1 BMGT364 P Cleveland Fall 2012 Lecture Outline 1 Introduction to OB What is an organization A consciously organized social unit composed of two or more people that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or a set of goals Key is consciously a Group is a collection of people who know each other and more importantly consider themselves to be related in some way as to constitute a group which they can define e g most commonly by having a name then boundary conditions who is to be considered part of the group often controversial Once so constituted by agreement a group can then operate as a single entity The next step in the evolution of a group is developing roles and duties e g starting a new business with 2 friends this is how organizations come into being An aggregate is a collection of people ie all households in PG county The Process of Organization creates Organizations Systems perspective useful for studying organizational dynamics e g entrepreneurship change Tied closely to creation application of new technologies We study organizations at different levels Highest level organization is society itself The smallest organization is the group Reflect on the difference between groups and aggregates Need organizations for efficiency challenges and opportunities Organization is fundamental to human adaptation Specialization is key to modern economic enterprise Complex organizations require management to operate Good management is extremely important for organizations Need to have good people skills for managing and leading OB Model 2 Organization as an open system Formal informal organizations Evidence based management running experiments and learning from the data knowing what the theory and evidence is and using it in formulating decisions and policies 2 Perception Perception is a process by which individuals organize their sensory inputs in order to give meaning to their environments Our environment is too complex for us to handle as it is Perceptual devices help us process information efficiently and generate responses promptly they enable and guide our judgment decisions and actions Our perceptions often fail to match reality Many decision failures in organizations simply come from the mismatch between decision makers perceived reality and actual reality Social Perception process of interpreting information about another person Depends on Characteristics of perceiver Characteristics of target Characteristics of situation Perceptual Devices viewpoints Selective Perception tendency to infer information which supports our First Impression Error Primacy Effect using limited information obtained in first encounter to infer what a person is really like Schema Scripts categorizations and descriptions of the characteristic features Self Fulfilling Prophecy Pygmalion Effect provoking the response we expect of people situations etc in other people Projection False Consensus Effect assuming that our beliefs and values are 3 commonly held and normative overestimation of commonality Halo Effect drawing a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic Contrast Effect your evaluation of people is affected by comparisons with other recently encountered people Attributions explaining causes of behavior Self serving bias if failure situation responsible if success self Differences between achievement failure oriented individuals Mental Models Implicit generalizations simplifications or theories about the world people business environment customers organizations Powerful in influencing how we see decide act and thus conduct our responsible behavior Mental models can become problematic when Outdated Left unexamined Widely and or strongly held Cases Two women three men on a raft Columbia no longer match reality cannot be openly examined Two women three men on a raft cannot examine alternative models This article is about how a group of people had to navigate a raft The men subconsciously were overbearing and were assigning roles to the women without the women asking for guidance or direction The men insisted on being assigned to a woman to take care of her if anything went wrong because they considered themselves as the powerful ones on the raft The men found it humorous when one of the women couldn t do their tasks When one of the women became the helmsperson of the raft the men doubted their ability to lead this was confirmed with one of the women made the raft flip over This was compared to how men sometimes undermine women who are in power in an organization such as female managers Men see women as weak and unable to manage a group because men see managing as macho and don t want to take orders from women NASA s management failed to inspect possible engineering malfunctions due to overconfidence that the debris wouldn t break off of the space shuttle they even took measures to make sure the Department of Defense stopped intervening and requesting to inspect any damage Management failed to respond to requests to inspect the left wing of the shuttle by NASA s chief thermal protection system Columbia case 4 There was lack of communication amongst management due to the fact that lower management was afraid to speak up to upper management about the necessity to run urgent inspections For perceptual devices self serving bias applies because it was a failure the situation was responsible Even though management should have known that the flight was at risk they released a report saying that the cause of the accident was a breach in the left wing that was caused by the foam being shed during the launch of the shuttle when in reality management is to blame for the accident The report claimed that the crew did not prepare themselves properly before the launch For mental models this mental model is problematic because it is outdated NASA s management s perception of the incident with the Columbia space craft does not match reality In reality they are not taking responsibility for their mistake and their lack of precautionary measures before the launch but rather are blaming it on the crew s preparation Management claimed that nothing could be done even if damage were detected but that is false The fact that their mental model was outdated led to inactions within NASA because they failed to acknowledge the damage of the space shuttle before the launch the reality was that it was a risk to launch the shuttle but their outdated mental model led
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