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Part One Environmental and Organizational Context
1. 2. 3. 4. Introduction to Organizational Behavior: An Evidence-Based Approach Environmental Context: Globalization, Diversity, and Ethics Organizational Context: Design and Culture Organizational Context: Reward Systems 5 31 57 88

EVIDENCE-BASED CONSULTING PRACTICES
A major component of the evidence-based theme of this text and the link to practice are these part openers from the world-famous Gallup Organization. Gallup draws from its internationally recognized survey science and cadre of internal and external researchers (e.g., the author of this text and a Nobel Prize winner in behavioral economics are Gallup Senior Scientists), publishes its findings in the top academic journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology and provides this evidenced-based perspective and representative practices for each text part. Gallup is the recognized world leader in the measurement and analysis of human attitudes, opinions, and behavior, building on over three-quarters of a century of success. Gallup employs many of the world’s leading scientists in management, economics, psychology, and sociology. Gallup performance management systems help organizations maximize employee productivity and increase customer engagement through measurement tools, management solutions, and strategic advisory services. Gallup’s 2000 professionals deliver services on-site at client organizations, through the Web, at Gallup University’s campuses, and in 40 offices around the world. Gallup has subsidiary operations in 20 countries, covering 75 percent of the world’s GNP. Gallup clients include top-performing organizations such as Toyota, Marriott, Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo, and Best Buy. The details and depth of Gallup’s consulting practices can be found in the bestselling books such as First, Break All the Rules (Simon & Schuster, 1999) Now, Discover Your Strengths (The Free Press, 2001), How Full Is Your Bucket (Gallup Press,

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2004), and Strength Finder 2.0 (Gallup Press, 2007), which recently passed the million copies sold mark. These books are all authored by Gallup scientists and practice leaders. All the part opening Gallup practices for this text are written by Tim Hodges, Executive Director of the Gallup University, with some input by former Gallup Senior Analyst Dr. Dennis Hatfield and this author. The following gives an introductory overview of the Gallup evidenced-based approach, and the other openers are more directly concerned with the theme of the respective part.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE GALLUP EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH: THE GALLUP PATH
According to numerous think tanks, recent global competition caused corporate executives to pose one common, all-consuming question: What is the role of human nature in driving business outcomes? As described in Coffman and Gonzalez-Molina’s Follow This Path, the Gallup Organization sorted through unprecedented bits of economic information and data from customers and employees to develop The Gallup Path™ management theory, answering the question concerning the role of human nature in driving business outcomes. The Gallup Path™ serves as Gallup’s premier management consulting model. At the model’s core is the theory that within every organization, every employee, at all levels, contributes to some degree to sales growth, profitability, and ultimately, share price. The path serves as the first management theory to track the connectedness of managers to employees, employees to customers, and customers to real financial outcomes. The “steps” along The Gallup Path™ progress from (1) individual’s identification of strengths to (2) finding the right fit to (3) great management to (4) engaged employees to (5) engaged customers to (6) sustainable business growth to (7) real profit increase to (8) stock increase. Just as The Gallup Poll reports the will of global citizens, The Gallup Path™ reports the will of customers and employees around the world through Gallup’s HumanSigma™ metrics.

GALLUP’S GREAT PLACE TO WORK
One of Gallup’s core practices involves the measurement and development of employee engagement, leading to the creation of “great places to work.” As described in Buckingham and Coffman’s First, Break All the Rules, Gallup consultants use the Q12® to provide a measure of the extent to which individuals are rightly placed and rightly managed, creating the great place to work. These Q12® questions are: (1) Do I know what is expected of me at work? (2) Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right? (3) At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day? (4) In the last seven days have I received recognition or praise for good work? (5) Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person? (6) Is there someone at work who encourages

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my development? (7) At work, do my opinions seem to count? (8) Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel like my work is important? (9) Are my coworkers committed to doing quality work? (10) Do I have a best friend at work? (11) In the last six months, have I talked with someone about my progress? (12) At work, have I had opportunities to learn and grow? (See Buckingham & Coffman, 1999, p. 28. These questions are the results of Gallup research, and as such they are proprietary. They cannot be reprinted or reproduced in any manner without the written consent of the Gallup Organization. Copyright © 1993–1998 The Gallup Organization, Washington, DC All rights reserved). A recent issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology published a meta-analysis of 7,939 business units in 36 companies examining the relationship between employee engagement and work-related outcomes of customer satisfaction, profit, productivity, turnover, and safety (Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002). Generalizable relationships of substantial practical value were found for all outcome measures, providing research evidence of the connection between an employee’s level of engagement and the level of quality of his or her performance. Related published workplace studies (e.g., Schmidt & Rader, Personnel Psychology, 1999) have also illustrated the validity of the right fit and management of talent in predicting supervisory ratings of job performance, sales volumes, production records, and absenteeism.

GALLUP’S APPROACH TO STRENGTHS-BASED DEVELOPMENT
For decades following World War II, the science of psychology focused almost completely on what is wrong with people. Bucking this trend of negativity, Gallup scientists analyzed more than 30 years of research on what is right about people. This in-depth study of over two million individuals led to the creation of the StrengthsFinder, Gallup’s Web-based talent assessment tool and psychology’s first taxonomy of strengths. For his leadership in the development of the StrengthsFinder and for his thought leadership that changed the entire field of psychology, in 2003 Gallup’s former chairman and chief scientist, Dr. Donald O. Clifton, was officially named the “Father of Strengths Psychology” and “Grandfather of Positive Psychology” by the American Psychological Association. The StrengthsFinder serves as the starting point for self-discovery in all of Gallup’s strengths-based development programs. After an individual has completed the assessment, a list of developmental suggestions is customized to the individual’s top five themes of talent—called Signature Themes. Over the past several years, StrengthsFinder has been used in the development of millions of individuals across hundreds of roles including manager, salesperson, teacher, student, leader, pastor, nurse, and many more. StrengthsFinder is available in more than a dozen languages. Role-specific strengths-based developmental information is available through the following Gallup books (each including a personal ID number allowing the reader to complete the StrengthsFinder): Now, Discover Your Strengths (Buckingham & Clifton, 2001); StrengthsQuest (Clifton & Anderson, 2002); Discover Your Sales Strengths (Smith & Rutigliano, 2003); Living Your Strengths (Winseman, Clifton, & Liesveld, 2003); and strengths Finder 2.0 (Rath, 2007).

