Organizational Behavior

Citation

Black, J. S., Bright, D. S., et al. (2019). Organizational Behavior. OpenStax. Free official edition: https://openstax.org/details/books/organizational-behavior

Chapter Summary

Chapter 1: Management and Organizational Behavior

Opening with a profile of how Apple and Google balance productivity with employee satisfaction, the chapter considers the meaning and functions of work, the challenges facing managers (international competition, technology, quality, motivation, diversity and ethics), what managers do (planning, organizing, directing, controlling) and how roles differ by level, and finally a model of organizational behaviour linking individual, group and organizational factors to outcomes.

Chapter 2: Individual and Cultural Differences

This chapter discusses selecting and matching people to jobs, mental and physical abilities, and personality: its determinants, traits such as self-esteem, locus of control, authoritarianism and dogmatism, and the possible conflict between personality and organizational demands. It closes with personal values, ethics and cultural differences in the workplace.

Chapter 3: Perception and Job Attitudes

Perception is presented as selecting, organizing and interpreting stimuli, with the effects of context, object and perceiver. Barriers to accurate social perception (stereotyping, selective perception, perceptual defence) and attribution theory follow, and the chapter ends with attitudes and behaviour and the work attitudes of job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Chapter 4: Learning and Reinforcement

Learning is explained through Thorndike's law of effect, operant and classical conditioning, and social learning with reciprocal determinism and vicarious learning. The chapter covers reinforcement schedules and their effects, behaviour modification programmes in organizations, and behavioural self-management.

Chapter 5: Diversity in Organizations

This chapter defines surface-level, deep-level and hidden diversity, describes the changing demographics of the workforce, and discusses diversity's effects on conflict, creativity and competitive advantage. It examines workplace discrimination and its legal context, key theories (such as the cognitive diversity hypothesis, social identity and similarity–attraction), benefits and challenges, and recommendations for managing diversity, with features on bias in recruiting and diversity training.

Chapter 6: Perception and Managerial Decision Making

Managerial decisions are characterized by complexity, incomplete information and time pressure. The chapter contrasts reflective and reactive brain systems, programmed and nonprogrammed decisions, barriers such as bounded rationality and cognitive biases, techniques for improving decisions (including creativity and evidence-based approaches) and group decision-making with its advantages and pitfalls.

Chapter 7: Work Motivation for Performance

Motivation is defined by direction and intensity. Content theories (Murray's manifest needs, McClelland's learned needs, Maslow, Alderfer's ERG theory, Herzberg's motivator–hygiene theory and self-determination theory) are compared with process theories (operant conditioning, equity theory, goal-setting theory and expectancy theory), followed by recent research and features on motivation across cultures and in entrepreneurs.

Chapter 8: Performance Appraisal and Rewards

Starting from two contrasting appraisal interviews, the chapter explains why and how organizations appraise performance, common rating errors (central tendency, leniency, halo, recency), techniques from graphic rating scales and behaviourally anchored scales to management by objectives and assessment centres, giving feedback, the functions and distribution of rewards, and individual and group incentive plans.

Chapter 9: Group and Intergroup Relations

Groups are classified as formal or informal and permanent or temporary; the chapter covers why people join groups, stages of development, roles, norms (including Asch's conformity study), status systems, social loafing, cohesiveness and intergroup behaviour and performance.

Chapter 10: Understanding and Managing Work Teams

This chapter defines teams and what makes them effective, describes Tuckman's stages (forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning), and discusses managing teams, team-building opportunities and challenges, team diversity and multicultural teams.

Chapter 11: Communication

The communication model (encoding, decoding, feedback, noise), oral, written and nonverbal communication, upward, downward and horizontal flows, the link between communication and corporate reputation, and the managerial channels of talking, listening, reading and writing are covered, along with roles such as gatekeeper and liaison.

Chapter 12: Leadership

Leadership is distinguished from management and examined through the leadership process, leader emergence, trait and behavioural approaches, situational (contingency) theories, substitutes for and neutralizers of leadership, transformational, visionary and charismatic leadership, and leadership needs in the twenty-first century.

Chapter 13: Organizational Power and Politics

The chapter defines power and its five bases (referent, expert, legitimate, reward, coercive), responses to influence, power dependency and counterpower, power tactics and the resource dependence model, political behaviour in organizations and ways to limit its influence, with a feature on the Challenger disaster.

