OB PBL 1

Management functions

(1) planning (2) organizing (3) leading (4) controlling

How do we go about evidence based management?

1. Answerable question →makes it clear how to compile relevant evidence. 2. The proposed cause needs to occur before the proposed effect

The model outcomes

1. Attitudes 2. Stress 3. Task performance 4. Citizenship behavior 5. Withdrawal behavior 6. Group cohesion 7. Group functioning 8. Productivity 9. Effectiveness 10. Efficiency 11. Organizational survival

When you want to be an evidence based leader you should:

1. Demand evidence and not use changes when evidence is still to be found 2. Examine logic → question all claims from experts 3. Treat the organization as an unfinished prototype →Encourage trial programs and reward learning instead of performance. HOWEVER, the tendency to do things everywhere or nowhere severely limits a company's ability to learn. 4. Embrace the attitude of wisdom It will undermine the power and prestige of influential managers. → Evidence based practice changes power dynamics, replacing formal authority, reputation and intuition with data.

Types of discrimination

1. Discriminatory policies or practices 2. Sexual harassment 3. Intimidation 4. Mockery and insults 5. Exclusion 6. Incivility

Organizational behavior as science: Intuition Systematic study → evidence-based management

1. Gut feelings 2. Common sense 3. Individual observation

What passes for wisdom; Sources of not-evidence based wisdom =

1. Obsolete knowledge gained in school 2. Dogma →Long-standing but never proven traditions (first-mover advantage, even when faced with evidence, not able to let go) 3. Personal experience→ feels better than info from a journal, but not all practices fit all businesses 4. Specialist skills → The methods they believe in and are most skilled in applying 5. Hype → Information from hordes of vendors with products and services to sell. 6. Mindless mimicry of top performers→ CASUAL benchmarking , you should also look into how to improve their best practices.

Are you part of the problem?

1. Stop treating old ideas as if they were brand-new 2. Be suspicious of 'breakthrough' ideas and studies 3. Celebrate and develop collective brilliance 4. Emphasize drawbacks as well as virtues 5. Use success (and failure) stories to illustrate sound practices, but not in place of a valid research method 6. Adopt a neutral stance toward ideologies and theories.

Diversity experience is more likely to lead to positive adaptations when:

1. The diversity experience undermines stereotypical attitudes. 2. If the perceiver is motivated and able to consider a new perspective on others. 3. If the perceiver engages in stereotype suppression and generative thought in response to diversity experience. 4. If the positive experience of stereotype undermining is repeated frequently.

Effective diversity programs: Effective, comprehensive workforce programmes encouraging diversity have three distinct components.(they have to be consistent, not just one session)

1. They teach managers about the legal framework and encourage fair treatment of all people regardless of their demographic characteristics. 2. They teach managers how a diverse workforce will be better able to serve a diverse market of customers and clients. 3. They foster personal development practices that bring out the skills and abilities of all workers, acknowledging how differences in perspective can be a valuable way to improve performance for everyone

What makes it hard to be evidence based?

1. Too much evidence →To hard to find the right articles 2. There's not enough good evidence → Lack of info on interventions etc 3. The evidence doesn't quite apply → Only evidence under certain conditions 4. People are trying to mislead you → consultants never get the opportunity to evaluate 5. You are trying to mislead you → Confirmatory bias 6. The side effects outweigh the cure → side effects are not always considered enough 7. Stories are more persuasive than evidence

4 different managerial activities

1. Traditional management 2. Communication 3. Human Resource Management 4. Networking

Why do we study OB?

1. Understanding OB helps determine manager effectiveness - Technical and quantitative skills are important - But leadership and communication skills are critical 2. Organizational benefits of skilled managers - Lower turnover of quality employees - Higher quality applications for recruitment - Better financial performance

Organization

A consciously coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals.

Organizational behavior (OB)

A field of study that investigates the impact that 1. individuals 2. groups and 3. structure have on behaviour within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge towards improving an organization's effectiveness.

(3) leading

A function that includes motivating employees, directing others, selecting the most effective communication channels and resolving conflicts.

Intuition

A gut feeling not necessarily supported by research

Big data

A manager who uses data to define objectives, develop theories of causality and test those theories can find which employee activities are relevant to the objectives

(1) planning

A process that includes defining goals, establishing strategy and developing plans to coordinate activities

Ability→deep-level

Ability = An individual's capacity to perform the various tasks in a job

1. Discriminatory policies or practices

Actions taken by representatives of the organization that deny equal opportunity to perform or unequal rewards for performance.

