Transcript

Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015

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Hi freshman IBA’er!

After a very long and hopefully joyful summer holiday, the time has come to get back to

business. And as the business students you are as of this September, you can take this

literally! You probably just witnessed one of the first lectures of many to come, and there

is much more to think about. You have to order books, find your way around campus,

maybe move the last few things to your new room, and build up your new social life. All

this can be very overwhelming, and we understand. All the people working for

SlimStuderen.nl IBA have been in your exact position. Together we form a diverse and

motivated group of IBA students that are dedicated to make your lives a little easier by

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One golden tip from us: planning is everything. Do not waste time doing things other

people can do for you. Hopefully this free example summary for Organizational Behavior

can convince you of all the good we have to offer. It consists, like all our first-year

summaries, of a drained down version of the literature of the course, supplemented by

useful notes we took from this year’s lectures*.

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discount code is valid until November 30th.

Anyway, we want to wish you the best of luck this year, we believe you can do it!

Kind regards,

Suzanne Louis

Study manager IBA

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

A. Behavior in organizations ......................................................................... 3

B. Thé SlimStuderen-method....................................................................... 10

C. Interview with Polonia Molengraaf (author) ........................................... 12

D. Tentamens halen? Volg een tentamentraining bij Capita Selecta! ........... 14

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*Note that, since this example summary has been published before the first lecture, it is

based on last year’s lecture.

A. Behavior in organizations

The following chapter summarizes the definition of Organizational Behavior. Moreover,

we will discuss some other important disciplines and definitions in this field of study.

Interpersonal skills

In order for companies to perform at their best, their employees need to perform at their

highest level. To achieve this, managers need to develop their interpersonal skills; these

skills have proven to make the workplace more interesting and pleasant since it creates

more understanding about the wants and needs of the employees. These interpersonal

skills can be divided into good people skills and good technical skills.

Organizations and managers

An organization is a consciously coordinated social unit that functions on a relatively

continuous basis and is composed of two or more people to achieve a common goal or

set of goals. A manager is someone who gets things done by delegating tasks to others.

In order to achieve their goals, they must direct the activities of others, allocate

resources and make decisions.

Managerial functions

A manager’s functions can be divided into four categories: planning, organizing, leading

and controlling. Planning is about setting goals, and establishing an overall strategy for

achieve these goals. This function increases the most as managers move from lower-

level to middle management. Organizing entails the distribution of resources and tasks

in such way that the goals can be achieved. Important here is to provide clear directions

to all people within this structure. The leading function is about connecting to the

employees on an interpersonal level. The manager must encourage, inspire and motivate

their employees to perform at their best possible level. Then, the controlling function

entails checking whether or not the set goals have been met.

Managerial roles

Based on a study of Henry Mintzberg, we can say that managers perform 10 different,

highly related roles, that can be grouped into the interpersonal role, informational role

and decisional role.

Within the interpersonal role, we can distinguish three main roles. Within the

figurehead role, the manager has a symbolic and ceremonial function. Also, all managers

perform a leadership role. Then, the third role within this section is that of the liaison.

According to Mintzberg, this means contacting outsiders to find necessary information.

Informational roles exist from the need for managers to collect or provide information.

In the role of monitor, the manager talks to other people and reads magazines in order

to learn about changes in the market and the plans of the competition. Managers also act

as a conduit to transmit information to organizational members. This is the disseminator

role. Moreover, managers perform a spokesperson role when they represent the

organization or institution to outsiders.

From the lecture…

“Organizational Behavior focuses on how to improve factors that make organizations more effective. Managers need to develop their interpersonal skills to be effective.”

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Lastly, Mintzberg defined a category of decisional roles. There is the entrepreneur role,

wherein managers initiate and oversee new projects that need to improve the

organization’s performance.

When managers discuss issues and bargain with other units to gain advantages they

perform the negotiator role. The resource allocator role entail the allocation of human,

physical and monetary resources. Finally, there is the role of disturbance handler, when

acting upon unforeseen problems.

The table below summarizes the different leadership roles.

