Chapter 1. Explaining organizational behaviour
Organization = a social arrangement for achieving controlled performance in pursuit of
collective goals.
- Social arrangement
- Collective goals
- Controlled performance and cybernetics
o The scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the
machine. (Wiener, 1948)
o Regulative systems
Regulative system
System = an interrelated set of elements that functions as a whole.
Output → products are sold to the consuming public.
Feedback → the system receives feedback from the environment regarding those outputs.
Information → information about the company and its operations is also released into the
environment → the environment responds to these outputs and influences future inputs.
Systems perspective!
,Organizational behaviour = the study of the structure and management of organizations,
their environments, and the actions and interactions of their individual members and
groups.
Environmental issues (macro)
Organizational and group issues (meso)
Individual issues (micro)
The focus on management is sometimes seen as unhelpful: → Biases (!)
Power inequalities = management is an elite group, with privileged access to information.
The agenda = managerialist perspective focuses on issues of importance to managers,
concerning control and performance. Issues that are significant to individuals and groups,
theories that have limited practical use, and criticisms of the managerial role are pushed
aside.
Multiple stakeholders = management is only one group with a stake in organizational
behaviour. An understanding of this subject is of value to employees, trade unions, etc.
Fashion victims = managers follow the latest trends in thinking and technique, to improve
personal and organizational effectiveness.
Organizational behaviour = the activities and interactions of people in organizations.
Organization = a social arrangement for achieving controlled performance in pursuit of
collective goals.
Social arrangements = groups of people who interact with each other because of their
membership. No distinctive feature!
A chemicals company A Whatsapp group King’s College Hospital
The local street corner gang Clan Buchanan Your local football club
A terrorist cell A famine relief charity The family next door
Collective goals = shared objectives = no distinctive feature!
Controlled performance = setting standards, measuring performance, comparing actual with
standard, and taking corrective action if necessary.
Preoccupation with performance + need for control → distinguish organizations from social
arrangements!
Images of Organization (Gareth Morgan, 2006)
→ 8 metaphors which invite us to see organizations through a series of different lenses: !!!
1. Machines: how component parts interact
2. Biological organisms
3. Human brains
4. Cultures or subcultures
5. Political systems
6. Psychic prisons = how an organization shapes the thinking and intellectual growth of
its members.
7. Systems of change and transformation
8. Instruments of domination
The main limitation to human aspiration lies not with intellect or equipment, but in our
ability to work together.
,Senior managers may decide on objectives and try to get others to agree by calling them the
‘organization’s mission’ or ‘corporate strategy’, but they are still the goals of the people who
determined them in the first place.
Organizations are personal and social sources of:
- Money, physical resources, other rewards
- Meaning, relevance, purpose, identity
- Order, stability, purpose, identity
- Status, prestige, self-esteem, self-confidence
- Power, authority, control
The central dilemma of organizational design = how to reconcile inconsistency between
individual needs and aspirations and the collective purpose of the organization. (!)
Individual goals vs collective goals!
Organizational control → hierarchy of authority
It is widely accepted that managers have the right to make the decisions while lower-level
employees are obliged to comply, or leave.
PESTLE: political, economic, social, technological, legal and ecological
Organizations are not static. They and their members have plans for the future which
influence actions today. Past events also shape current perceptions and actions.
Fundamental attribution error = the tendency to explain the behaviour of others based on
their personality or disposition, and to overlook the influence of wider contextual influences.
Possible fundamental attribution errors:
1. Context factors
a. Economic factors: staff angry about losing their job
b. Social issues: local population is in decline
2. Individual factors
a. Learning deficit: lack of training
b. Personality traits: demanding public
c. Motivation problem: lacking in challenge
3. Group factors
a. Group formation issues: no cohesive team
b. Group structure problems: a staff member is excluded from the group
c. Group norms: dealing with annoying customers is to be awkward in return
4. Structural factors
a. Hierarchy problems: organization is bureaucratic
b. Work design problems: concern about the way in which work is allocated
c. Decision making issues: problems to a regional boss, who doesn’t understand
local issues
5. Management process factors
a. Leadership style: annoying manager
b. Change problems: manager is suffering initiative fatigue following a
restructuring
c. Management decision making problems: management has made decisions
without consulting employees who have valuable ideas
, Organizational effectiveness = a multidimensional concept that can be defined differently by
different stakeholders.