Positive organizational scholarship

An area of OB research that concerns how organizations develop human strength, foster vitality and resilience, and unlock potential. Some key variables in positive OB research are engagement, hope, optimism and resilience in the face of strain. Although positive organizational scholarship doesn't deny the value of the negative (critical feedback), it does challenge researchers to look at OB through a new lens and pushes organizations to exploit employees' strength rather than dwell on their limitations.

Managers

An individual who achieves goals through other people

2. Stress

An unpleasant psychological process that occurs in response to environmental pressures.

Diversity as a strategy:

Any major corporate change will succeed only if a few key factors are in place: 1. Strong support from company leaders → which is often an issue 2. An employee base that is fully engaged with the initiative → mutual expectations, mutual influence, and trust 3. Management practices that are integrate and aligned with the effort → also hold them accountable for diversity-related results 4. A strong and well-articulated business case for action → Link diversity goals to business goals

Evidence Based Management (EBM)

Basing managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence.

There are few absolutes in OB

Because humans are complex, we are limited to make generalizations. OB concepts must reflect situational, or contingency, conditions. X lead to y, but only under condition z, the contingency variables.

Complementing intuition with systematic study

Behavior is generally predictable, and the systematic study of behavior is a means to making reasonable accurate predictions. Systematic study and Evidence Based Management (EBM) add to intuition about what makes others 'tick'. Only relying on intuition is bad, because we tend to overestimate the accuracy of what we think we know.

Enhancing employee well-being at work

Challenges Never getting away of the virtual workplace Heavy outside commitments Workers want more time-off → Solution: increasing flexibility. Organizations that don't help their people achieve work-life balance will find it increasingly difficult to attract and retain the most capable and motivated employees.

Biographical characteristics→ Surface-level characteristics

Combating discrimination may be associated with better performance for the organization as a whole, partially since employees who are discriminated against are more likely to leave

7)Cultural identity

Cultural norms influence the workplace, sometimes resulting in clashes. Thanks to global integration and changing labor markets, global companies do well to understand and respect the cultural identities of their employees, both as groups and as individuals. A company seeking to be sensitive to the cultural identities of its employees should look beyond accommodating its majority groups and instead create as much of an individualized approach to practices and norms as possible.

1. Traditional management

Decision making, planning and controlling

(2) organizing

Determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom and where decisions are to be made

Surface-level diversity

Differences in easily perceived characteristics, such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, or disability, that do not necessarily reflect the ways people think or feel but may activate certain stereotypes.

Deep-level diversity

Differences in values, personality and work preferences that become progressively more important for determining similarity as people get to know one another better.

4. Citizenship behavior

Discretionary behaviour that contributes to the psychological and social environment of the workplace.

6. Incivility

Disrespectful treatment, including behaving in an aggressive manner, interrupting the person, or ignoring his or her opinions.

Diversity in groups

Diversity in groups can help and hurt the group performance. Whether diverse or homogenous teams are more effective depends on the characteristic of interest. - Demographic diversity (gender/race) does not appear to either help or hurt the team. - Teams of individuals who are highly intelligent, conscientious and interested in working in team settings are more effective. It makes little sense to try to form teams that mix in intelligence, interest of conscientiousness. - Groups of individuals with different types of expertise and education are more effective than homogenous groups. - A group mix of leaders and followers will also be more effective. - Groups of diverse individuals will be much more effective if leaders can show how members have a common interest in the group's success.

Implementing diversity management strategies

Diversity is much more likely to be successful when we see it as everyone's business than if we believe it helps only certain groups of employees

The importance of interpersonal skills

During the decades, researchers discovered that technical skills are not the most important skill for managers. Interpersonal skills/good people skills are more important because they create a (1) pleasant workplace (2) retaining high-performing employees (3) best careers.

chapter 2; Diversity

Effective diversity management increases an organization's access to the widest possible pool of skills, abilities and ideas. Managers also need to recognize that differences among people can lead to miscommunication, misunderstanding and conflict. Diversity is a broad term, and the phrase workplace diversity can refer to any characteristic that makes people different from one another.

Improving ethical behavior

Ethical dilemmas and ethical choices Situations in which individuals are required to define right and wrong conduct.

1. Attitudes

Evaluations employees make about objects, people, or events.

2. Communication

Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork

5. Exclusion

Exclusion of certain people from job opportunities, social events, discussions, or informal mentoring; can occur unintentionally.

2nd article: Thomas, D. A. (2004). Diversity as Strategy. Harvard Business Review, September.

IBM Diversity article: By denying diversity and then accommodating it, showed IBM that greater diversity in the workplace could help attract a more diverse customer set. Diversity management = a core competency to assess executive performance Constructive disruption Diversity should be seen as a strategic goal.

workplace sectors in accomodating diversity:

If groups of employees are not proportionally represented in top management, managers should look for any hidden barriers to advancement. The organization should also clearly communicate its policies to employees so they can understand how and why certain practices are followed. Communications should focus as much as possible on qualifications and job performance: emphasizing certain groups as needing more assistance could well backfire.

