Week 1: What is Organisational Behaviour?

Question 1

Organizational behaviour:

Characteristics of organizational behaviour:

Answer 1

• Organizational behaviour: the study of individuals think, feel, and do in and around organisations
• Characteristics of organizational behaviour:
  
  • Applied focus: ultimate goals are to help people and organisations achieve high performance levels and organisation member achieve satisfaction from their task contributions and work experiences
  • Contingency orientation: organizational behaviour scholars adopt a contingency approach
  • Emphasis on scientific inquiry: organizational behaviour uses scientific methods to develop and empirically test generalisation about behaviour in organisations. Including:
    
    • The controlled and systematic process of data collection
    • The careful testing of proposed explanations
    • Only accepting explanations that can be scientifically verified

Question 2

Contingency approach:

Answer 2

attempt by organisational behaviour scholars to identify how situations can be understood and managed in ways that appropriately respond to their unique characteristics/ cultures

Question 3

Performance equation:

Answer 3

job performance = attributes x work effort x organisational support

Question 4

Emotional Intelligence

Answer 4

• Emotional intelligence: a form of social intelligence that allows us to monitor and shape our emotions and those of others
  
  • Goleman: emotional competence is a learned capability, based on EI, that results in outstanding work performance
  • Bar-On: developed EQi which measures traits and abilities related to social knowledge
  • Meyer and Salovey: EI a specific form of intelligence related to the ability to perceive, process, and manage emotions

Question 5

Why do Organisations Exist?

Answer 5

• Organisations are mechanisms through which many people combine their efforts and work together to accomplish more than any one person could alone. Produce a product or a service
• A goal statement, which is a clear statement of purpose, is important to guide the activities of an organisation and its members

Question 6

Division of labor:

Answer 6

the process of breaking the work to be done down into specialised tasks that individuals or groups can perform

Question 7

Synergy

Answer 7

the creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts (‘gestalt’)

• Clear purpose + Division of labour = Synergy

Question 8

Organisations as open systems

Human resources

Material resources

Open systems

Answer 8

• Human resources: are the individuals and groups whose contributions enable the organisation to serve a particular purpose
• Material resources: the technology, information, physical equipment and facilities, raw material and money that are necessary for an organisation to produce some product or service
• Open systems: transform human and physical resources received from their environment into goods and services that are then returned to the environment
  
  • Resource Inputs (material & human) -> Transformation Process -> Product Outputs -> Resouce Inputs (again)

Question 9

Contemporary themes in OB

Answer 9

• Globalisation
• Changing nature of work and workforce
• Changing nature of employment relationship
• Managing change (process re-engineering)

Question 10

Process re-engineering:

Answer 10

the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements critical to contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, service and speed

Question 11

Effects of globalisation on organisations:

Globalisation:

Answer 11

• Globalisation: the process of becoming more international in scope, influence or application
• Effects of globalisation on organisations:
  
  • New organisational structures
  • Different forms of communication
  • More diverse workforce
  • More competition, mergers, work intensification, demands for work flexibility

Question 12

Global management skills and competencies:

Answer 12

understanding of international business strategy, cross cultural management, international marketing, international finance, managing e-business and the internet, risk management, managing sustainable organisations, re-engineering organisations, managing the virtual workplace, knowledge management, international economics and trade and Asian languages

Question 13

Triple bottom line:

Answer 13

refers to society, economy and the environment

Question 14

Changing nature of work

Technology

Knowledge-based economy

Answer 14

Changing Nature of Work

• Technology has emerged as an ever-present, dominant force in our lives
• Knowledge-based economy: is an economy in which the production, distribution and use of knowledge is the main driver of growth, wealth creation and employment across all industries- not only those classified as high-tech or knowledge intensive
  
  • Knowledge management (KM): focuses on processes designed to improve an organisations ability to capture, share and diffuse knowledge in a manner that will improve business performance
    
    • Knowledge acquisition, sharing, use
  • Brain drain: refers to a characteristic of today’s skilled workforce whose members are now more mobile and prepared to take their knowledge with them to their new workplaces as they pursue opportunities across the globe

Question 15

Workforce diversity:

Answer 15

• Workforce diversity: consisting of broad mix of workers from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, different ages and genders, and different domestic and national cultures
  
  • Surface-level: obersvable characteristics (race and ethnicity)
  • Secondary: characteristics that are learnt or have control over (education)
  • Deep-level: psychological characteristics (personality and attitudes etc.)

Question 16

Hofstede’s five dimensions of national culture

Answer 16

1. Power-distance: the degree to which people in a country accept a heirarchical or unequal distribution of power in organisations
2. Uncertainty avoidance: the degree to which people in a country prefer structured rather than unstructured sitations
3. Individualism-collectivism: the degree to which people in a country focus on working as individuals more than working together in groups
4. Masculinity-femininity: the degree to which people in a country emphasis so-called masculine traits (assertiveness, independence and insensitivity to feelings) as dominant values
5. Long-term-short-term orientation: the degree to which people in a country emphasise values associated with the future, such as thrift and persistence over values that focus on the past or present, such as social obligation and tradition

Question 17

Age

Gender

Answer 17

• Age
  
  • Possible labour shortage
  • Loss of organisational memory
  • Generational differences: different values, less loyalty, greater mobility, changing technical skills
• Gender
  
  • Increasing number of women entering workforce
  • Increasing numbers of women in senior positions
  • Breaking down of traditional idea that some jobs are gender specific

Question 18

Changing Nature of Employer- Employee Relations

Answer 18

• Work-life balance vs. work-life integration
  
  • Indicator of career success
• Outsourcing
• Casualisation of the workforce
• Telecommuting
  
  • Working from home – pros and cons
  • Virtual teams

Question 19

Casual work

Ethical behaviour

Corporate social responsibility

ASEAN

Ethical Dilemma

Answer 19

• Casual work: is work where the number and schedule of work hours vary and there is little or no security of ongoing employment
• Ethical behaviour: behaviour that is morally accepted as ‘good’ or ‘right’ as opposed to ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ in a particular social context
• Corporate social responsibility (CSR): the obligation of organisations to behave in ethical and moral ways. It generally refers to the notion that corporations have a responsibility to the society that sustains them
• ASEAN: Association of South East Asian Nations
• Ethical dilemma: occurs when a person must make a decision that requires a choice among competing sets of principles