Org Behaviour Overview

Question 1

What are the 3 main ‘views’ of OB?

Answer 1

Classical View (aka Scientific Management)

Human Relations View
Hawthorne Experiment: Seamstresses given breaks, and a shorter day and output increases. When the breaks are removed, they work even harder. Therefore, humans are more complicated than machines.

Contingency View
Classical view for mundane tasks, Human Relations for complex ones.

Question 2

What is the Hawthorne Experiment?

Answer 2

Seamstresses given breaks, and a shorter day and output increases. When the breaks are removed, they work even harder. Therefore, humans are more complicated than machines. This is a reason for the Human Relations View of OB.

Question 3

What is a disadvantage of the Classical View?

Answer 3

Low employee satisfaction, deskilled employees, harsh atmosphere, employees not involved in decision making. (Employees making decisions helps them to be committed to the solution)

Question 4

Who is Frederick Taylor?

Answer 4

Classical View Holder

1) Make lazy employees work harder
2) Money as an incentive
3) Standardise tasks (e.g. size of a shovel load)
4) Inspired by Henry Ford methods and production lines.

Question 5

Who is Max Weber?

Answer 5

Classical View Holder

Strict hierarchy between deserving elites and lazy lay-people.

Question 6

What is the Contingency View?

Answer 6

Classical view for mundane taks, Human Relations view for creative ones.

Question 7

What is the Human Relations View of OB?

Answer 7

Human psychology is an important predictor of work performance.

Question 8

What is OB?

Answer 8

OB is a field of study that investigaes the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behaviour within organisations for the purpose of appling such knowledge toward improving an organisation’s effectiveness. (effectiveness is whether you achieved an organisational goal)

Question 9

Seamstresses were given breaks, and a shorter day and their performance went up. Then, when the days were made longer again, their performance went up even more. What is the name of this experiment?

Answer 9

The Hawthorne Experiment.

Question 10

Who thought that there should be a strict heirarchy between deserving elites and lazy lay-people?

Answer 10

Max Weber. He was a Classical View of OB Holder!