2. Class Agenda
What is organizational behaviour?
Does it matter?
How do we “know” things about OB?
Chapter 1
2
3. What is Organizational Behaviour?
Think of the single worst coworker you’ve ever
had
What did he or she do that was so bad?
Think of the single best coworker you’ve ever
had
What did he or she do that was so good?
Chapter 1
3
4. What is Organizational Behaviour?
A field of study devoted to
understanding, explaining, and
ultimately improving the attitudes
and behaviours of individuals and
groups in organizations
Chapter 1
4
6. Does OB Matter?
Do firms who do a good job managing
OB concepts become more profitable
as a result?
Chapter 1
6
7. Figure 1-2 What Makes a Resource
Valuable?
The resource-
based view of
the firm
Chapter 1
7
8. to Assess High-Performance Work
Practices
Chapter 1
8
Survey Questions about OB Practice Covered in Chapter
What is the proportion of the workforce whose jobs have been
subjected to a formal job analysis?
2
What is the proportion of the workforce who are administered
attitude surveys on a regular basis?
5
What is the proportion of the workforce who have access to
company incentive plans, profit-sharing plans, and/or gain-
sharing plans?
7
What is the average number of hours of training received by a
typical employee over the last 12 months?
4, 9
What is the proportion of the workforce who have access to a
formal grievance procedure and/or complaint resolution
system?
8
What proportion of the workforce are administered an
employment test prior to hiring?
4
What is the proportion of the workforce whose performance
appraisals are used to determine compensation?
7
Source: Adapted from M.A. Huselid, “The Impact of Human Resource Management Practices on Turnover, Productivity, and
Corporate Financial Performance.” Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 38, pp. 635–72. Academy of Management.
9. Table 1-3 Canada’s Most Admired
Corporate Cultures
Chapter 1
9
Top award winners (listed alphabetically)
1. Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts
2. Maple Leaf Foods
3. Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)
4. Starbucks
5. TELUS
6. Tim Hortons
7. WestJet Airlines
8. Yellow Pages
Source: “Canada’s 10 Most Admired Corporate Cultures Hall of Fame,”
http://canadasmostadmired.com/canadas-10-hall-of-fame.html, accessed June 2017.
10. So What’s So Hard?
The Rule of 1/8:
“One must bear in mind that 1/2 of organizations won’t believe
the connection between how they manage their people and the
profits they earn. 1/2 of those who do see the connection will
do what many organizations have done--try to make a single
change to solve their problems, not realizing that the effective
management of people requires a more comprehensive and
systematic approach. Of the firms that make comprehensive
changes, probably only about 1/2 will persist with their
practices long enough to actually derive economic benefits.”
Chapter 1
10
11. How Do We Know Things about OB?
Chapter 1
11
Where does the knowledge in this textbook
come from?
Understanding that requires an
understanding of how we know things in
general
12. How Do We Know Things about
OB?
How do we know about what causes:
People to get sick?
People to stay healthy?
Employees to be satisfied with their jobs?
Employees to be skilled at their jobs?
Chapter 1
12
13. How Do We Know Things about
OB?
Methods of Knowing
Experience
Intuition
Authority
Science
What are the benefits of the last one,
relative to the other three?
Chapter 1
13
15. How Do We Know Things about OB?
Chapter 1
15
Theory
A collection of assertions (both
verbal and symbolic) that specify
how and why variables are related,
as well as the conditions in which
they should (and should not) be
related
16. How Do We Know Things about
OB?
16
In groups, build a
theory similar to
the one at the
right, for one of
these outcomes:
Job satisfaction
Strain
Motivation
Trust in
supervisor
Example Theory
Chapter 1
17. How Do We Know Things about OB?
To test our theory we
gather data on the
variables included in
our hypotheses
We then use variants
of the correlation
coefficient to test
hypotheses, to see if
they verify our theory
Chapter 1
18. How Do We Know Things about
OB?
The correlation
Perfect positive relationship: 1
Perfect negative relationship: -1
Strength of the correlation inferred
from judging the compactness of a
scatterplot of the X-Y values
More compact = stronger correlation
Less compact = weaker correlation
Chapter 1
22. The Correlation
Chapter 1
22
How big is “big”?
What’s the correlation between height
and weight?
Will the correlation between job
satisfaction and job performance be
higher or lower?
