Notes
Notes
TABLE OF CONTENT
1 Introduction 2
2 Personality 45
3 Perception 11
4 Attitudes 22
5 Values 31
6 Motivation 35
7 Group behaviour 52
8 Organizational Design 61
9 Leadership 68
10 Organizational Development 75
Organizational Behaviour
Content
Organizational Behaviour
• Introduction to OB: Origin, Nature and Scope of Organizational Behaviour. Relevance to
Organizational Effectiveness and Contemporary Issues.
• Personality: Meaning and Determinants of Personality, Process of Personality Formation,
Personality Types, Assessment of Personality Traits for Increasing Self Awareness.
• Perception, Attitude and Value: Perceptual Processes, Effect of Perception on Individual
Decision-Making, Attitude and Behaviour.
Sources of Value, Effect of Values on Attitudes and Behaviour. Effects of Perception, Attitude
and Values on Work Performance
• Motivation Concepts: Motives, Theories of Motivation and their Applications for Behavioral
Change.
• Group Behaviour and Group Dynamics: Workgroup’s formal and informal groups and stages of
group development.
Concepts of Group Dynamics, group conflicts and group decision making.
Team Effectiveness: High performing teams, Team Roles, cross-functional and self-directed
teams
• Organizational Design: Structure, size, technology, Environment of an organization
Organizational Roles: Concept of roles, role dynamics, role conflicts and stress, Organizational
conflicts
• Leadership: Concepts and skills of leadership, Leadership and managerial roles, Leadership
styles and effectiveness, Contemporary issues in leadership
Power and Politics: Sources and Uses of power, politics at workplace, Tactics and strategies.
• Organization Development: Organizational Change and Culture Environment, Organizational
culture and climate, Contemporary issues relating to business situations, Process of Change and
Organizational Development
• Case Studies and Presentations
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Organizational Behaviour
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
An Organization
A systematic arrangement of people brought together to accomplish some specific purpose; applies
to all organizations—for-profit as well as not-for-profit organizations.
An organization is a collection of people who work together to achieve a wide variety of goals, both
goals of the various individuals in the organization and goals of the organization. Organizations exist
to provide goods and services that people want. These goods and services are the products of the
behaviors of workers.
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According to Fred Luthans, Organizational behavior is directly concerned with the Understanding,
Prediction, and Control of human behavior in Organizations.
Organizational behavior is the study of the many factors that have an impact on how individuals and
groups respond to and act in organizations and how organizations manage their environments.
Although many people assume that understanding human behavior in organizations is intuitive,
many commonly held beliefs about behavior in organizations, such as the idea that a “happy worker
is a productive worker,” are either entirely false or true only in specific situations.
The study of organizational behavior provides a set of tools—concepts and theories—that help
people understand, analyze, and describe what goes on in organizations and why. How do the
characteristics of individuals, groups, work situations, and the organization itself affect how
members feel about their organization?
Organizational Behavior is field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups and
structure have on behavior within an organization. It is the study and application of knowledge about
how people act within organizations. It is a human tool for human benefit. It applies broadly to the
behavior of people in all types of
organizations, such as business,
government, schools and services
organizations. It covers three
determinants of behavior in
organizations: individuals, groups,
and structure.
The ability to use the tools of organizational behavior to understand behavior in organizations is one
reason for studying this subject. A second reason is to learn how to apply these concepts, theories,
and techniques to improve behavior in organizations so that individuals, groups, and organizations
can achieve their goals. Managers are challenged to find new ways to motivate and coordinate
employees to ensure that their goals are aligned with organizational goals.
Organizational Behaviour is concerned with people's thoughts, feelings, emotions and actions in
setting up work. Understanding an individual Behaviour is in itself a challenge but understanding
group Behaviour in an organizational environment is a monumental managerial task. The
organization's work gets done through people, individually or collectively, on their, own or in
collaboration with technology. Therefore, the management of organizational behavior is central tithe
management task—a task that involves the capacity to "understand" the behaviour patterns of
individuals, groups and organizations, to ''predict'" what behavioural responses will be elicited by
various managerial actions and finally to use this understanding and these predictions to achieve
“control".
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In nutshell, OB applies the knowledge gained about individuals, groups, and the effect of structure
on behavior in order to make organizations work more effectively. It is concerned with the study of
what people do inane organization and how that behavior affects the performance of the
organization. There is increasing agreement as to the components of OB, but there is still
considerable debate as to the relative importance of each: motivation, leader behavior and power,
interpersonal communication, group structure and processes, learning, attitude development and
perception, change processes, conflict, work design, and work stress. It is also important because it
focuses on the following areas.
OB is a way of thinking.
• OB is multidisciplinary.
• There is a distinctly humanistic orientation with OB.
• The field of OB is performance oriented.
• The external environment is seen as having a significant impact on OB.
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Psychology:
Psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of
humans and other animals.
Sociology
Sociologists study the social system in which individuals fill their roles; that is, sociology studies
people in relation to their fellow human beings.
Social Psychology
An area within psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology and that focuses on
the influence of people on one another.
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Anthropology
The study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities
Political Science
The study of the behavior of individuals and groups within a political environment.
Levels
Micro organizational behavior is concerned mainly with the behaviors of individuals working alone.
Meso organizational behavior is a middle ground, bridging the other two subfields of organizational
behavior- the behaviors of people working together in teams or groups. Macro organizational
behavior focuses on understanding the behaviors of entire organizations.
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and they influence it. Each of the four elements of organizational behavior will be considered briefly.
People make up the internal social system of the organization. They consist of individuals and
groups, and large groups as well as small ones. People are the living, thinking, feeling beings who
created the organizations. It exists to achieve their objectives. Organizations exist to serve people.
People do not exist to serve organizations. The workforce is one of the critical resources that need to
be managed. In managing human resources, managers have to deal with:
• An individual employee who are expected to perform the tasks allotted to them
• Dyadic relationships such as superior-subordinate interactions
• Groups who work as teams and have the responsibility for getting the job done,
• People outside the organization system such as customers and government officials
Structure defines the official relationships of people in organizations. Different jobs are required to
accomplish all an organization’s activities. There are managers and employees, accountants and
assemblers. These people have to be related in some structural way so that their work can be
effective. The main structure relates to power and duties. For example, one person has authority to
make decisions that affect the work of other people.
Organizations can be structured as relatively rigid, formalized systems or as relatively loose, flexible
systems. Thus the structure of the organizations can range on a continuum of high rigidity to high
flexibility.
Technology is changing people’s jobs and their work behavior. We define the term technology
earlier to mean "how an organization transfers its inputs into outputs." Today it is also widely used to
describe machinery and equipment that use sophisticated electronics and computers to produce those
outputs. The common theme of these technologies is that they substitute for human labor in the
transformation of inputs into outputs. This has been happening since the mid-1800s. We are
concerned about the behavior of people at work—it is important to discuss how recent advances in
technology are changing the workplace and the work lives of employees.
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customer stages. Methods an organization can use to control these activities include exporting,
licensing, joint ventures, and wholly owned foreign subsidiaries.
Global learning is learning how to manage suppliers and distributors and to respond to the needs of
customers all over the world. There are three principal strategies that global organizations can use to
manage global expansion, each of which is associated with a type of global organizational structure:
an international strategy and international divisional structure, and a transnational strategy and global
matrix structure. The more complex the strategies, the greater is the need to integrate the global
organizational structure, and the stronger the global culture needs to be.
All the challenges associated with understanding and managing individual and group behavior that is
found at a domestic level, such as motivating and leading workers and managing group ‘sand teams,
are found at a global level. Expatriate managers must adapt their management styles to suit
differences in national culture if they are to be effective.
Implications of globalization:
Following are the implications of globalizations:
• New organizational structures
• Different forms of communication
• More competition, change, mergers, downsizing, stress
• Need more sensitivity to cultural differences
Emergence of E-Organization
Growth rate of e-business: The application of Internet operations are initially covers a small part of
the business. At this point, their e-commerce operations are secondary to their traditional business.
An increasingly popular application of e-business is merely using the Internet to better manage an
ongoing business. Later, there are millions of firms that are now selling anything over the Internet,
but they are using e-business applications to improve communications with internal and external
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stakeholders and to better perform traditional business functions. Some companies are putting
maximum effort in improving its internal efficiency and providing support to its wide-reaching
dealer network and to on-line sellers by creating a shared and integrated network. The companies
wanted to make creasing
E-Organizations: This embraces e-commerce and e-business. State and central governments,
municipal corporations are using the Internet for extending all the public utility services more
efficiently through internet. The employees must acquire skills, knowledge, attitudes in learning new
technology, overcoming any resistance
1. Managerial Challenges
a. Work force diversity
b. Changing demography of workforce
2. Workplace Issues and Challenges
a. Employee privacy / Personal life
b. Unions
c. Employee expectations
3. Organisational Challenges
a. Improving quality & productivity
b. Technology & Innovation
c. Ethical Behaviour
4. Global Challenges, and
a. Global Environment
b. Cultural diversity
5. Environmental Challenges.
a. PESTLE
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Personality
The term personality has been derived from Latin word “personnare” which means to speak
through. Personality is traditionally referring to how people influence others through their external
appearances. Gorden Allport defines “Personality is the dynamic organization within an individual
of those psychological systems that determine his unique adjustment to his environment”.
Personality is a complex, multi-dimensional construct and there is no simple definition of what
personality is. Maddi defines personality as, “A stable set of characteristics and tendencies that
determine those commonalities and differences in the psychological behavior and that may not be
easily understood as the sole result of the social and biological pressures of the moment”. From the
above definition we can infer that all individuals have some universally common characteristics.
People tend to have a general notion that personality refers to a personal appearance with charming
smile, or outlook. But psychologists view the concept as dynamic in nature concerned with growth
and development of a person’s whole psychological system.
Personality can be defined as the consistent psychological patterns within an individual that affect
the way they interact with others and the situations they encounter. Personality is defined as
relatively stable and enduring characteristics that determine our thoughts, feelings and behavior.
Personality is a complex phenomenon and there are various perspectives of personality construct.
Some personality theorists stress the need of identifying person-situation as interaction. This is
equivalent to recognizing the social learning aspects related to personality. Such social learning
analysis is one of the most comprehensive and meaningful ways included in the overall study of
organizational behavior. From this perspective, personality means the way people affect others. It
also involves people's understanding themselves, as well as their pattern of inner and outer
measurable traits, and the person and situation interaction. People affect others depending primarily
upon their external appearance such as height, weight, facial features, color and other physical
aspects and traits.
Personality is “Relatively stable pattern of behaviours and consistent internal states that explain a
person's behavioural tendencies”
1. The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts with others.
2. Mean how people affect others and how they understand and view themselves, as well as their
pattern of inner and outer measurable traits and Person-situation interaction.
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Determinants of Personality
Peoples are very complex. They have different ability and interest. Personality is influenced by four major
factors as:
Heredity The genetic components inherited from our parents at the time of conception strongly determine the
personality characteristics of an individual. The color, height, physical statutory, facial attractiveness,
gender, temperament, muscle composition, inheritable diseases etc. are considered to be inherited from our
parents.
Research studies conducted on identical twins that were reared in different places, temperament of young
children, longitudinal studies on the job satisfaction of employees over long period of time and across
different situation reveal that the heredity plays a substantial role in determining the behavior of individuals.
If all personality characteristics were completely dictated by heredity, they would be fixed at birth and no
amounts of experience could alter them.
Family is an important factor in shaping personality of an individual. The impact of these factors on the
personality can be understood identification process. Identification starts when a person begins to
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identify himself with some other members of the family. Normally child tries to behave like father or mother.
Home environment, family background, social class, parent education level, race, family relationship,
geographical location, birth order, number of members in family etc. will determine the personality
development of an individual
Cultural factors Culture largely determines what a person is and what a person will learn. Culture is the
complex of the believes, values and techniques for dealing with the environment which are shared with the
contemporaries and transmitted by one generation to the next. Norms, attitude, moral values, introducing and
accepting changes etc. will influence the personality.
Situational factors Situation extends an important press on individual. Every individual goes through
different types of experience and events in his life. Some will influence his behaviour and some will change
and modify his behaviour. Example: A trauma suffered by a person, especially sex assault, affects his later
life also. Timid/shy person performs his heroic acts in certain life saving situation, without caring for his own
safety.
Social factors Socialization is a process by which an infant acquires from the enormously wide range of
behavioral potentialities that are open to him at birth or customarily acceptable to the family and social
groups. The contribution of family and social group in combination with the culture is known as
socialization. It initially starts with the contact with the mother and later the other members of the family,
schoolmates, friends, and then colleagues at workspace and so on. An individual must accept the norms of the
society in which he exists.
Environment The culture in which people are brought up in their lives and they type of socialization process
such as family’s child rearing practices, socio economic status of the family, number of children in a family,
birth order, education of the parents, friends and peer group pressures, religious practices, the type of
schooling and recreational activities, pastime behavior etc. play a critical role in shaping our personalities.
For example, our parents mold the character of all children, almost from birth by expressing and expecting
their children to conform to their own values through role modeling and through various reinforcement
strategies such as rewards and punishments. Research studies reveal that the birth order – the difference
between first born children and later born children determine certain key personality characteristics, that is,
first born tend to exhibit more ambitious, and hardworking, more cooperative, more prone to guilt and
anxiety and less openly aggressive.