Responding to globalization: The manager's job is changing due to the world becoming a global village

Increased foreign assignments → transferred to your employer's operating division or subsidiary in another country Working with people from different cultures → different motives, communication Overseeing movements of jobs to countries with low-cost labour → balancing the interests of their organization with their responsibilities to the communities in which they operate. Adapting to differing cultural and regulatory norms →Knowing cultural practices of the workforce in each country where they do business.

The model inputs, processes, outcomes

Inputs Variables that lead to processes Processes Actions that individuals, groups and organizations engage in as a result of inputs and that lead to certain outcomes Outcomes Key factors that are affected by some other variables.

3)Race and ethnicity

It is in characteristics, along with culture and ethnic origins, that people may use to group themselves and others into 'races'. Research has consistently demonstrated that race is a factor in some selection decisions. There is evidence to suggest that there is a tendency for individuals to favor colleagues of their own race in performance evaluations and promotion decisions.

4. Mockery and insults

Jokes or negative stereotypes; sometimes the result of jokes taken too far.

systematic study

Looking at relationships, attempting to attribute causes and effects and drawing conclusions based on scientific evidence.

Improving customer service

Managers can improve success of interaction by showing how employee attitudes and behaviour influence customer satisfaction → Creation of customer-responsive culture is needed

(4) controlling

Monitoring activities to ensure that they are being accomplished as planned and correcting any significant deviations

5) Tenure

Most recent evidence shows a positive relationship between job productivity and seniority (time on a job). Tenure, expressed as work experience, appears to be a good predictor of employee productivity. Studies consistently show seniority to be negatively related to absenteeism. Tenure is also a potent variable in explaining turnover. Evidence also indicates that tenure and job satisfaction are positively related.

3. Human Resource Management

Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing and training

Working in networked organizations

New skills are needed → Motivating and leading people and making collaborative decisions online requires different techniques

Discrimination

Noting of a difference between things; often we refer to unfair discrimination, which means making judgements about individuals based on stereotypes regarding their demographic group

4) Disability

On the one hand, the evidence suggests workers with disabilities receive higher performance evaluations. However, it also shows that workers with disabilities tend to encounter lower performance expectations and are less likely to be hired.

OB = common sense

Once employees have mastered a task, they perform better when they are given specific difficult performance goals. The more often an employee has been in contact with his/her co-worker, the employee will like the co-worker more.

Methods of Attracting, selecting, developing and retaining diverse employees

One method of enhancing workforce diversity is to target recruiting messages to specific demographic groups underrepresented in the workforce. → Placing advertisements in publications geared towards specific demographic groups; recruiting at colleges, universities, and other institutions. Research has shown that women and minorities do have greater interest in employers that make special efforts to highlight a commitment to diversity in their recruiting materials. The selection process is one of the most important places to apply diversity efforts. When managers use a well-defined protocol for assessing applicant talent and the organization clearly prioritizes nondiscrimination policies, qualifications become far more important in determining who gets hired than demographic characteristics.

3. Intimidation

Overt threats or bullying directed at members of specific groups of employees.

Improving people skills

People skills are important to managerial effectiveness.

Biographical characteristics (AGRTRC)

Personal characteristics — such as 1) age 2) gender 3) race 4) disability 5) length of tenure 6) religion 7) cultural identity —that are objective and easily obtained from personnel records. These characteristics are representative of surface-level diversity

Disciplines that contribute to the OB field

Psychology →The science that seeks to measure, explain and sometimes change the behaviour of humans and other animals. Social psychology→An area of psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology and that focuses on the influence of people on one another. Sociology → The study of people in relation to their social environment or culture. Anthropology→ The study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.

6)Religion

Religion is clearly having an effect in the workplace, however, there has not been a great deal of research into these effects to date. What is known is that workers who are victims of religious discrimination have higher levels of health problems, absence and turnover.

Implications for managers:

Resist the inclination to rely on generalizations; some provide valid insights into human behaviour, but many are erroneous. Use metrics and situational variables rather than 'hunches' to explain cause-and-effect relationships. Work on your interpersonal skills to increase your leadership potential. Improve your technical skills and conceptual skills through training and staying current with organizational behaviour trends like big data. Organizational behaviour can improve your employees' work quality and productivity by showing you how to empower your employees, design and implement change programmes, improve customer service and help your employees balance work-life conflicts.

4. Networking

Socialising, politicking and interacting with outsiders

1. Technical skills

The ability to apply specialised knowledge or expertise.