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EXAMPLES OF CLIENT SUCCESS: GALLUP’S EVIDENCED-BASED PRACTICES IN ACTION
An important aspect of Gallup’s evidence-based approach is measuring the value of client engagements, known as Business Impact Analysis. The following examples of recent client success illustrate the impact of Gallup’s research in action. 1. A national clothing retailer was experiencing declining business. The retailer brought Gallup in to create an integrated performance management system designed to provide each store manager with the tools to optimize employee and customer engagement. The client engagement consisted of several administrations of employee and customer engagement, followed by in-depth analysis, executive consulting, and manager training. Gallup’s Business Impact Analysis uncovered a trend where employee and customer engagement significantly influenced each store’s financial performance. In fact, the group of stores with top-level performance on employee and customer engagement metrics realized a significant net benefit to the organization of approximately $114.8 million in sales, $47.6 million in margins, and $34.7 million in operating profit when compared to the group of stores with lower employee and customer engagement metrics. 2. Gallup’s extensive work in the health care sector has also led to valuable results for clients. For example, a relationship with one of the largest for-profit hospital networks created value for many years. Since the inception of an ongoing, systemwide program to improve employee engagement, more than 26,000 employees of this hospital network have moved from being “not engaged” (neither positive nor negative about their work environment) or “actively disengaged” (fundamentally disconnected from their work) to being engaged, or emotionally invested, in their jobs. According to the client’s estimates, these engaged employees represent over $46 million in reduced absenteeism costs alone. Further, over a recent three-year period, systemwide employee engagement levels closely reflect steady, incremental increases in the client’s stock price. Positive multimillion dollar relationships between employee engagement and reduced malpractice claims, earnings per admission, patient loyalty, and decreased nurse turnover have also been realized over the course of this successful client partnership. 3. One of the largest banks in North America entered into a partnership with Gallup to improve sales performance in three call centers. Gallup consultants studied the call center structure and business strategy, reviewed job performance criteria, and studied the best performers in each role to identify the talents that contributed to their success. Gallup developed and implemented hiring systems for customer service representatives and inbound sales representatives. Not only did employees hired through the Gallup system deliver a higher sales success rate, high-scoring new hires substantially outperformed their lower-scoring counterparts in revenues, sales, call handling time, and loan accuracy. Many more examples of successful client partnerships, as well as actionable management insights and perspectives from Gallup experts, are available in the monthly online newsletter, the Gallup Management Journal (http://www.gallupjournal.com).

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Chapter One Introduction to Organizational Behavior: An EvidenceBased Approach
Learning Objectives
• Provide an overview of the major challenges and the paradigm shift facing management now and in the future. • Outline an evidence-based approach to organizational behavior. • Summarize the Hawthorne studies as the starting point of the study of organizational behavior. • Explain the methodology that is used to accumulate knowledge and facilitate understanding of organizational behavior. • Relate the various theoretical frameworks that serve as a foundation for the study of organizational behavior. • Present the social cognitive model of organizational behavior that serves as the conceptual framework for the text.

Every era laments about daunting challenges. However, even previous generations would probably agree that effectively managing today’s organizations is very difficult. Ask anyone today—management professors, practitioners, or students—what the major challenges are in today’s environment, and the answer will be fairly consistent: A turbulent economy and dangerous geopolitics preoccupy everyone’s concerns. However, at the organization level, understanding global competition and diversity, and trying to solve ethical problems and dilemmas come to the fore. These are unquestionably major issues facing contempory organizations and are given major attention in this text. However, the basic premise and assumptions of the field of organizational behavior in general, and of this text in particular, are that managing the people—the human resources of an organization—have been, are, and will continue to be, the major challenge and critical competitive advantage. Globalization, diversity, and ethics serve as very important environmental or contextual dimensions for organizational behavior. However, as Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart and richest person in the world when he died, declared to this author over lunch a number of years ago when asked what the answer was to successful organizations—“People are the
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key!” The technology can be purchased and copied; it levels the playing field. The people, on the other hand, cannot be copied. Although it may be possible to clone human bodies, their ideas, personalities, motivation, and organization cultural values cannot be copied. The human resources of an organization and how they are managed represent the competitive advantage of today’s and tomorrow’s organizations. A recent study of over three hundred companies for over 20 years provides evidence for this statement. The researchers found that management of human resources through extensive training and techniques such as empowerment resulted in performance benefits, but operational initiatives such as total quality management or advanced manufacturing technology did not.1 At first employees were considered a cost, then human resources, and now are becoming widely recognized as “human capital”2 (what you know—education, experience, skills). Recent research indicates that investing in this human capital results in desired performance outcomes such as increased productivity and customer satisfaction.3 Even going beyond human capital are more recently recognized “social capital”4 (who you know—networks, connections, friends) and “positive psychological capital”5 (who you are—confidence, hope, optimism, resiliency) and (who you can become—one’s possible, authentic self). Although Chapter 7 will be specifically devoted to positive organizational behavior in general and psychological capital in particular, let it be simply noted here that there is growing research evidence that employees’ psychological capital is positively related to their performance and desired attitudes.6 As the ultimate “techie” Bill Gates astutely observed: “The inventory, the value of my company, walks out the door every evening.” Interestingly, whereas the technology dramatically changes, sometimes monthly or even weekly, the human side of enterprise has not changed and will not change that fast. As noted by well-known international management scholar Geert Hofstede, “Because management is always about people, its essence is dealing with human nature. Since human nature seems to have been extremely stable over recorded history, the essence of management has been and will be equally stable over time.”7 The nature of work and the workplace itself,8 the traditional employment contract,9 and the composition of the workforce10 are all dramatically changing and given attention in this text. Yet, the overriding purpose of the first edition, now 38 years ago, of trying to better understand and effectively manage human behavior in organizations remains the essence of this twelfth edition. This introductory chapter gives the perspective, background, methodology, and evidencebased approach to the field. After a brief discussion of the current environmental challenges and the paradigm shift facing management and why an evidence-based approach is needed, the historical background is touched on. Particular attention is given to the famous Hawthorne studies, which are generally recognized to be the beginning of the systematic study and understanding of organizational behavior. Next, an overview of the methodology used in the scientific study of organizational behavior is given. The chapter concludes by defining exactly what is involved in organizational behavior and by providing a conceptual model for the rest of the text.

THE CHALLENGES FACING MANAGEMENT
The academic field of organizational behavior has been around for about a half century. However, as the accompanying OB in Action: Some Things Never Really Change clearly indicates, problems facing managers of human organizations have been around since the beginning of civilization. This case, with but a few word modifications, is taken from the Old (not New) Testament of the Bible (Exodus 18:13–27), recognized by the Jewish, Christian,

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Some Things Never Really Change character: They should be truthful, not driven by material gain. The new structure should resolve all daily issues at the lowest possible level; only the big and difficult issues should be brought before the leader. He should focus on strategy—on dealing with the higher authority, on establishing new approaches and teaching these to the people, on showing them the way to go and the work to be done. The case states that the leader listens to the consultant and carries out the reorganization, which is a success, and the consultant returns home.

A powerful, charismatic leader is having problems. A well-known consultant is called in to help. The consultant notices that the leader tries to handle all problems and conflicts of his people himself. People queue up before his office; because he is overwhelmed, he cannot handle all the business. So the consultant has a private talk with the leader and tells him to structure his organization by delegating authority, empowering subordinates to handle the workload. These subordinates should be selected not only on their leadership abilities, but also on their

