Chapter 1

What is
Organizational
Behaviour?

Ian Gellatly, University of Alberta © 2022 McGraw Hill Limited

 Class Agenda
 What is organizational
behaviour?
 Does organizational behaviour
matter?
 How do we “know” what we know
about organizational behaviour?
 Summary: Moving Forward in this
Book

2 Chapter 1
What is Organizational Behaviour?
 Think of the single worst coworker you’ve
ever had
 What did he or she do that was so bad?
 Think of the single best coworker you’ve
ever had
 What did he or she do that was so good?

3 Chapter 1
What is Organizational Behaviour?
A field of study devoted to
understanding, explaining, and
ultimately improving the
attitudes and behaviours of
individuals and groups in
organizations

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 An Integrative Roadmap

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Does Organizational Behaviour Matter?

 Do
firms who do a good job
managing OB concepts become
more profitable as a result?

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Figure 1-2 What Makes a Resource
Valuable?

 The
resource-
based view
of the firm

7 Chapter 1
 Designed to Assess High-
Performance Work Practices
Survey Questions about OB Practice Covered in
Chapter
What is the proportion of the workforce whose jobs
2
have been subjected to a formal job analysis?
What is the proportion of the workforce who are
5
administered attitude surveys on a regular basis?
What is the proportion of the workforce who have
access to company incentive plans, profit-sharing 7
plans, and/or gain-sharing plans?
What is the average number of hours of training
received by a typical employee over the last 12 4, 9
months?
What is the proportion of the workforce who have
access to a formal grievance procedure and/or 8
complaint resolution system?
What proportion of the workforce are administered an
4
employment test prior to hiring?
What is the proportion of the workforce whose
performance appraisals are used to determine 7
compensation?
8 Chapter 1
Source: Adapted from M.A. Huselid, “The Impact of Human Resource Management Practices on Turnover,
Productivity, and Corporate Financial Performance.” Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 38, pp. 635–72.
Table 1-3 Canada’s Most Admired
Corporate Cultures
Sample of top award winners (listed
alphabetically)
1. Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts
2. Maple Leaf Foods
3. Medavie Blue Cross
4. Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)
5. Starbucks
6. TELUS
7. Tim Horton’s
8. WestJet Airlines
Source: “Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures Hall of
Fame,” https://waterstonehc.com/cma/awards/winners/, accessed November 2020.
9 Chapter 1
 So What’s So Hard?
 The Rule of 1/8:
 “One must bear in mind that 1/2 of organizations won’t
believe the connection between how they manage
their people and the profits they earn. 1/2 of those who
do see the connection will do what many organizations
have done--try to make a single change to solve their
problems, not realizing that the effective management
of people requires a more comprehensive and
systematic approach. Of the firms that make
comprehensive changes, probably only about 1/2 will
persist with their practices long enough to actually
derive economic benefits.”

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 How Do We Know Things about OB?
 Where does the knowledge in this
textbook come from?
 Understanding that requires an
understanding of how we know things
in general

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How Do We Know Things about OB?
 Howdo we know about what
causes:
 People to stay healthy?
 Employees to be satisfied with their jobs?
 Employees to be skilled at their jobs?

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How Do We Know Things about OB?
 Methods of Knowing
 Experience
 Intuition
 Authority
 Science
 What are the benefits of the last
one, relative to the other three?

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 Figure 1-3 The Scientific Method

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 How Do We Know Things about OB?
 Theory
A collection of assertions (both
verbal and symbolic) that
specify how and why variables
are related, as well as the
conditions in which they should
(and should not) be related

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How Do We Know Things about OB?
 In groups, build
a theory similar
to the one at the
right, for one of
these outcomes: Example Theory

Job satisfaction
Strain
Motivation
Trust in
supervisor
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 How Do We Know Things about
OB?
 To test our theory
we gather data on
the variables
included in our
hypotheses
 We then use
variants of the
correlation
coefficient to test
hypotheses, to see
Chapter 1
if they verify our
How Do We Know Things about OB?
 The correlation
 Perfect positive relationship: 1
 Perfect negative relationship: -1
 Strength of the correlation
inferred from judging the
compactness of a scatterplot of
the X-Y values
More compact = stronger

correlation
Less compact = weaker
Chapter 1
 The Correlation

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 The Correlation

20
 The Correlation

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 The Correlation
 How big is “big”?
 What’s the correlation between
height and weight?
 Will the correlation between job
satisfaction and job performance be
higher or lower?

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 The Correlation
 Important Disclaimer
 Correlation does not prove
causation
 Proving causation requires:
 Correlation
 Temporal precedence
 Elimination of alternative
explanations
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 How Do We Know Things about
OB?
 The correlations from multiple
studies get averaged together
using a technique called meta-
analysis
 Meta-analyses can then form the
foundation for evidence-based
management--the use of scientific
findings to inform management
education and practice
Chapter 1
How Do We Know Things about
OB?
 Well-supported
theories become
helpful tools for
answering why
questions, including:
 Why your best and worst
coworkers act so
differently
 Why you sometimes

25
think, feel, and act a Chapter 1
certain way
 OB on Screen
Moneyball

26 Chapter 1
 OB Assessments: Introspection
0 1 2 3 4
Extremely Somewhat Neutral Somewhat Extremely
Uncharacteris Uncharacteris Characteristi Characteristi
tic of Me tic of Me c of Me c of Me

1. I’m always trying to figure myself out. _______

2. Generally, I’m not very aware of myself. _______
3. I reflect about myself a lot. _______
4. I’m often the subject of my own daydreams. _______
5. I never scrutinize myself. _______
6. I’m generally attentive to my inner feelings. _______
7. I’m constantly examining my motives. _______
8. I sometimes have the feeling that I’m off somewhere watching _______
myself.
9. I’m alert to changes in my mood. _______
10. I’m aware of the way my mind works when I work through a _______
problem.

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