Fundamentals of Organizational

Uni
Behavior
t I.

Lesson A:Introductory Concepts of Organizational Behavior

Lesson
Unit IB:Fundamental Concepts
of the syllabus focuses and
on the Elements
basics of Organizational
of Organizational Behavior Behavior
(OB), which are
Lesson
crucial C:Reasons for
for understanding studying
how Organizational
organizations function. ItBehavior
starts with defining Organizational
Behavior
LessonandD:then exploresDevelopment
Historical its fundamentalof concepts and elements.
Organizational These concepts include
Behavior
things like communication, motivation, leadership, and decision-making, which are all important
for understanding how people behave within organizations. The section on Reasons for studying
Organizational Behavior explains why it's important to learn about OB, highlighting its role in
improving organizational performance and employee satisfaction. Additionally, the unit covers
the Historical Development of Organizational Behavior, showing how OB has evolved over time
through various theories and studies. Overall, Unit I provide students with a solid foundation to
understand the key aspects of Organizational Behavior.

Learning
Outcomes

At the end of the unit, the student must have:

1. identified the benefits of organizational behavior
2. defined key terms in organizational behavior
3. stated the reasons for studying organizational behavior
4. traced the history of organizational behavior

Lesson A: Introductory Concepts of Organizational Behavior

Jumpstart
Unit I. Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior | 1
 To begin our study of organizational behavior, we could just say that it is the study of
behavior in organizations and the study of the behavior of organizations, but such a definition
reveals nothing about what this study involves or examines. Let’s take Stephen Robbins (2001)
definition of Organizational Behavior, he said that OB is a field of study that investigates the
impact that individuals, groups and structures have on behavior within organizations for the
purpose of applying knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness. In short, OB is
the study of what people do in an organization and how their behavior affects the organizations
performance. The major goals of organizational behavior are to explain, predict, and control
behavior.

Achievement
Targets
By the end of this lesson, you must have:
1. familiarized with the various key concepts in the study of organizational behavior.
2. enumerated the discipline contributing to the OB field; and
3. applied the skills learned in OB.

Exercise your
Brain
Direction: As a kickoff to your understanding about this lesson, you will pick a
word found in the box that corresponds to your interest as to what role of manager you want to
see yourself in the future. Elaborate your chosen role on the space provided.

Figurehead Monitor Spokesperson

Liaison Distrubance Handler Negotiator
Leader Entreprenuer
Disseminator Resource Allocator

______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

Learning Inputs

Unit I. Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior | 2

 An organization is a collection of people who work together and coordinate their actions
to achieve a wide variety of goals. The goals are what individuals are trying to accomplish as
members of an organization (earning a lot of money, helping promote a worthy cause, achieving
certain levels of personal power and prestige, enjoying a satisfying work experience, and so
forth). The goals are also what the organization as a whole is trying to accomplish (providing
innovative goods and services that customers want; getting candidates elected; raising money
for medical research; making a profit to reward stockholders, managers, and employees; and
being socially responsible and protecting the natural environment). An effective organization is
one that achieves its goals.
To sum up our definition, OB is the study of what people do in an organization and how
their behavior affects the organization’s performance. And because OB is concerned specifically
with employment-related situations, you should not be surprised that it emphasizes behavior as
related to concerns such as jobs, work, absenteeism, employment turnover, productivity,
human performance, and management.

The Nature of Organizational Behavior

Organizational behavior (OB) is the study of the many factors that have an impact on
how people and groups act, think, feel, and respond to work and organizations, and how
organizations respond to their environments. Understanding how people behave in an
organization is important because most people work for an organization at some point in their
lives and are affected—both positively and negatively—by their experiences in it. An
understanding of OB can help people to enhance the positive, while reducing the negative,
effects of working in organizations.

The study of OB provides guidelines that help people at work to understand and
appreciate the many forces that affect behavior in organizations. It allows employees at all
levels in an organization to make the right decisions about how to behave and work with other
people in order to achieve organizational goals. In essence, OB concepts and theories allow
people to correctly understand, describe, and analyze how the characteristics of individuals,
groups, work situations, and the organization itself affect how members feel about and act
within their organization.

The Levels of OB

Unit I. Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior | 3

 In practice, OB is examined at three main levels: the individual, the group, and the
organization as a whole. A full understanding of OB is impossible without a thorough
examination of the factors that affect behavior at each level.

1. Individual Level. This is the first level of OB analysis. At the individual level,
organizational behavior studies the behavior of an individual person such as his/her
attitudes, motivation, perception, personality, values, ethics, satisfaction, and other
personal traits. The individuals working in the organization are the very existence of the
organization. Each individual’s behavior is
different from others, as it is natural, and some
are affected by social, cultural, and other social
variables.
2. Group Level. The group-level analysis of OB
studies the behavior of people at the group
level, how groups work, why they interact in
group work, collaboration, group decisions, etc.
In a group people work together, one’s actions
affect others, they are dependent on each
other, and the goal is achieved through
collective effort.
3. Organizational Level. Studying organizational level helps managers to understand the
performance of individuals and groups and how they are contributing to the
organization. By getting this, a manager can develop suitable plans, policies, motivation
programs, design jobs, manage change, etc. in order to run the organization smoothly.

A manager who understands how individual, group, and organizational

characteristics affect and shape work attitudes and behavior can begin to experiment to
see whether changing one or more of these characteristics might increase the
effectiveness of the organization—and the individuals and groups it consists of.

Managerial Functions
1. Planning. The planning function encompasses defining an organization’s goals,
establishing an overall strategy for achieving those goals, and developing a
comprehensive set of plans to integrate and coordinate activities.
2. Organizing. It includes 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.
3. Leading. A function that includes motivating employees, directing others, selecting the
most effective communication channels, or resolving conflicts among members.
4. Controlling. Monitoring performance, comparing actual performance with previously
set goals, and correcting any deviation. Evaluate how well the organization is achieving
its goals and take action to maintain and improve performance or take corrective action.

