession, managers are on the frontlines with employees who are asked to make do with less, who worry about their futures, and who sometimes must be fired. The difference between good and bad management can be the difference between profit and loss or ultimately between business survival and failure. Managing employees well when times are tough is just as hard as when times are good, if not harder: - In good times, understanding how to reward, satisfy, and retain employees is at a premium. - In bad times, issues like stress, decision making, and coping come to the forefront. Continuing Globalization Organizations are no longer constrained by national borders. Samsung, the largest South Korean business conglomerate, sells most of its products to organizations in other countries, Burger King is owned by a Brazilian firm, and McDonald’s sells hamburgers in more than 118 countries on six continents. Even what is arguably the U.S. company with the strongest U.S. identity— Apple—employs twice as many workers outside the United States as it does inside the country. And all major automobile makers now manufacture cars outside their borders; Honda builds cars in Ohio, Ford in Brazil, Volkswagen in Mexico, and both Mercedes and BMW in the United States and South Africa. The world has become a global village. ***In the process, the manager’s job has changed. Effective managers anticipate and adapt their approaches to the global issues we discuss next. Increased Foreign Assignments You are increasingly likely to find yourself in a foreign assignment— transferred to your employer’s operating division or subsidiary in another country. Once there, you will have to manage a workforce with very different needs, aspirations, and attitudes than those you are used to back home. To be effective, you will need to understand everything you can about your new location’s culture and workforce—and demonstrate your cultural sensitivity—before introducing alternate practices. Working with People from Different Cultures Even in your own country, you will find yourself working with bosses, peers, and other employees born and raised in different cultures. What motivates you may not motivate them. Or your communication style may be straightforward and open, which others may find uncomfortable and threatening. To work effectively with people from different cultures, you need to understand how their culture and background have shaped them and how to adapt your management style to fit any differences. Overseeing Movement of Jobs to Countries with Low-Cost Labor It is increasingly difficult for managers in advanced nations, where the minimum wage can be as high as $16.88 an hour, to compete against firms that rely on workers from developing nations where labor is available for as little as $0.03 an hour. In a global economy, jobs tend to be created where lower costs give businesses a comparative advantage, although labor groups, politicians, and local community leaders see the exporting of jobs as undermining the job market at home. Managers face the difficult task of balancing the interests of their organizations with their responsibilities to the communities in which they operate. Adapting to Differing Cultural and Regulatory Norms To be effective, managers need to know the cultural norms of the workforce in each country where they do business. For instance, a large percentage of the workforce enjoys long holidays in some countries. There will be country and local regulations to consider, too. Managers of subsidiaries abroad need to be aware of the unique financial and legal regulations applying to guest companies or else risk violating them. Violations can have implications for operations in that country and for political relations between countries. Managers also need to be cognizant of differences in regulations for competitors in that country; understanding the laws can often lead to success rather than failure. For example, knowing local banking laws allowed one multinational firm—the Bank of China—to seize control of a storied (and very valuable) London building, Grosvenor House, from under the nose of the owner, the Indian hotel group Sahara. Management at Sahara contends that the loan default that led to the seizure was a misunderstanding regarding one of their other properties in New York. Globalization can get complicated. Workforce Demographics The workforce has always adapted to variations in economies, longevity and birth rates, socioeconomic conditions, and other changes that have widespread impact. People adapt to survive, and OB studies the way those adaptations affect individuals’ behavior. For instance, even though the 2008 global recession ended years ago, some trends from those years are continuing: Some people who had long been unemployed left the workforce altogether, while others have cobbled together several part-time jobs or settled for on-demand work. Additional options that have been particularly popular for younger educated workers have included obtaining specialized industry training after college, accepting full-time jobs that are lower-level, and starting their own companies. As students of OB, we can investigate what factors lead employees to make various choices and how their experiences affect their perceptions of their workplaces. This understanding can help us predict organizational outcomes. Longevity and birth rates have also changed the dynamics in organizations. Global longevity rates have increased six years in a very short time (since 1990), while birth rates are decreasing for many developed countries, trends that together indicate a