Both the heredity and environment are equally important in determining personality characteristics of
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an individual. Heredity sets the parameters or outer limits, but a person’s full potential will be determined by
how well he or she adjusts to the demands and requirements of the environment.
Situation The type of specific situation which a person encounters also equally shapes the type of personality
characteristics. For example, an individual’s exposure to a job interview and the type of experiences
encountered during that time will shape certain personality characteristics. Similarly, going for a picnic with
friends and encountering the type of experiences whether pleasant and unpleasant will shape the personality
characteristics of individuals.
Exp: Personality traits are very important in organizational behavior. In particular, five personality traits
especially related to job performance have recently emerged from research which is called as BIG FIVE
MODEL
2. Emotional Stability Refers to the tendency to experience positive emotional states. Another Big
Five trait, neuroticism, or negative affectivity, refers to people’s dispositions to experience negative
emotional states, feel distressed, and view the world around them negatively. They may play devil’s
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advocate in an organization, pointing out problems with a proposed course of action. Individuals
high on neuroticism often experience negative moods, feel stressed, and have a negative orientation
at work. They are more critical of their own performance, a tendency that drives them to make
improvements and excel in critical thinking and evaluation. In group decision making, these
individuals exert a sobering influence by pointing out the negative aspects of a decision.
5. Openness to Experience reflects the extent to which an individual has broad interests and is
willing to be a risk-taker. Openness to experience is a trait that refers to the extent to which an
individual is original, is open to a wide variety of stimuli, has broad interests, and is willing to take
risks, rather than being narrow-minded or cautious. For openness to experience to be translated into
creative and innovative behavior in organizations, the organization must remove obstacles to
innovation.
Identifying the above "big five" traits related to performance reveals that personality plays an
important role in organizational behavior. Besides physical appearance and personality traits, the
aspects of personality concerned with the self-concept such as self-esteem and self-efficacy and the
person-situation interaction also play important roles.
Extrovert (E): Outgoing; speaks , then thinks. Relates more easily to the outer world of people than
inner world of ideas
Introverts (I): Reflective; thinks then speaks, Relates more easily to the inner world of ideas than outer
world of people
Sensing (S): Practical; Concrete. World work with known facts than look for possibilities and
relationship
Intuitive (N): Theoretical; abstract. Would look for possibilities and relationships than work with
known facts
Thinking (T): Analytical; relies more on interpersonal analysis and logic than personal vales
Feeling (F): Subjective; Relies more on personal values than on impersonal analysis and logic
Judgmental (J): Structured, organized. Likes a planned & orderly way of life rather than flexible ,
spontaneous way
Perceptive (P): Flexible, spontaneous. Likes a flexible, spontaneous way rather than a planned and
orderly way of life.
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INTJ
ISTJ ISFJ INFJ
Conceptual
Planner Protector Foreseer
izer
Inspector Supporter Developer
Director
ISTP ISFP INFP INTP
Analyzer Composer Harmonizer Designer
Operator Producer Clarifier Theorizer
ESTP ESFP ENFP ENTP
Promoter Motivator Discoverer Explorer
Executor Presenter Advocate Inventor
Extroverts: are happier in their jobs, they usually have more friends& spend more time in social
situation than introverts
Emotional Stability: More strongly related to the job satisfaction & lesser stress level.
People with low emotional stability can take better decisions when they are in Bad mood than the More
emotionally stable people
Openness to experience: Are more creative in Science & in Art, more likely to politically liberal. Cope
better with organizational Change
2. If a certain personality type better on specific job, management could use personality test to screen the
job candidates & improve employee performance.
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Self-Esteem
Locus of Control
Type B individuals are more relaxed and easygoing. Type A individuals may get a lot accomplished
inorganizations, but they also are more easily frustrated, more involved in more conflicts, and more
likely to develop coronary heart disease than Type B individuals. Type Bs never suffers from a sense
of time urgency with its accompanying impatience and feels no need to display or discuss either their
achievements or accomplishments unless such exposure is demanded by the situation.
Machiavellism The Prince by Niccole Machiavelli on How to gain and use power. I am prepared to
do whatever I have to do to go ahead. Even the course of action may be seen unethical by a section
of society.
Self-Esteem: Self-esteem is the extent to which people have pride in themselves and their
capabilities. Individuals with high self-esteem believe in their abilities and tend to set higher goals
and perform more difficult tasks
Narcissism: Describes a person who has grandiose sense of self importance, requires excessive
admiration, has a sense of self-importance, entitlement & are Arrogant.
Risk taking: managers are in large Organizations may actually to be more willing to take risk than the
entrepreneurs. High risk taking is more effective for stock trader in a brokerage firm, on the other hand
willingness to take a risk is a major obstacle to an accountant who performs auditing activities
Conclusion
Personality plays a key role in organizational behavior because the way that people think, feel, and
behave affects many aspects of the workplace. People's personalities influence their behavior in
groups, their attitudes, and the way they make decisions. Interpersonal skills hugely affect the way
that people act and react to things during work. In the workplace, personality also affects such things
as motivation, leadership, performance, and conflict. The more that managers understand how
personality in organizational behavior works, the better equipped they are to be effective and
accomplish their goals. Since personality of an individual plays a crucial role in shaping an
organization, several methods have been evolved to measure personality. Most organizational
behavior strategies are eventually meant to optimally utilize the capabilities of individuals and
groups towards achievement of organizational objectives.
Throughout any organization, different roles require different skill sets and aptitudes, which are tied
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to personality. Organizations are recognizing more and more the importance of personality when
looking for candidates to fill job openings. Information and skills can be learned, whereas personality
is ingrained and harder to change. Matching the right personality, along with the right skills, to each
job improves your chance of success.
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Perception
Perception can be defined as a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory
impressions in order to give meaning to their environment. Perception is not just what one sees with
eyes. It is a much more complex process by which an individual selectively absorbs or assimilates
the stimuli in the environment, cognitively organizes the perceived information in a specific fashion
and then interprets the information to make an assessment about what people select, organize, and
interpret or attach meaning to events happening in the environment. Since perception is subjective
process, different people may perceive the same environment differently based on what particular
aspects of the situation they choose.
The psychological processes that allow an individual to adjust his behaviour are called perception.
The behaviour of an individual is inclined by his personality, motives and efforts. The behaviour and
performance provides satisfaction to the employees who get stimulated to work more and develop his
personality and work quality.
Definition
Perception may be defined as “The process by which individuals organize and interpret their
impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.”
The environment is a stimulus to influence behaviour, because the stimuli are attended, organized
and interpreted to arrive at certain forms of behaviour. The sensory organs, i.e. eyes, nose, ears, skin
and tongue, are used to change the stimuli into behaviour through their attention, recognition and
interpretation processes. Individuals do not accept the information or stimuli unless they are
evaluated and interpreted by the mental processing system.
Individuals attend to the stimuli, recognize and translate them into meaningful information, which
inspire them to act and perform the job. These processes are known as perpetual process. When
employees get satisfaction through their performance, either by meeting their physical or mental
needs, they perceive the organization in the right perspective. It helps them understand the functions
and achieve satisfaction.
Components of Perception
Perception is a process of sensory organs. The mind gets information through the five sense organs,
viz. the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. The stimulation coming to these organs may be through
action, written messages, oral communication, odor, taste, touch of the product and people. The
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perception starts with the awareness of these stimuli. Recognizing these stimuli takes place only after
paying attention to them. These messages are then translated into action and behaviour.
Stimuli: The receipt of information is the stimulus, which results in sensation. Knowledge and
behaviour depend on senses and their stimulation. The physical senses used by people are vision,
hearing, touch, smell and taste. Intuitions and hunches are known as the sixth sense.
These senses are influenced by a larger number of stimuli, which may be action, information,
consideration and feelings, etc. The stimuli may be in the form of objects or physical commodities.
The human body itself is developed through the acceptance of the stimuli. The mind and soul are the
victims of these stimuli occurring in the surroundings of the people. The family, social and the
economic environment are important stimuli for the people.
The physiological and psychological functions are the result of these stimuli. The intensive and
extensive forms of stimuli have a greater impact on the sensory organs. The physical work
environment, socio- cultural environment and other factors have certain stimuli to influence the
employee's perception. In all, the perception begins only when people deal with stimuli; that is,
stimulating factors give information about the situation.
Attention: People selectively attend to stimuli. Some of the stimuli are reacted to while others are
ignored without being paid any attention. The stimuli that are paid attention depend purely on the
people's selection capacity and the intensity of stimuli. Educated employees pay more attention to
any stimuli, viz. announcement of bonus, appeal for increasing productivity, training and motivation.
The management has to find out suitable stimuli, which can appeal to the employees at the maximum
level. If the attention of the employees is not drawn, the organization cannot expect proper behaviour
from the employees. An organization should be aware of all those factors, which affect the attention
of the employees. During the attention process, sensory and neural mechanisms are affected and the
message receiver becomes involved in understanding the stimuli. Taking employees to the attention
stage is essential in an organization for making them behave in a systematic and required order.
Recognition: After paying attention to the stimuli, the employees try to recognize whether the
stimuli are worth realizing. The messages or incoming stimuli are recognised before they are
transmitted into behaviour. Perception is a two-phase activity, i.e. receiving stimuli and translating
the stimuli into action. However, before the stage of translation, the stimuli must be recognised by
the individual.
The recognition process is dependent on mental acceptability. For example, if a car driver suddenly
sees a child in front of his running car, he stops the car. He recognizes the stimuli, i.e. the life of the
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child is in danger. His mental process recognizes the danger after paying attention to the stimuli. If
he does not pay attention to the stimuli, he cannot recognize the danger. After recognizing the
stimuli, he translates the message into behaviour.
Translation: The stimuli are evaluated before being converted into action or behaviour. The
evaluation process is translation. In the above example, the car driver after recognizing the stimuli
uses the clutch and brake to stop the car. He has immediately translated the stimulus into an
appropriate action. The perception process is purely mental before it is converted into action. The
conversion is translation.
The management in an organisation has to consider the various processes of translating the message
into action. The employees should be assisted to translate the stimuli into action. For example, the
announcement of bonus should be recognised as a stimulus for increasing production. The employee
should translate it into appropriate behaviour. In other words, they should be motivated by the
management to increase productivity. During the translation period, psychological mechanism
commonly known as sensory and mental organs is affected. They influence perception. The
incoming stimuli are interpreted and perception is developed.
Behaviour: Behaviour is the outcome of the cognitive process. It is a response to change in sensory
inputs, i.e. stimuli. It is an overt and covert response. Perceptual behaviour is not influenced by
reality, but is a result of the perception process of the individual, his learning and personality,
environmental factors and other internal and external factors at the workplace. The psychological
feedback that may influence the perception of an employee may be superior behaviour, his eye
movement, raising of an eyebrow, the tone of voice, etc.
The behaviour of employees depends on perception, which is visible in the form of action, reaction
or other behaviour. The behavioural termination of perception may be overt or covert. The overt
behaviour of perception is witnessed in the form of physical activities of the employees and covert
behaviour is observed in the form of mental evaluation and self-esteem.
The perception behaviour is the result of the cognitive process of the stimulus, which may be a
message, or an action situation of management function. Perception is reflected in behaviour, which
is visible in different forms of employees' action and motivation.
Performance: Proper behaviour leads to higher performance. High performers become a source of
stimuli and motivation to other employees. A performance-reward relationship is established to
motivate people.
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Satisfaction: High performance gives more satisfaction. The level of satisfaction is calculated with
the difference in performance and expectation. If the performance is more than the expectation,
people are delighted, but when performance is equal to expectation, it results in satisfaction. On the
other hand, if performance is less than the expectation, people become frustrated and this requires a
more appealing form of stimulus for developing proper employee work behaviour and high
performance.
It is essential to understand the factors that influence the perception process and mold employees'
behaviour towards the corporate objectives and self-satisfaction. Individuals observe several stimuli
every day. They confront these stimuli, notice and register them in their minds, interpret them and
behave according to their background and understanding. Employees confronted with stimuli select
only a few stimuli of their choice and leave other stimuli unattended and unrecognized. Factors
influencing the selective process may be external as well as internal, organizational structures, social
systems and characteristics of the perceiver.
Perceptual Process
Perceptual
Receiving Selective Organization Emotions and
Stimuli Attention and Behaviours
interpretation
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1. Receiving Stimuli
• The first process of perception is the reception of stimuli or data from various sources.
• Most of the data received through the five sensory organs.
a. Feeling
b. Hearing
c. Seeing
d. Smelling
e. tasting
3. Perceptual Organisation:
After selecting stimuli, we usually simplify and make sense of it. This information involves organizing
the information into general categories and interpreting it
• Perceptual Grouping: The process of placing people and objects into recognizable and
manageable patterns or categories
• Mental Models: Perceptual grouping is influenced by our broader assumptions and beliefs,
known as mental models.
Target Expectations
Novelty
Situation
Motion
Factors Time
Sounds affecting on
perception Work Settings
Size
Social
Background
Settings
Proximity
similarity
11/9/2022 Dr. Pooja Thorat
A - Perceiver's
Perciever
Perception depends on how an individual views the objects and situations. Some employees may
perceive the workplace as incorporating favourable working conditions, while others may perceive it
as a place of good pay.
The perception is not actual reality, but it is the viewing of the reality, which differs from person to
person according to their respective characteristics. Perceptions of the object are influenced not only
by individual's characteristics but also by the characteristics of other employees, the manager's
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personality and employee's views from their perception of the workplace. The characteristics of
employees, viz. attitude, motives, interests, habits, experience, expectations, learning and personality
have a greater influence on perception formation.