Balanced scorecard = an approach to defining organizational effectiveness using a
combination of quantitative and qualitative measures, such as environmental concerns,
employee development, internal operating efficiencies, and shareholder value.
Quality of working life = an individual’s overall satisfaction with their job, working
conditions, pay, colleagues, management style, organization culture, work-life balance, and
training, development and career opportunities.
GOALS OF SCIENCE PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS SOCIAL SCIENCE PROBLEMS
DESCRIPTION Measurement Invisible and ambiguous variables
People change over time
EXPLANATION Identify the time order of events Timing of events not always clear
Establish causal links between Cannot always see interactions
variables
PREDICTION Generalizing from one setting to Uniqueness, complexity and lack
another of comparability between
settings
CONTROL Manipulation Ethical and legal constraints
DESCRIPTION
Natural science describes an objective reality.
Social science describes how people understand and interpret their circumstances.
The first goal of science is description. To achieve this, social science has three methods:
1. Observation 2. Asking questions 3. Studying documents (blogs, websites, texts)
Observation has limitations: we cannot decide about someone’s perception just by watching
them?
We can study learning by simple inference: examine knowledge before and after reading.
The validity of responses in self-report questionnaires is questionable for 3 reasons:
1. Subject may lie
2. Subject may not know
3. Subject may tell what they think we want to hear
EXPLANATION
The laws that explain human behaviour are different from those that govern the behaviour
of natural phenomena.
Meteorological law → clouds mean rain
Social law → red means stop
We are not born with pre-programmed behavioural guides. We have to learn the rules of
our society at a given time.
PREDICTION
Table 1.3 (17)
CONTROL
Organization = a social arrangement for achieving controlled performance in pursuit of
collective goals.
- Social arrangement
- Collective goals
- Controlled performance and cybernetics
o The scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the
machine. (Wiener, 1948)
o Regulative systems
Regulative system
System = an interrelated set of elements that functions as a whole.
Output → products are sold to the consuming public.
Feedback → the system receives feedback from the environment regarding those outputs.
Information → information about the company and its operations is also released into the
environment → the environment responds to these outputs and influences future inputs.
Systems perspective!
,Organizational behaviour = the study of the structure and management of organizations,
their environments, and the actions and interactions of their individual members and
groups.
Environmental issues (macro)
Organizational and group issues (meso)
Individual issues (micro)
The focus on management is sometimes seen as unhelpful: → Biases (!)
Power inequalities = management is an elite group, with privileged access to information.
The agenda = managerialist perspective focuses on issues of importance to managers,
concerning control and performance. Issues that are significant to individuals and groups,
theories that have limited practical use, and criticisms of the managerial role are pushed
aside.
Multiple stakeholders = management is only one group with a stake in organizational
behaviour. An understanding of this subject is of value to employees, trade unions, etc.
Fashion victims = managers follow the latest trends in thinking and technique, to improve
personal and organizational effectiveness.
Organizational behaviour = the activities and interactions of people in organizations.
Organization = a social arrangement for achieving controlled performance in pursuit of
collective goals.
Social arrangements = groups of people who interact with each other because of their
membership. No distinctive feature!
A chemicals company A Whatsapp group King’s College Hospital
The local street corner gang Clan Buchanan Your local football club
A terrorist cell A famine relief charity The family next door
Collective goals = shared objectives = no distinctive feature!
Controlled performance = setting standards, measuring performance, comparing actual with
standard, and taking corrective action if necessary.
Preoccupation with performance + need for control → distinguish organizations from social
arrangements!
Images of Organization (Gareth Morgan, 2006)
→ 8 metaphors which invite us to see organizations through a series of different lenses: !!!