lasting shift toward an older workforce. OB research can help explain what this means for attitudes, organizational culture, leadership, structure, and communication. Socioeconomic shifts have a profound effect on workforce demographics. Equal access to work and education, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, has been deemed a human rights issue by the United Nations. OB researchers study how people from diverse backgrounds fare in the workplace, the unique challenges and benefits they experience, as well as how their conditions can be improved. This is just one illustration of how cultural and socioeconomic changes affect the workplace, and it is one of many. We will discuss how OB can provide understanding and insight on workforce issues throughout this text. Workforce Diversity One of the most important challenges for organizations is workforce diversity, a trend by which organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of employees’ gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other characteristics. Managing this diversity is a global concern. Though we have more to say about diversity in Chapter 2, we start here by saying that diversity presents great opportunities and poses challenging questions for managers and employees. How can we leverage differences within groups for competitive advantage? Should we treat all employees alike? Should we recognize individual and cultural differences? What are the legal requirements in each country? Does increasing diversity even matter? Customer Service Service employees include technical support representatives, fast-food workers, salesclerks, nurses, automobile repair technicians, consultants, financial planners, and flight attendants. The shared characteristic of their jobs is substantial interaction with an organization’s customers. OB can help managers increase the success of these customer interactions by showing how employee attitudes and behavior influence customer satisfaction. Many organizations have failed because their employees failed to please customers. Management needs to create a customer-responsive culture. OB can provide considerable guidance in helping managers create such cultures—in which employees establish rapport with customers, put customers at ease, show genuine interest, and are sensitive to a customer’s individual situation. People Skills As you proceed through the chapters of this text, we will present relevant concepts and theories that can help you explain and predict the behavior of people at work. You will also gain insights into specific people skills you can use on the job. For instance, you will learn ways to design motivating jobs, techniques for improving your management skills, and how to create more effective teams Networked Organizations Networked organizations allow people to communicate and work together even though they may be thousands of miles apart. Independent contractors can telecommute via computer and change employers as the demand for their services changes. Software programmers, graphic designers, systems analysts, technical writers, photo researchers, book and media editors, and medical transcribers are just a few examples of people who can work from home or other nonoffice locations. The manager’s job is different in a networked organization. Motivating and leading people and making collaborative decisions online require different techniques than when individuals are physically present in a single location. As more employees do their jobs by linking to others through networks, managers must develop new skills. OB can provide valuable insights to help hone (smooth and sharpen) those skills. Social media In the business world is here to stay. Despite its pervasiveness, many organizations continue to struggle with employees’ use of social media in the workplace. In February 2015, a Texas pizzeria fired an employee before she showed up for her first day of work after she tweeted unflattering comments about her future job. In December 2014, Nordstrom fired an Oregon employee who had posted a personal Facebook comment seeming to advocate violence against white police officers. These examples show that social media is a difficult issue for today’s managers, presenting both a challenge and an opportunity for OB. For instance, how much should HR investigate a candidate’s social media presence? Should a hiring manager read the candidate’s Twitter feeds or do a quick perusal of her Facebook profile? We will discuss this issue later in the text. Once employees are on the job, many organizations have policies about accessing social media at work—when, where, and for what purposes. But what about the impact of social media on employee well-being? One recent study found that subjects who woke up in a positive mood and then accessed Facebook frequently found their mood decreased during the day. Subjects who checked Facebook frequently over a two-week period reported a decreased level of satisfaction with their lives. Managers—and the field of OB—are trying to increase employee satisfaction and therefore improve and enhance positive organizational outcomes. We will discuss these issues further in Chapters 3 and 4. Employee Well-Being at Work The typical employee in the 1960s and 1970s showed up at a specified workplace Monday through Friday and worked for clearly defined 8- or 9-hour chunks of time. That is no longer true for a large segment of today’s workforce because the definition of the workplace has expanded to include anywhere a laptop or smartphone can go. Even if employees work flexible hours at home or from half a