and Islam religions. The case took place over 3,000 years ago, the charismatic leader was Moses (when he led his people from Egypt to Palestine), the well-known consultant was Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, and the higher authority was God. Embedded in the case are many topics covered in this text—for example, charismatic leadership, management of conflict, empowerment, management of change, and nonfinancial incentives. Although the problems with human organizations and the solutions over the ages have not really changed that much, the emphasis and surrounding environmental context certainly have changed. For example, in the 1980s to the mid-1990s managers were preoccupied with restructuring their organizations to improve productivity and meet the competitive challenges in the international marketplace and quality expectations of customers. Although the resulting “lean and mean” organizations offered some short-run benefits in terms of lowered costs and improved productivity, instead of making significant changes to meet the changing environment, most organizations continued with more of the same. For example, one analysis of Fortune 500 firms between 1995 and 2005 found the most prominent initiatives were restructuring (downsizing), cost reduction programs, globalizing supply chains, creating shared services and Six Sigma (almost perfect) quality programs.11 During this era, top management compensation was primarily tied to stock options (covered in Chapter 4) and thus the firm’s stock price, which in turn led to high risk mergers, acquisitions, and a highly regulated, winner-take-all environment.12 For example, the head of nearly century-old investment house Merrill Lynch bet his firm— and ultimately lost—on the subprime financial market and outsized leverage and then took a whopping $160 million severance package on the way out the door.13 This type of behavior, and of course many other social, economic, and geopolitical factors, led to the financial crisis and stock market crash starting at the end of 2008. Although most of the focus has been on financial markets, government intervention through the so-called bailouts, and massive unemployment, the impact on those not laid off, the remaining employees, human resources of organizations, has been slighted. As an expert on the psychology of the corporate environment recently noted, “after years of downsizing, outsourcing, and a cavalier corporate attitude that treats employees as costs rather than assets, most of today’s workers have concluded that the company no longer values them. So they, in turn, no longer feel engaged in their work or committed to the company.” 14 This turmoil has certainly left employees hurt and fearful, and feeling very vulnerable. There is also powerful evidence from the Gallup World Poll (a representative sample of the population of over 100 countries) that by far the single most dominant thought and primary driver of almost everyone, in every corner of the plant, is, “I want a good job.”15 As the
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head of Gallup, Jim Clifton, concluded on the basis of this evidence, “Work is crucial to every adult human because work holds within it the soul of the relationship of one citizen to one government and one country.”16 In other words, even though recent history has been tough not only on the economy but also on organizations and employees, the burning desire for a good job still prevails among all people. In the tradition of an effective strategy of turning threats into opportunities, such an environment as the world has experienced in recent times may ironically be the ideal time to meet the challenges facing the management of human resources. As in the words of popular leadership author (‘Good to Great’) Jim Collins, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”17 The time has come to not only recognize and appreciate the importance of human resources, but also to use recent history as a catalyst for paradigmic change in the way we understand and manage human resources. This process starts with understanding what is meant by a paradigm shift, not just keeping up with incremental change, but a new way of thinking about and managing human resources in today’s dramatically changed workplace.

UNDERGOING A PARADIGM SHIFT
The term paradigm comes from the Greek paradeigma, which translates as “model, pattern, or example.” First introduced years ago by the philosophy of science historian Thomas Kuhn,18 the term paradigm is now used to mean a broad model, a framework, a way of thinking, or a scheme for understanding reality.19 In the words of popular futurist Joel Barker, a paradigm simply establishes the rules (written or unwritten), defines the boundaries, and tells one how to behave within the boundaries to be successful.20 The impact of globalization, diversity, and ethics given detailed attention in the next chapter, a turbulent, very problematic economy,21 and a workforce described as a “blend of traditionally trained baby boomers, in-your-face Gen Xers, people with inadequate literacy skills from disadvantaged areas, and techies raised on computers,”22 has led to a paradigm shift. For example, James Brian Quinn offers the “intelligent enterprise” as new paradigm. He believes that “the organization of enterprises and effective strategies will depend more on development and deployment of intellectual resources than on the management of physical assets.”23 These human and intellectual resources have moved into the new paradigm, and as indicated by the interview with Jim Collins in the accompanying OB in Action: Good to Great Expectations, with a new set of challenges and required ways of thinking. In other words, for today’s and tomorrow’s organizations and management, there are new rules with different boundaries requiring new and different behavior inside the boundaries for organizations and management to be successful. Paradigm shifts have invalidated advantages of certain firms (e.g., consider the well-known problems of almost all auto, financial and retail firms in recent years) and created new opportunities for others (e.g., Google and Costco). Those who study paradigm shifts, such as the shift that took place in the basic sciences from deterministic, mechanistic Cartesian-Newtonian to Einstein’s relativity and quantum physics, note that “real controversy takes place, often involving substantial restructuring of the entire scientific community under conditions of great uncertainty.”24 Commonly called the “paradigm effect,” a situation arises in which those in the existing paradigm may not even see the changes that are occurring, let alone reason and draw logical inferences and perceptions about the changes. This effect helps explain why there is considerable resistance to change and why it is very difficult to move from the old management paradigm to the new. There is discontinuous change in the shift to the new paradigm. As one observer of the needed new paradigm organization noted:

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Good to Great Expectations work is insane. There are only 24 hours in a day, so what difference does it really make if you work 10 hours or 14, given that there are a thousand potential hours of work? The real question is the incredible rigor of what goes into the hours you allocate. As I look at the most effective people we’ve studied, a “stop-doing” list or not-to-do list is more important than a to-do list, because the to-do list is infinite. For every big, annual priority you put on the to-do list, you need a corresponding item on the stop-doing list. It’s like an accounting balance. You’ve got to admit, though, that technology has made it harder today. I don’t think it’s obviously harder today at all. Technology helps, not hurts, as long as you have the discipline to turn these things off. You don’t report to your BlackBerry. What we know about people who are really effective is that they think. The key is to build pockets of quietude into your schedule—times when you have an appointment with yourself and it’s protected. I have on my calendar “white space” days. I set them six months in advance, and everyone around me can see them. It’s not that I’m not working, but absolutely nothing can be scheduled on a white space day. You talk in Good to Great about leaders needing to confront brutal facts. But organizations loaded with bureaucracy are the exact places where truth doesn’t rise to the top. What do the best managers do to break down that bureaucracy? How do you create a climate in which the truth is heard? The first thing is to increase your questions-to-statements ratio. Have someone track it and see if you can double it in the next year. The leaders in our studies asked lots of questions. They were Socratic. By asking questions, they got the brutal facts, as well as lots of insights and ideas. What can people who aren’t in leadership positions do to better navigate bureaucracies? I think about how the leaders we studied handled this before they were in charge. If you look at [former Gillette CEO] Colman Mockler or Ken Iverson before he became CEO of Nucor, what did they do? They were focused on what they could control. That is Job One. But they were also really good at figuring out the three to four people in the organization who really mattered and became very good at presenting to them evidence and arguments that were persuasive. If you produce exceptional work, your ability for influence is very high. Most people, even in bureaucracies, (continued)
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For Jim Collins, the Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer-turned-management thinker, “the workplace” is a pleasant office suite set amid the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colo. Managing generational tension amounts to shepherding a team of smart, curious students who help him with the research projects that have led to blockbuster books like Built to Last and Good to Great. And dealing with difficult bosses means stepping outside to do some rock climbing in the mountain air if he gets frustrated with himself. But the author of Good to Great, the world’s bestselling guide to taking companies to the next level, still has plenty of insights for those of us stuck in gray-walled cubicles where the “scenic view” is often the parking lot of a drab corporate campus. Management Editor Jena McGregor asked Collins to translate some of his popular concepts to today’s workplace. Here are edited excerpts of that conversation: One of the big concepts in your book is “first who,” or that the most important thing is getting the right people “on the bus.” But for cubicle dwellers who can’t trade in their boss or their co-workers, what should they think about doing? The idea of a personal board of directors came to me when I was in my 20s. I drew a little conference table on a sheet of paper with seven chairs around it and wrote names on them of people I admired. I pasted it above my computer and would look up and in my mind poll the personal board when I was wrestling with tough questions. If I was really stuck, I might talk to some of them. It’s sort of like a group of tribal elders that you create for yourself. How many of the leaders running the companies in Good to Great had any kind of work-life balance? Is it possible to run a great company and also have a great life? The bad news is, about half the CEOs didn’t really seem to have a life. They defined a great life as building a great company. A lot of people who do extraordinary things are not balanced. I’m not even convinced that the idea makes sense [since] there’s a certain neurotic obsession with doing exceptional things. But here’s the good news: It was only about half. So I draw the conclusion that it’s a choice. But haven’t BlackBerrys and globalization made such choices nearly impossible? The imperative is to manage our time, not our work. This is why the whole question of balance and finishing our

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(continued) are hard-working, well-intentioned people trying to do good things. If you ever wake up and say the majority of people here aren’t that, then for sure it’s time to jump. You manage a team of student researchers. Any secrets you’ve discovered to managing Generation Y?