Unit I. Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior | 4

Management Skills
Still another way of considering what managers do is to look at the skills or
competencies they need to achieve their goals. Researchers have identified a number of skills
that differentiate effective from ineffective managers.

1. Technical Skills. Technical skills encompass the ability to apply specialized knowledge or
expertise. The manager of a restaurant, for example, needs cooking skills to fill in for an
absent cook, accounting and bookkeeping skills to keep track of receipts and costs and
to administer the payroll, and artistic skills to keep the restaurant looking attractive for
customers.
2. Human Skills. The ability to understand, communicate with, motivate, and support
other people, both individually and in groups, defines human skills. Many people are
technically proficient but poor listeners, unable to understand the needs of others, or
weak at managing conflicts.
3. Conceptual Skills. Managers must have the mental ability to analyze and diagnose
complex situations. These tasks require conceptual skills. Decision making, for instance,
requires managers to identify problems, develop alternative solutions to correct those
problems, evaluate those alternative solutions, and select the best one.

Management Roles
Type of Managerial Roles and Example of Role Activities
Type of Role Example of Role Activities
Gives speech to workforce about future organizational goals and objectives; opens a new corporate
Figurehead headquarters building; states the organization’s ethical guidelines and principles of behavior that
employees are to follow in their dealings with customers and suppliers.
Gives direct commands and orders to subordinates; makes decisions concerning the use of human
Leader
and financial organizational resources; mobilizes employee commitment to organizational goals.
Coordinates the work of managers in different departments or even in different parts of the world;
Liaison
establishes alliances between different organizations to share resources to produce new products.
Evaluates the performance of different managers and departments and takes corrective action to
Monitor improve their performance; watches for changes occurring in the industry or in society that may
affect the organization.
Informs organizational members about changes taking place both inside and outside the
Disseminator organization that will affect them and the organization; communicates to employees the
organization’s cultural and ethical values.
Launches a new organizational advertising campaign to promote a new product; gives a speech to
Spokesperson
inform the general public about the organization’s future goals
Commits organizational resources to a new project to develop new products; decides to expand the
Entrepreneur
organization globally in order to obtain new customers.
Moves quickly to mobilize organizational resources to deal with external problems facing the
Disturbance
organization, such as environmental crisis, or internal problems facing the organization, such as
Handler
strikes
Resource Allocates organizational resources between different departments and divisions of the organization;
Allocator sets budgets and salaries of managers and employees.
Works with suppliers, distributors, labor unions, or employees in conflict to solve disputes or to
Negotiator reach a long-term contract or agreement; works with other organizations to establish an agreement
to share resources.
Unit I. Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior | 5
 In the late 1960s, Henry Mintzberg, then a graduate student at MIT, undertook a
careful study of five executives to determine what they did on their jobs. On the
basis of his observations, Mintzberg concluded that managers perform ten different,
highly interrelated roles—or sets of behaviors.
-Stephen Robbins, Organizational Behavior 15th Edition

Disciplines that Contribute to the OB Field

Organizational behavior is an applied behavioral science built on contributions from a
number of behavioral disciplines, mainly psychology and social psychology, sociology, and
anthropology. Psychology’s contributions have been mainly at the individual or micro level of
analysis, while the other disciplines have contributed to our understanding of macro concepts
such as group processes and organization.
1. Psychology. It seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of
humans and other animals. More recently, their contributions have expanded to include
learning, perception, personality, emotions, training, leadership effectiveness, needs
and motivational forces, job satisfaction, decision-making processes, performance
appraisals, attitude measurement, employee-selection techniques, work design, and job
stress.
2. Social Psychology. Social psychologists contribute to measuring, understanding, and
changing attitudes; identifying communication patterns; and building trust. They have
made important contributions to the study of group behavior, power, and conflict.
3. Sociology. It studies people in relation to their social environment or culture.
Sociologists have contributed to OB through their study of group behavior in
organizations, particularly formal and complex organizations.
4. Anthropology. The study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.
Anthropologists’ work on cultures and environments has helped us understand
differences in fundamental values, attitudes, and behavior between people in different
countries and within different organizations.
5. Political Science. The study of the behavior of individuals and groups within a political
environment. In OB, topics such as conflict, intra-organization politics and power would
affect how individual and group act and behave.

Unit I. Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior | 6

Goals of OB
Describe Understand Predict Control

The first goal is to A second goal is to The managers The final goal of OB is
describe, understand any would have capacity to control and
systematically how people behave as to predict which develop some human
people behave they do. The employees might be activity at work.
under a variety of managers would be dedicated and Since managers are
conditions. frustrated if they productive or which held responsible for
Achieving this goal could talk about ones might have performance
allows managers to behavior of their absented, cause outcome, they are
communicate about employees, but not problem. And thus, vitally interested in
being able to make
human behavior at understand the the managers could
an impact on
work using a reasons behind take preventive
employee behavior,
common language. those actions. actions. skill development,
team effort, and
productivity.

Learning
Resources

Electronic Book References:

Yumpu.com.
(n.d.b).organizational_behavior_15e__stephen_p_robbins__timothy_a_judge_pdf_qwer
ty.yumpu.com.https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/56067731/
organizationalbehavior-15e-stephen-p-robbins-timothy-a-judge-pdf-qwerty

Organizationalbehavior.(n.d.).GoogleBooks.https://books.google.com.ph/books?
id=8eRtuZeIguIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage
&q&f=false

Powerpoint Presentations:

Authors:
Don McArthney C. Tugaoen
Sarah Jane S. Inay

Unit I. Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior | 7