Chapter 14: Conflict and Negotiations

Conflict is classified by form and level, traced to causes such as task interdependence and resource competition, and modelled as a process. The chapter compares ineffective and effective strategies for preventing and reducing conflict and ends with negotiation behaviour and bargaining approaches.

Chapter 15: External and Internal Organizational Environments and Corporate Culture

This chapter examines the forces in an organization's external environment and industry, mechanistic versus organic designs, six structural forms (functional, divisional, matrix, geographic, networked team, virtual), the fit between internal organization and environment, corporate culture and organizing for change.

Chapter 16: Organizational Structure and Change

Building on Chapter 15, the chapter revisits structural design and turns to organizational change: types of change (structural, technological, cultural), forces for and resistance to change, and approaches to managing change.

Chapter 17: Human Resource Management

The chapter describes the "waves" in the evolution of human resource management, legal compliance (with US laws such as the FLSA, ADA and FMLA), performance management, compensation and motivation, building an organization for the future, and talent development and succession planning.

Chapter 18: Stress and Well Being

Stress, strain and the general adaptation syndrome are introduced, followed by organizational influences (occupational differences, role ambiguity, conflict and overload) and personal influences (control, life change, Type A personality), buffers such as social support and hardiness, consequences including burnout, and individual and organizational coping strategies.

Chapter 19: Entrepreneurship

The final chapter surveys types of entrepreneurship (social, corporate, family, serial, lifestyle, high-technology), characteristics of entrepreneurs, the business model canvas, new venture financing, design thinking and support systems for entrepreneurship. Appendices cover the scientific method in organizational research and scoring keys for the self-assessment exercises.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–2: Management and Organizational Behavior; Individual and Cultural Differences

• Management functions: planning, organizing, directing and controlling people and resources to meet goals.
• Ability versus motivation: capacity to respond versus desire to respond.
• Locus of control: attributing life events to one's own actions (internal) or to outside forces (external).

Chapters 3–4: Perception and Job Attitudes; Learning and Reinforcement

• Attribution theory: how people infer the causes of their own and others' behaviour.
• Job satisfaction and organizational commitment: core work attitudes linked to behaviour.
• Reinforcement schedules: patterns of reward, with variable schedules producing the most lasting behaviour.

Chapters 5–6: Diversity in Organizations; Perception and Managerial Decision Making

• Surface-level, deep-level and hidden diversity: visible traits, unobservable values and beliefs, and identities that can be concealed.
• Programmed and nonprogrammed decisions: routine decisions with clear criteria versus novel decisions without guidelines.
• Bounded rationality and bias: limits on information and cognition that distort decisions.

Chapters 7–8: Work Motivation for Performance; Performance Appraisal and Rewards

• Content and process theories: what motivates people (needs) versus how motivation works (equity, goals, expectancy).
• Expectancy theory: motivation depends on expected effort–performance and performance–reward links and on the value of rewards.
• Rating errors: central tendency, leniency, halo and recency errors in performance appraisal.

Chapters 9–10: Group and Intergroup Relations; Understanding and Managing Work Teams

• Norms and roles: shared standards and expected behaviour patterns that regulate group members.
• Social loafing: reduced individual effort in groups.
• Tuckman's stages: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.

Chapters 11–12: Communication; Leadership

• Communication model: encoding, decoding, feedback and noise.
• Contingency approaches: the idea that effective leadership depends on the situation.
• Transformational leadership: leadership that changes followers' values and motivation through vision and charisma.

Chapters 13–14: Organizational Power and Politics; Conflict and Negotiations

• Bases of power: referent, expert, legitimate, reward and coercive power.
• Organizational politics: self-interested influence behaviour and how organizations can limit it.
• Conflict process: frustration, conceptualization, behaviour and outcome stages.

Chapters 15–17: Environments and Culture; Structure and Change; Human Resource Management

• Mechanistic versus organic structures: rigid, bureaucratic designs versus flexible ones suited to changing environments.
• Corporate culture: shared values and norms that shape behaviour within an organization.
• Succession planning: preparing future leaders through talent development.