I don’t understand this generational tension thing other than that I think the tension is great. You should find a way to have young people in your face all the time. Wrestle with it. Revel in it. Learn from them. My view is, we ought to get those people into positions of leadership as fast as we can.

The depth of change required demands that those charged with charting a passage through hurricane-like seas do more than run up a new set of sails. What is involved equates to a quantum shift in, not just learning, but how we learn; not just doing things differently, but questioning whether we should be doing many of the things we currently believe in, at all; not just in drawing together more information but in questioning how we know what it is (we think) we know.25

This text on organizational behavior has the goal of helping today’s and tomorrow’s managers make the transition to the new paradigm. Some of the new paradigm characteristics include Chapter 2’s coverage of globalization, diversity, and ethics, Chapter 3 on the organizational context of design and culture; and Chapter 4 on reward systems. The new paradigm sets the stage for the study, understanding, and application of the timetested micro cognitive processes (Chapters 5–7), dynamics (Chapters 8–10), and the final part on managing and leading for high performance (Chapters 11–14). However, before getting directly into the rest of the text, we must know why management needs a new perspective to help meet the environmental challenges and the shift to the new paradigm. We must gain an appreciation of the historical background, methodology, and theoretical frameworks that serve as the basis of this text’s perspective and model for organizational behavior.

A NEW PERSPECTIVE FOR MANAGEMENT
How is management going to meet the environmental challenges and paradigm shift outlined above? Management is generally considered to have three major dimensions— technical, conceptual, and human. The technical dimension consists of the manager’s functional expertise in accounting or engineering or marketing and increasingly in information technology. There seems little question that today’s managers are competent in their functional specialization. Overall, however, although managers are certainly more aware and becoming competent in their functional/technical component, few today would question that, at least in the past, most practicing managers either slighted the conceptual and human dimensions of their jobs or made some overly simplistic assumptions. Following the assumptions that pioneering management scholar Douglas McGregor labeled many years ago as Theory X, most managers thought, and many still think, that their employees were basically lazy, that they were interested only in money, and that if you could make them happy, they would be high performers. When such Theory X assumptions were accepted, the human problems facing management were relatively clear-cut and easy to solve. All management had to do was devise monetary incentive plans, ensure job security, and provide good working conditions; morale would then be high, and good performance would result. It was as simple as one, two, three. Human relations experts, industrial/

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organizational psychologists, and industrial engineers supported this approach, and human resource managers implemented it. Unfortunately, this approach no longer works with the current environmental demands under the new paradigm. Although good pay, job security, and working conditions are necessary, it is now evident that such a simplistic approach falls far short of providing a meaningful solution to the complex challenges. For example, a recent report in The Economist in reference to McGregor’s Theories X and Y include that “companies are coming to realize that knowledge workers, who have been identified as the creators of future wealth, thrive only under Theory Y. Theory X is becoming extinct.”26 The major fault with the traditional approach is that it overlooks and oversimplifies far too many aspects of the problem. Human behavior at work is much more complicated and diverse than is suggested by the economic-security–working-conditions approach. The new perspective assumes that employees are extremely complex and that there is a need for theoretical understanding backed by rigorous empirical research before applications can be made for managing people effectively. In the academic world, transition has now been completed. The traditional human relations approach no longer has a dominant role in business and applied psychology education. Few people would question that the organizational behavior approach, with its accompanying body of knowledge and applications, dominates the behavioral approach to management education now and will do so in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, still only a minority of practicing managers and their organization cultures really buy into, fully implement, and then stick with this research-based organizational behavior approach to management practice. Stanford professor Jeff Pfeffer has summarized the status of the organizational behavior approach to real-world management as a “one-eighth” situation.27 By one-eighth he means that roughly half of today’s managers really believe and buy into the importance of the human side of enterprise and that the people are truly the competitive advantage of their organizations. Taken a step further, however, only about half of those who believe really do something about it. Thus, he says that only about one-fourth are fully implementing the high performance work practices (HPWPs) that flow from organizational behavior theory and research—such as pay for performance, self-managed teams, 360 degree (multisource) feedback systems, behavioral management and investing in psychological capital. Most organizations have tried one or a few of the approaches and techniques emphasized in the chapters of this text, but only about a fourth fully implement the whole approach. So now that we are down to one-fourth, where does the one-eighth come from? Well, Pfeffer estimates that only about one-half of the one-fourth who implement 1 1 the approach stick with it over time. Thus, only about one-eighth (1⁄2 ⁄2 1⁄2 ⁄8) of today’s organizations believe it, do it, and stick with it (the “3 Its”). The so-called oneeighth organizations have as their organizational cultural values the importance of human capital and the techniques in place to carry it out over time. Importantly, as Pfeffer well documents in his book Human Equation, these one-eighth organizations are world class, the best in the world—such as General Electric, Southwest Airlines, Google, Gallup, and SAS (the software development firm). Today there is ample accumulated research findings and documented practices of the best firms to prove the value of the human factor. Pfeffer and Sutton felt compelled to try to explain why most managers today know this importance and how to implement the approach to improve organizational performance, but still are not doing it (i.e., The Knowing-Doing Gap).28 They identify five sources that seem to prevent the majority of managers from effective implementation and sustainability: (1) hollow talk, (2) debilitating fear, (3) destructive internal competition, (4) poorly designed and complex measurement systems, and (5) mindless reliance on precedent. They are convinced that if these obstacles (i.e., resistance to

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change) can be overcome, then “Competitive advantage comes from being able to do something others don’t do. When most companies are stuck talking about what should be done, those that get down to business and actually do will emerge as star performers.”29 This new perspective is now called evidence-based management or simply EBM and, as indicated by the subtitle, is the approach taken by this text.

EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT
Although the academic study and research of management in general and organizational behavior in particular is thriving (e.g., membership in the academic professional association Academy of Management has doubled in the past 10 years), there is growing concern that the divide, the gap, between theory/research and practice seems to be widening. As noted in the introductory comments of a special issue of the Academy of Management Journal, devoted to the problem, “It is hardly news that many organizations do not implement practices that research has shown to be positively associated with employee productivity and firm financial performance,” and this “gap between science and practice is so persistent and pervasive that some have despaired of its ever being narrowed.”30 The problem largely comes from the fact that when it comes to people, everyone is an expert. However, management academics add to the gap by too often only concentrating on the creation of knowledge by rigorous scientific methods and pay too little attention on the translation and diffusion of research findings to practice.31 Both management consultants and journalists (and popular book authors) also contribute to the problem. Too often consultants tend to conduct “in house” (not peer-reviewed scientific process) research and only depend on narrow personal or client experience and the journalists tell interesting stories and make interpretations based on some facts, but also depend too much on limited anecdotes and personal experience.32 Obviously, the bridge to help close the theory/research-practice gap must be built from both sides, practice and academic. Traditionally, practitioners have neither had the time nor the desire to read and translate rigorous academic research and academics have not had the time, desire, nor talent to write (translate the research) for practitioners.33 In other words, practitioners must take on more of a “Practitioner-Scientist” role and academics must assume a more “Scientist-Practitioner” role. This movement to not only recognize, but also do something about what Pfeffer and Sutton called the “Knowing-Doing Gap” is the recently emerging movement toward evidence-based management (EBM). Drawing from how professions such as education and especially medicine have handled this similar gap problem, Denise Rousseau in her recent presidential speech to the Academy of Management called for the field to take an evidence-based approach. She defined evidence-based management or EBM as “translating principles based on best evidence into organizational practices. Through evidence-based management, practicing managers develop into experts who make organizational decisions informed by social science and organizational research—part of the zeitgeist moving professional decisions away from personal preference and unsystematic experience toward those based on the best available scientific evidence.”34 The historical roots for this EBM can be traced back to one of the founding fathers of social psychology Kurt Lewin who astutely observed many years ago that there is nothing so practical as a good theory and “No action without research, no research without action.”35 Following this sage advice, advocates of EBM stress the need to refocus management education based on valid theory and research, translated for effective practice.

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As indicated, this text from the beginning and through subsequent editions has been known for and prided itself on the theory and research foundation for everything presented. Whereas other texts typically have no theoretical framework and relatively few research citations per chapter this text has a theoretical model to tie all the chapters together (presented at the end of this chapter) and a great number (in some cases over two hundred) of research citations in each chapter. In other words, this text takes an EBM approach to contribute to the reader/student to become a Practitioner-Scientist. The starting point in this journey of closing the science-practice gap and becoming a Practitioner-Scientist is to have an understanding and appreciation of history and research methods.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: THE HAWTHORNE STUDIES
Most of today’s organizational behavior texts have dropped any reference to history. Yet, the position taken in this evidence-based approach is that history always has important lessons to teach, and as was recently brought out again, “It is an interesting phenomenon that that which is touted as fundamentally ‘new management practice’ is essentially the readapting of existing ‘old management truths.’”36 There is no question that the early practicing management pioneers, such as Henri Fayol, Henry Ford, Alfred P. Sloan, and even the scientific managers at the end of the 19th century such as Frederick W. Taylor, recognized the behavioral side of management. However, they did not emphasize the human dimension; they let it play only a minor role in comparison with the roles of hierarchical structure, specialization, and the management functions of planning and controlling. An example would be the well-known Nobel Prize–winning French engineer turned executive Henri Fayol. About the time of World War I Fayol headed up what was at that time the largest coalmining firm in Europe. Writing the generally considered first book about management, he emphasized that the purpose of the organization was to get the work done in specialized, machinelike functions. He did not emphasize that the organization is made up of people; it is not a machine. Yet, perhaps the most widely recognized management expert in modern times, Peter Drucker, stated, “The organization is, above all, social. It is people.”37 There were varied and complex reasons for the emergence of the importance of the organization as a social entity, but it is the famous Hawthorne studies that provide historical roots for the notion of a social organization made up of people and mark the generally recognized starting point for the academic field of organizational behavior.

The Illumination Studies: A Serendipitous Discovery
In 1924, the studies started at the huge Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company outside of Chicago. The initial illumination studies attempted to examine the relationship between light intensity on the shop floor of manual work sites and employee productivity. A test group and a control group were used. The test group in an early phase showed no increase or decrease in output in proportion to the increase or decrease of illumination. The control group with unchanged illumination increased output by the same amount overall as the test group. Subsequent phases brought the level of light down to moonlight intensity; the workers could barely see what they were doing, but productivity increased. The results were baffling to the researchers. Obviously, some variables in the experiment were not being held constant or under control. Something besides the level of illumination was causing the change in productivity. This something, of course, was the complex human variable.

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It is fortunate that the illumination experiments did not end up in the wastebasket. Those responsible for the Hawthorne studies had enough foresight and spirit of scientific inquiry to accept the challenge of looking beneath the surface of the apparent failure of the experiments. In a way, the results of the illumination experiments were a serendipitous discovery, which, in research, is an accidental discovery. The classic example of serendipity is the breakthrough for penicillin that occurred when Sir Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered green mold on the side of a test tube. That the green mold was not washed down the drain and that the results of the illumination experiments were not thrown into the trash can be credited to the researchers’ not being blinded by the unusual or seemingly worthless results of their experimentation. The serendipitous results of the illumination experiments provided the impetus for the further study of human behavior in the workplace.

Subsequent Phases of the Hawthorne Studies
The illumination studies were followed by a study in the relay room, where operators assembled relay switches. This phase of the study tried to test specific variables, such as length of workday, rest breaks, and method of payment. The results were basically the same as those of the illumination studies: each test period yielded higher productivity than the previous one. Even when the workers were subjected to the original conditions of the experiment, productivity increased. The conclusion was that the independent variables (rest pauses and so forth) were not by themselves causing the change in the depen dent variable (output). As in the illumination experiments, something was still not being controlled that was causing the change in the dependent variable (output). Still another phase was the bank wiring room study. As in the preceding relay room experiments, the bank wirers were placed in a separate test room. The researchers were reluctant to segregate the bank wiring group because they recognized that this would alter the realistic factory environment they were attempting to simulate. However, for practical reasons, the research team decided to use a separate room. Unlike the relay room experiments, the bank wiring room study involved no experimental changes once the study had started. Instead, an observer and an interviewer gathered objective data for study. Of particular interest was the fact that the department’s regular supervisors were used in the bank wiring room. Just as in the department out on the factory floor, these supervisors’ main function was to maintain order and control. The results of the bank wiring room study were essentially opposite to those of the relay room experiments. In the bank wiring room there were not the continual increases in productivity that occurred in the relay room. Rather, output was actually restricted by the bank wirers. By scientific management analysis—for example, time and motion study—the industrial engineers had arrived at a standard of 7,312 terminal connections per day. This represented 21⁄2 equipments (banks). The workers had a different brand of rationality. They decided that 2 equipments was a “proper” day’s work. Thus, 21⁄2 equipments represented the management norm for production, but 2 equipments was the informal group norm and the actual output. The researchers determined that the informal group norm of 2 equipments represented restriction of output rather than a lack of ability to produce at the company standard of 21⁄2 equipments. Of particular interest from a group dynamics standpoint were the social pressures used to gain compliance with the group norms. The incentive system dictated that the more a worker produced, the more money the worker would earn. Also, the best producers would be laid off last, and thus they could be more secure by producing more. Yet, in the face of this management rationale, almost all the workers restricted output.

