Week 1 What is OB? The point of these notes is to highlight some key points from the chapter.

. Its not meant to be an exhaustive review of the chapter. I assume you can read and that you are interested and motivated to learn about human behaviour. My job is to guide and help you; your job is to want to read, think, question and learn. What is OB? OB is concerned with human behaviour at work. In general, OB is concerned with how aspects of the person, the presence of others and organisational systems impact on behaviour. Employers and employees have much to learn from an understanding of OB since it contributes to successes for both parties. Whose success is a very good question and you should be able to answer by the end of this course. When we talk about management it seems like we are talking about a piece of technology that always works well. Management however, is not a machine or a mathematical equation that provides the same results every time. Management is a system of work but it is always done through people irrespective of whether it is a manufacturing company or a hotel. Good managers in one company are not necessarily good managers in another company. How many times do you read the business section of a newspaper to find this to be the case? In completing this course you will be better prepared to answer this question. OB is interwoven with management. Much of what managers do is tinkering with OB concepts and this can be implicit or explicit. Managers get the work done via the people that report to them. Managers will have some ideas about how best their employees will deliver results and OB is the rationale for the strategies that managers will choose. For example, a manager may believe that employees will be better motivated by giving them more money. Sure this may work but will it work in all cases? Management functions When you read the various management functions (Fayol), roles (Mintzberg) or skills (Katz) did you notice that across these, there is some underlying consensus? The scholars have grouped the attributes differently but each is concerned with what a manager should be doing: Do they have the technical competencies? Do they know what is expected and how to perform their job? Can they build and strengthen relationships with their employees and peers? This is done in part via communication, sharing information, rewarding effort. Decision making. Once sufficient data has been collected, a manager must act!

Managers need to develop and lead people to achieve success.

Success comes in different forms. Did you notice the type of success achieved by managers who focussed on different aspects of their job? Successful managers spent more time networking. How was success defined in this instance? How did effective managers spend their time? How was effectiveness defined? What do you think about the distinction between the effective and successful managers?

OB & research OB is concerned with how individuals, groups and organisational structures/systems influence behaviour at work. By behaviour I mean the performance of the organization. The rest of this course is based on further understanding these components. Some people saw OB is something we already know. Most people say this because OB is about human behaviour and we are all experts on this; right? Well, its also the case that some of what we believe to be facts are actually wrong. Eg. People only respond if we pay them more. Well a pay rise may motivate you for a short time but then we return to our normal behaviour. So my point is lets try to understand what works and under what condition. Our knowledge of OB is based on systematic study rather than intuition. Systematic study means that the research has carefully evaluated the relationship between the variables of interest and has reached some conclusion. Ideally, we want to attribute cause and effect to the problem. Do not trust intuition alone; this usually says something about what makes you tick! OB is not a specific discipline. It is informed by a number of disciplines. These are shown on p10-12. Each of these disciplines brings a different version of systematic study but if they all support the same relationship then there is more surety around the conclusion. The disciplines bring different rigor to the study of human behaviour and therefore, the results may not be consistent. One very frustrating point for students (and me) is that studies are not always consistent. Some will report pay is a motivator and others say its not. Maybe both results are right but for different types of employees. You need to become a critical reader of studies. Think about who was studied, how they were studied and over what period of time are all critical questions to ask.

OB & challenges The rate of change in society and business continues its march. Read about some of these challenges in the book but have a think about the following issues and some associated questions; Globalisation means we may work internationally for an Australian firm. o What do we know about making these managers successful in a foreign location? Culture is important. Do all foreign cultures share my social and economic values? How do you keep your employees focussed with the fear of a terrorist attack? Will the same selection methods work in different cultures?

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What does climate change mean for organizations? o Will it lead to downsizing? Why? How will employees respond to downsizing decisions? How do we keep the employees motivated?

Working with a multicultural and ageing workforce o Are they all driven by the same goals?

More on RESEARCH Earlier I mentioned having to become savvy with basic research terms. Research talks about dependent and independent variables (DV, IV), so what do these terms mean? DV are the variabless that you are interested in finding out about. eg. If you are interested in pay, you want to know what predicts pay from other variables. The variables that you think could predict pay are called the independent variables (eg. age, social class, education, gender). Lets assume we run the analyses and found that age and education predicts who wants more pay (DV). So know we know which IV play a role in determining the DV (pay). In other words the IV changes the DV. Typical DV in organizations include; productivity, absenteeism, turnover, workplace behaviour and job satisfaction. These are important because they are both a direct and indirect COST to the business. Is OB complex? The diagram on page 24 answers this. Do not be concerned by the model. This is week one and we will build on OB gradually each week. In reviewing the diagram on p.24 I do encourage you to take a systems view of the world. Systems thinking inform us that when we tinker in one part of the

system, it affects parts of another system. For example, burning carbon provides energy. But this has also warmed the globe leading to polar melting and other climatic changes. Even if you do not believe in global warming, this is an example of systems thinking. OB is a challenging field because there is no universal answer. But there are better ways than relying on your intuition alone.