Historical Background
of Organizational Behavior
Certainly large
numbers of people have been doing work for a long time. Pyramids and many
other huge monuments and structures were built, armies and governments were organized,
Civilizations spread over vast territories. This took organization and management. There are
some writings from antiquity that suggest that systematic approaches to management and
organization did evolve and were transmitted to others.
But the primary
influences in organizations and management today stem from more recent
events.
Some would claim
that to begin to understand our organizations today we need to look at the
Protestant Reformationa nd the Protestant Ethic. A new ethic began to evolve, an ethic that
shifted the orientation of one's life from the "next world" to this world. This ethic is best
embodied in quotes from Luther ("All men possess a calling in the world and the fulfillment of
its
obligation is a divinely imposed duty") and Calvin ("Disciplined work raises a person above
the
calling into which he was born and is the only sign of his election by God to salvation"... "The
soul is naked before God without Church or communion-religion is a personal matter; worldly
success and prosperity are construed as signs of God's approval").
Over time, the
Protestant Reformation provided an ideological foundation for the modern
industrial society by suggesting that work is now a profound moral obligation, a path to eternal
salvation. The focuse focus is this world and materialism, not next world. The individual's
obligation is self- disciplin,and systematic work. It should be clear that the factory system which
began to evolve late in the 18th Century could never have flourished without the ideological
underpinnings of this profound shift in philosophy as exemplified by the Protestant Ethic.
Scientific Management
The Industrial
Revolution that started with the development of steam power and the creation of
large factories in the late Eighteenth Century lead to great changes in the production of textiles
and other products. The factories that evolved, created tremendous challenges to organization
and management that had not been confronted before. Managing these new factories and later
new entities like railroads with the requirement of managing large flows of material, people, and
information over large distances created the need for some methods for dealing with the new
management issues.
The most important
of those who began to create a science of management was Frederic
Winslow Taylor, (1856-1915). Taylor was one of the first to attempt to systematically analyze
human behavior at work. His model was the machine with its cheap, interchangeable parts,
each of which does one specific function. Taylor attempted to do to complex organizations
what engineers had done to machines and this involved making individuals into the equivalent of
machine parts. Just as machine parts were easily interchangeable, cheap, and passive, so too
should the human parts be the same in the Machine model of organizations.
This involved breaking
down each task to its smallest unit and to figure out the one best way to
do each job. Then the engineer, after analyzing the job should teach it to the worker and make
sure the worker does only those motions essential to the task.. Taylor attempted to make a
science for each element of work and restrict behavioral alternatives facing worker. Taylor
looked at interaction of human characteristics, social environment, task, and physical
environment, capacity, speed, durability, and cost. The overall goal was to remove human
variability.
The results were
profound. Productivity under Taylorism went up dramatically. New
departments arose such as industrial engineering, personnel, and quality control. There was also
growth in middle management as there evolved a separation of planning from operations.
Rational rules replaced trial and error; management became formalized and efficiency
increased. Of course, this did not come about without resistance. First the old line managers
resisted the notion that management was a science to be studied not something one was born
with (or inherited). Then of course, many workers resisted what some considered the
"dehumanization of work." To be fair, Taylor also studied issues such as fatigue and safety
and
urged management to study the relationship between work breaks, and the length of the work
day and productivity and convinced many companies that the careful introduction of breaks and
a shorter day could increase productivity. Nevertheless, the industrial engineer with his stop
watch and clip-board, standing over you measuring each little part of the job and one's
movements became a hated figure and lead to much sabotage and group resistance.
The core elements
of scientific management remain popular today. While a picture of a factory
around 1900 might look like something out of Dickens, one should not think the core concepts
of scientific management have been abandoned. They haven't. They have merely been modified
and updated.
The Human Relations
Movement
Despite the economic
progress brought about in part by Scientific Management, critics were
calling attention to the "seamy side of progress," which included severe labor/management
conflict, apathy, boredom, and wasted human resources. These concerns lead a number of
researchers to examine the discrepancy between how an organization was supposed to work
versus how the workers actually behaved. In addition, factors like World War I, developments
in psychology (eg. Freud) and later the depression, all brought into question some of the basic
assumptions of the Scientific Management School. One of the primary critics of the time, Elton
Mayo, claimed that this "alienation" stemmed from the breakdown of the social structures
caused by industrialization, the factory system, and its related outcomes like growing
urbanization.
The Western Electric
(Hawthorne Works) Studies (1923- 1933) Cicero, , ILL.
The most famous
of these studies was the Hawthorne Studies which showed how work groups
provide mutual support and effective resistance to management schemes to increase output.
This study found that workers didn't respond to classical motivational approaches as suggested
in the Scientific Management and Taylor approaches, but rather workers were also interested
in the rewards and punishments of their own work group. These studies, conducted in the
1920's started as a straightforward attempt to determine the relationship between work
environment and productivity. The results of the research led researchers to feel that they were
dealing with socio-psychological factors that were not explained by classic theory which
stressed the formal organization and formal leadership. The Hawthorne Studies helped us to
see that an organization is more than a formal arrangement of functions but is also a social
system. In the following chart, we can see a comparison of traditional assumptions vs. a newer
"human relations" view.
|
Traditional
Assumptions
we act individually
to satisfy
individual needs
|
Human relations
Assumptions
management requires
effective social skills, not just technical
skills
|
Results of the
Hawthorne Studies and the related research
These studies added
much to our knowledtge of human behavior in organizations and created
pressure for management to change the traditional ways of managing human resources. The
Human Relations Movement pushed managers toward gaining participative support of lower
levels of the organization in solving organization problems. The Movement also fostered a more
open and trusting environment and a greater emphasis on groups rather than just individuals
Douglas McGregor's
Theory X and Theory Y
Douglas McGregor
was one of the great popularizers of Human Relations approach with his
Theory X and Theory Y. In his research he found that although many managers spouted the
right ideas, their actual managers indicated a series of assumptions that McGregor called
Theory X. However, research seemed to clearly suggest that these assumptions were not valid
but rather a different series of notions about human behavior seemed more valid. He called
these Theory Y and urged managers to managed based on these more valid Theory Y notions.