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Social ostracism, ridicule, and name-calling were the major sanctions used by the group to enforce this restriction. In some instances, actual physical pressure in the form of a game called “binging” was applied. In the game, a worker would be hit as hard as possible, with the privilege of returning one “bing,” or hit. Forcing rate-busters to play the game became an effective sanction. These group pressures had a tremendous impact on all the workers. Social ostracism was more effective in gaining compliance with the informal group norm than money and security were in attaining the scientifically derived management norm.

Implications of the Hawthorne Studies
Despite some obvious philosophical,38 theoretical,39 and methodological limitations by today’s standards of research (which will be covered next), the Hawthorne studies did provide some interesting insights that contributed to a better understanding of human behavior in organizations.40 For instance, one interesting aspect of the Hawthorne studies is the contrasting results obtained in the relay room and the bank wiring room. In the relay room, production continually increased throughout the test period, and the relay assemblers were very positive. The opposite was true in the bank wiring room; blatant restriction of output was practiced by disgruntled workers. Why the difference in these two phases of the studies? One clue to the answer to this question may be traced to the results of a questionnaire administered to the subjects in the relay room. The original intent of the questions was to determine the health and habits of the workers. Their answers were generally inconclusive except that all the operators indicated they felt “better” in the relay test room. A follow-up questionnaire then asked about specific items in the test room situation. In discussions of the Hawthorne studies, the follow-up questionnaire results, in their entirety, usually are not mentioned. Most discussions cite the subjects’ unanimous preference for working in the test room instead of the regular department. Often overlooked, however, are the workers’ explanations for their choice. In order of preference, the workers gave the following reasons: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Small group Type of supervision Earnings Novelty of the situation Interest in the experiment Attention received in the test room41

It is important to note that novelty, interest, and attention were relegated to the fourth, fifth, and sixth positions. These last three areas usually are associated with the famous “Hawthorne effect.” Many social scientists imply that the increases in the relay room productivity can be attributed solely to the fact that the participants in the study were given special attention and that they were enjoying a novel, interesting experience. This is labeled the Hawthorne effect and is, of course, a real problem with all human experimental subjects. But to say that all the results of the relay room experiments were due to such an effect on the subjects seems to ignore the important impact of the small group, the type of supervision, and earnings. All these variables (that is, experimental design, group dynamics, styles of leadership and supervision, and rewards), and much more, separate the old human relations movement and an evidence-based approach to the field of orga nizational behavior. So do the refinement and fine-tuning of the research methodology used to accumulate meaningful evidence about organizational behavior.

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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY TO DETERMINE VALID EVIDENCE
An evidence-based approach to organizational behavior depends on rigorous research methodology. Accumulating valid evidence of why people behave the way they do is a very delicate and complex process. In fact, the problems are so great that many scholars, chiefly from the physical and engineering sciences, argue that there can be no precise science of behavior. They maintain that humans cannot be treated like chemical or physical elements; they cannot be effectively controlled or manipulated. For example, the critics state that, under easily controllable conditions, 2 parts hydrogen to 1 part oxygen will always result in water and that no analogous situation exists in human behavior. Human variables such as motives, bias, expectations, learning, perception, values, and even a Hawthorne effect on the part of both subject and investigator confound the controls that are attempted. For these reasons, behavioral scientists in general and organizational behavior researchers in particular are often on the defensive and must be very careful to comply with accepted methods of science.42

The Overall Scientific Perspective
Behavioral scientists in general and organizational behavior researchers in particular strive to attain the following hallmarks of any science: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Figure 1.1

The overall purposes are understanding/explanation, prediction, and control. The definitions are precise and operational. The measures are reliable and valid. The methods are systematic. The results are cumulative.

Figure 1.1 summarizes the relationship between the practical behavioral problems and unanswered questions facing today’s managers, research methodology, and the existing body of valid evidence. When a question arises or a problem evolves, the first place to turn for an answer is the existing body of valid evidence. It is possible that the question can be answered immediately or the problem solved without going any further. Unfortunately, the answer is not always found in the body of valid evidence and must be discovered through appropriate research methodology. Although behavioral science in general compared to the physical and biological sciences is relatively young, and the field of organizational behavior is even younger—its

FIGURE 1.1
Simple Relationships Among Problems, Methodology, and Valid Evidence.

BODY OF VALID EVIDENCE

Research methodology

Problems and questions about organizational behavior

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direct origins really go back only to the early 1970s—there is now enough accumulated valid evidence that organizational behavior principles can be provided for the effective management of human behavior in organizations. As explained in the preface, this is the only text that presents evidence-based principles of organizational behavior at the end of each chapter. Interestingly, it is the research technique of meta-analysis providing the quantitative synthesis and testing of all available studies that permits confidently stating these evidence-based principles. As Williams points out, meta-analysis “shows what works and the conditions under which management techniques may work better or worse in the ‘real world.’ Meta-analysis is based on the simple idea that if one study shows that a management technique doesn’t work and another study shows that it does, an average of those results is probably the best estimate of how well that management practice works (or doesn’t work).”43 Although there are now enough research studies in organizational behavior to have this evidence-based text, it is also recognized that many questions and problems in organizational behavior cannot yet be answered or solved directly by existing evidence or, as the accompanying OB in Action: Forget Going with Your Gut points out, certainly not just common sense. A working knowledge of research methodology becomes especially important to practitioner-scientists, both as knowledgeable and critical consumers of the rapidly expanding literature reporting the results of organizational behavior research and as practitioner-scientists who are capable of applying appropriate research methods to solve difficult problems in the workplace.

Starting with Theory
Although theory is often devided as being unrealistic and overly complicated by practitioners, as noted earlier Lewin may have been right when he declared there is nothing as practical as a good theory. As the editors of the Journal of Applied Psychology recently reminded, “Theory tells us why something occurs, not simply what occurs.”44 Yet students and practitioners of organizational behavior are usually “turned off ” by all the theories that pervade the field. The reason for all the theories, of course, is the still relative newness of the field and the complexity and multidimensionality of the variables involved.45 The purpose of any theory, including those found in organizational behavior, is to explain and predict the phenomenon in question; theories allow the researcher to deduce logical propositions or hypotheses that can be tested by acceptable research designs. However, as Don Hambrick points out, “A theory, by its very nature, is a simplification of reality. When we develop or test theories, we inevitably exclude an array of factors that might potentially affect the phenomena under examination.”46 Thus, theories are ever changing on the basis of the empirical results. In other words, theory and research go hand in hand in evidencebased management. After pleading for more and stronger theory in organizational behavior, Sutton and Staw have pointed out that references, data, lists of variables or constructs, diagrams, and hypotheses are not theory. Instead, they note that theory is the answer to queries of why. Theory is about the connections among phenomena, a story about why acts, events, structure, and thoughts occur. Theory emphasizes the nature of causal relationships, identifying what comes first as well as the timing of such events. Strong theory, in our view, delves into the underlying processes so as to understand the systematic reasons for a particular occurrence or non-occurrence.47

Such theorizing is not easy. “Theorizing takes scientists on mental journeys between the world of observed events, such as falling apples, and the imagined world of hypothetical concepts, such as gravity. Bridging gaps between concrete experience and abstract

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OB in Action:

Forget Going with Your Gut talent. Take forced ranking, for instance. Popularized by General Electric Co. under Jack Welch, the process requires managers to divide employees into the top 20%, middle 70%, and bottom 10% of performers, often culling the lowest group. Practiced by as many as one-third of companies today, the authors say the approach has many flaws. A 2004 survey of more than 200 human-resource managers found that even though more than half of them used forced ranking, they felt it resulted in lower productivity, skepticism, reduced collaboration, and impaired morale. Breaking up teams by automatically firing the bottom 10% of workers can even be dangerous: Citing a National Transportation Safety Board study, the authors note that 73% of commercial airline pilots’ serious mistakes happen on crews’ first day together. Pfeffer and Sutton also make a persuasive case against paying widely divergent rewards to high and low performers, a popular practice in talent management today. Many studies show that tying pay to performance can drive good results when individuals are working solo. But the same can’t be said for the collaborative, interconnected teams that now make up most companies. The authors cite a 2005 study that surveyed senior management groups at 67 publicly traded firms. Those with greater gaps between the best- and worst-paid executives also had weaker financial performance. Managers who implement wide pay differences in heavily team-based groups, argue Pfeffer and Sutton, forget that people get a lot of fulfillment from their social bonds at work, and creating such distinctions often diminishes trust.