Attitude: The attitude and aptitude of employees influence perception formation. If they have
positive attitudes towards the management, they directly perceive the stimuli given by management.
In case of negative attitudes, the employees suspect the management's approach. Employees of high
aptitude have a desire and attitude for growth. They behave positively towards the management of an
organization.
Motives: The motives and desires of employees cause them to view stimuli differently as per their
level and angle. Helpful motives of the employees will always assist the management. If they desire
to develop themselves and the organisation, they will perceive objects and situations positively.
Employees having low motives will not work sincerely. The perception will differ depending on
different types of motives. An indecisive manager perceives his supervisors differently. Personal
insecurity of a manager results in doubtful perception about his supervisors, irrespective of their
intentions. People who are dubious are prone to see others as dubious persons. Motives are reflected
in actions based on perception.
Interest: The interest of individuals draws more attention and recognition to stimuli. Less attention
and recognition lowers the impact of stimuli or objects on behaviour. If employees lack interest,
behaviour pattern will be less effective, and the perception will be weak. Managers cannot influence
the employees in their work culture. Since individual interests vary from person to person, the
perception is also different. However, the management tries to create interest among the employees
to have higher perception of the organisation.
Habits: Habits die-hard and therefore individuals perceive objects, situations and conditions
differently according to their habits. Many employees learn quickly. Others are slow in perceiving a
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stimulus. Some employees are not bothered about the management. They do not perceive the object
correctly. Some people work by smoking or chewing pan. Thus, the habits of people have different
perception levels.
Expectation: Expectations distort the perceptions. People see what they expect to see. If they see the
object and the situation differently from their expectations, they get frustrated. They are unable to
modify their behaviour. The employees may expect more inclination towards them positively in
terms of payments and fringe benefits; therefore, they perceive the management from that angle. The
real stimuli are not properly perceived if expectations exist there on. The management has to evolve
expectations for proper perception.
Learning: Learning levels of employees have a great impact on their perceptions. It is an important
factor influencing perception formation. Educated persons have higher perceptions than the less
educated persons. Attitudes are developed according to the learning levels.
Personality: Personality has different levels of perception. The personality of a perceiving person
considerably affects the stimuli transformation behaviour process. Young people perceive objects
and situations in the original form. Experienced persons perceive the objects as per their personality
levels. Perception influences learning, which is a developing factor of personality. The personality
has a wider impact on the perception process too. Persons can view objects and situations as per their
personality levels. The age, sex, motivation, learning levels, etc. influence perception.
Economic and Social background: The employee perceptions are based on economic and social
backgrounds. The employee's level of understanding depends upon their economic and social
backgrounds. Socially and economically developed employees have a more positive attitude towards
development rather than less developed employees. However, developed employees are prone to
decision-oriented functions. Conflicts between managers and employees will increase in this case.
The problems can be resolved only through proper perception processes.
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B - Target
Objects are external factors influencing the perceiver because he has no control over them. The
physical and internal attributes of objects are influencing factors of perception. The physical and
time proximity, complex nature of objects, presentation of messages and the territorial approach of
the management have great impact on the perception.
Size: The size of the object or stimulus has a greater impact on the perception process because the
size influences attention and recognition in a more effective manner. Employees are greatly
influenced by tall and well-built managers as compared to the normal-sized individuals. The
engineering department pays more attention to big and, attractive machines; Big-sized objects have a
natural attraction and get more attention.
Intensity: Scholars on human behaviour have revealed that the more intense the stimuli, the higher
the attention and recognition in the perception process. A strong voiced manager has more impact on
supervisors and employees. It is observed that managers use voice modulation to get the attention of
employees. Bright letters and strong appeal have more impact on people than normal letters and low
appeal. More attention results in a higher recognition and behaviour pattern. The intensity varies as
per the needs of the organisation. The same type of intensity may not be useful for all the situations
and objects.
Contrast: Contrasting objects have more impact on behaviour. Employees pay more attention and
recognition to contrasting objects and situations. Machines making noises are hardly noticed, but a
machine coming to a halt is immediately noticed, because of contrast stimuli. Normal
communication and performance have less impact than abnormal and contrast communication. The
purpose of contrast stimuli is to attract more attention and recognition. However, if the contrast is not
helpful in drawing more attention, it should be avoided and more attention-drawing stimuli should be
exercised for gaining a real perception of work behaviour.
Repetition: Repeated stimuli have more impact on performances than a single statement. Repetition
has the advantage of being attention-catching. When stimuli are waning, repetition generates fresh
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attention and recognition. Supervisors repeat orders several times to have them followed by
employees.
Motion: People pay more attention to the moving objects than to stationary objects. This is just the
impact of eyes on the mind. Workers are more attentive towards working machines than stationary
machines. The video films of some training programmes create more of an impact on employees than
others.
Familiarity: Employees would like to hear and see those programmes with which they are familiar.
Training programmes demonstrated in the language of the employees are highly attended and
recognised. Examples, which are known and easily understood, are used for motivating employees.
Novelty: Novel actions 'get more attention. New ideas and model preaching will draw the attention
of the perceiver. Changing jobs reduce monotony. Novel objects and situations are recognised
clearly by the perceivers.
C - Situations
Situations have a great influence on people's perceptions. A favourable work environment develops a
positive attitude and work culture because the perception process is easily channelized and rightly
directed. The management style and functioning of the organisation influences the employee’s
mental state through attention and recognition. Work relations also have some impact on perception
forces.
Perceptual structure: The organizational structure influences the perception of employees and other
people related to the organisation. The departmentalization, decentralization, delegation of authority
and other structural frameworks have important bearings in the mind of employees. An adequate
amount of decentralization makes employees feel that the organisation is welfare-oriented. Similarly,
too much centralization gives rise to the feeling of suspicion in the minds of employees. Structure
itself becomes a flowchart of perception. Work relations and the decision- making authority provide
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Selective Perception: People selectively interpret what they see on the basis of their interests,
background, experience, and attitudes
Conclusions: based on stereotyping effects. Favourable and unfavorable traits are always calculated and
evaluated to find their impact on the behaviour or decision taken.
Stereotyping has become an important factor of social perception, which is based on ethnic groups- socio-
economic groups, demographic groups and so on. The individual difference in the group is recorded to
evaluate the perceptual errors in arriving at stereotyping effects. The belief factor in stereotyping effects has
become an important tool to arrive at certain decisions. One can conclude that an organisation has a
democratic manager. The common characteristics are the basis of belief. If a manager belongs to the said
democratic organisation, one can believe that he will also have the same characteristics. The errors may
be there in belief because of ignoring variations in characteristics and holding mistaken beliefs. The beliefs
or stereotyping effects are modified from time to time to arrive at correct perception behaviour and
decisions.
Halo effect: The halo effect occurs only when a single factor is taken for performance evaluation or
perception, with the process ignoring other important considerations. For example, if an employee is
considered good on one account, he is treated as good on all accounts. But, in the real field, he may
not be good on every account.
The halo effect is related to the personality assessment based only on a single trait. If a manager is
found to be intelligent, he is considered good for cooperation, dependability and for other purposes.
The halo effect arises on account of the nuclear expression of traits, which are not frequently
encountered and have moral implications. The perception process becomes deceptive if only one
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factor is given more importance.
If an employee possesses all desirable qualities except that of loyalty to the manager, he is not put in
the same perceptual setup as the personally loyal employees, having no profession attributes and
work devotion. The halo effect is an attribution. Error or perceptual error should be avoided in the
perception process. The communicating authority should be well aware of the halo effect for proper
motivation.
Contrast effect: Like stereotyping and halo effect, the contrast effect is another factor of social
perception, i.e. perception in a group. People perceive differently in many cases. Whatever the
manager emphasizes, the employees may take different views of the stimulus. For example, manager
asks employees to increase productivity for getting a bonus. Employees may view this stimulus or
message as the manager being bothered about his promotion. If employees develop this perception
and translate it into practice, the stimulus will work against the purpose. The contrast effect is an
error of social perception. Politicians generally produce a contrast effect amongst their audience. The
contrast effect occurs because of doubtful relations, swift conclusions, unfavorable attitudes and so
on.
Stereotyping effect: The perception process takes the shortest method in some cases and considers
only routine effects. Stereotype judgement is based on an ideal situation or the type of impression
formed about the group. It is the consideration of individual's characteristics as being representative
of the whole group. If an employee is found well behaved, the whole group of employees is
considered to be good. If, in an organisation, a manager is helpful, it is generalized that the
organisation is very helpful and sympathetic towards employees.
It is an inductive method wherein conclusions are aggregated from individual performance; that is, it
accumulates particular cases to arrive at general conclusions. Stereotyping is generalization, which
has the advantages of being time saving, accurate and common. For example, assume that the
management has previously found that sportsmen and athletes have been very successful workers in
the factory. They were ambitious; hardworking and can easily overcome adverse situations. In future
selection process, the management may appoint such sportsmen and athletes without undergoing
many selection procedures. Similarly, many decisions are taken on the basis of the stereotyping
effect.
The generalization may prove disastrous if it is relied on heavily without proper scrutiny and
examination of individual characteristics. The most important stereotyping effects are observed in
the form of age, sex, nationality and social status. The stereotyping effects under social perception
consider the attributes, traits and other qualities of a member of a social organisation. These qualities
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are generalized as the qualities of the social organisation or group. However, there may be perceptual
errors, because the generalized attributes and qualities may not be found in all the cases. Therefore,
the perception process takes into consideration the amount of perceptual errors when deriving
1 Employment Interview
– Perceptual biases of raters affect the accuracy of interviewers’ judgments of applicants.
2. Performance Expectations
– Self-fulfilling Prophecy (Pygmalion effect): Individuals behaviour determined by other
people’s expectations.
3. Performance Evaluations
– Appraisals are often the subjective (judgmental) perceptions of appraisers of another
employee’s job performance.
A decision-making model that describes how individuals should behave to maximize some outcomes
Assumptions:
• Complete information
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2. Bounded Rationality: A process of making decisions by constructing simplified models that extract the
essential features from problems without capturing all their complexity.
3. Intuition: “It is an unconscious process created out of refined experiences.” Intuition is highly complex
and highly developed form of reasoning that is based on years of experience and learning.
Individual Organizational
Differences Constraints
Performance
Personality evaluation
system
Gender Reward
system (GM)
Mental Formal regulations
ability (Domino’s)
Cultural
differences System-imposed
time constraints
Historical
precedents
11/9/2022 Dr. Pooja Thorat
Summary
Behaviour is a fatality of the environment, which is observed in the form of stimuli. The sensory organs
perceive the stimuli as per their learning and personality. The reverse functions are also correct. The
perceptions, if modified through adequate and qualitative stimuli, help to develop learning and personality.
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Improved behaviour has better performance and rewards, which provide more satisfaction to the employees.
A satisfied employee tries to learn and work effectively.
An organisation grows with the developed employees. Perception is therefore an important and initial step
for developing an organizational behaviour. It is a cognitive process, which selects, organizes and interprets
the stimuli. It overlay the base for behaviour. Although, perception may not be a real-world presentation, it
is an imaginary understanding of the situation. The behaviour of an individual is guided by perception.
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Attitudes
The motive of the present lesson is to understand how attitudes affect human behaviour and to
identify how attitudes are developed so that mangers can affect attitudes by controlling various
factors. Attitudes are evaluative statements or judgements concerning objects, people or events.
Introduction
It is defined as individuals’ feelings like likes and dislikes, pros and cons, favorable or unfavorable,
positive or negative towards various other people, objects, events or activities. These are the
evaluative statements – either favorable or unfavorable towards object or people. I like coke. I do not
like rock music. These are expression of attitudes towards products.
In organizations, attitudes are important because they affect job behaviors. If employees believe that
supervisors, auditors, bosses , engineers are all in a conspiracy to make the employee work harder for
the same or less money, then it makes sense to try understand how attitudes were formed, their
relationship to actual job behavior and how they can be made more favorable.
Attitude is the major factor, which affect the behaviour of a person or an organisation. It manipulates
the perception of objects and people, exposure to and comprehension of information, choice of
friends, co-workers and so on. The importance of attitudes in understanding psychological
phenomenon was given formal recognition early in the history of social psychology. From the time
of the concept's entry into the language of psychology until now, interest in attitudes has been strong
and growing.
However, over the years attitudes have been studied with differing emphases and methods. For
example, between the period of 1920s and up to World War II the attention of attitude researchers
was directed principally towards definitional issues and attitude measurement.
In addition, there were studies concerned with relationship of attitudes to some social variables.
World War II brought with it a growing concern about the place of the attitude concept in
understanding prejudice, particularly anti-Semitism. This period also brought the measurement of
attitudes and opinions concerning various facts of soldiering and war. After the war, the subject of
attitudes was taken up by academicians, particularly in the context of attitude change. Till now, the
researchers have developed a loosely structured theoretical framework formulating the psychological
processes underlying attitude change and the direct application of the study of attitudes to
contemporary social problems.
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barometer, which reflects the generalized level of individuals’ attitudes towards some object or
concept, and opinion survey which typically are used to elicit the opinions of people toward specific
aspects of, for example, their work situation.