General roles Sub-roles

Interpersonal roles Figurehead, leadership, liason

Informational roles Monitor, disseminator, spokesperson

Decisional roles Entrepreneur, negotiator, resource allocator,

disturbance handler

Managerial skills

Researcher Robert Katz has defined three different necessary managerial skills, namely:

Technical skills: the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise;

Human skills: the ability to understand, work with and motivate others;

Conceptual skills: the mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex problems.

Managerial activities

Managers all engage in four kinds of managerial activities. There is the traditional

management, which revolves around decision making, planning and controlling. The

second activity entails exchanging information and processing paperwork; we call this the

communication category. Then there is networking, which is about socializing and

interacting with outsiders. Lastly, everything that includes the motivating, disciplining

and training of people is called human resource management.

For successful managers it holds that they mostly engage in networking activities. On the

contrary, effective managers contribute most of their time in communication activities.

Overall it is absolutely essential to recognize the importance of managing people.

Organizational Behavior

There is a field of study that has investigated the impact that certain conditions can have

on behavior within organizations; Organizational Behavior. It is a distinct area of

expertise with a common body of knowledge, and it studies individuals, groups, and

structure within organizations. It also includes core topics of motivation, leadership

behavior and power, interpersonal communication, group structure and processes,

learning, attitude development and perception, change processes, conflict, work design

and work stress.

Combining intuition and systematic study

In social science, the systematic approach uncovers important facts and relationships

that will secure a base that enables researchers to make more accurate predictions of

behavior. There are certain fundamental consistencies underlying the behavior of all

individuals that can be identified and then modified to reflect individual differences.

These fundamental consistencies are very important, because they allow predictability.

Systematic study looks at relationships in an attempt to attribute causes and effects,

and basing our conclusions on scientific evidence. Evidence-based management

(EBM) is an approach that complements systematic study, and involves taking

managerial decisions based on the best available scientific evidence.

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Both systematic study and EBM add to intuition, or those “gut feelings” about “why I do

what I do” and “what makes others tick”. Even though intuition can be useful at times, it

cannot be fully trusted when making decisions. The best is to enhance intuitive views

with a systematic analysis.

Disciplines of Organizational Behavior

Organizational Behavior finds its building blocks in several different disciplines. Amongst

them is the discipline of psychology. Psychology is involved with the measurement and

the explanation of behavior of humans and other animals. Another discipline OB relates

to is social psychology. This discipline is a mixture between psychology and sociology.

It focuses on people’s influence on one another. Sociology looks at the way people

behave in relation to their social environment. Finally, OB also derives some elements

from anthropology. This is the study about human beings in general and their activities.

Difficulties

One difficulty for OB is that there are practically no universal principles which would be

able to explain all types organizational behavior, but it can be said that OB concepts

must reflect situational or contingency conditions.

Another challenge is to respond to globalization. The world has become a global village.

Therefore the manager’s job is constantly changing. It is likely that you will be

transferred to another division or subsidiary in another country. As a consequence, you

will face other needs, aspirations and attitudes, and cultures. It is necessary to

understand their differences in order to make your management style work.

Also, the fear for terrorism is not to be underestimated. Security precautions should be

taken to be able to deal with employees’ fears.

Workforce diversity exists when organizations become a heterogeneous mix of people

in terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Accommodating to the

needs of all these groups can be a real challenge for companies. Either way, companies

should embrace diversity.

Customer service

Nowadays in developed countries, the majority of employees work in service jobs. These

jobs all have in common that they require substantial interaction with the customers of

these organizations. Organizations and companies cannot exist without customers, and

therefore it is essential that employees understand what it takes to please their

customers. Managers need to create a customer-responsive culture. OB can provide

guidance to help managers in this respect. An environment in which employees are

willing to do what is necessary to please the customer, be friendly, accessible,

knowledgeable and prompt in responding to customer needs should be created. It might

be necessary to improve people skills.

“There are two types of research methods: systematic observation (behavior is

systematically observed and recorded), and experimental research. The first allows for the study of variables and their relationships, the second for studying causality.”

“The best predictions of behavior are made from a combination of a good theory, systematic study (and some intuition).”

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Innovation and change

Fostering innovation and mastering the art of change are essential for successful

organizations. They will survive if they succeed to maintain their flexibility, improve their

quality on a frequent basis, and beat their competition by a constant stream of

innovative products and services.