23. The Correlation
Important Disclaimer
Correlation does not prove causation
Proving causation requires:
Correlation
Temporal precedence
Elimination of alternative
explanations
Chapter 1
23
24. How Do We Know Things about OB?
The correlations from multiple studies
get averaged together using a
technique called meta-analysis
Meta-analyses can then form the
foundation for evidence-based
management--the use of scientific
findings to inform management
education and practice
Chapter 1
25. How Do We Know Things about OB?
Well-supported theories
become helpful tools for
answering why
questions, including:
Why your best and worst
coworkers act so differently
Why you sometimes think,
feel, and act a certain way
Chapter 1
25
27. OB Assessments: Introspection
27 Chapter 1
0
Extremely
Uncharacteristic
of Me
1
Somewhat
Uncharacteristic
of Me
2
Neutral
3
Somewhat
Characteristic of
Me
4
Extremely
Characteristic of
Me
1. I’m always trying to figure myself out. _______
2. Generally, I’m not very aware of myself. _______
3. I reflect about myself a lot. _______
4. I’m often the subject of my own daydreams. _______
5. I never scrutinize myself. _______
6. I’m generally attentive to my inner feelings. _______
7. I’m constantly examining my motives. _______
8. I sometimes have the feeling that I’m off somewhere watching myself. _______
9. I’m alert to changes in my mood. _______
10. I’m aware of the way my mind works when I work through a problem. _______
28. End of Chapter: Summary
Questions
1. What is the definition of “organizational
behaviour” (OB)?
2. What are the two primary outcomes in
studies of OB?
3. What factors affect the two primary OB
outcomes?
4. Why might firms that are good at OB tend to
be more profitable?
5. What is the role of theory in the scientific
method?
6. How are correlations interpreted?
28 Chapter 1
Editor's Notes
Welcome to Chapter 1 of the slides that accompany the 4th Canadian edition of Colquitt-LePine-Wesson-Gellatly. Note that these slides will sometimes refer to the Instructor’s Manual. In particular, the slides will refer to the Try This! feature in the manual. That feature is designed to supply some helpful hints to spice up your lectures. Note that the Instructor’s Manual includes other helpful features as well, including OB on Screen hints, and Bonus Cases from prior editions of the book.
Try This!: Open the very first class by asking them to picture their worst coworker ever and to list the things that person did to earn “worst coworker” status. Then have them do the same with the best coworker ever, listing the things that person did to earn “best coworker” status. Both of these lists should be written on the board, a process that will result in a table similar to Table 1-1. Then get them to understand the importance of explaining why the two people act so differently. That process of explanation is what OB is all about.
Explain that this integrative model will provide a roadmap, of sorts, for the course. This model is included near the beginning of each set of slides, to remind students of where they are, where they’ve been, and where they’re going. As the model illustrates, OB is dedicated to improving two outcomes, in particular:
Job Performance - How well does an individual perform his/her on-the-job behaviours?
Organizational Commitment - How likely is it that the individual will “stick around” and stay loyal to the company?
These outcomes are critical to managers and employees alike, and represent two of the most common “dependent variables” in OB research.
This integrative model reminds students of where they are, where they’ve been, and where they’re going. In this chapter, students are still working their way through the two major outcomes of interest in OB: Job Performance and Organizational Commitment. Reflecting back on last chapter, it’s not enough to have employees who engage in high levels of task performance and citizenship behavior, and low levels of counterproductive behavior. You also need to keep them!
I like to get students to consider--on the very first day--the reasons why OB might matter to a firm’s profitability, and the reasons why it might not matter. A debate is a good format for doing so. I assign the right side of the classroom to come up with arguments for this position: No, Being Good at OB Does Not Impact Profitability. Then I assign the left side of the classroom to come up with arguments for this position: Yes, Being Good at OB Does Indeed Impact Profitability.
I let the “No” side go first, with arguments typically revolving around the importance of product, marketing, or corporate strategy issues. For example, a student might point out that Wal-Mart is profitability because of its cost leadership strategy but has a reputation for sometimes treating employees poorly. Then I let the “Yes” side go, giving them opportunities to debunk the “No” side’s arguments while coming up with new arguments as well. Those often revolve around the costs associated with turnover, the important role of people in innovation, and the link between employee satisfaction and customer service. Then I let the class vote on which side is more compelling (the “Yes” side always wins that vote).
Having debated the issue a bit, it’s then helpful to supply a conceptual argument for why OB might matter, which is what the resource-based view does.
Before taking the students through the model, ask them to articulate why Facebook dominates its industry, and why Apple dominates its industry. One key with both companies is the Numerous Small Decisions piece of the resource-based view. Facebook’s major features can be copied, and Apple’s products are constantly being copied. But both companies do little “under the hood” things that their competitors do not--unobservable things that keep them “one step ahead.” Another key with both companies is the Socially Complex Resources--resources like “coolness”, “addictiveness,” “it factor”, and so forth.