continent away, managers still need to consider their well-being at work. One of the biggest challenges to: - Maintaining employee well-being is the new reality that many workers never get away from the virtual workplace. While communication technology allows many technical and professional employees to do their work at home or on the beach in Tahiti, it also means that many feel like they are not part of a team. “The sense of belonging is very challenging for virtual workers, who seem to be all alone out in cyberland,” said Ellen Raineri of Kaplan University. - Asking employees to put in longer hours. According to one study, one in four employees shows signs of burnout, and two in three report high stress levels and fatigue. This may be an underestimate because workers report maintaining “always on” access for their managers through e-mail  and texting. Employee well-being is challenged by heavy outside commitments. Millions of single-parent employees and employees with dependent parents face significant challenges in balancing work and family responsibilities, for instance. As a result of their increased responsibilities in and out of the workplace, employees want jobs that give them flexibility in their work schedules so they can better manage work–life conflicts. In fact, 56 percent of men and women in a recent study reported that work–life balance, more than money, recognition, and autonomy, was their definition of career success. Most college and university students say attaining balance between personal life and work is a primary career goal; they want a life as well as a job. Organizations that do not help their employees achieve work–life balance will find it increasingly difficult to attract and retain the most capable and motivated individuals. Positive Work Environment A real growth area in OB research is positive organizational scholarship (also called positive organizational behavior), which studies how organizations develop human strengths, foster vitality, and resilience, and unlock potential. Researchers in this area say too much of OB research and management practice has been targeted toward identifying what is wrong with organizations and their employees. In response, they try to study what is good about them. Some key topics in positive OB research are engagement, hope, optimism, and resilience in the face of strain. Researchers hope to help practitioners create positive work environments for employees. Positive organizational scholars have studied a concept called reflected best-self by asking employees to think about when they were at their personal best to understand how to exploit their strengths. The idea is that we all have things at which we are unusually good, yet we focus too often on addressing our limitations and rarely think about how to exploit our strengths. Although positive organizational scholarship does not deny the value of the negative (such as critical feedback), it does challenge researchers to look at OB through a new lens and pushes organizations to exploit employees’ strengths rather than dwell on their limitations. One aspect of a positive work environment is the organization’s culture, the topic of Chapter 15. Organizational culture influences employee behavior so strongly that organizations have begun to employ a culture officer to shape and preserve the company’s personality. Ethical Behavior In an organizational world characterized by cutbacks, expectations of increasing productivity, and tough competition, it is not surprising many employees feel pressured to cut corners, break rules, and engage in other questionable practices. They increasingly face ethical dilemmas and ethical choices, in which they are required to identify right and wrong conduct. Should they blow the whistle if they uncover illegal activities in their company? Do they follow orders with which they do not personally agree? Do they play politics to advance their careers? What constitutes good ethical behavior has never been clearly defined and, in recent years, the line differentiating right from wrong has blurred. We see people all around us engaging in unethical practices: Elected officials pad expense accounts or take bribes; corporate executives inflate profits to cash in lucrative stock options; and university administrators look the other way when winning coaches encourage scholarship athletes to take easy courses or even, in the case of the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, sham courses with fake grades. When caught, people give excuses such as “everyone does it” or “you have to seize every advantage.” Determining the ethically correct way to behave is especially difficult for both managers and employees in a global economy because different cultures have different perspectives on certain ethical issues. The definition of fair treatment of employees in an economic downturn varies considerably across cultures, for instance. As we will see in Chapter 2, perceptions of religious, ethnic, and gender diversity also differ across countries. Today’s manager must create an ethically healthy climate for employees in which they can do their work productively with minimal ambiguity about right and wrong behaviors. Companies that promote: - A strong ethical mission - Encourage employees to behave with integrity - Provide strong leadership can influence employees to behave ethically. Classroom training sessions in ethics have also proven helpful in maintaining a higher level of awareness of the implications of employee choices if the training sessions are given on an ongoing basis. In upcoming chapters, we