Temporariness

Organizations should be fast and flexible in order to survive. This implies that employees

and managers mostly work in a climate which is temporary. Jobs are being redesigned;

tasks are being done by flexible teams rather than individuals. Companies are relying

more and more on temporary workers, jobs are being subcontracted to other firms, and

pensions are being redesigned to move with people when they change jobs. Finally,

companies are in a state of flux. Today’s managers and employees must learn to cope

with temporariness.

Employed at networked organizations

Technology changes like the Internet and the ability to link computers within

organizations, allow people to communicate and work together even though they may be

located in different countries. It gives the opportunity to become independent

contractors, who can communicate via computers to workplaces around the world with

flexible workforce based on the demand of their customers. The manager’s job is

different in a networked organization. When it comes to managing people “online” this

requires different techniques than are needed in dealing with people who are physically

present. OB can provide valuable insights to help develop those skills.

Work-life balance

Many employees are complaining that the lines between work and non-work time have

become blurred, which creates personal conflicts and stress:

The creation of global organizations means their world never sleeps;

Communication technology allows employees to do their work at home, in their

cars or at the beach;

Organizations are asking employees to put in longer hours;

Fewer families have only one single person working.

In fact, evidence indicates that balancing work and life demands now surpasses job

security as an employee priority. Many students say that attaining a balance between

work and personal life is a primary career goal. OB supplies a number of suggestions to

guide managers in designing workplaces and jobs that can help employees deal with

work-life conflicts.

Work environment

Some organizations are trying to realize a competitive advantage by fostering a positive

work environment. A real growth area in OB research has been positive organizational

scholarship, which concerns on how organizations develop human strength, foster vitality

and resilience, and unlock potential. Studies look into how these measures within

organizations affect them, with a focus on the positive effects.

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Ethical behavior

Today many employees are facing ethical dilemmas; situations in which they need to

define right and wrong conduct. What is good ethical behavior? Differentiating right from

wrong seems logical, but can be very confusing and hard. The confidence and trust of

employees in management has decreased and they are more and more uncertain about

appropriate ethical behavior in their organizations. Managers need to improve ethical

behavior and can achieve this by:

Writing and distributing codes of ethics to guide employees;

Offering seminars, workshops and other training programs;

Providing in-house advisors, who can be contacted (anonymously) for assistance

in dealing with ethical issues;

Creating protection mechanisms for employees who reveal internal unethical

practices.

Managers need to create an ethically healthy environment for their employees in which

they can work productively with a minimal number of ethically doubtful situations.

Developing an OB model

A model is an abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of a real-world

phenomenon. The basic OB model contains:

Individual level;

Group level;

Organizations systems level.

The three basic levels are basically used as building blocks; each level is constructed on

the previous level.

The dependent variables

A dependent variable is the key factor that you want to explain or predict, and that is

affected by some other factor. Primary dependent variables in OB are:

Productivity;

Absenteeism;

Turnover;

Job satisfaction.

Productivity

Productivity means that the company is able to achieve its goals by transferring inputs to

outputs at the lowest cost. In order to reach this, the company must achieve

effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness is successfully meeting the needs of the

clients and efficiency is to realize it at the lowest cost. Likely measures of organizational

efficiency include return on investment, profit per dollar of sales, and output per hour of

labor.

In organizations in service industries it is necessary to include attention to customer

needs and to measure how effectively these needs are met. In these types of businesses

there is a clear chain of cause and effect. The attitude and behavior of the employees

affects that of the customers, resulting in the organization’s productivity.

Absenteeism

Absenteeism is defined as the failure to report to work. For employers this implies huge

costs and disruption of daily work. Because the workflow is disrupted it is often necessary

to delay important decisions. Levels of absenteeism beyond the normal range have a

direct impact on effectiveness and efficiency within these companies or organizations.