A difference can also be made between attitude and belief. A belief is an enduring organisation of
perceptions and cognitions about some aspects of individual's world. Thus belief is a hypothesis
concerning the nature of objects, more particularly, concerning one’s judgement of the probability
regarding their nature. In this sense, belief is the cognitive component of attitude, which, reflects the
manner in which an object is perceived. Kolasa observes that beliefs are stronger than opinions; we
hold them more firmly than we do the more changeable evaluations of minor or transitory events
represented by opinions.
Components Of Attitude
Behavioral:
describes an
Cognitive:
Affective: intention to
description of or
emotional or behave in a
belief in the way
feeling segment certain way
things are
towards someone
or something
The affective component of an attitude reflects 'feelings and emotions' that an individual has towards
a situation. The cognitive component of an attitude is derived from 'knowledge', belief or information
that an individual has about a situation. It has no meaning that the information is real or correct.
Finally, the behavioural or intentional component of an attitude reflects how an individual 'expects to
behave' towards or in the situation. For example, the different components of an attitude held
towards a firm, which supplies inferior products and that too irregularly could be described as
follows:
• "I don't like that company"—Affective component.
• "They are the worst supply firm I have ever dealt with"—Cognitive component.
• "I will never do business with them again"'—Intentional component.
People try to maintain consistency among the three components of their attitudes. However,
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conflicting circumstances often arise. The conflict that individuals may experience among their own
attitudes is called 'cognitive dissonance.
Attitude Formation
There are so many theories that have been projected to explain the attitude formation and change.
Although, these theories have many limitations, they provide useful thinking about the processes
underlying attitude formation. These theories are organised into major groupings according to the
nature of the psychological processes postulated to underlying formation and change of attitudes.
These theories may broadly be classified into three categories: cognitive-consistency theories,
functional theories and social judgment theories. However, there is frequent discontinuity between
various grouping because related approaches have focused on different sets of phenomena.
Nevertheless, such classification is valid from practical point of view.
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all other persons. Second, family mediates the influence of larger social systems on the individual's
attitudes, values, and personality characteristics. As an individual interacts with other family
members, he simultaneously both influences the personality characteristics and attitudes of others
and in turn is influenced by others. Since a family is a primary group, the attitudes of family
members tend to converge and are typically more homogeneous than would be the case if they were
not in the family.
Individual’s behaviour is not a simple and direct stimulus-response relationship; rather it is affected
by the individual concerned, as is explained by S-O-B model. The work situation is interpreted by
individual, and attitudes play an important part in which the situation is interpreted. Only after
individual's interpretation and comparison does the response occur. This means that response
expected of a purely objective and rational consideration of the work situation and its characteristics
may not be the actual response of the individual. His response depends completely on how he
interprets the situation and on his own personal attitudes towards the situation. Obviously, attitudes
are an important consideration because of their central position in the process transforming work
requirements into effort. Attitudes have been thought as serving four functions and thereby affecting
the behaviour, as discussed below.
Instrumental: Attitude serves as a means to reach at a desired goal or to avoid an undesired one.
Instrumental attitudes are aroused by the activation of a need or cues that are associated with the
attitude object and arouse favourable or unfavourable feelings.
Ego-defensive: The ego-defensive function of attitudes acknowledges the importance of
psychological thought. Attitude may be required and maintained to protect the person from facing
threats in the external world or from becoming aware of his own unacceptable impulses. Ego-
defensive attitudes may be aroused by internal or external threat, frustrating events, appeals or to the
build-up or repressed impulses, and suggestions by authoritarian sources. The attitude influences
his/her behaviour by affecting his perception of the situation accordingly.
Value Orientation: The value-orientation function takes into account attitudes that are held because
they express a person's values or enhance his self-identity. These attitudes arise by conditions that
threaten the self- concept, appeals to reassert the person's self-image, or by cues that engage the
person's values and make them salient to him.
Knowledge: The knowledge function of attitudes is based on a person's need to maintain a stable,
organised and meaningful structure of the world. Attitudes that provide a standard against which a
person evaluates aspects of his world serve the knowledge function too.
These functions of attitudes affect the individual's way of interpreting the information coming to
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him. Since attitudes intervene between work requirements and work responses, information about
how people feel about their jobs can be quite useful in prediction about work response. Thus these
types of attitudes can portray areas of investigation for making the individual and the organisation
more compatible.
Job Involvement This refers to the extent to which a person identifies psychologically with her or
his job. The person feels that the job is more meaningful and it utilizes one’s talent and skills to the
fullest extent. There is a perfect harmony between the types of skills a person possesses and the work
content. The individual experiences as if the whole work is being carried out by him having full
control over everything related to the work. Due to this perception, performance level will be
increasing significantly and enhance the overall self-worth. Employees with a high level of job
involvement strongly identify with and really care about the kind of work they do in their job.
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Job involvement measures the degree to which a person identifies psychologically with her or his job
and considers her or his perceived performance level important to her or his self-worth. Employees
with a high level of job involvement strongly identify with and really care about the kind of work
they do in their job. There is high level of relationship between job involvement and fewer absences
and lower resignation rates of an individual.
Attitude Change
There is often a paradox of attitudes in that people need them to provide stability to social world yet
world is a changing one and people must change their attitudes appropriate to the situation. The
attitude change appropriate to organizational requirement is more important because attitudes affect
behaviour and only certain behaviour is desirable from organisation point of view. Organizations
adopt a number of techniques for changing attitudes of their members so that their behaviour
corresponds with the organizational requirement. However, whatever the techniques for attitudes
change are adopted, they can be effective only if basic characteristics of attitudes and their nature are
kept inconsideration. Though various theories of attitude formation and change have been presented
earlier which help in understanding attitudes and the techniques through which they can be changed,
the change techniques can be more effective, if three basic factors (as discussed below) are
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considered adequately
Summary
Attitude is the bent of one's mind toward an object or subject. It involves liking or disliking people,
work and objects. Desire is an attitude, which directs people to adopt certain behaviour. Attitude is
developed through learning, although the family, society and nation exert great influence in the
attitude formation of people. Attitude is a combination of popular belief and interest. For example,
the attitude of male workers is that female workers cannot perform hard work. Attitude is learned
and expressed, apart from being primarily acquired by people through interaction with members of
family and society. Attitude formation is related to the cognitive aspects of behaviour.
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VALUES
Values are broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of action or outcomes. Values
influence behavior and attitudes.
Sources of values
• Parents
• Friends
• Teachers
• Role models
• External reference groups
Types of values
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Terminal Values: Preferences concerning the ends to be achieved. The end goals that we strive to
achieve and are most important to us are known as terminal values. Terminal values are the overall
goals that we hope to achieve in our lifetime. Terminal values include inner harmony, social
recognition, and a world of beauty. These are values that we think are most important or most
desirable. They are desirable states of existence that we will work towards or try to reach. They
include but are not limited to happiness, self-respect, recognition, inner harmony, and professional
excellence.
Example: True Friendship / Mature Love / Self-Respect / Happiness / Inner Harmony / Equality /
Freedom / Pleasure / Social Recognition / Wisdom / Salvation / Family Security / National Security /
A Sense of Accomplishment / A World of Beauty / A World at Peace / A Comfortable Life / An
Exciting Life
Instrumental Values Preferences for the means to be used in achieving desired ends. Instrumental
values can be defined as specific methods of behavior. Instrumental values are not an end goal, but
rather provide the means by which an end goal is accomplished. Character traits and personal
characteristics, such as being imaginative and independent, make up most of the instrumental values.
Rokeach developed a list of 18 instrumental values. These refer to preferred types of behavior like
honesty, sincerity, and ambition. These values are more focused on personality traits and character.
Example: Cheerfulness / Ambition / Love / Cleanliness / Self-Control / Capability / Courage /
Politeness / Honesty / Imagination / Independence / Intellect / Broad-Mindedness / Logic /
Obedience / Helpfulness / Responsibility / Forgiveness
Work Values
• Achievement (career advancement)
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• Concern for others (compassionate behavior)
• Honesty (provision of accurate information)
• Fairness (impartiality)
The thoughts and feelings people have about work range from being broad and long-lasting attitudes
about the nature of work in general, called work values, to more specific thoughts and feelings about
a current job or organization, called work attitudes, to more moment-to-moment experiences, called
work moods.
Work values are a worker’s personal convictions about expected outcomes work and behavior at
work. Outcomes might include a comfortable existence with family security, a sense of
accomplishment and self-respect, or social recognition, and an exciting lifestyle. Appropriate work
behaviors at work include being ambitious, imaginative, obedient, self-controlled, and respectful.
Work values guide ethical behavior at work—honesty, trustworthiness, and helpfulness.
Economic- the
Creativity and
satisfaction of Independence
challenges
financial needs
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Work Centrality Different cultures value work differently. People for whom work is a central life
interest tend to work longer hours. Thus, Japanese managers tend to work longer hours than their
North American or British counterparts. This illustrates how cross-cultural differences in work
centrality can lead to adjustment problems for foreign employees and managers.
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Geert Hofstede, a social scientist, studied over 116,000 IBM employees in forty countries about their
work-related values. His results show that differences occurred across cultures in four basic
dimensions of work-related values: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity/femininity,
and individualism/collectivism. Subsequent work resulted in a fifth dimension, the long-term/short-
term orientation.
Power Distance
High-inequalities Individualism Vs Masculinity Vs
Low- equality and Collectivism Femininity
opportunity
Power distance is the extent to which an unequal distribution of power is accepted by society
members. In small power distance cultures, inequality is minimized, superiors are accessible, and
power differences are downplayed. In large power distance societies, inequality is accepted as
natural, superiors are inaccessible, and power differences are highlighted. The degree to which
people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.
Uncertainty avoidance is the extent to which people are uncomfortable with uncertain and
ambiguous situations. Strong uncertainty avoidance cultures stress rules and regulations, hard work,
conformity, and security. Cultures with weak uncertainty avoidance are less concerned with rules,
conformity, and security, and hard work is not seen as a virtue. However, risk taking is valued.
Another cultural value that differs across cultures is known as masculinity/femininity. More
masculine cultures clearly differentiate gender roles, support the dominance of men, and stress
economic performance. More feminine cultures accept fluid gender roles, stress sexual equality, and
stress quality of life.
Individualistic cultures stress independence, individual initiative and privacy. Collective cultures
favour interdependence and loyalty to family or clan.
Another cultural value that differs across cultures is known as long-term/short-term orientation.
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Cultures with a long-term orientation tend to stress persistence, perseverance, thrift, and close
attention to status differences. Cultures with a short-term orientation stress personal steadiness and
stability, face-saving, and social niceties.
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Motivation
“A state of mind, desire, energy or interest that translates into action” or “The inner drive that
directs a person’s behavior toward goals”
The word motivation is derived from ‘motive', which means an active form of a desire, craving or
need that must be satisfied. Motivation is the key to organizational effectiveness. The manager in
general must get the work done through others. These 'others' are human resources who need to be
motivated to attain organizational objectives.
Motivation is central to understanding and managing organizational behavior because it influences
workers’ behaviors, workers’ level of effort, and their persistence in the face of obstacles. This
chapter discusses the differences between motivation and performance and between intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation. Several theories of work motivation are described: need theory, expectancy
theory, equity theory, and procedural justice theory.
Defining Motivation
According to George R. Terry, "Motivation is the desire within an individual that stimulates him
other to action. “In the words of Robert Dublin, it is "the complex of forces starting and keeping a
person at work in an organization". Viteles defines motivation as "an unsatisfied need which creates
a state of tension or disequilibrium, causing the individual to move in a goal directed pattern towards
restoring a state of equilibrium, by satisfying the need."
“The processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction and persistence of effort toward
attaining a goal”
Features of motivation
The following are the features of motivation:
• It is an internal feeling and forces a person to action.
• It is a continuous activity.
• It varies from person to person and from time to time.
• It may be positive or negative.
Motivation is defined as individual’s intention or willingness to put maximum effort in his/her work
to reach organizational goals and enhance one’s ability to satisfy some individual needs. The cyclic
process of motivation starts from Unsatisfied needs > Tension > Drives > Search Behavior >
Satisfied Need > to end with Reduced Tension.
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Motives
Drives are known as motives too. These motives may be categorized into three groups Primary,
General and Secondary
Primary Motives - These are physiological / Biological or Unlearned. E.g. Hunger, Thirst, Sleep,
Pain.
Secondary Motives – Important in developed societies (Hunger may not be a motive for you) These
are learned and important in Organizational behaviour. E.g. Power, Achievement, Affiliation, Status
etc.
General Motives – Falls between primary and secondary. These are unlearned but not physiological.
E.g. Curiosity, Affection etc.
Key Elements
Intensity of effort: how hard a person tries. Intensity is concerned with how hard a person tries. This
is the element most of us focus on when we talk about motivation. It refers to an individual’s
intensity in reaching the stated goal. The intensity varies from individual to individual and also
depends upon the extent to which individual assigns importance to various goals. If these efforts are
channeled in proper direction consistent with organizational goals, the organization will maximize its
profit and reach a state of excellence in their field.
Direction: toward beneficial goal. Direction is the orientation that benefits the organization.
Persistence: how long a person tries. Persistence is a measure of how long a person can maintain
his/her effort. Motivated individuals stay with a task long enough to achieve their goal.
Need: It refers to some internal state that makes certain outcomes appear attractive. It is also a state
of deficiency and the organism tries to restore this deficiency to make it as equilibrium. An
unsatisfied need creates tension that stimulates drives within an individual. These drives direct the
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individual in different directions or searching in different places to find a particular goal, If the goal
is attained the organism will satisfy the need and reduce the tension.
