Module 1 – Organizational Behaviour (OB)
Lecture 1 – 5-9-2025
OB impacts anybody and everywhere you are at the workplaces. Serious fun is important,
also at the workplace and environment. There is a difference between organizational and
management. This course started as multidisciplinary, for the different departments for
pluralism goal. So you can put different perspectives on business management. Innovation
can be interpret differently, and can change over time. Novelty and improvement are
fragments from innovation, but is different for some people. Philosophers are the students to
become entrepreneurs; so you have to ask yourself the why-question a lot. Critical thinking is
very important, that is what the article were about too. Professor Ludwig Wittgenstein is a
philosopher who speaks about language game, nice concept.
The literature:
Its not mandatory for the assignments, but it can be handy. Business schools can/should
have a different meaning than the sigma that is around in nowadays. Holt talks about
morality and call out that there is a decline in business schools, focusing on efficiency and
effectiveness. The business schools are founded in 18th century, for a social purpose. But this
doesn’t mean you exclude commercial industries, education and social. Both articles say
business schools are focussing much on money, efficiency and facts and exclude the morality
and social aspect. So, you can also have value, making meaning and serious fun at business
environments. What kind of leadership do we want? What are the main important highlight
we want to teach?
Pluralism and crucial thinking is the best thing you can do. To have multiple perspective is
essential. Group thinking is therefore important, because you are not doing what the
majority does but you can have a discussion about it.
Business as pleasure by Jurriens start with the ancient Greeks, with pleasure can be
combined with serious business. But there is a sidenote, that not everyone can handle this
freedom.
Lecture 2 – 8-9-2025
Job satisfaction and motivation (Organizational behaviour, value percept theory, job model
framework)
The connection between woman and banana is nothing, there is no deeper meaning.
Some of the issues in the field of OB is miscommunication and a language gap (video slide 8).
Employees don’t get what is expected by them. It’s a two road way, because the importance
and job responsibilities were not clear. So this lies by the supervisor and the employee. Also
the criteria and the skills and knowledge don’t match. Manager skills and communication is
,important in these cases. OB is trying to find and understanding this mismatch. OB tries to
understand people management in working environments and organizations. Also conflicts
can be tackled. Improving attitudes and therefore performances.
Organizational Behaviour is a field of study that investigates the impact that
individuals, groups, and structure have on behaviour within organizations, for the
purpose of applying such knowledge towards improving an organization’s
effectiveness. OB is about understanding human behaviour in organizational settings.
Different managers; effective managers
(good team performance), successful
managers and average managers. People
can only spent their time once, and when
networking a lot (self-focused), less time
will spent on human resources (your own
team).
POLL – If you reward employees with
activities they like doing, they will like
these activities even more. The more often an employee has been in contact with her
coworker, the employee will like the coworker even more (while you become more familiar
with them, and becoming to overlook the negatives). Individual idea generation creates more
ideas than brainstorming in teams (the effective output is more with individual thinking, you
have lifters on the ideas otherwise).
If the individual mechanisms
(mediators) are not in the right
place, the organizational and
group mechanism are not
successful and the individual
outcomes are not right either. If
the employee is connected to the
organization and is performing
well, you have a good employee.
“You can’t eat for eight hours a
day nor drink for eight hours a day
nor make love for eight hours a
day – all you can do for eight
hours is work. Which is the reason why…
“Work will always matter to people…they will always love it and hate it…society should help
people love it more than hate it” (Warr and Wall)
The field of OB is dynamic as organizations and relationships evolve and change. This gives
new insights.
, Motivation is the process that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and
persistence of effort toward attaining a goal, specifically an organizational goal. The
result of the individual mechanisms and characteristics to get the job done.
Motivation determines the:
o Direction of effort
Is the effort channelled toward and consisted? Or are you easily distracted?
o Intensity of effort
How hard are you working of half-speed?
o Persistence of effort
How many hours are you motivated to doing the work?
*Job satisfaction is more about the job itself and how you feel about it, the emotional state.
Motivation is more about the inner things to thrive people. They are related but different.
People are not only motivated by money alone, also
meaningfulness, responsibility, sense of community, etc.
are important. Assumptions about what makes people
happy and motivates them, may be very different than
the actual factor that they experience. What are the
reasons behind their motivation and are they satisfied or
not?
Value percept theory is a theory about the gap
between what an individual wants and what they
actually have. If this gap is big, the dissatisfaction
is higher and the person is not happy. The
different aspects of the job are considered,
looking at it together. The value percept theory is
about the job satisfaction of an individual. What
factor cause job satisfaction and which not?
o Dissatisfaction = (Vwant – Vhave) x
(Vimportance)
How can you make sure that one is going to like the work process itself, the motivation? This
is being done by the managers, who want money performances but you can choose the
employee satisfaction too.
Job Characteristics Model (JCM) is
about the 3 factors
(meaningfulness, responsibility
and knowledge). You want a
balance this variety. The job
characteristics are named VISAF,
which lead to psychological states
which lead to satisfaction with the