In a sample of 968 firms, the answers to these questions allowed the research to predict turnover rate, sales per employee, the market value of the firm, and its profitability. All this with only 5 minutes worth of survey questions filled out by the firms’ executives!
Firms with very good OB practices also tend to be some of the most successful organizations in the country—in both good and difficult economic times!
Another way to explore this issue is to measure “how good a company is at OB.” Every year since 2005, panels of prominent Canadian business leaders have been asked to evaluate some of the nation’s largest companies on criteria such as, vision and leadership, cultural alignment with the organization’s strategic goals, reward and recognition practices, financial performance, and corporate social responsibility. On this basis, annual awards are given to those top ten companies who demonstrate that they deserve to be one of Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures. Only a handful of these top winners have consistently reached this elite level (Table 1-3). Not only are these winners drawn from a range of industry sectors, but it clearly shows that firms with very good OB practices also tend to be some of the most successful organizations in the country—in both good and difficult economic times!
If the importance of OB can be explained with conceptual arguments, and if there are data to back up those arguments, many students will wonder why so many companies seem to do a bad job managing their people. The Rule of One-Eighth can provide a partial answer to that. It’s not enough to do one thing—companies have to do a lot of things (and leave those things in place for a long enough time period). That need for comprehensive thinking reinforces the importance of the integrative model that serves as the roadmap for the course. That model gets students thinking in comprehensive “system-style” ways.
Here the chapter pivots to a discussion of research methods issues. This content helps legitimize the theories and findings in the book, gives students an appreciation of the technical aspects of OB, and helps them understand the discussion of correlations that runs throughout the book.
If anyone wants to do more with the research methods aspect of the course, try this team research project: Teams are asked to use four interviews to build a theory of what causes either job performance or organizational commitment. Specifically, they use the interviews to identify three independent variables that should predict one of those outcomes. Help them build four-item scales to measure their independent variables, and supply measures of either job performance or organizational commitment. The teams then survey 30 people and put their data into an Excel file that you can provide, which calculates correlations. Then they present and discuss their studies at the end of the term. The project helps them appreciate the method of science while introducing their own content to the course.
Try This! Ask students how they know the factors that improve health. What kinds of dietary philosophies do they know to be healthy? What kinds of exercise practices do they know to be healthy? Once the “knowledge in the room” has been summarized, explore where that knowledge came from. How much of it was just experience or intuition? How much of it comes from authorities (e.g., doctors, trainers, books). How much of it comes from science, either directly (news reports, magazine reports) or indirectly (through relevant authorities). Does any of the “knowledge in the room” conflict with each other (for example, some students think a low fat diet is more critical; others think a low carbohydrate diet is more critical)?
Most students will answer this question by pointing to “objectivity” and data. Other students will describe the notion of replication, and of many studies being targeted at a particular question (as opposed to just one’s person’s experiences.
This Exercise from the end-of-chapter materials is helpful for illustrating theory building, but also for establishing that OB is more than just common sense. The way to do the latter is to compare the theories that the groups build to Figure 5-7 (for Job Satisfaction), Figure 6-4 (for Stress), Figure 7-7 (for Motivation), and Figure 8-8 (for Trust in Supervisor). Often students will leave out important concepts that scientific research has identified. Other times students will include concepts that have been revealed to be unimportant, based on scientific research. In either event, those disconnects reveal that OB is not just common sense.
Most students will intuitively understand what correlations represent. In my experience, even if their “mathematical take” on correlations is not quite accurate, their version is close enough to the true version that the disconnect isn’t all that important. Their versions still represent some index of the strength of the relationship between two variables.
Here I ask the students if they should expect to see correlations of 1.00 in this course, given that variables like Job Performance or Organizational Commitment will often be the dependent variable of interest. The answer, of course, is “no.” I make the point that--if anyone does find something that perfectly predicts performance or commitment, they should tell me and we’ll open up a very lucrative consulting business!
This is more along the lines of what the relationships in this class will look like. A linear trend is evident in the data, but the scatterplot is not perfectly compact.