Goals: Human behavior is always goal directed. Once the desired goal is satisfied, individuals will
always restate the goals or look for other goals to get satisfied. Goals will always be changing from
one level to another. In order to motivate an individual, managers must ensure to set a goal in such a
way which stimulates him or her to put more effort in their work. An effective way to set goals is to
follow the SMART approach, which states that goals should meet five characteristics:
• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Timely or Time Limited
If the chosen goal has these characteristics, the employee will have a highest level of motivation.
Motivational Theories
Content theories of motivation
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow Abraham proposed his theory in the 1940s. This theory, popularly known as the Hierarchy
of Needs assumes that people are motivated to satisfy five levels of needs: physiological, security,
belongingness, esteem and self-actualization needs. Need theory is actually a collection of theories
that focus on workers ‘needs as the sources of motivation. Need theories propose that workers seek
to satisfy many of their needs at work, so their behavior at work is oriented toward need satisfaction.
A need is a requirement for survival and well-being. Maslow suggested that all people seek to satisfy
the same five needs—physiological needs, safety needs, need to belong, esteem needs, and self-
actualization needs. Maslow proposed that the needs be arranged in a hierarchy of importance, with
the most basic or compelling needs—physiological and safety needs—at the bottom. Basic needs
must be satisfied before an individual seeks to satisfy higher needs in the hierarchy. Maslow argued
that once a need is satisfied, it is no longer a source of motivation.
Maslow’s theory helps managers understand that workers’ needs differ and that motivation for one
worker is not motivation for another. Managers must identify a worker’s needs and ensure
satisfaction of these needs if desired behaviors are performed.
1. Physiological needs: food, drink, shelter, sexual satisfaction, and other physical requirements.
2. Safety needs: security and protection from physical and emotional harm, as well as assurance that
physical needs will continue to be met.
3. Social needs: affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship.
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4. Esteem needs: internal esteem factors such as self-respect, autonomy, and achievement and
external esteem factors such as status, recognition, and attention.
5. Self-actualization needs: growth, achieving one's potential, and self-fulfillment; the drive to
become what one can become.
In terms of motivation, Maslow argued that each level in the hierarchy must be substantially satisfied
before the next is activated and that once a need is substantially satisfied it no longer motivates
behavior. In other words, as each need is substantially satisfied, the next need becomes dominant.
In terms of the individual moves up the need’s hierarchy. From the standpoint of motivation,
Maslow’s theory proposed that, although no need is ever fully satisfied, a substantially satisfied need
will no longer motivate an individual. If you want to motivate someone, according to Maslow, you
need to understand what level that person is on in the hierarchy and focus on satisfying needs at or
above that level. Managers who accepted Maslow's hierarchy attempted to change their organizations
and management practices so that employees' needs could be satisfied.
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In addition, Maslow separated the five needs into higher and lower levels. Physiological and safety
needs were described as lower-order needs; social, esteem, and self-actualization were described as
higher-order needs. The difference between the two levels was made on the premise that higher-
order needs are satisfied internally while lower-order needs are predominantly satisfied externally. In
fact, the natural conclusion from Maslow's classification is that, in times of economic prosperity,
almost all permanently employed workers have their lower-order needs substantially met.
Maslow's need theory received wide recognition, especially among practicing managers during
the1960s and 1970s. This recognition can be attributed to the theory's intuitive logic and ease of
understanding. Unfortunately, however, research hasn't generally validated the theory. Maslow
provided no empirical support for his theory, and several studies that sought to validate it could not.
Motivators
• Achievement
• Recognition
• Advancement
• The work itself
• The possibility of personal growth
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• Responsibility
The existence needs in this theory refers to the physiological and security needs of Maslow.
Relatedness needs refers to belongingness and esteem needs.
Growth needs refers to both self-esteem and self-actualization needs.
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Although ERG Theory assumes that motivated behavior follows a hierarchy in somewhat the same
fashion as suggested by Maslow, there are two important differences.
Firstly, ERG theory suggests that more than one kind of need might motivate a person at the same
time. For example, it allows for the possibility that people can be motivated by a desire for money
(existence); friendship (relatedness), and an opportunity to learn new skills(growth) all at the same
time.
Secondly, ERG theory has an element of frustrations-regression that is missing from Maslow’s need
hierarchy. Maslow maintained that one heed must be satisfied before an individual can progress to
needs at a higher level, for example, from security needs to belongingness. This is termed as
satisfaction—progression process. Although the ERG theory includes this process, it also suggests
that if needs remain unsatisfied at some higher level, the individual will become frustrated, regress to
a lower level and will begin to pursue low level needs again. For" example, a worker previously
motivated by money (existence needs) is awarded a pay rise to satisfy these needs. Then he attempts
to establish more friendship to satisfy relatedness needs. If for some reason an employee finds that it
is impossible to become better friends with others in the workplace, he may eventually become
frustrated and regress to being motivated to earn even more money. This is termed as ‘frustration-
regression' process.
The ERG theory emphasis on the following key points regarding needs:
• Some needs may be more important than others.
• People may change their behavior after any particular set of needs has been satisfied.
1. Expectancy Theory
Expectancy theory, developed by Victor Vroom, focuses on how workers make choices among
alternative behaviors and levels of effort. With its emphasis on choices, expectancy theory focuses
on workers ‘perceptions and thoughts or cognitive processes. By describing how workers make
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choices, expectancy theory provides managers with valuable insights on how to get workers to
perform desired behaviors and how to encourage workers to exert high levels of effort.
Expectancy theory makes two assumptions: (1) workers are motivated to receive positive outcomes
and avoid negative outcomes and (2) workers are rational, careful processors of information.
Expectancy theory identifies three factors that determine motivation: valence, instrumentality, and
expectancy. The most comprehensive and widely accepted explanation of employee motivation to
date is Victor Vroom’s expectancy theory. Although the theory has its critics, most research evidence
supports it.
Expectancy theory states that an individual tends to act in a certain way based on the expectation that
the act will be followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the
individual. It includes three variables or relationships.
Expectancy theory
Positive reinforcement increases the probability that a behavior will occur by administering positive
consequences (called positive reinforces) following the behavior. Managers determine what
consequences a worker considers positive. Potential reinforces include rewards such as pay, bonuses,
promotions, job titles, interesting work, and verbal praise. Rewards are positive reinforcements if a
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worker acts in the desired manner to obtain them. Workers differ in what they consider to be a
positive reinforce. For some, titles are rewards, for others it is vacation time. Once the desired
behavior is determined, reinforces must follow to increase reoccurrence. Organizations use
reinforcement to promote the learning and performance of many behaviors. Some organizations use
positive reinforcement for diversity efforts and to retain valuable employees.
Negative reinforcement increases the probability that a desired behavior, then occur by removing a
negative consequence (or negative reinforce) when a worker performs the behavior. The negative
consequence is faced until a worker performs the desired behavior, then the consequence is removed.
A manager’s nagging is a negative reinforcement, if the nagging stops when worker performs a task
correctly. Negative reinforces differ for various individuals. Nagging may not affect some
subordinates. They will not perform the desired behavior, even if the nagging stops. When using
negative and positive reinforcement, the magnitude of the consequences must fit the desired
behavior. A small bonus may not be sufficient to cause a worker to perform a time-consuming or
difficult task.
Extinction: According to operant conditioning, both good and bad behaviors are controlled by
reinforced consequences. Identifying behavioral reinforces and removing them can decrease a
behavior. An undesired behavior without reinforcement can diminishes until it no longer occurs. This
process is called extinction. Extinction can modify the behavior of a worker who spends much time
talking or telling jokes. The attention of coworkers reinforces this behavior. If coworkers stop talking
and laughing, the worker is likely to stop telling jokes. Although extinction is useful, it takes time to
eliminate the undesired behavior. When behaviors need to stop immediately, managers may resort to
punishment.
Punishment consists of administering a negative consequence when the undesired behavior occurs.
Punishment is not the same as negative reinforcement. It decreases a behavior, whereas negative
reinforcement increases the frequency of a behavior. Punishment administers a negative
consequence; whereas negative reinforcement removes a negative consequence
Individual continually
Only one hour is given for Reprimand by
Punishment: takes more than one
lunch each day Supervisor
hour for lunch
Individuals who take more than
Individuals take only
Avoidance one hour for lunch will be No reprimand
one hour for lunch
reprimanded by supervisor
Salesperson worked
Bonus given to salesperson for hard to get new orders
Bonus
each new customer order Salespersons exert only
Extinction No bonus
Bonus removed for each new nominal effort to get
customer order new orders
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GROUP BEHAVIOR
Group is defined as collection of two or more individuals who are interdependent and interact with
one another for the purpose of performing to attain a common goals or objective.
The principal characteristics presented in this definition – goals, interaction and performance are
crucial to the study of behavior in organizations. A group is a collection of individuals in which the
existence of all (in their given relationships) is necessary to the satisfaction of certain individual
needs to each. In order to satisfy certain needs relating to social interactions, employees may
informally (or formally) join together to form various social, civic, or recreational groups within
organizations.
Types of groups
Various methods are used to classify the types of groups that exist in our organizations. In
organizations, the predominant operating groups are the functional groups, task or project groups and
interest groups. In addition, groups are also classified as formal and informal groups.
Formal groups: Formal groups are collections of employees who are made to work together by the
organization to get the job done smoothly and efficiently. For example, if five members are put
together in a department to attend to customer complaints they would be a formal group. The formal
groups are those whose primary purpose is facilitating, through member interactions, the attainment
of the goals of the organization.
Informal groups: Informal groups are groups that emerge or randomly get formed due to the formal
group members’ interaction with each other, and thereby develop common interest. For example,
members who are showing interest in cricket will join together and share and enjoy talking about the
cricket games. Informal groups provide a very important service by satisfying their members’ social
needs. Because of interactions that result from the close proximity of task interactions, group
members play cricket together, spending their tea breaks together etc.
Functional Groups: The functional group in an organization is a group generally specified by the
structure of the organization. It involves a superior-subordinate relationship and involves the
accomplishment of ongoing tasks and generally considered as formal group. Example – Manager of
accounting department supported by staff accountants, financial analyst, and computer operators etc.
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Task or Project Groups: When a number of employees are formally brought together for the
purpose of accomplishing a specific task – for a short-term or long term period – such a collection of
individuals is called a task or project group. For example, the plant manager of a chemical processing
plant may be interested in identifying potential safety problems in the plant.
To provide a coordinated effort, the manager creates a four-person task force consisting of the
production superintendent, maintenance superintendent, director of engineering and the safety
engineer. The group members will deliberate these issues bring out suitable remediable measure for
those safety problems within a deadline period. If any problems are found, the plant manager may
create other task forces to work toward the elimination of the potential problems. These activities
create a situation that encourages the members of the task force to communicate, interact and to
coordinate activities, if the purpose of the group is to be accomplished.
Interest and Friendship Groups: The group members formed relationships based on some common
characteristics such as age, political belief, or interests. Generally, it can be considered as formal or
informal group. Employees who joined together to have their fringe benefits continued to have its
implementation, to support a peer who has been fired, or to seek more festival holidays etc. they tend
to unite together to further their common interest. Groups often develop because the individual
members have one or more common characteristics. This is called friendship groups. For example,
recreation clubs, social groups etc.
Status Inclusion in a group that is viewed as important by others provides recognition and status for
its members. Being a member of Rotary Club, the members feel pride and gain status and
recognition.
Self-esteem Groups can provide people with feelings of self-worth. That is, in addition to conveying
status to those outside the group, membership can also give increased feelings of worth to the group
members themselves. The self-esteem is bolstered when members are accepted by a highly valued
group. Being assigned to a task force whose purpose is to review and make recommendations for the
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location of the company’s new corporate headquarters can fulfill one’s intrinsic needs for
competence and growth.
Affiliation Groups can fulfill social needs. People enjoy the regular interaction that comes with
group membership. For many people, these on-the-job interactions at work are the primary source for
fulfilling their needs for affiliation.
Power For individuals who desire to influence others, groups can offer power without a formal
position of authority in the organization. As a group leader he or she may be able to make requests of
group members and obtain compliance without any of the responsibilities that traditionally go either
formal managerial position.
Goal achievement There are times when it takes more than one person to accomplish a particular
task- there is a need to pool talents, knowledge in order to complete a job. In such instances,
management will rely on the use of a formal group.
Performing: This stage is characterized by collaboration and integration. The group members
evaluate their performance so that the members develop and grow. The group relationships and
structures are set and accepted. Group energy has moved from getting to know and understand each
other, to performing the task at hand. Feelings are expressed at this stage without fear, leadership
roles shared among the members, and the group members’ activities are highly co-coordinated. The
task and maintenance roles are played very effectively. The task performance levels are high and
member satisfaction, pride and commitment to the group also high. Both performance and members’
satisfaction are sustained indefinitely;
Adjourning This stage is characterized by concern with wrapping up activities rather than task
performance. The group prepares for its disbandment (breaking up). High task performance is no
longer the group’s top priority. Instead, attention is directed towards finalizing activities. As the
group approaches the terminal phase, members break off their bonds of affection and stop interaction
with each other. Responses of group members vary in this state. Some feel pride in what the group
has accomplished. Others may be negative and critical of the way the organization has treated the
group and others may be sad over the loss of friendship gained during the life of the work groups.
