Introduction to Individual and Group Dynamics

Dr. Bindu Gupta

 Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles
Mintzberg concluded that managers perform ten different, highly 
interrelated roles or sets of behaviors attributable to their jobs
• Discovered ten managerial roles

• Separated into three groups:
• Interpersonal
• Informational
• Decisional
Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles:

Entrepreneur
Monitor
Figurehead
Distur
Negoti bance
ator handle
r
Spokesperson Disseminator
Leader Liaison

Resource
allocator

Interpersonal Roles Informational Roles Decision Roles

Management Skills

Technical Skills
The ability to apply specialized
knowledge or expertise
Human Skills
The ability to work with,
understand, and motivate other
people, both individually and
in groups
Conceptual Skills
The mental ability to analyze and
diagnose complex situations
Organizational benefits of skilled managers

•Lower turnover of quality employees

•Higher quality applications for recruitment
•Better financial performance

1‐5
 We are a company built by engineers for engineers.” And most
engineers want to spend their time designing and debugging, not
communicating with bosses or supervising other workers’ progress.

We believe that management is more destructive than

beneficial, a distraction from “real work” and tangible,
goal-directed tasks

software engineer
• Since the early days of Google, people throughout the company have questioned the value of
managers.

As the company grew, the founders soon realized that managers contributed in many
other, important ways—for instance, by
• communicating strategy,
• helping employees prioritize projects,
• facilitating collaboration,
• supporting career development
• ensuring that processes and systems aligned with company goals
High-scoring managers
• Less turnover on their teams than the others did

• Connection between managers’ quality and workers’ happiness

• Employees reported greater satisfaction in multiple areas, including

innovation, work-life balance, and career development

Managers indeed mattered

• Organizations can no longer achieve a 
```````
competitive advantage through the 
traditional sources of success, such as 
technology, regulated markets, access to 
financial resources, and economies of 
scale. Today, the main factor that 
differentiate organizations is the 
workforce, and most successful 
organizations are those effectively 
manage their employees

• (From “Competitive Advantage Through 
People” by Jeffrey Pfeffer)
 Organizational Behavior

A field of study that investigates the 
impact that individuals, groups, and 
structure have on behavior within 
organizations, for the purpose of 
applying such knowledge toward 
improving an organization’s 
effectiveness.
Organizational Behavior
What is an Organization?

A structured social system consisting of groups and 
individuals working together to meet some agreed‐
upon objectives.
•Systematic Study
 Systematic Study

• Looks at 
relationships
Systematic  • Scientific 
Study evidence
• Predicts 
behaviors

1‐14
An Outgrowth of Systematic Study…
Evidence-Based Management (EBM)

Basing managerial decisions on the best available

scientific evidence

Must think like scientists: Apply 

relevant 
Search for  information 
best  to case
available 
evidence
Pose a 
managerial 
question

1‐15
• Professor Pfeffer summarized the status of organizational behavior approach to real 
world management as a “one‐eight” situation
• Roughly half of today’s managers really believe and buy into the importance of the human side of 
enterprise and that the people are truly the competitive advantage of their organizations

• Only about one half of those who believe really do something about it

• Only about one fourth are fully implementing the high performance practices that flow from 
organizational behavior theory and research

• Most organizations have tried one or a few of the approaches, but only about a fourth fully 
implement the whole approach

• Only about one one‐half of the one‐fourth who implement the approach stick with it over time 

• These one eighth organizations are world class, the best in the world‐
such as General Electric, Southwest airlines, Google, Gallup, and SAS 
 Contributing Disciplines 
Many behavioral sciences 
have contributed to the 
development of
Organizational
Behavior
Psychology

Social 
Psychology

Sociology Anthropology

1‐17
An Historical Perspective of the Field

Scientific Management
The Human Relation Movement
Contemporary Management‐ The Contingency 
Approach 
 Contemporary scholars and managers recognize the merits of both 
approaches

 Classical approach – role of control and coordination in getting 
organizations to achieve their goals

 Human relations – addressed the need of flexibility and adaptability

 Contemporary scholars – management approaches need to be tailored 
to fit the situation
Contemporary Management‐ The 
Contingency Approach (cont.)

• Human behavior is very complex

• No simple set of laws of organizational Behavior

• General answer to many questions 

•”It Depends” 
Contemporary Management‐ The 
Contingency Approach (cont.)
Organizations are dynamic and always
changing
Contingency variables: “It Depends!”
Situational factors that make the main relationship
between two variables change—e.g., the
relationship may hold for one condition but not
another
In Country 1 x May be related to y
In Country 2 x May NOT be related to y
Some Outcome Variables
• Productivity
• Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB)
• Job Satisfaction

• Absenteeism
• Turnover/attrition
• Deviant Workplace Behavior
 The Dependent Variables
(Cont.)
Productivity
A performance measure that includes
effectiveness and efficiency

Effectiveness
Achievement of goals

Efficiency
Meeting goals at a low cost
 The Dependent Variables
Organizational Citizenship Behavior
(OCB)
Discretionary behavior that is not
part of an employee’s formal job
requirements, but that nevertheless
promotes the effective functioning of
the organization
Examples 
• Willingness to support,
• cooperation and collaboration among 
colleagues, 
• taking initiative, 
• sharing the ideas, 
• speaking positive about the organization
 The Dependent Variables

Job Satisfaction
A general attitude (not a behavior) toward one’s job; a
positive feeling of one's job resulting from an evaluation of
its characteristics

A survey of more than 200,000 respondents,

showed the social relationships among co-workers
and supervisors were strongly related to job
satisfaction

Journal of applied Psychology, (2007), 92, 5

 The Dependent Variables (cont.)

Absenteeism
The failure to report to work

Turnover
The voluntary and
involuntary permanent
withdrawal from an
organization
Impact of Attrition
• Decreased productivity.
• Replacement costs of employees who have left the organization.
• Expense in time and money for training new employees.
• Costs of recruiting and hiring new employees. 
• Costs of workflow interruptions when employees leave.
• Decline in the quality of service.
• Loss of expertise and business opportunities.
• Impact on job satisfaction and morale of remaining employees.
• Corporate image.
http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/staffingmanagement/articl
es/pages/cms_017882.aspx
Challenges and Opportunities for OB
The major challenges and opportunities are:
• Responding to Economic Pressures
• Responding to Globalization
• Managing Workforce Diversity
• Improving Customer Service
• Improving People Skills
• Stimulating Innovation and Change
• Coping with “Temporariness”
• Working in Networked Organizations
• Helping Employees Balance Work‐Life Conflicts
• Creating a Positive Work Environment
• Improving Ethical Behavior
• Social Media 
 Managing Workforce Diversity

• “Diversity must be recognized and nurtured as the organization’s 
greatest asset, and the ability to attract and work with diverse talent 
must be seen as critical competitive advantage” 
Business week, September 22, 2008

• “Organizational diversity initiatives should not simply focus on getting 
people of color and women in the door, but embracing an inclusive 
Head of SHRM
culture to maintain these people”
 Why diversity matters?

• New research makes it increasingly clear that companies with more 
diverse workforces perform better financially.
January 2015 | by Vivian Hunt, Dennis Layton, and Sara Prince

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/why_diversity_matters