will discuss the actions managers can take to create an ethically healthy climate and help employees sort through ambiguous situations. ethical dilemmas and ethical choices Situations in which individuals are required to define right and wrong conduct. ****Vacation: All I Ever Wanted Do you work to live, or live to work? Those of us who think it is a choice might be wrong. Almost one-third of 1,000 respondents in a study by Kelton Research cited workload as a reason for not using allotted vacation days. Consider Ken Waltz, a director for Alexian Brothers Health System. He has 500 hours (approximately 3 months) in banked time off and no plans to spend it. “You’re on call 24/7 and these days, you’d better step up or step out,” he says, referring to today’s leaner workforce. “It is not just me—it is upper management.... It is everybody.” Many people feel pressure, spoken or unspoken, to work through their vacation days. Employers expect workers to do more with less, putting pressure on workers to use all available resources—chiefly their time— to meet manager expectations. In today’s economy, there is always a ready line of replacement workers, and many employees will do everything possible to stay in their manager’s good graces. The issue of vacation time is an ethical choice for the employer and for the employee. Many organizations have “use it or lose it” policies whereby employees forfeit the paid time off they have accrued for the year if they have not used it. When employees forfeit vacation, the risk of burnout increases. Skipping vacation time can wear you down emotionally, leading to exhaustion, negative feelings about your work, and a reduced feeling of accomplishment. You may find you are absent more often, contemplate leaving your job, and grow less likely to want to help anyone (including your managers). Even though these are negative consequences for your employer as well as for you personally, the employee must often take charge of the situation. Here are some ways you can maintain your well-being and productivity: 1. Recognize your feelings. We solve few problems without first recognizing them. According to a recent study by ComPsych involving 2,000 employees, two in three identified high levels of stress, out-of-control feelings, and extreme fatigue. 2. Identify your tendency for burnout. Research on 2,089 employees found that burnout is especially acute for newcomers and job changers. Burnout symptoms should level off after 2 years, but each individual experiences stress differently. 3. Talk about your stressors. Thomas Donohoe, a researcher on work–life balance, recommends talking with trusted friends or family. On the job, discussing your stress factors in an appropriate manner can help you reduce job overload. 4. Build in high physical activity. Research found an increase in job burnout (and depression) was highest for employees who did not engage in regular physical activity, while it was almost negligible for employees who did engage in regular physical activity. 5. Take brief breaks throughout your day. For office employees, the current suggestion from experts is to spend at least 1 to 2 minutes of every hour standing up to combat the effects of all-day sitting. Donohoe also suggests snack breaks, walks, or short naps to recharge. 6. Take your vacation! Studies suggest that recovery from stress can happen only if employees are (1) physically away from work and (2) not occupied by work-related duties. That means telling your manager that you will log off your e-mail accounts and shut off your phone for the duration of the vacation. It is not always easy to look beyond the next deadline. But to maximize your long- term productivity and avoid stress, burnout, and illness—all of which are ultimately harmful to employer aims and employee careers alike—you should not succumb to vacation deficit disorder. Educate your managers. Your employer should thank you for it. Relationship and Considering the Role of Physical Activity,” Journal of Applied Psychology 97, no. 3 (2012): DEVELOPING AND OB MODEL Exhibit 1-5 presents the skeleton of our OB model. (PAGE 58) It proposes three types of variables (inputs, processes, and outcomes) at three levels of analysis (individual, group, and organizational). In the chapters to follow: - Individual level (Chapters 2 through 8) - Group behavior (Chapters 9 through 14) - Organizational system (Chapters 15 through 18). The model illustrates that inputs lead to processes, which lead to outcomes; we will discuss these interrelationships at each level of analysis. Notice that the model also shows that outcomes can influence inputs in the future, which highlights the broad-reaching effect that OB initiatives can have on an organization’s future. Inputs Inputs are variables like: - Personality - Group structure - Organizational culture These variables that led to processes. These variables set the stage for what will occur in an organization later. Many are determined in advance of the employment relationship. For example, Individual diversity characteristics, personality, and values are shaped by a combination of an individual’s genetic inheritance and childhood environment. Group structure, roles, and team responsibilities typically assigned immediately before or after a group is formed. Organizational structure and culture are usually the result of years of development and change as the organization adapts to its environment and builds up customs and norms. Processes If inputs are like the nouns in OB, processes are like the verbs. Processes are actions that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in