These five stages of group development are only a suggestive and not prescriptive. Sometimes,
groups do not always proceed clearly from one stage to the next. Sometimes, several stages go on
simultaneously as when groups are storming and performing at the same time. Under some
conditions, high levels of conflict are conducive to high group performance.
Various types of groups exist within the framework of organizations, from the formal functional and
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task or project groups, to the generally more informal interest and friendship groups. Whatever the
classification– it is Important for the effective functioning of the organization that the goals of such
groups be congruent with the overall goals of the organization. Groups with incongruent goals create
a situation of conflict, interpersonal problems and reduced effectiveness.
Although different types of groups develop at different rates, they all tend to follow a similar four-
stage pattern – orientation, internal problem solving, growth and productivity and evaluation and
control. Each of these stages is characterized by different types of behavior required of individual
members and of the organization. Changes in eh composition of the group, its task or leadership can
result in the group reverting to any earlier stage.
Teams
Teams are a collection of individual members used to manage inter- group activities where there are
more than two or three interacting units. The distinguishing aspects of the team concept are that the
problem to be solved usually is long term in nature, requiring a relatively permanent formal
assignment to the team. Team members maintain a dual responsibility, one to their primary
functional unit and the second to the team. When the team has accomplished its task, each member
returns full-time to the functional assignment. Teams require individuals with complimentary skill /
technical expertise, as well as problem-solving, decision-making and interpersonal skills and high
scores on the personality characteristics of extroversion, agreeableness, conscientious and emotional
stability. Effective teams are neither too large nor too small- typically they range in size from five to
twelve people. They also have adequate resources, effective leadership and a performance evaluation
and reward system that reflect team contribution Effective teams have members committed to a
common purpose, specific team goals, member who believe in the team’s capabilities, a manageable
level of conflicts and a minimal degree of social loafing.
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• Organizational purpose
• Individual work products
• Efficient meetings
• Measures performance by influence on others
• Delegates work
Work team: A group whose individual effort results in a performance that is greater than the sum of
the individual inputs. A team gets a greater degree of individual commitment towards the common
shared goal. The efforts of the team members result in more synergy and may achieve a better total
performance.
Teams
• Shared leadership
• Individual & mutual accountability
• Specific team purpose
• Collective work products
• Open-ended meetings
• Measures performance from work products
• Do real work together
TYPES OF TEAMS
The common types of teams:
Problem-solving Teams: The primary goals of these teams are improving quality, efficiency and the
work environment. The members share ideas or offer suggestions about how work process and
methods can be improved. Quality circles are one of the problem solving teams where the work
group members meet regularly to discuss and solve problems. The team members use tools and
techniques to examine these problems and to present to management solutions and the costs and
benefits of solving a problem.
Self-managed Teams: This refers to a team of employees who perform highly related or inter-
dependent jobs and to take on many of the responsibilities of their former supervisors. Typically this
includes planning and scheduling of work, assigning tasks to members, collective control over the
pace of work, making operating decisions and taking action on problems. Self- managed teams meet
their own goals and measure their own performance once top management sets the overall
objectives. Fully self-managed work teams even select their own members and have the members
evaluate each other’s performance.
Cross-functional Teams: This refers to a type of teams where employees from about the same
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hierarchical level, but from different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task. Examples
of Cross functional include task force to resolve emergency cases, committee composed of members
from across departmental lines etc.
Virtual Teams: Teams that use computer technology to tie together physically dispersed member in
order to achieve a common goal. They allow people to collaborate on-line using communication
links such as wide area networks, video conferencing or e-mail. The three primary factors that
differentiate virtual teams from face to face teams are: i) the absence of Para verbal and non-verbal
cues, ii) limited social context and iii) the ability to overcome time and space constraints. In virtual
teams the members will never have an opportunity to have an access of Para language and non-
verbal communication. And also suffer social support and less direct interaction among members.
Multicultural Teams: Teams /Groups represent three or more ethnic backgrounds. Diversity may
increase uncertainty, complexity, & inherent confusion in group processes. Culturally diverse groups
may generate more & better ideas & limit groupthink.
record on their achievements, difficulties, shortcomings etc. The feeding of such a data will
be of much help in assessing the overall growth of the group activities.
• Follower: Sometimes, the leaders move along with the group by accepting the views of others
and serving as audience in-group discussion. The primary reason is to ensure that the group
must achieve its goals.
Team Effectiveness
• Knowledge Criteria – reflect the degree to which the team continually increases its
performance capabilities. Teams are more effective when they share knowledge and
understanding.
• Affective Criteria – address the question of whether team members have a fulfilling and
satisfying team experience. One important faction is the affective tone or general emotional
state of the team.
• Outcome Criteria – refer to the quantity and quality of the team’s output or to the extent to
which the team’s output is acceptable to clients. Should reflect synergy.
• Is the Team Needed? – does the project really need a team or would one person be preferred?
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Behaviour modification
Simulations
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6V6qg1Tz-g)
Appreciative enquiry
Role Negotiation: it is a technique of discussing the role tasks with a team and understand their
expectations from self role and accordingly conducting negotiation based on individual capacity
and convenience
Behaviour Modification:
Simulations:
Appreciative Enquiry:
Force Field Analysis:
Linkage with Individual Goals:
Organizational Design
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Organizational design means a structure that suits the culture of the organization.
Structure defines the formal relationship and use of people in organizations. Numbers of people are
required to accomplish various jobs. These people have to be related in some structural way so that
their work can effectively coordinated.
Departmentalization: It refers to the basis on which jobs are grouped in order to accomplish
organizational goals. Some key characteristics are:
• Grouping can be done by the homogeneity of tasks (Functional departmentalization),
• Grouping jobs by product line (Product departmentalization)
• Grouping jobs on the basis of territory or geography (Geographic departmentalization)
• Grouping jobs on the basis of product or customer flow
• Facilitates utilization of common skills, knowledge and orientation together into common
units.
Chain of command: This shows the flow of authority directed from the upper levels of the
organization to the lowest levels and delineates who reports to whom. This concept incorporates
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Span of control: This deals with how many subordinates one can effectively manage under his/her
control. There are two types of span of control.
• Wider span of control which has fewer levels and each level managers are controlling more
people
• Narrow span of control has more levels and in each level managers have limited number of
people to supervise.
• The effectiveness of narrow or wider span of control depends upon task structure, employee’s
maturity, environmental uncertainty, technology, work culture etc.
Centralization and decentralization: The decision making latitude given at the top or lower level
determines whether the organization is centralized or decentralized.
• If top management makes key decisions with no input from lower level employees, then the
organization is centralized.
• If lower level employees are provided more input and given more discretion to make
decision, it is decentralized.
• The effectiveness of centralization or decentralization depends upon so many factors such as
environment, technology, employees, size of the company, strategies etc.
Formalization: This refers to the extent to which the employees are governed by rules, regulations
and standardized operating procedures to maintain consistency and uniformity in maintaining the
output.
• In a highly formalized organization, there are explicit job descriptions, lots of rules and
clearly defined procedures covering work process.
• This eliminates flexibility, innovativeness and freedom in discharging the duties and
responsibilities.
Organizational Roles
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Role refers to a set of expected behavior patterns attributed to someone occupying a given position
in a social unit.
Roles are classified into three ways:
Expected Role: It refers to the expectations of supervisors towards their subordinates on the type of
behavior or actions in their job. This expected role can be specified by giving a detailed job
description, position, title or by other directions from the organizations.
Perceived Role: This concerns the set of activities or behaviors of the group that an individual
believes he or she should do. Most of the time, the perceived role corresponds to the expected role.
Many factors may be present in a situation that can distort the individual’s perception and thus make
the perceived role inaccurate.
Enacted Role: This refers to the way in which the individual group member actually behaves. The
enacted role is generally dependent on the perceived role
If there is any differences exist between or among these roles, a considerable level of role ambiguity
or role conflict exists. Role ambiguity is the lack of clarity regarding job duties, authority and
responsibility that the individual perceives in his role. It can be caused by a number of factors such
as lack of clear job description, occupational
levels with complex
Organizational conflict
The manner in which organizations view and treat inter-group conflict has changed measurably
during the last three decades. There are two different views – traditional and contemporary views of
inter-group conflict to deal with the conflicting situations. The old line, traditional approach views
inter-group conflict is dysfunctional to the organization and should be avoided. This view
emphasizes that conflict is caused by personality differences and a failure of leadership. Further, it
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reiterates that conflict is resolved by physical separation or the intervention by higher management
levels. The contemporary approach views inter-group conflict as an inevitable consequence of
organizational interactions, caused by primarily by the complexities of our organizational systems.
Through such mechanisms, the solutions of conflict may help to bring about positive organizational
change.
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Leadership
Leadership is defined as the process of influencing others to get the job done more effectively over a
sustained period. Leaders play a critical role in influencing the work behavior of others in the
system. For example, Marketing managers influence their sales force personnel to influence to meet
the targeted sales volume. If he is more influential, his style will have an impact on the behavior of
the subordinates. There are three processes by which people can be influenced-compliance,
identification and internalization or some combinations of these.
Theories of leadership
There are three major approaches to leadership:
• Trait theory
• Behavioral theory
• Situational theory
Trait Theory
Trait theories highlight that there exists a finite set of individual traits or characteristics that
distinguish successful from unsuccessful leaders. Behavioral theories highlight that the most
important aspect of leadership is not the traits of the leader, but what the leader does in various
situations. Successful leaders are distinguished form unsuccessful leaders by their particular style of
leadership. Situational theories outlines that the effectiveness of the leader is not only determined by
his or her style of behavior, but also by the situation surrounding the leadership environment.
Situational factors include the characteristics of the leader and the subordinates, the nature of the task
and the structure of the group.
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There are six traits associated with effective leadership include drive, the desire to lead, honesty and
integrity, self-confidence, intelligence and job-relevant knowledge.
Drive: Leaders exhibit a high effort level. They have a relatively high desire for achievement, they
are ambitious, they have a lot of energy, they are tirelessly persistent in their activities and they show
initiative.
Desire to lead: Leaders have a strong desire to influence and lead others. They demonstrate the
willingness to take responsibility
Honesty and Integrity: Leaders build trusting relationship between themselves and followers by
being truthful and non-deceitful and by showing high consistency between word and deed.
Self-confidence: Followers look to leaders for an absence of self-doubt. Leaders therefore need to
show self-confidence in order to convince followers of the rightness of goals and decisions.
Intelligence: Leaders need to be intelligent enough to gather synthesize and interpret large amounts
of information; and to be able to create vision, solve problems and make correct decision.
Job-relevant knowledge: Effective leaders have a high degree of knowledge about the company, the
industry and technical matters. In-depth knowledge allows leaders to make well- informed decision
and to understand the implications of those decisions.
Behavioral Theory
They identified behaviors that differentiated effective leaders’ from ineffective leaders. Based on
these people could be trained to be leaders. The following are three types of behavioral styles of
leadership
1. Autocratic Style: A leader who tended to centralize authority, dictate work methods, make
unilateral decision and limit employee participation
2. Democratic Style: A leader who tended to involve employees in decision making to delegate
authority, to encourage participation in deciding work methods and goals, and to use feedback as
an opportunity for coaching employees
3. Laissez-faire style: A leader who generally gave the group complete freedom to make decision
and complete the work in whatever way, the group want to complete.
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Situational Theories
Situational theories of leadership studies revealed that choosing the appropriate style of leadership
depends upon the situation will yield more effective results than following same type of leadership
style across all the time.
Among various situational theories of leadership Fiedler’s contingency model and Hersey and
Blanchard’s Life Cycle Model outlined the importance of situational factors while choosing the
appropriate style of leadership.
Hersey and Blanchard model reported that if the employees are highly matured psychologically and
possess job competency, the enforcing delegating style will be more effective. Similarly if the
employees are not adequately possessing job competency and very low in psychological maturity,
the enforcing directing style will be more effective.
Situational leadership uses the same two leadership dimensions – task and relationship behavior.
However, the situational leadership approach goes a step further by considering each as either high
or low and then combining them into for specific leadership styles: Directing, Coaching, Supporting
and Delegating.
Directing: (high directive – low supportive): The leader defines roles and tells people what tasks to
do and how, when and where to do them. Its emphasis directive behavior.
Coaching: (high directive – high supportive): The leader provides both directive behavior and
supportive behavior)
Supporting (low directive-high supportive): The leader and follower share in decision-making, with
the main role of the leader being facilitating and communicating.
Delegating: (low directive-low supportive): The leader provides little direction or support.
Willing, confident,
Delegating Made by Follower
able
Made by leader and Unwilling, insecure,
Participating
follower able
Made by leader in Willing, confident,
Coaching
consultation with follower unable
Unwilling, insecure,
Directing Made by Leader
unable
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them to perform far beyond what they would have thought themselves capable of. By providing a
new vision, the transformational leader transforms the followers into people who self-actualize.
Charismatic leadership is central to transformational leaderships. These kinds of leaders guide or
motivate their follower’s in the direction of established goals by clarifying role and task
requirements. There exists a kind of understanding between the leader and the follower that if the
goals are achieved, the follower’s own interests and desires will be rewarded.
This type of leader also pays attention to the concerns and developmental needs of individual
followers: they change follower’s awareness of issues by helping them to look at old problems in
new ways; and they are able to excite, arouse and inspire followers to put extra effort in order to
achieve group goals. In essence, most transformational leaders are also charismatic leaders because
they are seen as heroic and as having a profound and extraordinary effect on their followers.
