Chapter 1-Introduction to the Feild of Organizational Behavior

Chpt.1

Pixar Animation Studios

-OB practices helped Pixar become the world’s most successful animation studio by focus on:

-people-cenetered

-employee compentencies

Why Study Organizational behavior?

-statisfy the need to understand and guide

-influence behavior-get things done

*Improves an organization’s overall health-including financial

-OB is for everyone

Four Perspectives Organizational Effectiveness

-open systems perspective

-organizations are complex systems that depend upon the external environment

-effective organizations: maintain a close fit

-organizational learning perspective

-an organization’s capacity to acquire, share, use, and store valuable knowledge

-need to consider both stock(HardDrive) and flow of knowledge(inbox)

-knowledge acquisition(extracting info and ideas from its environment as well as through insight)----->knowledge sharing(distributing knowledge throughout the organization)----->knowledge use(applying knowledge to organizational processes in ways that improves the organization’s effectiveness

-organizational memory

-HPWPs(Best Practices): are internal systems and structures that are associated with successful companies

-value of employees increased through “best practices”

-recognized by peers/professional organizations.

-Stakeholder Perspective: any entity who affects or is affected by the firm’s objectives and action-employees, suppliers, community, interest groups, etc.

-challenges with stakeholder perspective:

-stakeholders have conflicting interests

-firms have limited resources

Corp. Social Responsibility

-stakeholder perspective includes this

-benefit society and environment beyond the firm’s immediate financial interests or legal obligations

3 Business Challenges

-Globalization

-economic, social, and cultural connectivity with people in other parts of the world

-effects of globalization on organizations

-new internal structures-languages/habits/values

-externally-increasing competitive pressures

-Workforce Diversity

-surface-level diversity:

-observable(e.g. race, ethnicity, gender, age)

-deep-level diversity:

-differences in psychological characteristics(e.g. personalities, beliefs, values, and attitudes)

-implications:

-advantage & challenges(e.g. teams, conflict)

-Employment Relationships

-Work/life balance:

-minimizing conflict between work and non-work demands number one indicator of career success

-Virtual work:

-using information technology to perform one’s job away from the traditional physical workplace