For the average patient, the fact that “evidence-based medicine” is now one of the hottest forces in health care might seem pretty absurd. After all, isn’t all medicine based on hard facts? Actually, no. To make decisions, many physicians rely on clinical experience, conventional wisdom passed down through training, and sometimes, outdated research. The evidence-based medicine movement, which has been gaining traction in hospitals and among insurers in recent years, calls for better integration of the most current, most carefully designed research into everyday medicine. The practice of business management could use a similar movement, argue Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, and Robert I. Sutton, a professor of management and engineering at Stanford. In their densely researched book, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense: Profiting from EvidenceBased Management, the authors fret that managers’ fondness for casual benchmarking (“GE does it? We should too!”), past practices, and pet ideologies may hold serious harm for their organizations. At a time when intuition is on the ascent, thanks in part to Malcolm Gladwell and his best-selling Blink, Hard Facts is a useful reminder that the gut is often trumped by the facts. The book’s deconstruction of some of the most widely applied management truisms and fads is thought-provoking but will leave some managers, especially those in metrics-driven cultures, unsatisfied. The authors are at their best when dispelling the copycat tactics managers use for evaluating and rewarding

concepts presents a challenge.”48 As Sumantra Ghoshal noted, “Our theories and ideas have done much to strengthen the management practices that we are all now so loudly condemning.”49 There is also the danger that theories can become self-fulfilling without empirical verification. As recently noted by Ferraro, Pfeffer, and Sutton, “Theories can ‘win’ in the marketplace for ideas, independent of their empirical validity, to the extent their assumptions and language become taken for granted and normatively valued, therefore creating conditions that make them come ‘true’.”50 However, as Karl Weick, perhaps the most widely recognized theorist in organizational behavior, notes: a good theory explains, predicts, and delights.51

The Use of Research Designs
Research design is at the very heart of scientific methodology and evidence-based management; it can be used to answer practical questions or to test theoretical propositions/ hypotheses. The three designs most often used in organizational behavior research today are the experiment, the case, and the survey. All three have played important roles in the development of EBM. The experimental design is borrowed largely from psychology,
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where it is used extensively; the case and survey designs have traditionally played a bigger role in sociology. All three designs can be used effectively for researching organizational behavior. A primary aim of any research design is to establish a cause-and-effect relationship. The experimental design offers the best possibility of accomplishing this goal. All other factors being equal, most organizational behavior researchers prefer this method of testing hypotheses. Simply defined, an experiment involves the manipulation of independent variables to measure their effect on, or the change in, dependent variables, while everything else is held constant or controlled. If possible, an experimental group and a control group are randomly assigned so that the participants are equivalent. The experimental group receives the input of the independent variables (the intervention), and the control group does not. Any measured change in the dependent variable in the experimental group can be attributed to the independent variable, assuming that no change has occurred in any other variable and that no change has occurred in the control group. The controls employed are the key to the successful use of the experimental design. If all intervening variables are held constant or equal, the researcher can conclude with a high degree of confidence that the independent variable caused the change in the dependent variable.

The Validity of Studies
The value of any evidence is dependent on its validity. In particular, research results must have both internal validity and external validity in order to make a meaningful contribution to evidence-based management. A study has internal validity if there are no plausible alternative explanations of the reported results other than those reported. The threats to internal validity include uncontrolled intervening events that occur between the time the preexperiment measurement is taken and the time the postexperiment measurement is taken does A cause B, does B cause A, a problem with correlational studies. The threats to internal validity can be overcome with careful design of the study. However, this is not always true of external validity, which is concerned with the generalizability of the results obtained. In order for a study to have external validity, the results must be applicable to a wide range of people and situations. Field studies tend to have better external validity than laboratory studies because at least the study takes place in a real setting. In general, the best strategy is to use a number of different designs or mixed methods (including qualitative research) to answer the same question. The weaknesses of the various designs can offset one another and the problem of common method variance (the results are due to the design, rather than the variables under study) can be overcome. Normally, the research would start with a laboratory study to isolate and manipulate the variable or variables in question. This would be followed by an attempt to verify the findings in a field setting. This progression from the laboratory to the field may lead to the soundest conclusions. However, free observation in the real setting should probably precede laboratory investigations of organizational behavior problems or questions. Specifically, in recent years qualitative methods are being suggested as a starting point or supplement, if not an alternative, to quantitatively based and statistically analyzed methods of researching organizational behavior. Van Maanen explains that this qualitative approach “seeks to describe, decode, translate, and otherwise come to terms with the meaning, not the frequency, of certain more or less naturally occurring phenomena in the social world.”52 Multiple designs and multiple measures have the best chance for valid, meaningful research contributing to an evidence-based approach to organizational behavior.

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FIGURE 1.2
The Relationship of Organizational Behavior to Other Closely Related Disciplines.
THEORETICAL OT (Organization theory) OB (Organizational behavior)

APPLIED

OD (Organization development) MACRO

HRM (Human resource management) MICRO

DEFINING ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
With a rich historical background such as the Hawthorne studies and using an accepted scientific methodology as briefly outlined above, the field of organizational behavior is now an accepted academic discipline. As with any other relatively new academic endeavor, however, there have been some rough spots and sidetracks along the way. Besides the healthy academic controversies over theoretical approach or research findings, perhaps the biggest problem that organizational behavior had to overcome was an identity crisis. Early on, the field of organizational behavior had to answer questions such as: Is it an attempt to replace all management with behavioral science concepts and techniques? How, if at all, does it differ from traditional applied or industrial psychology? Fortunately, these questions have now been answered to the satisfaction of most management academicians, behavioral scientists, and management practitioners. Figure 1.2 shows in very general terms the relationships between and emphases of organizational behavior (OB) and the related disciplines of organization theory (OT), organization development (OD), and human resource management (HRM). As shown, OB tends to be more theoretically oriented and at the micro level of analysis. Specifically, OB draws from many theoretical frameworks of the behavioral sciences that are focused on understanding and explaining individual and group behavior in organizations. As with other sciences, OB accumulates evidence and tests theories by accepted scientific methods of research. In summary, organizational behavior can be defined as the understanding, prediction, and management of human behavior in organizations.

Figure 1.2

THEORETICAL FOUNDATION FOR ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
Although organizational behavior is extremely complex and includes many inputs and dimensions, the cognitive, behavioristic, and social cognitive theories can be used to develop an overall framework for an evidence-based approach. After the major theories are briefly summarized, the last section of the chapter presents a model that is used to conceptually link and structure the rest of the text.

