Section 1

An Introduction to
Organizational Behaviour
 How do you define an
organization?
 A machine oiled by money?
 A social space run by people?
 A network of relationships?
 An office with machines and people?
 Different definitions
 An organisation is a collection of people working together
through divisions of labour to achieve a common purpose.
(Source: Wood et al. 2004)
 An organization is defined as a cooperative social system
involving the coordinated efforts of two or more people pursuing
a shared purpose. In other words when people gather and
formally agree to combine their efforts for a common purpose,
an organisation is the result. (Source: Kreitner 2001)
 (An organisation is a) consciously coordinated social unit,
composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively
continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals
(Source: Robbins et al. 2008)
 What is the important part of this
definition?
 The emphasis on people
 Often seen as most important
resource
 Organizations seen as a collection of
people
 Or a social unit
 However, organizations…
 Do not have to be a large group of
people
 Work towards a similar or common
purpose
 May or may not share actual space
 May or may not interact on a daily
basis
 Thought Provoker
 ‘The ultimate limitation on human
aspirations lies neither in intelligence
nor in technology, but in our ability
to work together effectively in our
organisations’ (Buchanan &
Huczynski 1997, p. 2).
Organizational Behavior defined
 A field of study that investigates the
impact of…
 People, groups and structures on
behaviors within an organization…
 To improve overall effectiveness
 Why study OB?
 To discuss the impact on
organizational effectiveness of
situations
 A story
A story
Imagine you and a friend graduate from USQ on the
same day, having invested the same time and effort
and achieved the same results in all your courses. By
coincidence you are appointed by the same employer
to exactly the same job starting on exactly the same
day. The first year goes by and you both work to
exactly the same standard and undergo your
performance review on exactly the same day.
Imagine that you get a promotion, a better office and
a pay rise as a result of your performance review and
your friend gets… nothing – not even a thank you.
OB will help you analyze the impact
on your friend’s
 future productivity
 the likelihood they will quit (turnover)
 tendency to take sick leave or not turn up at
work (absenteeism)
 general attitude towards their work (job
satisfaction)
 willingness to go that extra mile for the
company (organisational citizenship)
 and the likelihood they will become a liability
as a result of poor behaviour (deviant
workplace behaviour).
 Your friend’s unhappiness is
important because…
 Management is often defined as the
art of getting things done through
other people
 How can you optimize
organizational performance?
 Look at it as a whole
 Then identify its groups
 Finally focus on individuals
 In other words, there are three
categories of human input:
individual, group and system level
 What do managers do?
 Functions: planning, organizing,
leading and controlling
 Roles: Interpersonal, informational
and decisional
 Skills: Technical, Human and
Conceptual
 Influences on Organizations
nowadays
 Workforce diversity management
 Improving people skills
 Empowering people
 Coping with temporariness
 Innovation with change
 Ethical behaviour
 A contingency model for OB
 The dependent variables:
productivity, absenteeism, turnover,
organizational citizenship and job
satisfaction
 Independent variables: Individual
level variables, group level variables
and system level variables
End of Section 1