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Turnover

The voluntary and involuntary permanent withdrawal from an organization is called

turnover. Increased recruiting, selection and extra training costs are the result from a

high turnover rate. Besides that, it can disrupt the efficiency of an organization when

knowledgeable and experienced personnel leaves. In that case, replacements must be

found for positions of responsibility. However, when the “right” people are leaving the

company, meaning non-performers, it can be positive, because employers are able to

replace the positions with better/higher skilled and motivated people, and it might create

opportunities for promotions. However, often turnover involves the loss of respected

employees and valuable performers. In that case it disrupts the organization’s

effectiveness.

Deviant workplace behavior

Deviant workplace behavior is voluntary behavior that violates significant

organizational norms and, in doing so, threatens the well-being of the organization or its

members. It is essential that managers understand why an employee is acting like this,

because otherwise the problem will never be solved.

Deviant workplace behavior is an important concept, because it relates to dissatisfaction.

Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) is discretionary behavior that is not part

of an employee’s formal job requirements, but nevertheless promotes the effective

functioning of the organization. Employees doing more than their normal duties (and thus

performing beyond expectations), are vital for successful organizations. OB is concerned

with OCB as a dependent variable.

Job satisfaction

This is the final dependent variable to be discussed. Job satisfaction is defined as a

positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. It

represents an attitude rather than a behavior. Job satisfaction has become a primary

dependent variable for two reasons:

Its demonstrated relationship to performance factors;

Value preferences held by many OB researchers.

That satisfied employees are more productive than dissatisfied employees was a belief

among managers for years, but now research has proved the satisfaction-

performance relationship.

Independent variables

An independent variable is the presumed cause of some change in a dependent variable.

The independent variables are:

Individual-level variables;

Group-level variables;

Organization system-level variables.

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Individual level variables

People enter organizations with certain characteristics that will influence their behavior at

work. The most obvious are personal or biographical characteristics like age, gender and

marital status. Personality characteristics are a person’s emotional framework, values,

attitudes and ability. These factors will be discussed as independent variables. There are

four other individual-level variables which each have proven effect on employees

behavior, namely:

Perception;

Individual decision making;

Learning;

Motivation.

Group level variables

People’s behavior in groups is different from their behavior when they are alone.

Therefore, researchers have studied group behavior. Later on the dynamics of group

behavior will be explained.

Organization system level variables

The design of the formal organization, the organization’s internal culture, and the

organization’s human resource policies and practices (selection processes, training and

development programs, performance evaluation methods) all have an impact on the

dependent variables.

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B. Thé SlimStuderen-method

Anyone can write summaries, but writing a good summary that really helps someone out,

is a quality on its own. We have been practicing this quality since 2002. During the last

twelve years we have been developing our method of summarizing, which makes us the

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for you and picked out the most important subject-matter. This way, you know for

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If you have any thoughts for us to improve the quality of the summaries, you can e-mail

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Thank you for your interest in our summaries and good luck with your study!

On behalf of the whole team of SlimStuderen.nl

Jaap Klok

Managing director

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C. Interview with Polonia Molengraaf (author)

Who are you?

My name is Polonia Molengraaf

and I’m 20 years old. I’m a third

year student in law at Erasmus

University Rotterdam. As an

author I’ve written a summary for

SlimStuderen.nl

Why did you become an author

for SlimStuderen.nl?

When I’m studying myself, I

always write summaries for own

practice. In that way, I take in the

study material well and I use it as

a way of reference when I’m

preparing my exams. Because I

already used to write summaries

myself, I decided to inquire about and to apply for the authorship for a certain course

that I was going to follow during the next semester.

What do you do as an author at SlimStuderen.nl?

During my interview with the study manager of the study of law I received a manual,

which we discussed during this interview. In this manual, it is stated exactly what

SlimStuderen.nl expects of its authors and how you should handle certain things as an

author yourself. Here you should think of lay-out, but also for example the style of

writing of the summary.

Besides the manual, I received a weekly planning during the interview. I was allowed to

fill in this planning myself. I liked this a lot because in this way I could decide the

workload myself, keeping my usual schedule in mind. The deadline on which the entire

summary has to be finished is well before the exam. This ensures that you still have

plenty of time to study for your exams and that you are very well prepared for one of

your courses already!

Every week, I received an e-mail of the study manager about my progress and the

quality of the summary. The study manager always told me what was good about my

summary and what could still be improved. These improvements could refer to the

content, spelling and grammar or to the lay-out of my summary.