2. Human skills

The ability to work with, understand and motivate other people, both individually and in groups.

Intellectual capabilities

The capacity to do mental activities - thinking, reasoning and problem solving Smart people generally earn more money and attain higher levels of education. Researchers recognize a general factor of intelligence, general mental ability (GMA).

Physical abilities

The capacity to do tasks that demand stamina, dexterity, strength and similar characteristics

3. Task performance

The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing your core job tasks.

8. Productivity

The combination of the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization.

10. Efficiency

The degree to which an organization can achieve its ends at a low cost.

11. Organizational survival

The degree to which an organization is able to exist and grow over the long term

9. Effectiveness

The degree to which an organization meets the needs of its clientele or customers.

Responding to economic pressures

The difference between good and bad management can be the difference between profit and loss or, between survival and failure. In good times, understanding how to reward, satisfy, retain employees. In bad times, stress, decision making, coping.

6. Group cohesion

The extent to which members of a group support and validate one another while at work.

3. Conceptual skills

The mental ability to analyse and diagnose complex situations.

Diversity management

The process and programmes by which managers make everyone more aware of and sensitive to the needs and differences of others.

7. Group functioning

The quantity and quality of a work group's output.

1) Age

The relationship between age and job performance is likely to be an issue of increasing importance, since the workforce is ageing. Employers express mixed feelings about an older worker. A number of positive qualities like experience, judgement, strong ethic, but also negative qualities, like resisting new technology, lacking flexibility. As workers get older, they have fewer alternative job opportunities as their skills have become more specialized to certain types of work. HOWEVER, age and job task performance are unrelated

5. Withdrawal behavior

The set of actions employees take to separate themselves from the organization.

Demographic characteristics of the European workforce

The shift of a more diverse workforce has already happened, but problems as differences in wages have arisen with it.

Diversity in different cultures

The similarity in personality appears to affect career advancement. Those whose personality traits are similar to those of their co-workers are more likely to be promoted than those whose personalities are different. In collectivistic cultures: similarity to supervisors is more important. In individualistic cultures: similarity to peers is more important.

2) Gender

There are no consistent male-female differences in problem-solving ability, analytical skills, competitive drive, motivation, sociability or learning ability However, sex roles still affect our perceptions. Men and women may be offered a similar number of developmental experiences, but females are less likely to be assigned challenging positions by men, assignments that may have helped them achieve higher positions. Women still earn less money than men for the same positions. Workers who experiences sexual harassment, have higher levels of psychological stress, these feelings in turn are related to lower levels of commitment and satisfaction and higher intentions to leave.

ethical behaviour in the workplace

Today's manager must create an ethically healthy climate for his or her employees, where they can do their work productively with minimal ambiguity about right versus wrong behaviors. Companies that promote a strong ethical mission, encourage employees to behave with integrity and provide strong leadership can influence employee decisions to behave ethically.

Implications for managers:

Understand your organization's anti-discrimination policies thoroughly and share them with your employees. Assess and challenge your stereotype beliefs to increase your objectivity. Look beyond readily observable biographical characteristics and consider the individual's capabilities before making management decisions. Fully evaluate what accommodations a person with disabilities will need and then fine-tune a job to that person's abilities. Seek to understand and respect the unique biographical characteristics of your employees; a fair but individualistic approach yields the best performance.

Challenges and opportunities for OB

Understanding organizational behavior has never been more important for managers than it is today. As a result of changes or rising technology, employment options have adapted to include new opportunities for workers. Today's challenges bring opportunities for managers to use OB concepts.

2. Sexual harassment

Unwanted sexual advances and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that create a hostile or offensive work environment.

ARTICLE: Pfeffer, J., & Sutton, R. I. (2006). Evidence-based management. Harvard business review, 84(1), 62.

We should use evidence to base our medical decisions, but this is only done 15% of the time. However, managers are far worse than doctors. It is a bit more difficult because evidence is weaker: (1) everyone can claim to be an expert and (2) writers of romans are often used as inspiration (3) some proven practices do not fit all businesses. However, managers can create competitive advantage if they rely on evidence based management.

Managing workforce diversity

Workforce diversity: The concept that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and inclusion of other diverse groups.

Main core topics of OB:

motivation, leader behavior and power, interpersonal communication, group structure and processes, attitude development and perception, change processes, conflict and negotiation, work design.

contingency variables

situational factors: variables that moderate the relationship between two or more variables

What constitutes good ethical behavior has never been clearly defined →

→ Determining the ethically correct way to behave is especially difficult in a global economy because different cultures have different perspectives on certain ethical issues.

Management skills

→ Skills that differentiate effective from ineffective managers 1. Technical skills 2. Human skills 3. Conceptual skills