because of inputs and that lead to certain outcomes. At the individual level, processes include: - Emotions and moods - Motivation - Perception - Decision making. At the group level, they include: - Communication - Leadership - Power and politics - Conflict and negotiation. At the organizational level, processes include: - Human resources management - Change practices. Outcomes Outcomes are the key variables that you want to explain or predict and that are affected by other variables. What are the primary outcomes in OB? Scholars have emphasized outcomes on: Individual-level: - Attitudes and stress - Task performance - Citizenship behavior - Withdrawal behavior. Group level: - Cohesion and functioning are the dependent variables. Organizational level: - We look at overall productivity and survival. Because these outcomes will be covered in all the chapters. we will briefly discuss each here so you can understand the goal of OB. Attitudes and Stress Employee attitudes are the evaluations that employees make, ranging from positive to negative, about objects, people, or events. For example, The statement “I really think my job is great” is a positive job attitude, and “My job is boring and tedious” is a negative job attitude. Stress is a psychological process that occurs in response to environmental pressures. Attitudes often have behavioral consequences that relate directly to organizational effectiveness. Ample evidence shows that employees who are more satisfied and treated fairly are more willing to engage in the above-and-beyond citizenship behavior so vital in the contemporary business environment. Task Performance The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing your core job tasks reflects your level of task performance. If we think about the job of a factory worker, task performance could be measured by the number and quality of products produced in an hour. The task performance of a teacher would be the level of education that students obtain. The task performance of consultants might be the timeliness and quality of the presentations they offer to the client. All these types of performance relate to the core duties and responsibilities of a job and are often directly related to the functions listed on a formal job description. Obviously, task performance is the most important human output contributing to organizational effectiveness, so in every chapter we devote considerable time to detailing how task performance is affected by the topic in question. Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) The discretionary behavior that is not part of an employee’s formal job requirements, and that contributes to the psychological and social environment of the workplace, is called organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), or simply citizenship behavior. Successful organizations have employees who do more than their usual job duties—who provide performance beyond expectations. In today’s dynamic workplace, where tasks are increasingly performed by teams and where flexibility is critical, employees who engage in good citizenship behaviors help others on their team, volunteer for extra work, avoid unnecessary conflicts, respect the spirit as well as the letter of rules and regulations, and gracefully tolerate occasional work-related impositions and nuisances. Organizations want and need employees who will do things that are not in any job description. Evidence indicates organizations that have such employees outperform those that do not. As a result, OB is concerned with citizenship behavior as an outcome variable. Withdrawal Behavior Withdrawal behavior is the set of actions that employees take to separate themselves from the organization. There are many forms of withdrawal: - Ranging from showing up late - Failing to attend meetings - Absenteeism - Turnover Employee withdrawal can have a very negative effect on an organization. The cost of employee turnover alone has been estimated to run into the thousands of dollars, even for entry-level positions. Absenteeism also costs organizations significant amounts of money and time every year. For instance A recent survey found the average direct cost to U.S. employers of unscheduled absences is 8.7 percent of payroll. In Sweden, an average of 10 percent of the country’s workforce is on sick leave at any given time. It is obviously difficult for an organization to operate smoothly and attain its objectives if employees fail to report to their jobs. The workflow is disrupted, and important decisions may be delayed. In organizations that rely heavily on assembly-line production, absenteeism can be considerably more than a disruption; it can drastically reduce the quality of output or even shut down the facility. Levels of absenteeism beyond the normal range have a direct impact on any organization’s effectiveness and efficiency. A high rate of turnover can also disrupt the efficient running of an organization when knowledgeable and experienced personnel leave and replacements must be found to assume positions of responsibility. Research indicates that, in general, turnover is significantly harmful for organizational performance. All organizations have some turnover, of course. Turnover rates vary greatly by country and in part reflect the economy of that country. The U.S. national turnover rate in 2014 averaged about 40 percent; often the average is around 3 percent per month. Is this good or bad? Cause of turnover includes: - Voluntary terminations by the employee (quitting) - Involuntary terminations by the employer without cause (layoffs and