This document provides an overview of Module I of an Organizational Behaviour course. It defines key concepts like organizational behavior, management functions, and the systems approach. It also outlines emerging challenges for OB like globalization, diversity, and quality management. OB draws from multiple disciplines including psychology, sociology, and political science. The systems approach views organizations as importing resources, transforming inputs, and exporting outputs with feedback. Understanding OB helps managers achieve goals through people and respond to a changing environment.

1. Semester II- B
Course: Organisational Behaviour
Instructor: Fezeena Khadir
Module I
Organizational basis for behaviour − contributing disciplines to the
OB field − Why managers require a knowledge of OB − Need for a
contingency approach to the study of OB − Emerging challenges
and opportunities for OB − The organization as a system − System
approach to organizational behaviour − Managerial functions −
The organization and people

2. What Managers Do
What are Managerial Activities ?
•Make decisions
•Allocate resources
•Direct activities of others to
attain goals
Managers (or administrators)
Individuals who achieve goals through other people.

3. Where Managers Work?
Organization
•A 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.

4. Management Functions
Management
Functions
Planning Organizing
LeadingControlling

5. Management Functions (cont’d)
Planning
A process that includes
•defining goals,
•establishing strategy, and
•developing plans to coordinate
activities.

6. Management Functions (cont’d)
Organizing
•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.

7. Management Functions (cont’d)
Leading
A function that includes
•motivating employees,
•directing others,
•selecting the most effective
communication channels, and
•resolving conflicts.

8. Management Functions (cont’d)
Controlling
•Monitoring activities to ensure they are being
accomplished as planned and
•correcting any significant deviations

9. Management Skills
Technical skills
The ability to apply specialized
knowledge or expertise.
Human skills
The ability to work
with, understand, and motivate
other people, both individually and
in groups.
Conceptual Skills
The mental ability to analyze and
diagnose complex situations.

10. Organizational Behavior
Organizational behavior (OB)
A field of study that
investigates
•the impact that individuals,
groups, and structure have on
• behavior within organizations,
• for the purpose of applying
such knowledge
•toward improving an
organization’s effectiveness.

11. Basic OB Model: Stage I

12. The Independent Variables
Independent
Variables
Individual-Level
Variables
Organization
System-Level
Variables
Group-Level
Variables
Independent variable
The presumed cause of some change in the dependent
variable.

13. The Dependent Variables
Productivity
A performance measure that
includes effectiveness and
efficiency.
Effectiveness
Achievement of goals.
Efficiency
The ratio of effective output
to the input required to
achieve it.
Absenteeism
The failure to report to work.
Turnover
The voluntary and involuntary
permanent withdrawal from an
organization.
Job satisfaction
A general attitude toward one’s job, the
difference between the amount of reward
workers receive and the amount they
believe they should receive.
Organizational citizenship behavior
(OCB)
Discretionary behavior that is not part
of an employee’s formal job
requirements, but that nevertheless
promotes the effective functioning of
the organization.

14. Basic OB
Model, Stag
e II

15. Toward an OB Discipline

16. Contributing Disciplines to the OB
Field
1. Psychology
The science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change
the behavior of humans and other animals.

17. Contributing Disciplines to the OB
Field (cont’d)
2. Sociology
The study of people in relation to their fellow human beings.

18. Contributing Disciplines to the OB
Field (cont’d)
3. Social Psychology
An area within psychology that blends concepts from psychology
and sociology and that focuses on the influence of people on one
another.

19. Contributing Disciplines to the OB
Field (cont’d)
4. Anthropology
The study of societies to learn about human beings and their
activities.

20. Contributing Disciplines to the OB
Field (cont’d)
5. Political Science
The study of the behavior of individuals and groups
within a political environment.

