Chapter One:

Introduction to
the Field of
Organizational
Behaviour
© 2021 McGraw-Hill Limited. All rights reserved. Authorized only for instructor use in the classroom. No reproduction or further distribution permitted without the prior written consent of McGraw Hill.
 Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, students should be able to:
1. Define organizational behaviour and organizations.
2. Explain why organizational behaviour knowledge is important
for you and for organizations.
3. Discuss the anchors on which organizational behaviour
knowledge is based.
4. Summarize the workplace trends of diversity and the inclusive
workplace, work–life integration, remote work, and emerging
employment relationships.
5. Describe the four factors that directly influence individual
behaviour and performance.
6. Summarize the five types of individual behaviour in
organizations.
© 2021 McGraw-Hill Limited. Slide 2
 BlueCat Networks
Toronto-based BlueCat Networks has become a highly
successful technology company by supporting
teamwork and collaboration, a strong organizational
culture, effective decision making and creativity, and
many other organizational behaviour practices.

© 2021 McGraw-Hill Limited. Slide 3 © BlueCat Networks

 Organizational Behaviour and Organizations
Organizational behaviour (OB):
• Studies what people think, feel, and do in and around
organizations.
Organizations.
• Groups of people who work interdependently toward some
purpose.

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 Importance of OB for You
OB is important for everyone.
Employers say OB skills are most important.
OB helps students adopt better personal theories to:
• Understand workplace events.
• Predict workplace events.
• Get things done by influencing and coordinating with others.

© 2021 McGraw-Hill Limited. Slide 5

 Importance of OB for Organizations
OB theories improve the organization’s effectiveness.
Organizational effectiveness is an ideal state in which
the organization:
• Has a good fit with its external environment (open system).
• Effectively transforms inputs to outputs (human capital).
• Satisfies the needs of key stakeholders.

© 2021 McGraw-Hill Limited. Slide 6

 Organizations as Open Systems

Exhibit 1.2 Organizations as Open Systems

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 Human Capital as Competitive Advantage
Knowledge, skills, abilities, creative thinking, and other
valued resources that employees bring to the organization.
Human capital is:
• Essential for survival/success.
• Difficult to find or copy.
• Difficult to replace employees with technology.
Human capital improves organizational effectiveness.
• Directly improves individual behaviour and performance.
• Performing diverse tasks in unfamiliar situations.
• Company’s investment in employees motivates them.

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 Organizations and their Stakeholders
Stakeholders: entities who affect or are affected by the firm’s objectives and
actions.
Firms need to understand, manage, satisfy stakeholders.
Challenges:
• conflicting interests
• firm’s limited resources
Values are relatively stable, evaluative beliefs that guide preferences, courses of
action.

© 2021 McGraw-Hill Limited. Slide 9 © REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo

 Stakeholders and CSR
Corporate social responsibility (CSR): activities intended to
benefit society and the environment beyond the firm’s
immediate financial interests or legal obligations.
Triple-bottom-line philosophy:
• Economic.
• Society.
• Environment.

© 2021 McGraw-Hill Limited. Slide 10 © REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo

 Integrative Model of OB

Exhibit 1.3 An Integrative Model of OB

© 2021 McGraw-Hill Limited. Slide 11 .

 Organizational Behaviour Anchors

Exhibit 11.4 Anchors of OB Knowledge

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 Workplace Diversity and Inclusiveness at YVR
Supporting workforce diversity
and inclusiveness is a top
priority at the Vancouver
Airport Authority (YVR):
• Diversity awareness courses.
• Career fairs for people with
disabilities.
• Outreach groups to announce
job openings.
• Hiring targets for identifiable
and unrepresented groups.
• Women in management
development program.

© 2021 McGraw-Hill Limited. Slide 13 ©i viewfinder/Shutterstock

 Emerging Workplace: Inclusive Workplace
Inclusive workplace:
• Values people of all identities.
• Views diversity as a valued
resource.
• Evidence at individual and
collective level.
Surface-level diversity.
Deep-level diversity.