Managerial Grid
The five basic approaches to management identified by
Black and Mouton are based on the two dimensions of
concern of people and concern for production that are
associated with leaders. A managerial grid is formed
based on these two dimensions which are rated on 9
point scale. If manager is securing the lowest score on
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these two dimensions I,I is identified as impoverished style of managers who are low on both their
concern of people and production, 1,9 or country club style is designated to those managers who are
having high concern for people but low concern for production. The 5, 5 or the middle-of-the- road
style concerns the moderate levels of concern for both people and production. The 9,1 or task
management style is one where there is a high concern for production but very little concern for
people and finally, 9,9 or team management style is one where the manager has high concern for
both people and production. According to Black and Mouton the one best style for all mangers is the
9,9 or team management style.
POWER
Power is defined as the capacity to influence, the possession of delegated authority or an ability to
act. According to French and Raven, individuals have five different social bases of power depending
upon how they position their relationship with others. They are reward power, coercive power,
legitimate power, referent power and expert power. The first three types of power can be exercised
because of the position in which one finds oneself in the organization and can be referred to as
position power and the last two can be attributed more to the characteristics of the individual and
referred to as personal power.
Sources of Power:
Legitimate Power: It is held because the organization has given power and authority to the position
held by the leader. This stems from the belief that the superior has the right to command the
subordinate and expect that his or her orders will be obeyed. The employees accept the rights of
persons holding higher offices to command because of the legitimate authority bestowed on the
individual by the organization.
Reward Power: It is held because the leader has the opportunity through the control of resources,
either to give or withhold things wanted by others. A leader can use reward power well to reinforce
effective behavior or badly to manipulate the behavior of others. The greater the rewards that the
leader is perceived as having within his or her control to dispense to others, the greater will be the
individual’s ability to influence others through reward power.
Coercive Power: It can be described as power which is exercised to manipulate the behavior of
another by threatening to withhold desired rewards or punish the individual if the latter fails to
comply with the wishes of the leader. In order to avoid the negative consequences, the individual will
unwillingly obey the orders of the superior and perhaps develop a hostile attitude towards their
leader. The strong presence of unions in organizations will restrict or weaken this power base.
Referent Power: Its base is identification with a person who has desirable resources or personal
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traits. If a person has admirable, charismatic, attractive, and extraordinary characteristics, he can
exercise power over others to get things done. The followers identify with the leader and more
attracted towards his or personal charisma and they are pleased to act in ways desired by their leader.
Expert Power: It is held because of the leader’s knowledge, aptitude and ability. It comes from an
individual’s ability to direct another’s behavior because of special knowledge or expertise that one
person may be perceived to possess which others need and look for. An experienced software
engineer will be able to influence his colleagues to things in a particular way because the staff
members will look up to this software engineer as someone possess the knowledge, experience and
judgment that the staff member lacks.
Expert power is based the credibility accorded to the leader for his expertise whereas informational
influence is based on the characteristics of the type of information. Reward and coercive power will
both lead to compliance. The former would result in satisfaction for person who complies if rewards
are dispensed, and the latter will result in dissatisfaction. Referent power will lead to identification
with these sources of influence and both parties are likely to experience satisfaction. Expert and
legitimate power, on the other hand, help individuals to internalize the desired values. The behavior
of individual will then be sustained even when the leader is not present in the setting.
Political perspective
When people meets, group develops, it give birth to power, and if the power is converted into action,
we call it politics.
Individual level
• Needs
• Personality
• Power motives
• Status
Organizational Level
• Organizational culture (Low trust, Role ambiguity etc)
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• Decision making
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Organizational Development
Organizational development is the process of helping organizations improve through change in
policies, power, leadership, control, or job redesign. The main focus is to improve efficiency and
effectiveness within the organization.
Organization Development refers to all on-going developmental efforts which are oriented towards
making the organization and its members effective. Organization Development connotes the
continuous planned efforts that are made to enhance the structural, processual and people aspects of
the system. Such systematic efforts ensure the organization’s survival and growth by enhancing the
quality of work life and the quality of life of the employees in general. In a sense, OD makes the
difference between being and becoming. Being aspect reflects a static state of things as they
currently are and the becoming aspect denotes a developmental aspect of constantly experiencing a
state of growing, developing and reaching new heights. Organizations develop and grow and so do
individuals, groups, and society itself. Thus, OD signifies a planned growth and developmental
strategy for organization, making use of behavioral science, organization theory, comparative
management, and other fields of scientific knowledge. Currently more behavioral science knowledge
and techniques are used as intervention mechanisms, that is, techniques to bring about the desired
changes
The OD paradigm values human and organizational growth, collaborative and participative process
and a spirit of enquiry. The change agent may be directive in OD; however, there is a strong
emphasis on collaboration. Concepts such as power, authority, control, conflict and coercion are held
in relatively low esteem among OD change agents.
The following are some of the key values in most OD efforts:
• Respect for people: Individuals are perceived as being responsible, conscientious and caring. They
should be treated with dignity and respect
• Trust and support: The effective and healthy organizations is characterized by trust, authenticity,
openness and supportive climate
• Power equalization: Effective organizations de-emphasize hierarchical authority and control.
• Confrontation: Problems should not be swept under the carpet. They should be openly confronted
• Participation: The more the people who will be affected by a change are involved in the decisions
surrounding that change, the more they will be committed to implementing those decisions.
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OD Interventions
OD Interventions
Potential Areas for OD Interventions’ efforts are useful wherever problems and tensions exist.
Areas where OD interventions help encompasses the people side of the organization, the technical
and job related aspects and the structural aspects. Certain OD techniques are also available to obtain
information about how effective the organization is perceived to be by significant others and how its
effectiveness can be increased. All these areas are interrelated.
Some of the OD interventions to address “people concern” are sensitivity training, transactional
analysis, process consultation and third-party peacemaking, team building, individual counseling, life
and career planning, role clarification. Areas for interventions in the technical and job related aspects
include the examination of workflow interdependencies, job evaluation job redesigning. OD
intervention aimed at socio- technical systems cover flexible work hours for better productivity,
offering job sharing, job evaluation and role analysis techniques.
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Life and Career Planning: According to Super, there are five identifiable life stages that a person
moves through in his life:
• Growth (from conception to 15 years),
• Exploration (115 to 25 years
• Establishment (25 to 40 years)
• Maintenance (45 to retirement form a job)
• Decline
The organizational career involves primarily the establishment and maintenance stage. It is during
these stages that individuals utilize their skills and abilities to perform certain job-related tasks.
Organization can develop life and career planning programs to develop
Sensitivity training or T-groups is unstructured small group interaction form which participants
learn about their personal styles, how they communicate and how they are perceived by others. This
information is obtained from the feedback that group members offer. A group is initially formed and
left to them to interact with each other as they sit in a circle. The primary objectives of T- group
training are as follows:
• To increase understanding, insight and self-awareness about one’s behavior and its impact on
others.
• To increase understanding and sensitivity about the behavior of others
• To improve understanding and awareness of group and inter-group processes
• To improve diagnostic skills in interpersonal and inter- group situations
• To increase ability to transform learning into action
• To improve an individual’s ability to analyze his or her own interpersonal behavior.
There are three types of sensitivity groups such as stranger, cousin and family.
• The stranger’s group would include members who do not know each other.
• The cousin group consists of members of the same organization who do not work together.
• The family group includes member who belong to the same work unit.
These groups meet with a trainer. The trainer may structure the content and discuss or may decide to
follow an informal or nonstructural format, allowing the group to proceed as they desire.
It stresses ‘the process rather than the content of training and focuses upon emotional rather
conceptual training. The group meets away from the job and engages in an intense exchange of ideas,
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opinion, beliefs and philosophy. The group members then become open and talk about themselves
and get feedback on how others perceive them. As the group members meet more often, they become
more comfortable in opening themselves up and in giving and receiving feedback.
The T-group leader or trainer simply facilitate the agenda less group sessions when the group gets
struck or stays away from the main goal of learning about themselves. Different individual react
differently to the T- group or sensitivity training sessions. People, who are more open to feedback,
learn more about themselves in several of the lab sessions and acquire increased self-awareness.
They become more attentive to the feelings of others and more sensitive to cues from others.
Team Building: Team building as an OD intervention strategy is aimed at improving intra and inter-
group effectiveness. The team building activities may revolve around enhancing between interaction
modes, sharing resources more effectively, forming temporary task forces, and acquiring skills for
accomplishing the task as a team or teams of interacting members. The intra-group as well as inter-
group efforts focus on such aspects as problems solving, role clarification, goal setting, improving
boss-subordinates’ relationships, conflict resolutions, managing group process and understating the
organizational culture. Extensive clarifications take place in role expectations, goals to be
accomplished and resources sharing among members of a team or between them.
The consultant role in team building includes interviewing the group members in advance before
working with them as a group, creating the environment to make it a constructive and
psychologically safe place for members to interact and to help the group to examine its norms. Team
building is both a time-consuming and exhausting interventions technique, but very useful if
skillfully managed. Team building can be applied within groups or at the inter-group level where
activities are interdependent. The objective is to improve coordinative efforts of members, which
will result in an increase in the team’s performance. Team building can also address itself to
clarifying each member’s role on each team. Each role can be identified and clarified. Previous
ambiguities can be brought to the surface. For some individuals, it may offer one of the few
opportunities they have had to think through thoroughly what their jobs is all about and what specific
tasks types are expected to carry out if the team is to optimize its effectiveness.
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Survey Feedback: Survey feedback research involves the process of systematically collecting data
about a group or the organization primarily through self-report questionnaire. Occasionally,
interviews and records of the unit being studied are used. The collected data are analyzed and feed
back to the group for analysis, interpretation and corrective action if needed. The entire process has
two major components: the attitude survey and small discussion workshops. Three significant steps
are involved in survey feedback.
• Members holding primary position in the organization plan what data need to be collected
• Data are collected from all the members of the organization
• Data are analyzed and feed back to the top executives and down the hierarchy in team.
These feedback sessions are done by a consultant who serves as a resource person and prepares the
superior to share the data with his immediate subordinates. The group members are asked to interpret
the data, what constructive changes seem necessary, and how they should be brought about. Based
on these discussions with each group, the commonly recurring them are dealt with through the help
of a reconstituted group of members.
The survey feedback is a good diagnostic tool which can be used for several types of intervention
such as team building. The survey technique provides useful data about the system. The feedback
technique helps the organization to work with the data in a manner which helps the system. The
survey feedback is an effective intervention strategy since people realize that they are working with
data that they themselves have provided.
Process Consultation:
The purpose of process consultation is for an outside consultant to assist a client, usually a manager
to perceive, understand and act upon process events with which they must deal. These might include
workflow, informal relationships among unit members and formal communication channels.
For instance, it is certainly important to specify the channels of communication in an organization
system so that people know whether they can communicate only through hierarchical levels or
whether they can pass on information horizontally. However, having laid down the structure, the
manager cannot always expect that the expected behaviors and results will automatically follow.
Attentions have to be paid to the process by which communication takes place. Are people friendly
with each other in communication or do they take adversative positions? How do they understand
each other?
Process consultation requires a combination of skills in establishing helping relationships, knowing
what kinds of process to look for an organizations and intervening in ways to improve organizational
process. The essence of processes consultation is that a skilled consultant works with the mangers,
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individual and groups in the system to develop their process skills – that is, diagnose, understand,
and resolve process-related problem. This involves sensitizing the individual about issues such as
how people get along with each other, how conflicts are resolved, styles of interactions among
departments and so on. The members of the organization are made aware of organization process that
enhance and obstruct their effectiveness. They also then learn how to bring about necessary changes
so that the organization becomes a more effective system.
Process consultation is similar to sensitivity training in its assumption that organizational
effectiveness can be improved by dealing with interpersonal problems and its emphasizes on
involvement. But process consultant is more task-directed than sensitivity training.
Third-Party Peacemaking:
Third-party peacemaking focuses on interventions by a third party to resolve conflict situations. The
fundamental aspect of third-party peacemaking is for the consultant (third party) to make the two
disagreeing parties to confront or face up to the fact that a conflict does not exist and that it is
impairing the effectiveness of both. The consultant facilitates the significant issues involved in the
conflict to surface by using the right intervention strategies.
By wisely choosing the place, selecting the proper environment, using effective interventions
strategies, and setting an appropriate agenda for the meeting, the third party can help the parties in
conflict to own up to their problems and find solutions. In case there is a dispute over for scarce
resources sharing, the consultant will concentrate on the parties engaging in problem solving through
rational bargaining behaviors If the conflicting situation is based on emotional issues, the consultant
might have to work hard at restructuring the perceptions and facilitate understanding between the
parties involved.
Management by Objectives:
Peter Drucker defines MBO is process whereby the superior and subordinate of an organization
jointly identify its common goals, define each individual’s major areas of responsibilities, interest
and the results expected of him. Use these measures as guides for operating the unit and assessing the
contributions of each of its members.
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The following are the series of interrelated and interdependent steps of MBO Process.
Step I: Diagnosis for MBO Readiness: A thorough analysis of its people, the history of change,
jobs, technology, mission, plan and strategy of the company will be carried out in advance to make
the organization in a readiness state
Step II: Preparation for MBO: Initiative must be taken to involve all the members to participate in
this exercise through active interaction. Certain facilities such as proper communication system,
formal training and development, establishing action plans, developing criteria for assessing
effectiveness have to be created.