I experienced these moments of feedback as very pleasant. It does not only help you in

keeping up with the material, but it also teaches you to look critically at your own

summary. Besides, this critical way of looking comes in handy while writing essays for

my study. By the way, I thought the study manager was very sincere. Although he looks

very carefully at your progress, he gives founded criticism and when my summary was of

good quality this was certainly mentioned.

How did you experience the authorship for SlimStuderen.nl

I liked working as an author for SlimStuderen.nl As mentioned before, I used to write

summaries myself regularly. Now I actually did exactly the same but I got paid to do so.

Too read the book does cost some time, but unknowingly you are studying at the same

time.

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One big advantage of being an author is that you can choose the course for which you

want to write a summary yourself. In that way, you are well prepared for your exam.

Moreover, you work at home which means that you can decide when you want to work

on your summary. I liked this because in this way I could write the summary piece for

piece when I had some free time in between other obligations.

I think the guidance that SlimStuderen.nl offers is very good. I found the intensive

contact with the study manager very pleasant. SlimStuderen.nl has paid a lot of attention

to my work and I noticed that they appreciated my summaries.

Finally, could you mention some features that come with working at

SlimStuderen.nl?

Good guidance;

Independently;

Communication;

Flexible;

Instructive;

Good reward.

Tip: Do you think you would like writing a summary for SlimStuderen.nl? Please send

your CV + motivation to [email protected]. We will contact you without any

obligations to see what the possibilities are.

SlimStuderen.nl: An ideal combination of working and studying!

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D. Tentamens halen? Volg een tentamentraining bij Capita Selecta!

Beste eerstejaars studenten,

Na een mooie vakantie en introductie periode is er een serieuzere periode aangebroken:

tijd om te studeren!

Om je net dat ene steuntje in de rug te geven, is er de mogelijkheid om bijlessen voor je

tentamen vakken te volgen bij Capita Selecta. Als grootste en oudste tentamentrainer

zorgen wij dat jij optimaal voorbereid je tentamens in gaat!

Wat is een Capita-cursus?

Capita Selecta is de standaard keuze voor studenten en er wordt dan ook vaak

gesproken over “even een Capitaatje nemen”. Maar wat doet Capita Selecta precies om

jou door je tentamentijd te loodsen?

Door het spreiden van de lesmomenten in 3, 4 of 5 lessen van 3 uur zorgt onze beste

student-docent er voor dat jij de kneepjes van het vak leert. Doordat we met kleine

groepen werken (max. 12 personen) is er voldoende ruimte voor jouw vragen en wordt

er intensief geoefend met (oude) tentamens.

Capita repetitoren

Onze student-docenten, ofwel repetitoren, worden streng geselecteerd waardoor er altijd

iemand voor de klas staat die én de stof goed beheerst én het goed kan uitleggen aan

jou. Deze combinatie is voor ons erg belangrijk en kwaliteit staat dan ook hoog in het

vaandel.

Fulltime klantenservice:

Omdat er zoveel studenten gebruik maken van onze tentamentrainingen hebben wij

sinds 2013 een professionele klantenservice. Wij worden graag op de hoogte gehouden

over onze cursussen en zijn daarom op werkdagen van 09.30 tot 16.00 bereikbaar. Ook

voor al jouw vragen kun je bellen naar 010-2142394 of een mailtje sturen naar

[email protected].

Genieten van je studententijd!:

Wij begrijpen maar al te goed dat er nog veel meer dingen te doen zijn naast studeren

en daarom werken wij met veel studie- en studentenverenigingen samen. In de meeste

gevallen ontvang je korting op onze cursus via jouw vereniging, vergeet hier niet naar te

informeren!

Namens heel het team van Capita Selecta, wens ik je een mooi begin van je

studententijd. Hopelijk zien we je in één van onze Capita-cursussen!

Groetjes,

Loes Hellemons

Business Unit Manager Capita Selecta

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Voucher

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Use the following code: EUIB12. The code is valid until November 30th.

For the upcoming trimester CAPITA SELECTA offers the following courses for you:

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Organizational Behaviour

Introduction to

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More info? [email protected] or

010-2142394


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