Introduction

As students will soon discover, the study of Organisational Behaviour (OB) is very much tied to a manager’s perspective. This is because most of the behaviour that occurs within an organisation can be directly attributed to the decisions and actions of a manager. It is therefore appropriate that in the first part of this first topic, we review who a manager is, along with their functions, roles and skills.

In the subsequent section of the topic we define Organisational Behaviour (OB) and briefly ‘map’ it’s short history. As part of this discussion we recognise that OB draws on the contributions of other behavioural sciences, such as psychology and sociology. In turn, students are encouraged to consider how OB might evolve in the near future. This is, of course, far from a straight-forward task. As you will discover, the contemporary business environment has many key trends that represent both a challenge and opportunity for future organisational success.

To complete the topic, we examine the general or ‘basic’ model of OB. This content is particularly important to consider as it effectively illustrates the level of analysis (individual, group or system) for each of the key topics covered throughout the rest of the unit.

Objectives

On completion of this topic, you should be able to:

• Recognise the value of an OB curriculum that incorporates both theoretical and practical perspectives.
• Identify the manager’s functions, roles, and skills
• Define organisational behaviour (OB) and explain what it is that the field studies
• Compare and contrast the ‘intuitive’ and ‘systematic’ approaches to OB management.
• Identify the major behavioural science disciplines that contribute to OB
• Explain why there are few absolutes in OB
• Identify the key trends impacting OB and discuss their challenges and opportunities
• Illustrate and explain the general OB model.

Approximate study time required

Actively engaging with the lecture content	2 hrs
Topic readings	2 hrs
Undertake the prescribed learning activities	1 hrs
Self-directed topic review	1 hrs
Total	6 hrs

Unit design

Organisational Behaviour can be studied either from a theoretical or a practical perspective. Which of these perspectives should be used in a unit such as this? The answer to this question depends on the purpose to be served by a unit. Blood (1994) suggests that the application focus should be emphasised in an OB curriculum if the degree program is aimed at preparing managers and leaders in organisations, whereas the theoretical perspective should play the dominant role in a program (usually a PhD program) aimed at preparing researchers and lecturers in the field.

Since it is aimed at helping you to improve your abilities as managers, this unit follows Blood’s (1994) suggestion by emphasising the application focus. This does not mean that theories will be ignored in this unit. Indeed, Kurt Lewin, an eminent social psychologist, has noted that there is nothing so practical as a good theory. Similarly, John Maynard Keynes, the eminent British economist, has observed that the actions taken by the most practical of men and women are based on theories; although their influence may not be explicitly realised.

The choice of which theories to be included in the unit curriculum will be guided by the question: ‘Will this particular theory help a practitioner take effective action?’

Defining organisation and organisational behaviour

In the discussion so far, we have often used the terms ‘organisation’ and ‘OB’. We have not, however, formally discussed or defined these terms. The text defines these terms in the first part of Chapter 1. It then describes the reasons behind studying organisational behaviour. Robbins et al. (2020, p. 8) defines organisational behaviour as:

A field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups and structure have on behaviour within organisations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge towards improving an organisation’s effectiveness.

Notice that this definition includes the word ‘organisations’ in it, which the text previously defined as, ‘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’ (Robbins et al. 2020, p. 5).

Definitions are supposed to clarify an ambiguous concept. However, this is not always easy or possible to do, as the effort to define one term brings in others that add new ambiguities. A term such as ‘organisational effectiveness’ or ‘relatively continuous’ may seem very straightforward and simple, but in reality may be something which is very hard to specify or measure. Does organisational effectiveness relate to sales, profits, share prices, stability of employment, employee morale, innovativeness, or any number of other possibilities, and should it be measured in the short term or long term? Researchers and writers debate organisational behaviour issues such as these.

Therefore under what conditions is it possible, or useful, to ‘define’ a term? The attempt to ‘define’ an organisation might be like the famous attempt of the blind men to define an elephant based on the particular part of the elephant which each of them had touched. They further suggest that any single definition of a concept, such as an organisation, in effect acts as a blinder and restricts our understanding. Blinders may be useful for horses, but for managers they have the potential to lead to a mistaken action, having overlooked some important aspect of what an organisation is. Accordingly, we need to develop the habit of looking at organisations from different points of view and to discover the insights offered by different points of view.

Evolution of OB

A number of different people, using different approaches, have influenced the evolution of OB as a field of study. In the beginning, the emphasis was on looking at each individual employee’s movements and standardising them through training. This approach was pioneered by Frederick Taylor in his work on scientific management. A related approach was to try to create an efficient organisation through following rules such as the ‘scalar chain of authority’. This approach was pioneered by Henri Fayol, a French businessman who formulated his principles of management, and Max Weber, a German sociologist, who formulated his theory of bureaucracy.

Taylor’s, Fayol’s and Weber’s approaches had a common element: they looked at the problem of improving organisational efficiency, the way an engineer would look at the problem of improving the efficiency of a machine. Taylor’s focus was on improving the efficiency of individual workers. Such a focus is called the ‘micro OB focus’, where the word ‘micro’ means small. Fayol and Weber’s interest was on the organisation as a whole. This focus is called the ‘macro OB focus’, where the word ‘macro’ means large. You will notice that the early chapters of the text (Chapters 2–7) have a ‘micro’ focus (individual level of analysis), while Chapters 14–16 have a ‘macro’ focus (organisational level of analysis). The chapters in-between (from 8–13) focus on groups and have a focus at the intermediate level between micro and macro OB (group level of analysis).