Step III: Objective Setting: Special attention has to be paid to clarify the objectives of individuals,
departments, division and organization. The superiors and subordinates must participate and jointly
set the goals and objectives and prioritizes those objectives based on the importance and weight ages
Step IV: Intermediate Review: This review will facilitate to modify the original objectives
considering the limitations or getting feedback on the process.
Step V: Final Review and Analysis of Results: An intensive analysis is taken up to review its
results and initiate the next complete cycle of objective setting
Step VI: Achieving Results: The accomplishment of better planning, control, and organization
through motivated involvement, based on achieved results instead of personality and popularity.
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Benefits of MBO:
The following are some of the benefits of MBO program:
• Increased short and long range planning,
• A procedure for monitoring work progress and results
• Improved commitment to the organization because of increased motivation, loyalty and
participation of employees
• Improved communication between superiors and subordinates
• An improved organizational climate in general that encourages improvements in performance.
Conclusion:
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Although most OD efforts are not carefully evaluated, two large-scale reviews of a wide variety of
OD techniques reached the following conclusions:
Most OD techniques have a positive impact on productivity, job satisfaction, or other work
attitudes.
OD seems to work better for supervisors or managers than for blue-collar workers.
Changes that use more than one technique seem to have more impact.
There are great differences across sites in the success of OD interventions.
Organizational Change
Changes are constantly taking place in our environment. Changes occur outside organization that
requires internal adaptation. The manager has to ensure that individual and groups in organizations,
and structures, process and behaviors of sub-systems must adapt to the changing external and
internal environments. In effect, the manager is a change agent who facilities changes to occur in the
various subsystems of the organization needed.
Changes at the individual level can be facilitated by offering special training to particular employees
to handle a new assignment. At group level, team building efforts can be initiated to operate
interactively in a smooth and harmonious fashion so as to increase their effectiveness. Changes can
be brought at the technological level through implementation of sophisticated and more effective
machines or by better ways of doing things. At the structural level, job can be redesigned or new
policies initiated which serve the needs of both employees and the organization. Changes at the
perceptual, attitudinal and behavioral levels can be brought about by changing the organizational
climate. By being able to scan the internal and external environment of the organization and
deciphering how changes in these environments are likely to widen the gap between desired and
actual state of affairs (performance, productivity, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction etc.,
the manager can become an effective change agent for introducing planned changes.
Government laws and regulations: These are frequent impetus for change. Creation of special
economic zones and foreign direct investment in India sparked off major changes in the IT
Industries, Insurance, and Car manufacturing industries. More foreign automobile industries are
setting up manufacturing plants and generating more employment opportunities in India.
Technology: It creates the need for change. For example, technological developments in
sophisticated and extremely expensive diagnostic equipment have created significant economy of
scale for hospitals and medical centers. Assembly-line technology is undergoing dramatic change as
organizations replace human labor with robots. Even in the greetings card industry, electronic mail
and internet have influenced the way people send greetings.
Labor Markets: The fluctuation in labor markets forces managers to change. For instance, the
demand for webpage designers and website managers made it necessary for organizations that need
those kinds of employees to change their human resources management activities to attract and retain
skilled employees in the areas of greatest need.
Economic Changes: Economic changes affect almost all organization. The appreciation of rupee
value against the US dollar affects the export prospects of knitwear products from India to America
as those products cost more to Americans. But even in strong economy, uncertainties about interest
rates, government budgets deficits and current exchange rates create conditions that may force
organizations to change.
Internal Forces: Internal forces can also stimulate the need for change. These internal forces tend to
originate primarily from the internal operations of the organizations or from the impact of external
changes.
Structural factors: A structural force would be the inability to transmit important information from
the top of the organization to the lower level cadre. Because of numerous layers in the hierarchy,
information moves slowly from one level to the next. This could be viewed as a process or a
behavioral problem involving a failure to communicate effectively.
Strategy: A redefinition or modification of an organization’s strategy often introduces a host of
change. The strategic move of Reliance Industries in getting into retail business in urban and rural
markets made them to introduce a change in the managerial approach as well as the human relations
approach to gain acceptance from the different cross section of the customers.
Organizations Workforce: In recent times, the work force composition is varied and is not very
static. Its composition changes in terms of age, education, sex and so forth. In a stable organization
with a large pool of seasoned executives, there might be a need to restructure jobs in order to retain
younger managers who occupy lower ranks. The compensation and benefit system might also need
to be adapted to reflect the needs of an older work force
0Technology: The introduction of new equipment represents another internal force for change.
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Employees may have their jobs redesigned, they need to undergo training on how to operate the new
equipment or they may be required to establish new interactions patterns with their work group.
Employee Attitudes: Employee attitudes such as increased job satisfaction may lead to increased
absenteeism, more voluntary resignations, and even labor strikes. Such events will often lead to
changes in management policies and practices.
Resistance to change
In planning for change, the team leaders must take into consideration the various factors on which
the members exhibit their resistance to implement the change process. For example, the company
wanted to install a new software program in cash counter computer terminals to facilitate the fast
movement. But some employees may not respond favorably and display their refusal to cooperate by
increasing absenteeism, sub-standard work, joining of union increased labor turn over etc. Resistance
to change can also be a source of functional conflict. For example, resistance to a reorganization plan
or a change in a product line can stimulate a healthy debate over the merits of the idea and result in a
better decision.
Resistance can be overt, implicit,
immediate or deferred. It is the easiest
for management to deal with
resistance when it is overt and
immediate such as employees strike,
work slowdown etc. The greater
challenge is managing resistance that
is implicit or deferred. Such as loss of loyalty to the organization, loss of motivation to work,
increased errors or mistakes increased absenteeism etc.
Individual Resistance: Individual sources of resistance to change lie in basic human characteristics
such as perceptions, personalities and needs.
Habit: The team members are habituated or conditioned to do their job or activity in a particular
way. When they are asked to do differently, they tend to respond to resist change. When employees
are asked to move to new office building across the town, they are likely to change their routine
habits like waking up ten minutes earlier, finding new parking place, adjusting to new office layout,
developing new lunch time routine etc.
Security: The team members with a high need for security are likely to resist change because it
threatens their feelings of safety. When Indian Railway introduced new online booking for their
reservations, employees may have similar fears.
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Economic Factors: If the members feel that the new changes result in lower pay, they may likely to
resist change process. Changes in jobs or established work routine can also arouse economic fears if
people are concerned that they won’t be able to perform the new tasks or routines to their previous
standards, especially when the pay is closely tied to productivity.
Fear of the Unknown: The cashiers or secretaries might fear the new activities due to lack of
knowledge in operating the new software program. They might develop a negative attitude towards
working with new programs or behave dysfunctional if required to use them. Employees in
organizations hold the same dislike for uncertainty. For example, if an organization introduced TQM,
the production employees will have to learn statistical process control techniques. Therefore, they
may develop a negative attitude towards TQM or behavior dysfunctional if required to use statistical
techniques.
Selective Information Processing: Once the team members shape their world through their own
way, they prefer to do their work based on their perceptions. If the change process demands to follow
the new method, the members tend to resist. So individuals are guilty of selectively processing
information in order to keep their perception intact. They hear what they want to hear. They ignore
information that challenges the world they have created.
Organizational Resistance
Some organizations prefer to follow their routine and reluctant to venture new things or follow any
new methods of doing. Government agencies want to continue doing what they have been doing for
years, whether the need for their service changes or remains the same. Six major sources of
organizational resistance have been identified. They are as follows:
Structural Inertia: Organizations have built in mechanisms to produce stability. For instance, the
training and orientation programs reinforce specific role requirements and skills. Formalization
provides job descriptions, rules and procedures for employees to follow. Once the routine has been
established, organization is very reluctant to adapt to new changes. When an organization is
confronted with the change process, the team members tend to resist.
Limited Focus of Change: The change process is interlinked. One activity cannot be changed
without affecting the others. If change is introduced in technology without considering the structural
changes, the change in technology is not likely to be accepted. Organizations are made up of number
of interdependent subsystems.
Group Inertia: Sometimes the group norm or standards could act as a constraint. For example, the
union norms may dictate resistance to change process.
Threat to Expertise: The change process could threaten the expertise of team members of the
groups. Once the members feel that they are forced to learn something new, they tend to resist. The
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Education and Communication: If the logic and advantages of the change are explained early to
the team members, resistance can be reduced. This can be achieved through one-to-one discussions,
memos, group presentations, or reports. This tactics assumes that the source of resistance lies in
misinformed or poor communication. If the team members received the full facts and have their
misunderstanding cleared up, their resistance will subside. Once people have bought into the idea,
they will implement the change. The only problem is that this could be very time consuming process,
if too many people are to be communicated with.
Participation and Involvement: Resistance to change can be reduced or eliminated by having those
involved participate in the decision of the change through meetings and induction. It is difficult for
individuals to resist a change decision in which they participated. Once people have had an
opportunity to contribute ideas and become a part of the change process, they will be less inclined to
see it fail. However, working in committees or task forces is a time consuming activity, and hence it
will take a longer time to bring about changes.
Facilitation and Support: Easing the change process and providing support for those caught up in it
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is another way managers can deal with resistance. Retraining programs, allowing time off after a
difficult period, and offering emotional support and understanding may help. This emotional support
can be given through empathic listening, offering training and other types of help. Such facilitation
and emotional support help individual to deal more effectively with their adjustment problems. This
process can be time consuming and there is no guarantee that it will always work.
Negotiation and Agreement: It is sometimes necessary for a team leader to negotiate with potential
resistance or exchange something of value for a lessening the resistance. For instance, if the
resistance is from a few powerful individuals in the team, a specific reward package can be
negotiated that will meet their individual needs. Though in some instances this may be the relatively
easy way to gain acceptance, it is possible that this could be an expensive way of effecting changes
as well. Also, if the use of this strategy becomes public knowledge, others might also want to try to
negotiate before they accept the change.
Manipulation and Co-optation: The team leader seeks to ‘buy off’ the key members who are
resisting by giving them an important role in the change decision. The team leader’s advice is sought,
not to arrive at a better decision but to get their endorsement. Some of the co-opting tactics include
selectively sharing information and consciously structuring certain types of events that would win
support. This can be a quick and relatively easy and inexpensive strategy to gain support. However,
the purpose will be defeated if people feel they are being manipulated.
Explicit and Implicit Coercion: The team leaders can force the members to go along with changes
by threats involving loss or transfers of jobs, lack of promotion, etc. Such methods, though not
uncommon, is more difficult to gain support for future change efforts. This strategy can be
particularly resorted to when changes have to be speedily enforced or when changes are of a
temporary nature. Though speedy and effective in the short run, it may make people angry and resort
to all kinds of mean behaviors in the long run.
Technical Approach - Changes in machinery, methods, automation, and job design. Changes help
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Unfreezing: It is actually the process of preparing the system for change through disconfirmation of
the old practices, attitudes, tendencies, or behaviors. This is the initial phase where those involved in
the change experience a need for something different and a sense of restlessness with the status quo.
In essence, the feeling that the system is hurting itself badly now and desperately requires a change
to survive, is sensed by all. Initiative for changes efforts are taken to overcome the pressures of both
individual resistance and group conformity.
Movement to a new state: Changing or moving is the phase where the changes that have been
planned are actually initiated and carried out. Changes could relate to the mission, strategy,
objectives, people, tasks, work roles, technology, structure, corporate culture, or any other aspects of
the organization. Well thought out changes have to be carefully implemented with participation of
the members who will be affected by the change. Changes incorporated too quickly without adequate
preparation will result in resistance to change.
Refreezing: It is the last phase of the planned change process. Refreezing ensures that the planned
changes that have been introduced are working satisfactorily, that any modifications, extra
considerations, or support needed for making the changes operational are attended to, and that there
is reasonable guarantee that the changes will indeed fill the gap and bring the system to the new,
desired state of equilibrium. This necessarily implies that the results are monitored and evaluated,
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and wherever necessary corrective measures are taken up to reach the new goal. If the refreezing
phase is neglected or temporarily attended to, the desired results will not ensure and the change may
even be total disaster.
Model the way: This refers to the leader and manager of the organization putting into practice the
values and behavior that reflect the vision. The managers’ action must be consistent with his works;
otherwise the employees will become cynical and distrustful. Managers need to operate with
integrity and sincerity so that employees see the actions of their managers as example of what is
expected of them
Reinforce /solidify the change: Management must offer adequate rewards and appreciation to their
employees for successful implementation of the changes and process and getting the expected
results. These can also involve solidifying the change by changing the procedure and process so that
change becomes a regular part of the operation.
Evaluate and improve: The program must be evaluated thoroughly and improve the change
program after it has been under way for a time. Due to negligence of this process, the change
programs are sloppy or superficial. As result, programs are discontinued or abandoned based on the
personal feelings or lack of budget. Surveys and baseline measure should be gathered at the
beginning of the program and repeated once the program has been running for one to two years.
Organizational Culture
Is a set of understandings that members of a community share in common.
Culture would be interactive aggregate of common characteristics that influence a human group
response to its environment.
Characteristics of culture
• Innovative or risk taking
• Outcome orientation (rather than procedural)
• People orientation
• Team orientation
• Aggressiveness
• Stability
• Attention to details
Dominant – Expresses the core values that are shared by the majority of members
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Sub-culture – Mini culture within organization typically defined by departmental and geographical
separation
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