© 2021 McGraw-Hill Limited. Slide 14 ©i viewfinder/Shutterstock

 Workplace Diversity Benefits and Challenges
Benefits of diversity:
• Better decisions, employee attitudes, team performance.
• More team creativity, better decisions in complex situations.
• Better representation of community needs.
• Moral/legal imperative.
• Inclusive workplace develops a culture of respect.
Challenges of diversity:
• Team take longer to perform effectively together.
• Higher dysfunctional conflict, lower info sharing and morale.

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 Emerging Workplace: Work-Life Integration
Effectively engaged in work and nonwork roles with low
role conflict.
Problem: Depleting personal resources in one role
starves other roles.
Practising work-life integration.
• Literally integrate two or more roles.
• Flexible work scheduling.
• Align work and nonwork roles with personal characteristics.
• Boundary management.

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 Emerging Workplace: Remote Work
Performing the job away from the organization’s
physical work site.
Usually working from home or other non-client site.
Remote employees are connected through information
technology.
Some companies are completely remote (distributed).

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 Remote Work Benefits and Risks
Remote work benefits:
• Better work-life integration.
• Valued job benefit, less turnover.
• Higher productivity.
• Better for environment.
• Lower corporate costs.
Remote work disadvantages:
• More social isolation.
• Less informal communication.
• Lower team cohesion.
• Weaker organizational culture.

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 Remote Work Contingencies
Employee characteristics:
• High self-motivation.
• High self-organization.
• High need for autonomy.
• Good information technology skills.
• Fulfill social needs outside work.
Job characteristics:
• Tasks don’t require office resources.
• Low task interdependence.
• Task performance is measurable.
Organizational characteristics:
• Reward performance, not presence.
• Maintaining team cohesion and psychological connectedness.
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 Emerging Workplace: Employment Relationships
Three main employment relationships:
1. Direct employment: Employee working directly with employer.
2. Indirect employment: Outsourced or agency work.
3. Contract employment: Worker is one firm serving a client.
Consequences of emerging employment relationships:
• Direct employment:
- Higher work quality, innovation, and agility.
- Lower satisfaction, commitment when working with indirect workers.
• Indirect employment:
- Lower job satisfaction than other employment types.
• Teams with direct and indirect workers.
- Weaker social networks, less information sharing.
• Ambiguous manager roles, less discretion over indirect workers.
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 MARS Model of Individual Behaviour

Situational
factors
Personality
Motivation
Values
Self-concept
Behaviour and
Perceptions Ability results
Emotions &
attitudes
Role
Stress perceptions

Exhibit 1.7 MARS Model of Individual Behaviour and Results

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 Employee Motivation
Internal forces that affect a person’s voluntary choice of
behaviour.
• Direction.
• Intensity.
• Persistence.

S
M
A BAR

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 Employee Ability
Aptitudes and learned capabilities required to
successfully complete a task.
Person–job matching.
• Selecting.
• Developing.
• Redesigning.

S
M

A BAR

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 Employee Role Perceptions
Understand the job duties expected of us.
Role perceptions are clearer when we:
• understand our tasks or accountable consequences.
• understand task/performance priorities.
• understand the preferred behaviours/procedures.
Benefits of clear role perceptions:
• Higher proficient job performance.
• Better coordination with others. S
M
• Higher motivation.
A BAR

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 Situational Factors
Conditions beyond person’s short-term control that
constrain or facilitate behaviour.
• Constraints/facilitators – time, budget, facilities, etc.
• Cues – e.g. signs warning of nearby hazards.

S
M

A BAR

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 Types of Individual Behaviour 1

Task performance:
• Voluntary goal-directed behaviours.
• Three types of performance:
1. Proficient.
2. Adaptive.
3. Proactive.

Organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs):

• Cooperation with or helpfulness, supports work context.
• OCBs are directed toward individuals and organization.
• Some OCBs are discretionary, others implicit job requirement.
• OCBs may have negative consequences.

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 Types of Individual Behaviour 2

Counterproductive work behaviours.

• Voluntary behaviours that may harm the organization.
Joining and staying with the organization.
• Problems with skills shortages and high turnover.
Maintaining work attendance.
• Absences due mainly to situation and motivation.
• Presenteeism: attending scheduled work during significantly
reduced capacity (illness, injury).

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