discharges) - Other separations, including involuntary terminations with cause (firing). Is not all bad. Positive aspect of turnover for the economy: People quit because they are optimistic about their outside prospects. If the “right” people are leaving—the poorer performers—quits can be positive for an organization. They can: - Create opportunities to replace underperforming individuals with others who have higher skills or motivation - Open increased opportunities for promotions - Bring new and fresh ideas to the organization. - Improve organizational flexibility and employee independence - Can lessen the need for management-initiated layoffs. Group Cohesion Although many outcomes in our model can be conceptualized as individual-level phenomena, some relate to the way groups operate. Group cohesion is the extent to which members of a group support and validate one another at work. In other words, a cohesive group is one that sticks together. When employees trust one another, seek common goals, and work together to achieve these common ends, the group is cohesive; when employees are divided among themselves in terms of what they want to achieve and have little loyalty to one another, the group is not cohesive. There is ample evidence showing that cohesive groups are more effective.67 These results are found both for groups studied in highly controlled laboratory settings and for work teams observed in field settings. This fits with our intuitive sense that people tend to work harder in groups that have a common purpose. Companies attempt to increase cohesion in a variety of ways, ranging from brief icebreaker sessions to social events like picnics, parties, and outdoor adventureteam retreats. Throughout the text, we assess whether these specific efforts are likely to result in increases in group cohesiveness. We will also consider ways that picking the right people to be on the team in the first place might be an effective way to enhance cohesion. Group Functioning In the same way that positive job attitudes can be associated with higher levels of task performance, group cohesion should lead to positive group functioning. Group functioning refers to the quantity and quality of a group’s work output. Like how the performance of a sports team is more than the sum of individual players’ performance, group functioning in work organizations is more than the sum of individual task performances. What does it mean to say that a group is functioning effectively? In some organizations, an effective group is one that stays focused on a core task and achieves its ends as specified. Other organizations look for teams that can work together collaboratively to provide excellent customer service. Still others put more of a premium on group creativity and the flexibility to adapt to changing situations. In each case, different types of activities will be required to get the most from the team Productivity The highest level of analysis in OB is the organization. An organization is productive if it achieves its goals by transforming inputs into outputs at the lowest cost. Thus, productivity requires both effectiveness and efficiency. A hospital is effective when it meets the needs of its clientele successfully. It is efficient when it can do so at a low cost. If a hospital manages to achieve higher output from its present staff by reducing the average number of days a patient is confined to a bed or increasing the number of staff–patient contacts per day, we say the hospital has gained productive efficiency. A business firm is effective when it attains its sales or market share goals, but its productivity also depends on achieving those goals efficiently. Popular measures of organizational efficiency include return on investment, profit per dollar of sales, and output per hour of labor. Service organizations must include customer needs and requirements in assessing their effectiveness. Why? Because a clear chain of cause and effect runs from employee attitudes and behavior to customer attitudes and profitability. For example, a recent study of six hotels in China indicated that negative employee attitudes decreased customer satisfaction and ultimately harmed the organization’s profitability. Survival The outcome we will consider is organizational survival, which is simply evidence that the organization is able to exist and grow over the long term. The survival of an organization depends not just on how productive the organization is but also on how well it fits with its environment. A company that is very productive in making goods and services of little value to the market is unlikely to survive for long, so survival also relies on perceiving the market successfully, making good decisions about how and when to pursue opportunities, and successfully managing change to adapt to new business conditions. Having reviewed the input, process, and outcome model, we are going to change the figure up a little bit by grouping topics together based on whether we study them at the individual, group, or organizational level. As you can see in Exhibit 1-6, we deal with inputs, processes, and outcomes at all three levels of analysis, but we group the chapters as shown here to correspond with the typical ways research has been done in these areas. For example, it is easier to understand one unified presentation about how personality leads to motivation, which leads to performance, than to jump around levels of analysis. Each level builds on the one that precedes it, so after going through them in sequence, you will have a good idea of how the human side of organizations functions.