Chapters 18–19: Stress and Well Being; Entrepreneurship

• Role ambiguity, conflict and overload: organizational sources of work stress.
• Burnout: emotional exhaustion and reduced effectiveness after prolonged stress.
• Business model canvas: nine building blocks describing how a venture creates, delivers and captures value.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Wide scope for an introductory course. The nineteen chapters cover individual processes (personality, perception, learning, motivation), groups and teams, leadership, power and conflict, and organization-level topics (structure, culture, change, HR), plus stress and entrepreneurship, so the book supports courses taught from either a psychology or a management angle.
• Many business examples. Each chapter opens with an "Exploring Managerial Careers" profile, and boxed features (Ethics in Practice, Managing Change, Managerial Leadership, Catching the Entrepreneurial Spirit, Sustainability and Responsible Management) apply concepts to firms such as Google, Microsoft, Uber, Tesla, Amazon and General Electric, each with critical thinking questions.
• Structured learning outcomes. Numbered learning outcomes open each chapter and are answered section by section in the Summary of Learning Outcomes. Concept Checks, chapter review questions, Management Skills Application Exercises (with self-assessments scored in Appendix B), Managerial Decision Exercises and a Critical Thinking Case support practice.
• Specialist authorship. The preface notes that specialists wrote individual chapters, which gives depth in areas such as motivation theories, appraisal techniques and power.

Limitations

• Uneven integration. Multiple authorship shows: Chapters 15 and 16 overlap on organizational structure, the same managerial profile opens both Chapter 10 and Chapter 17, and the style of the end-of-chapter summaries varies, with some written as lists of what students "should understand".
• Traditional, management-oriented framing. The preface calls this a traditional approach to organizational behaviour; the critical and sensemaking perspectives developed in some of the course's more specialised readings receive little attention, and social identity theory appears mainly within the diversity chapter.
• Little research method or evidence evaluation. Theories are summarized rather than tested against studies; research methods are confined to Appendix A, and statistics or effect sizes are rarely discussed.
• US legal and corporate context. Employment law, examples and HR compliance material are largely American, and some company examples date quickly.

Where It Fits in the Course

For an organizational and work psychology course, this is the survey that maps the whole field. Among the listed books, Chmiel, Fraccaroli and Sverke's An Introduction to Work and Organizational Psychology is the other broad survey text and takes an international, psychology-department perspective; texts such as Furnham's The Psychology of Behaviour at Work, Spector's Industrial and Organisational Psychology, Fineman, Gabriel and Sims's Organizing and Organizations, Hayes's The Theory and Practice of Change Management and Dawson and Andriopoulos's Managing Change, Creativity and Innovation treat parts of the field in more depth.

The more specialised readings, including Weick's Sensemaking in Organizations and Making Sense of the Organization, Haslam's social identity books, Schein's work on organizational culture and psychology, Morgan's Images of Organisation and Bryman's Doing Research in Organisations, develop particular theoretical or methodological perspectives. OpenStax's Organizational Behavior is best read first to learn the standard concepts (motivation theories, group processes, leadership models, structure and culture) that these books build on or critique; its Chapters 15 and 16 are a useful prelude to the change-management and culture readings.

How to Use This Book

The book is written for an introductory organizational behaviour course and assumes no previous study of psychology or management. It suits business and psychology students alike.

Chapters 1–4 and 7 (individual behaviour and motivation) form a natural core, followed by Chapters 9–14 on groups, communication, leadership, power and conflict. Choose among Chapters 5, 6, 8 and 15–19 according to the course's emphasis; Chapter 17 suits HR-focused courses and Chapter 19 those with an entrepreneurship component. For each chapter, read the opening profile, keep the numbered learning outcomes in view, answer the Concept Checks after each section and compare your answers with the Summary of Learning Outcomes. Complete at least one Management Skills Application Exercise per chapter (several are self-assessments scored in Appendix B) and use the Critical Thinking Case for written or group work.

Edition and Sources

This guide is based on Organizational Behavior (OpenStax, original publication 2019), read in the official free PDF downloaded from https://openstax.org/details/books/organizational-behavior (current printing, colour paperback ISBN 978-1-947172-71-5). It draws on the preface (scope, pedagogy, features, answer policy, contributing authors), the full table of contents, and for all 19 chapters the numbered learning outcomes, the Exploring Managerial Careers openings, every section heading, the titles of the boxed features and the Summary of Learning Outcomes, together with the list of appendices.