- Work is inherently distasteful
to most people
- Most people are not
ambitious, have little desire for
responsibility, and prefer to be
directed
- Most people have little
capacity for creativity in
solving organizational
problems
- Motivation occurs only at the
physiiological and security
levels
Most people must
be closely controlled and
often coerced to achieve organizational
objectives
|
- Work is as natural as play if the
conditions are favorable
- Self-control is often indispensible in
achieving organizational goals
- The capacity for creativity is spread
throughout organizations
- Motivation occurs at affiliation,
esteem, and self-actualization levels,
not just security, physiological levels
People can be self-directed
and creative at work if
properly motivated
|
SCHOOLS OF HISTORICAL
THOUGHT AND THEIR COMPONENTS BY DECADE
Org. theory prior
to 1900: Emphasized the division of labor and the importance of machinery to
facilitate labor
Scientific management(1910s-)--Described
management as a science with employers having
specific but different responsibilities; encouraged the scientific selection, training, and
development of workers and the equal division of work between workers and management
Landmarks in Management
Thought
THE FIELD OF ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR
EMERGING TRENDS
IN ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
-
Globalization
- Definition
- Occurs when an organization extends its
activities to other
parts of the world, actively participates in other markets, and
competes against organizations located in other countries.
- Implications for organizational behavior
- Requires new structures and different forms
of communication
to assist the organization's global reach.
- Creates new career opportunities and potentially
brings in new
knowledge to improve the organization's competitive
advantage.
- Emphasizes the need to recognize the contingencies
of effective
OB practices in different cultures.
- The Changing Work Force
- Trends
- Increase of minorities in the workforce.
- Increase of a multicultural workforce due
to an increasing
demographic diversity.
- Greater difficulty in discussing ethic
differences as inter- racial
marriages increase.
- Increasing representation of women in the
workforce.
- More job security expected by baby boomers-people
born
between 1946 and 1964.
- Less loyalty to one organization expressed
by Gen-Xers-
people born between 1964 and 1977.
- Impact of how Generation-Y employees -those
born in the
decade or so since 1979- affect the workplace.
- How diversity impacts organizational behavior
- Can lead to a competitive advantage by
improving decision-
making and team performance on complex tasks.
- Can present new challenges for companies
to overcome.
- Emerging Employment Relationships
- Employability: employees perform a variety
of work activities rather
than hold specific jobs, and they are expected to continuously learn
skills that will keep them employed.
- Contingent work: any job in which the individual
does not have an
explicit or implicit contract for long- term employment, or one in which
the minimum hours of work can vary in a nonsystematic way.
- Telecommuting: working from home usually
with a computer
connection to the office.
- Virtual teams: cross-functional groups
that operate across space, time,
and organizational boundaries with members who communicate mainly
through electronic technologies.
- Information Technology
- Lead to rise in telecommuting and virtual
teams.
- Creates opportunities to connect people
around the plant.
- Allows small businesses in developing countries
to compete in the
global marketplace.
- Leads to the creation of a network organization
-an alliance of several
organizations for the purpose of creating a product or serving a client.
- Workplace Values and Ethics
- Definitions
- Values - stable, long-lasting beliefs about
what is important in a
variety of situations.
- Cultural values - represent the dominant
prescriptions of a
society.
- Personal values - incorporate cultural
values, as well as other
values socialized by parents, friends, and personal life events.
- Organizational values - those which are
widely and deeply
shared by people within the organization.
- Ethics - the study of moral principles
or values that determine
whether actions are right or wrong and outcomes are good or
bad.
- Importance of values and ethics
- Rise of globalization leads to a multitude
of different values and
ethics in the workplace.
- Old "command-and-control" system
of direct supervision is not
congruent with today's more independently-minded workforce.
- Increased societal pressure on organizations
to engage in
ethical practices.
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
-
Definitions
- Knowledge Management: any structured activity
that improves an
organization's capacity to acquire, share, and utilize knowledge in ways
that improve its survival and success.
- Intellectual capital: knowledge that resides
in an organization. Includes:
- Human capital - knowledge that employees
posses and
generate including their skills, experience, and creativity.
- Structural capital - knowledge that is
captured and retained in
an organization's systems and structures.
- Relationship capital - value derived from
an organization's
relationships with customers, suppliers, and other external
stakeholders who provide added value for the organization.
- Knowledge Management Process
- Knowledge acquisition: includes the organization's
ability to extract
information and ideas from its environment as well as through insight.
- Grafting - hiring individuals or acquiring
entire companies. One
of the fasted ways to acquire knowledge.
- Knowledge sharing
- Communities of practice - informal groups
bound together by
shared expertise and passion for a particular activity or interest.
- Knowledge use
- Organizational Memory
- Definition
- Refers to the storage and preservation
of intellectual capital.
- Includes information that employees possess
as well as
knowledge embedded in the organization's systems and
structures.
- Includes documents, objects, and anything
else that provides
meaningful information about how the organization should
operate.
1. Rafael