1. Machines: how component parts interact
2. Biological organisms
3. Human brains
4. Cultures or subcultures
5. Political systems
6. Psychic prisons = how an organization shapes the thinking and intellectual growth of
its members.
7. Systems of change and transformation
8. Instruments of domination
The main limitation to human aspiration lies not with intellect or equipment, but in our
ability to work together.
,Senior managers may decide on objectives and try to get others to agree by calling them the
‘organization’s mission’ or ‘corporate strategy’, but they are still the goals of the people who
determined them in the first place.
Organizations are personal and social sources of:
- Money, physical resources, other rewards
- Meaning, relevance, purpose, identity
- Order, stability, purpose, identity
- Status, prestige, self-esteem, self-confidence
- Power, authority, control
The central dilemma of organizational design = how to reconcile inconsistency between
individual needs and aspirations and the collective purpose of the organization. (!)
Individual goals vs collective goals!
Organizational control → hierarchy of authority
It is widely accepted that managers have the right to make the decisions while lower-level
employees are obliged to comply, or leave.
PESTLE: political, economic, social, technological, legal and ecological
Organizations are not static. They and their members have plans for the future which
influence actions today. Past events also shape current perceptions and actions.
Fundamental attribution error = the tendency to explain the behaviour of others based on
their personality or disposition, and to overlook the influence of wider contextual influences.
Possible fundamental attribution errors:
1. Context factors
a. Economic factors: staff angry about losing their job
b. Social issues: local population is in decline
2. Individual factors
a. Learning deficit: lack of training
b. Personality traits: demanding public
c. Motivation problem: lacking in challenge
3. Group factors
a. Group formation issues: no cohesive team
b. Group structure problems: a staff member is excluded from the group
c. Group norms: dealing with annoying customers is to be awkward in return
4. Structural factors
a. Hierarchy problems: organization is bureaucratic
b. Work design problems: concern about the way in which work is allocated
c. Decision making issues: problems to a regional boss, who doesn’t understand
local issues
5. Management process factors
a. Leadership style: annoying manager
b. Change problems: manager is suffering initiative fatigue following a
restructuring
c. Management decision making problems: management has made decisions
without consulting employees who have valuable ideas
, Organizational effectiveness = a multidimensional concept that can be defined differently by
different stakeholders.
Balanced scorecard = an approach to defining organizational effectiveness using a
combination of quantitative and qualitative measures, such as environmental concerns,
employee development, internal operating efficiencies, and shareholder value.
Quality of working life = an individual’s overall satisfaction with their job, working
conditions, pay, colleagues, management style, organization culture, work-life balance, and
training, development and career opportunities.
GOALS OF SCIENCE PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS SOCIAL SCIENCE PROBLEMS
DESCRIPTION Measurement Invisible and ambiguous variables
People change over time
EXPLANATION Identify the time order of events Timing of events not always clear
Establish causal links between Cannot always see interactions
variables
PREDICTION Generalizing from one setting to Uniqueness, complexity and lack
another of comparability between
settings
CONTROL Manipulation Ethical and legal constraints
DESCRIPTION
Natural science describes an objective reality.
Social science describes how people understand and interpret their circumstances.
The first goal of science is description. To achieve this, social science has three methods:
1. Observation 2. Asking questions 3. Studying documents (blogs, websites, texts)
Observation has limitations: we cannot decide about someone’s perception just by watching
them?
We can study learning by simple inference: examine knowledge before and after reading.
The validity of responses in self-report questionnaires is questionable for 3 reasons:
1. Subject may lie
2. Subject may not know
3. Subject may tell what they think we want to hear
EXPLANATION
The laws that explain human behaviour are different from those that govern the behaviour
of natural phenomena.
Meteorological law → clouds mean rain
Social law → red means stop
We are not born with pre-programmed behavioural guides. We have to learn the rules of
our society at a given time.
PREDICTION
Table 1.3 (17)
CONTROL
