BMGT364 Management Mid Term Study Guide Session 2 What is Organizational Behavior Organizations and Organizational Behavior What is an organization o A consciously organized social unit composed of two or more people that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals Formal Organization official legitimate and most visible part of an organization Informal Organization unofficial less visible o Hawthorne studies conducted in 1920 s and 1930s and concerned with importance of informal organizations Sometimes the informal and formal elements of an organization can conflict What is a manager Manager someone who gets things done through other people o Primary functions planning organizing leading and controlling o Management Skills technical human and conceptual skills Organizational Behavior A field of study that investigates the impact that individuals groups and structure have on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization s effectiveness Systematic Study behavior generally is predictable if we know how the person perceived the situation and what is important to him or her Looking at relationships attempting to attribute causes and effects and drawing conclusions based on scientific evidence Evidence Based Management EBM complements systematic study Argues for managers to make decisions on evidence Scientific Management o Data driven o Rigorous analytic methods replicable ideally quantifiable o Application of technology Systemic Study Scientific Grounding o Scientific method basis for prediction management o Scientific process iterative empirical theoretical relevance Intuition Systematic study and EBM add to intuition or those gut feelings about why I do what I do and what makes others tick Not supported by research Challenges and Opportunities for OB o Increasing competition o Globalization o Workforce diversity o Need for flexibility adaptability Session 3 Perception and Individual Decision Making chapter 6 We should look at more data points before making assumptions Use the scientific method keep an open mind and attempt to disprove our initial hypothesis What we see is what we believe We form stereotypes Perception a process by which individuals organize their sensory inputs in order to give meaning to their environments Social Perception process of interpreting information about another person Depends on Characteristics of perceiver Characteristics of target Characteristics of situation Attribution Theory specifying our perceived causes of an event Fundamental Attribution Error we have a tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal or personal factors Self Serving Bias individuals attribute their own successes to internal factors Shortcuts individuals use in making judgments about others Selective Perception any characteristic that makes a person object or event stand out will increase the probability that it will be perceived Tendency to selectively interpret what one see s on the basis of their interests background experiences and attitudes Halo Effect occurs when we draw a general impression on the basis of a single characteristic o Ex steaming coffee cup handwriting Contrast Effects we do not evaluate a person in isolation Our reaction to one person is influenced by other persons we have recently encountered o Ex an interview situation in which one sees a pool of job applicants can distort perception Stereotyping judging someone on the basis of our perception of the group to which he or she belongs This is a means of simplifying a complex world and it permits us to maintain consistency From a perceptual standpoint if people expect to see these stereotypes that is what they will perceive First Impression Error Common Decision Biases or Errors Confirmation Bias We have a bias towards confirming what we know rather than rejecting it Seek our information that reaffirms our choices and discount information that contradicts past judgments Look for specific information that sticks out Overconfidence Bias individuals whose intellectual and interpersonal abilities are weakest are most likely to overestimate their performance and ability always think they re right Anchoring Bias fixating on initial information as a starting point and failing to adequately adjust for subsequent information o ex buying a car Availability Bias tendency for people to base judgments on information that is readily available evidence that it is wrong Escalation of Commitment staying with a decision even when there is clear Randomness Error decision making becomes impaired when we try to create meaning out of random events Risk Aversion risk averse employees will stick with the established way of doing their jobs rather than taking a chance on innovative or creative methods Prefer 100 moderate gain over higher payoff on a riskier outcome Hindsight Bias tendency to believe falsely that one has accurately predicted the outcome of an event after that outcome is actually known Self Fulfilling Prophesy a situation in which a person inaccurately perceives a second person and the resulting expectations cause the second person to behave in ways consistent with the original perception Mental Models Generalizations simplifications or theories about the world Powerful in influencing how we see decide act and conduct our behavior o can become problematic when outdated no longer match reality widely and or strongly held cannot examine alternative models left unexamined cannot be openly examined o Without the ability to reject or modify our existing beliefs valuable information is likely to be lost Application of shortcuts in organizations People hold implicit generalizations about other people in organizations which in many cases are untrue exaggerated and negative This excludes other people as well as precious possibilities and resources with them Columbia Disaster Case 2004 NASA History and Environment tight budget successful past coping complexity with rule based organizing Perception and Mental Models bias shuttle program viewed as production system not experimental system prove there s something wrong worked in the past should work today people must follow right route for right reason Fragmented information and mental models across groups Critical Actions and Inactions downplay of risk safety testing foam strike becomes a maintenance issue risk concerns are
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