21. Why managers require a knowledge of
OB?
• Organizations exist to achieve goals
• Organizations include people who work towards
the common goals of the organization
• Managers achieve goals through other people.
• So in the highly competitive environment,
managers require people skills also
– apart from the basic technical managerial skills
– to manage, control and coordinate people
…contd…

22. …contd…
• For retaining high performing employees- depends on
managers’ interpersonal skills
• To ensure satisfaction and commitment of employees
• To understand the individual, the group and the
structure of the organization so that this knowledge
can be applied for effective functioning
• To predict behaviour more accurately
• To identify and resolve conflicts and problems within
individuals and groups in the organisation
• For effective decision making

23. Need for a contingency approach to
the study of OB
• The contingency approach refers to situational factors that
are variables which moderate the relationship between the
independent and dependent variables.
• Situational factors: variables that moderate the
relationship between two or more other variables and
improve the correlation.
• There are four key dependent variables
(productivity, absenteeism, turnover, and job satisfaction)
• and a large number of independent variables (for
example, motivation, leadership, work processes)
• Because of the large number of independent variables, the
study of OB is complex and
• requires a systematic approach within organizations as we
seek to predict the behavior of people at work.

24. • The appropriate managerial action or behavior
in any given situation depends on the
elements of the situation
• a universal rule cannot be applied in certain
cases,
– because no two individuals are the same and
different people posses different ideologies

25. Emerging Challenges and
Opportunities for OB (1)
• Responding to Globalization
– Increased foreign assignments
– Working with people from different cultures
– Overseeing movement of jobs to countries with low-
cost labor (eg: US outsourcing to India)
• Managing Workforce Diversity
– Embracing diversity
– Changing workforce demographics
– Women managers
– Implications for managers
• Recognizing and responding to differences

26. Major Workforce Diversity Categories
(2)
Caste
Religion
National
Origin
Age
Disability (PHP)
Gender

27. Challenges and Opportunities for OB (3)
• Improving Quality and Productivity
– Quality management (QM)
– Process reengineering
• Responding to the Labor Shortage
– Changing work force demographics
– Fewer skilled laborers
– Early retirements and older workers
• Improving Customer Service
– Increased expectation of service quality
– Customer-responsive cultures

28. What Is Quality Management? (4)
1. Intense focus on the customer.
2. Concern for continuous improvement.
3. Improvement in the quality of everything the
organization does.
4. Accurate measurement.
5. Empowerment of employees.

29. Improving Quality and Productivity (5)
• Quality management (QM)
– The constant attainment of customer satisfaction through
the continuous improvement of all organizational
processes.
– Requires employees to rethink what they do and become
more involved in workplace decisions.
• Process reengineering
– Asks managers to reconsider how work would be done and
their organization structured if they were starting over.
– Instead of making incremental changes in
processes, reengineering involves evaluating every process
in terms of its contribution.

30. Challenges and Opportunity for OB (6)
• Improving People Skills
• Empowering People
• Stimulating Innovation and Change
• Working in Networked Organizations
• Helping Employees Balance Work/Life
Conflicts
• Improving Ethical Behavior

31. Organsiation as a system
• Helps managers to view organisations from a broader
perspective
• Earlier, individual departments were considered self-
sufficient
• Now, managers are recognizing the various parts of the
organization, and their interrelations, e.g., the coordination
of central offices with other departments, engineering with
manufacturing, supervisors with workers etc.
• Managers now focus more attention on matters of ongoing
organization and feedback.
• Managers now diagnose problems, not by examining what
appear to be separate pieces of the organization, but by
recognizing larger patterns of interactions

32. System approach to OB: Various inputs are
transformed into outputs with important feedback from the environment

33. The systems approach (contd..)
• How organisations import resources from the
external environment
(money, materials, knowledge, innovation, ma
chines)
• convert them into more useful goods and
services (products, profit, satisfaction and
improved quality of life)
• and export them to the markets

34. The organisation and people

35. End of module I
References:
• Fred Luthans
• Stephen P. Robbins
• Ashwathappa