Organizational Behavior and
Management Thinking
Outline
Introduction
• It is important to understand ourselves and others in the workplace.
• Shakespeare's quote from Julius Caesar reminds us that many issues are
caused by our own thinking.
• Clear thinking involves knowing the basis of our beliefs and examining them
critically.
• Examining our own thinking leads to greater awareness and deliberate future
thinking.
• Soft skills, including thinking and socio-emotional skills, are crucial in today's
job market.
• The Lecture aims to explore how managers think and identify mental
processes that hinder quality thinking.
The Field of Organizational Behavior
• Organizational behavior studies how people behave in organizations.
• Managers can use organizational behavior theories to improve
management practices.
• The field has evolved from scientific management to administrative
theories, bureaucracy, human relations, and insights from cognition
and complexity theory.
The Field of Organizational Behavior
• Organizational behavior is interdisciplinary, drawing from psychology,
social psychology, sociology, anthropology, communications, and
neuroscience.
• This Lecture emphasizes cognitive psychology and its application to
organizational behavior.
Organizational Behavior's Contribution to
Management
• Successful organizations maximize employees' talents and energies
for a competitive advantage.
• Effective management of employees leads to organizational
competence and performance gains.
• Pfeffer (1998) suggests organizations can achieve a 40% gain by
managing people effectively.
• "Soft skills" like interpersonal interactions and working with
individuals are crucial.
• A skilled manager in organizational behavior can collaborate with
employees and colleagues to achieve organizational goals.
Key Topics in Organizational Behavior
• Organizational behavior encompasses various levels: individual,
group, and organization-wide behavior.
• Studying individual behavior helps understand the influence of
assumptions, perceptions, and personality on work outcomes.
• Group interactions offer insights into leadership, teamwork, decision-
making, power, and conflict.
• Collective organization-wide behavior explores work organization,
authority, systems, human resources, culture, learning, and
adaptation.
Organizational Behavior Issues in Health Organizations
• Challenges in health organizations are similar to those in other
industries but may have specific nuances.
• Complex medical systems demand reliable, well-coordinated work
due to the high risk of errors.
• Health care requires skilled professionals working autonomously,
posing challenges for managers' authority.
• Health care managers face the task of coordinating employees and
colleagues to achieve organizational goals.
• Organizational behavior skills empower managers to optimize talents
and thrive in the demanding health care industry.
Thinking: The "Inner Game" of
Organizational Behavior
• Thinking informs actions and behavior in organizations.
• Cognitive psychology and social cognition contribute to understanding
human behavior in organizations.
• Much thinking is hidden or unconscious, influencing behavior and
interactions.
• Cognition encompasses mental processes like perception, processing,
ordering information, and creating meaning.
• Thinking shapes perceptions, assumptions, expectations, identity,
judgments, biases, and learning.
Thinking: The "Inner Game" of
Organizational Behavior
• Organizations are relational and information processing capacity is
limited.
• Social cognition studies how people make sense of themselves and
others in social situations.
• Key concepts include schemas, mental models, mindsets, attention,
perceptions, automatic processing, cognitive heuristics, biases,
attributions, social biases, and social motivations.
• Emotions are intertwined with thinking, influencing perceptions,
decisions, and reasoning.
The Four Key Features of Thinking
• Cognitive sciences examine how thinking and perception influence
organizational life.
• Daniel Kahneman's work revolutionized understanding of human
cognition and judgment.
• Kahneman identified biases and shortcuts in human reasoning.
• Humans are predictably irrational; patterns of non-rationality exist.
• Non-rational thinking is normal, useful, and copes with information
overload.
The Four Key Features of Thinking
• Four key areas of thinking in organizational life:
• Brain as a muscle that needs proper use.
• Small, neglected muscles supporting major physical movement.
• First two factors support the next two larger factors.
