Foundations of Behaviour in Organisations

Dr. Berna Bridge

University of Leicester Centre for Leadership and Management

Organisational Behaviour

People differ in many ways. At work, those difference influence how they interpret an assignment, whether they like to be told what to do, and how they handle challenges. Managers’ personalities and attitudes can also profoundly affect the work place.

People are an organisation’s most valuable

resource and the source of most difficult problems.

Organisational Behaviour

Organisational Behaviour: (OB) An interdisciplinary field dedicated to the study of how individuals and groups tend to act in organisations.

(People may cooperate with, compete with, support or undermine one another. People can distract the organisation from its strategy by engaging in conflict or they can pool their talents together to accomplish much more.)

Organisational Behaviour

Organisational citizenship: Work behaviour that goes beyond job requirements and contributes as needed to the organisational success.

Three basic leadership skills are at the core of identifying and solving people’s problems:

diagnosing or gaining insight into the situation a manager is trying to influence

adopting individual behaviour and resources to meet the needs of the situation

communicating in a way that others can understand and accept

Thus, managers need insight about individual differences to understand what a behavioural situation is now and what it may be in the future.

Managers can encourage organisational citizenship by applying their knowledge of human behaviour, such as selecting people with positive attitudes and personalities, helping them to see how they can contribute and enabling them to learn from and cope with workplace challenges.

Attitude

Attitude: A cognitive and effective evaluation that predisposes a person to act in a certain way.

Eg: A person who has the attitude ‘I love my work, it is challenging and fun’ probably will tackle work-related problems cheerfully, while one who comes to work with the attitude ‘I hate my job’ will panic or grumble.

Attitude

Attitudes have three components:

Cognitions (thoughts-beliefs, opinions) Affect (feeling-such as loving or hating the job) Behaviour

Work-related Attitudes

To lead employees effectively, managers seek to cultivate the kinds of attitudes that are associated with high performance.

Two attitudes that relate to high performance are job satisfaction and organisational commitment.

Work-related Attitudes

Job satisfaction: A positive attitude toward one’s job.

(When their work matches their interest, when working conditions and rewards are satisfactory and when the employees like their co-workers. Research shows that the link between satisfaction and performance is generally small and is affected by other factors.)

Work-related Attitudes

Organisational commitment: Loyalty to and heavy involvement in one’s organisation-this has become especially important during the recent years with tight labour market.

(An employee with a high degree of organisational commitment say ‘we’ when talking about the organisation.)

Cognitive dissonance: A condition in which two attitudes or a behaviour and an attitude conflict, a psychological discomfort that occurs when individuals recognise inconsistencies in their own behaviours and attitude.

For example: A person’s high level of organisational commitment may conflict with that person’s commitment to family members. If employees routinely work evenings and weekends, their long hours and dedication to the job may conflict with their belief that family ties are important.

Personality: The set of characteristics that underline a relatively stable pattern of behaviour in response to ideas, objects, or people in the environment. ( she has a pleasant personality, he has an aggressive personality…)

Big five personality factors

Extroversion: The degree to which a person is sociable, talkative, assertive, and comfortable with interpersonal relationships.

Agreeableness: The degree to which a person is able to get along with others by being good natured, cooperative, forgiving, understanding and trusting.

Conscientiousness: The degree to which a person is focused on a few goals, thus behaving in ways that are responsible, dependable, persistent, and achievement oriented.

Big five personality factors

Emotional stability: The degree to which a person is calm, enthusiastic, and secure rather than tense, nervous, depressed, moody, or insecure.

Openness to experience: The degree to which a person has a broad range of interests and is imaginative, creative, artistically sensitive, and willing to consider new ideas.

These factors represent a continuum, that is any individual may exhibit a low, moderate or high degree of each quality.

A person who has an extremely high degree of agreeableness would likely be described as warm, friendly, and good natured while one at the opposite extreme might be described as cold, rude or hard to get along with.

In general, having a moderate to high degree of each of the personality factors is considered desirable for a wide range of employees.

In addition, certain factors may be particularly important for specific kinds of work.

Attitudes and Behaviours Influenced by Personality

An individual’s personality influences a wide variety of work related attitudes and behaviours.

Locus of control: The tendency to place the primary responsibility for one’s success or failure either within oneself (internally) or on outside forces. (externally)

Attitudes and Behaviours Influenced by Personality

People tend to differ in terms of what they tend to attribute as the cause of their success or failure.

Some people place the primary responsibility

within themselves, they feel in control of their own fate. These people have a high internal locus of control. These people are easier to motivate. They are better able to handle complex information and problem solving, are more achievement oriented but are also more independent and more difficult to lead.

Attitudes and Behaviours Influenced by Personality

Other people believe that events in their lives occur because of chance, luck or outside people and events. They have a high external locus of control.

They are harder to motivate, less involved in their jobs, more likely to blame others when things go wrong but easier to lead.

Authoritarianism: The belief that power and status differences should exist within the organisation.

People with high authoritarianism tend to be concerned with power and toughness, obey recognised authority above them, stick to conventional values, critically judge others, and oppose the use of subjective feeling.

The degree to which manager are authoritative will influence how they wield and share power.

The degree to which employees are authoritative will influence how they react to their managers.

If a manager and employee differ in their degree of authoritarianism, the manager may have difficulty leading effectively.

Machiavellianism: The tendency to direct much of one’s behaviour toward the acquisition of power and the manipulation of others for personal gain.

It is named after Niccolo Machiavelli, a sixteen century author who wrote The Prince, a book for nobleman of the day on how to acquire and use power.

High Machs are predisposed to being pragmatic, capable of lying to achieve personal goals, more likely to win in win-lose situations, and more likely to persuade than be persuaded.

In loosely structured situations, high Machs actively take control, while low Machs accept the direction given by others. Low Machs thrive in highly structures situations, while high Machs perform in a detached, disinterested way. High Machs are particularly good in jobs that require bargaining skills or that involve substantial rewards for winning.

Problem solving styles: Managers also need to understand that individuals differ in the way they go about gathering and evaluating information for problem solving and decision making. There are four functions (Carl Jung) related to this process:

sensation, intuition, thinking and feeling.

Gathering information and evaluating information are separate activities.

People gather information by sensation or intuition, but not by both simultaneously.

Sensation type people would rather work with known facts and hard data and prefer routine and order in gathering information.

Intuitive type people would rather look for possibilities than work with facts and prefer solving new problems and using abstract concepts.

People evaluate information by thinking and feeling.

Thinking type individuals base their judgements on impersonal analysis, using reason and logic rather than personal values or emotional aspects of the situation.

Feeling type individuals base their judgements more on personal feeling such as harmony and tend to make decisions that result in approval from others.

According to Jung, only one of the four functions is dominant in an individual. However, the dominant function is usually backed up by one of the functions from the other set of paired opposites.

Studies show that the sensation-thinking combination characterises many managers in Western industrialised societies. However, the intuitive-thinking style is useful for top executives who have to deal with many complex problems and make fast decisions.