Try This! Ask ten students to volunteer their height in inches and their weight in pounds. Ask them to write the numbers down on a sheet of scrap paper. Then input them into an Excel spreadsheet, placing them in columns A and B. Ask students to eyeball the two columns of numbers and guess the correlation. Then calculate it using this formula: =correl(a1:a10,b1:b10). Did the resulting correlation differ from the population value (.44, as given in Table 1-4). Ask the students why the class number might differ from the population value, using that to explain why multiple studies (and high sample sizes) are needed when performing OB research. Then ask the students whether the correlation between job satisfaction and job performance should be higher or lower than the correlation between height and weight. Use that frame of reference to get them to understand that correlations of .30 are actually moderate in size, and correlations of .50 are actually strong in size.
A good point of discussion here is famous spurious correlations. A famous one concerns ice cream sales and drowning. A city’s ice cream sales are often at the highest when the rate of drowning in city swimming pools is also at the highest. However, to imply that ice cream sales cause the drownings, or the reverse, would be a spurious correlation. In reality, an unseen variable, namely a heat wave, probably causes both
Students will also see the intuitive appeal of meta-analysis. Of course, meta-analyses do more than just average correlations together, but that summary does capture the core of what meta-analyses do. I find that basing instructional points on meta-analyses is helpful because it gets students to understand that OB scholars don’t just study one particular job, or one particular industry. The findings in this course are often based on hundreds of studies, across jobs, industries, countries, and so forth.
OB on Screen: Moneyball. The clip referenced in the book begins around the 46:11 mark of the film, continuing until about the 49:45 mark. The scene depicts an argument between Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s, and Grady Fuson, his head scout. Beane has embraced advanced analytics—statistics-based decision making as espoused by Pete Brand. Fuson prefers decision making based on experience and intuition, not science, referring to Brand as “Google Boy.” Ask the students who is right? Beane or Fuson? The reality is that both are a little right and both are a little wrong. The method of science need not come at the expense of experience or intuition—all can be used to complement one another. Although Beane clearly denigrates the need for scouting in the clip, the reality is that most sports teams now have analytics experts and science experts. Beane’s focus on science has stood the test of time, as the A’s have remained successful. Unfortunately for them, other teams copied the use of analytics, given that the practice was not inimitable. Please email me at gellatly@ualberta.ca f you have any questions about using OB on Screen in your teaching.
Students can gain insights about themselves from the theories discovered in the course, especially if they are introspective.
For all the OB Assessments, instruct students to “reverse” the bolded items (2 and 5 in this case). 0 becomes 4, 1 becomes 3, 3 becomes 1, and 4 becomes 0. After doing that reversing, they should sum up their scores. The average score for this scale is shown on the slide (26 in this case). Recognize that this is an admittedly arbitrary way of classifying “high” vs. “low.” Use a show of hands to see how many students fall above and below the average, and then see if students will volunteer any extremely high or low scores.
In the case of Introspection, challenge students who score low on the assessment to actively try to apply course content to their own experiences, to learn more about themselves.
OB Assessments: Introspection. This brief survey can be used to give students a feel for the types of data that are often collected in organizational behavior studies. Introspection, specifically, is relevant in an OB course because introspective students can use the content in the chapters to better understand their current and past work experiences, and their strengths and talents as employees. Use a show of hands to see how many students fell above and below the average level, and see if students will volunteer any extremely high or low scores. Challenge students who score low on the assessment to actively try to apply course content to their own experiences and characteristics.
TAKEAWAYS
Organizational behaviour is a field of study devoted to understanding and explaining the attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups in organizations. More simply, it focuses on why individuals and groups in organizations act the way they do.
The two primary outcomes in organizational behaviour are job performance and organizational commitment.
A number of factors affect performance and commitment, including individual characteristics and mechanisms (personality, cultural values, and ability; job satisfaction; stress; motivation; trust, justice, and ethics; learning and decision making), relational mechanisms (communication; team characteristics and processes; power, influence, and negotiation; leadership styles and behaviours), and organizational mechanisms (organizational structure; organizational culture and change).
The effective management of organizational behaviour can help a company become more profitable because good people are a valuable resource. Not only are good people rare, but they are also hard to imitate. They create a history that cannot be bought or copied, they make numerous small decisions that cannot be observed by competitors, and they create socially complex resources such as culture, teamwork, trust, and reputation.
A theory is a collection of assertions, both verbal and symbolic, that specifies how and why variables are related, and the conditions in which they should (and should not) be related. Theories about organizational behaviour are built from a combination of interviews, observation, research reviews, and reflection. Theories form the beginning point for the scientific method and inspire hypotheses that can be tested with data.
A correlation is a statistic that expresses the strength of a relationship between two variables (ranging from 0 to ±1). In OB research, a .50 correlation is considered “strong,” a .30 correlation is considered “moderate,” and a .10 correlation is considered “weak.”