The next stage in the OB evolution began with the famous Hawthorne studies, carried out in the late 1920s and early 1930s under the leadership of Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger. Elton Mayo was an Australian who was trained as a medical doctor, although he never practised medicine and spent much of his professional career in the United States. In a sense, he became a doctor for organisations rather than for individual patients. A school of business in a South Australian university is named in his honour.

Both Mayo and Roethlisberger served as professors at Harvard Business School. As coincidence would have it, a statistician named W. Edwards Deming was also working at Hawthorne at this time. His experiences there led him to develop his theory of Total Quality Management, which first became popular in Japan and eventually reached the Western societies in the 1980s.

The Hawthorne studies began with an engineering perspective rather like that of Frederick Taylor. They were aimed at investigating the effect of illumination on the productivity of individual workers. Their conclusion, however, created a new ‘paradigm’ (or frame) in organisational behaviour. The Hawthorne studies showed that human needs for recognition and group membership had a greater impact on productivity than physiological factors such as illumination and rest breaks. The impact of the Hawthorne studies on OB was enormous. They led to a humanistic perspective of organisations. According to this perspective, organisations should attempt to satisfy their employees’ needs as human beings, and not just treat them as parts of a machine.

Anchors of organisational behaviour knowledge

As detailed in the previous reading, Robbins et al. (2020) map the OB field within a number of applied behavioural sciences: psychology; social psychology; sociology;; and anthropology. Psychology contributes at the individual micro level whereas the other three disciplines areas have contributed to the macro levels of group processes and organisation.

What you must remember when studying OB is that it is not an exact science due to the fact that people are very complicated and complex beings whom operate in different contexts and situations. Nonetheless, OB theory can offer reasonably informed explanations of human behaviour, developed through research-based inquiry.

Trends in OB

The text refers to several trends which are impacting on organisations and the workplace: globalisation; the changing composition of the workforce; Social Media; virtual work; and ethical dilemmas. These are amongst the biggest challenges you will face as managers, along with the rate of change these trends are imposing on organisations and the people that work within them.

In 1995, the Australian Commonwealth Government’s Industry Taskforce on Leadership and Management Skill commissioned The Boston Consulting Group to write The Manager of the 21st Century. Ten years on, Innovation & Business Skills Australia (IBSA) asked the Boston Consulting Group to look at the issue again, which resulted in the report titled: 2020 Vision: The Manager of the 21st Century. A key message from the report refers to how:

As the world changes, so does the workplace. Managers of the 21st Century operate in environments quite unlike those they first entered, and must regularly update their skills to meet the challenges of a dynamic global market and a more diverse workforce.

Robbins et al. (2020, p. 14) defines workforce diversity as:

The concept that organisations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, race, ethnicity and inclusion of other diverse groups.

The basic OB Model

In this last section of the topic students are introduced to the General OB model.

It is important to recognise that the model is not something that is common to the OB field but rather, it has been specifically designed by the authors of the unit textbook. Their objective is to provide a single illustration that encapsulates the many topics that they believe are central to the study of OB. The model helps to not only identify these individual topics but it also shows their interrelationship. This is particularly valuable as many of the topics may appear at first to be very similar.

The main features of the model are the three ‘content’ categories (Inputs, Processes and Outcomes) and the three levels of analysis (Individual, Group and System). You might have already recognised that Inputs represent the core features or elements of an Organisation, Processes are the ‘doing’ part, and Outcomes are the results.

As an example of how you could apply this model in practice, consider the task of forming a project team. When doing so it is important to identify the skills, experience and needs of individual members (group roles and responsibilities) as this will help to better manage the issues that typically arise when individuals work as a team (power struggles and conflict), which in turn will help to ensure that key outcomes (group cohesion and functioning) are more likely to be achieved.

Summary

Organisational Behaviour is a field of study which is of interest to both practitioners and researchers of management. This unit is aimed at current and future practitioners of management. At the same time it is recognised that theories, to the extent that they are sound, contribute significantly to the practice of management. The emphasis of the unit is, therefore, on interweaving theory and practice in such a way that theory illuminates and helps to improve practice.

A key aspect of a manager’s job is to seek and obtain cooperation from other people in an organisation and to influence them to act in a certain way in order to achieve certain objectives. With this in mind we considered some key skills that a manager requires in order to achieve such cooperation and influence.

In this topic we also briefly reviewed several stages in the evolution of organisational behaviour, along with a number of current trends impacting organisations The topic ended with an introduction to the general model of OB. It is important that students continually revisit this model throughout their studies as it provides an effective illustration of the entire OB unit content. Students may also find the following table to be useful as it identifies the fundamental characteristics of OB, as discussed throughout this first topic.

Table 1.1 Traits of OB (Source: Adapted from Osland et al. 2007, pp. xvi–xvii)

Trait	Description
Multidisciplinary	Draws from an array of discipline areas: psychology; sociology; anthropology; political science; and economics
Three levels of analysis	Individual, group and organisational levels of analysis
Environmental forces	Have a major impact on behaviour within organisations
Scientific method	Discipline knowledge has been accumulated through scientific inquiry
Performance orientation	Much of the research looks at performance at the three levels of analysis
Applied science	Its purpose is to develop knowledge that can be used and applied by managers and employees
Change-oriented	Due to the emphasis on performance and application