Cognitive Framework
The cognitive approach to human behavior has many sources of input. The micro-oriented chapters in the next part provide some of this background. For now, however, it can be said simply that the cognitive approach gives people much more “credit” than the other

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approaches. The cognitive approach emphasizes the positive and freewill aspects of human behavior and uses concepts such as expectancy, demand, and intention. Cognition, which is the basic unit of the cognitive framework, can be simply defined as the act of knowing an item of information. Under this framework, cognitions precede behavior and constitute input into the person’s thinking, perception, problem solving, and information processing. Concepts such as cognitive maps can be used as pictures or visual aids in comprehending a person’s “understanding of particular, and selective, elements of the thoughts (rather than thinking) of an individual, group or organization.”53 The classic work of Edward Tolman can be used to represent the cognitive theoretical approach. Although Tolman believed behavior to be the appropriate unit of analysis, he felt that behavior is purposive, that it is directed toward a goal. In his laboratory experiments, he found that animals learned to expect that certain events would follow one another. For example, animals learned to behave as if they expected food when a certain cue appeared. Thus, Tolman believed that learning consists of the expectancy that a particular event will lead to a particular consequence. This cognitive concept of expectancy implies that the organism is thinking about, or is conscious or aware of, the goal. Thus, Tolman and others espousing the cognitive approach felt that behavior is best explained by these cognitions. Contemporary psychologists carefully point out that a cognitive concept such as expectancy does not reflect a guess about what is going on in the mind; it is a term that describes behavior. In other words, the cognitive and behavioristic theories are not as opposite as they appear on the surface and sometimes are made out to be—for example, Tolman considered himself a behaviorist. Yet, despite some conceptual similarities, there has been a controversy throughout the years in the behavioral sciences on the relative contributions of the cognitive versus the behavioristic framework. As often happens in other academic fields, debate has gone back and forth through the years.54 Because of the recent advances from both theory development and research findings, there has been what some have termed a “cognitive explosion” in the field of psychology. For example, an analysis of articles published in the major psychology journals found by far the greatest emphasis is on the cognitive school over the behavioral school starting in the 1970s.55 Applied to the field of organizational behavior, a cognitive approach has traditionally dominated units of analysis such as personality, perception and attitudes (Chapter 5), motivation and goal setting (Chapter 6), and positive constructs such as psychological capital (Chapter 7). Recently, there has been renewed interest in the role that cognitions can play in organizational behavior in terms of advancement in both theory and research on social cognition. This social cognitive process can be a unifying theoretical framework for both cognition and behaviorism. However, before getting into the specifics of social cognitive theory, which serves as the conceptual framework for this text, it is necessary to have an understanding of the behavioristic approach as well.

Behavioristic Framework
Chapter 12 discusses in detail the behavioristic theory in psychology and its application to organizational behavior. Its historical roots can be traced to the work of Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson. These pioneering behaviorists stressed the importance of dealing with observable behaviors instead of the elusive mind that had preoccupied earlier psychologists. They used classical conditioning experiments to formulate the stimulusresponse (S-R) explanation of human behavior. Both Pavlov and Watson felt that behavior could be best understood in terms of S-R. A stimulus elicits a response. They

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concentrated mainly on the impact of the stimulus and felt that learning occurred when the S-R connection was made. Modern behaviorism marks its beginnings with the work of B. F. Skinner. Deceased for a number of years, Skinner is widely recognized for his contributions to psychology. For example, a recent study drawing from publication citations and a large survey of psychologists ranked Skinner as the most influential psychologist of the twentieth century.56 He felt that the early behaviorists helped explain respondent behaviors (those behaviors elicited by stimuli) but not the more complex operant behaviors. In other words, the S-R approach helped explain physical reflexes; for example, when stuck by a pin (S), the person will flinch (R), or when tapped below the kneecap (S), the person will extend the lower leg (R). On the other hand, Skinner found through his operant conditioning experiments that the consequences of a response could better explain most behaviors than eliciting stimuli could. He emphasized the importance of the response-stimulus (R-S) relationship. The organism has to operate on the environment (thus the term operant conditioning) in order to receive the desirable consequence. The preceding stimulus does not cause the behavior in operant conditioning; it serves as a cue to emit the behavior. For Skinner and the behaviorists, behavior is a function of its contingent environmental consequences. Both classical and operant conditioning and the important role of reinforcing consequences are given detailed attention in Chapter 12. For now, however, it is important to understand that the behavioristic approach is environmentally based. It posits that cognitive processes such as thinking, expectancies, and perception may exist but are not needed to predict and control or manage behavior. However, as in the case of the cognitive approach, which also includes behavioristic concepts, some modern behaviorists feel that cognitive variables can be behaviorized.57 However, the social cognitive theory that has emerged in recent years incorporating both cognitive and behavioristic concepts and principles may be the most unifying and comprehensive foundation for an evidence-based approach to organizational behavior.

Social Cognitive Framework
The cognitive approach has been accused of being mentalistic, and the behavioristic approach has been accused of being deterministic. Cognitive theorists argue that the S-R model, and to a lesser degree the R-S model, is much too mechanistic an explanation of human behavior. A strict S-R interpretation of behavior seems justifiably open to the criticism of being too mechanistic, but because of the scientific approach that has been meticulously employed by behaviorists, the operant model in particular has made a significant contribution to the study and meaning of human behavior58 and in turn an evidence-based approach to organizational behavior. The same can be said of the cognitive approach. Much research has been done to verify its importance as an explanation of human behavior in general and organizational behavior in particular. Instead of polarization and unconstructive criticism between the two approaches, it now seems time to recognize that each can make an important contribution to the understanding, prediction, and control of organizational behavior. The social cognitive approach tries to integrate the contributions of both approaches and serves and the foundation for an evidence-based approach to organizational behavior. About 30 years ago we (Davis and Luthans) proposed a social learning approach to organizational behavior,59 and over 25 years ago we (Luthans and Kreitner) suggested a social learning approach to organizational behavior modification (O.B. Mod.).60 Based on the work of Albert Bandura61 and our own theory building and application to

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FIGURE 1.3
A Social Learning Approach to Organizational Behavior.

ORGANIZATIONAL PARTICIPANTS

Cognitive representations of reality help guide organizational behavior

Participants control their own behavior to the extent that they rely on cognitive supports and manage relevant environmental cues and consequences

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Much of complex behavior is acquired by directly observing and imitating others in the surrounding environment

ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT

organizational behavior, social learning theory provided the conceptual framework for the 3rd to 8th editions of this text. Social learning takes the position that behavior can best be explained in terms of a continuous reciprocal interaction among cognitive, behavioral, and environmental determinants. The person and the environmental situation do not function as independent units but, in conjunction with the behavior itself, reciprocally interact to determine behavior. Bandura explains that “it is largely through their actions that people produce the environmental conditions that affect their behavior in a reciprocal fashion. The experiences generated by behavior also partly determine what a person becomes and can do, which, in turn, affects subsequent behavior.”62 The triangular model shown in Figure 1.3 takes this social learning work of Bandura and translates it into relevant units of analysis and variables in organizational behavior. Bandura has taken his social learning and developed it into the more comprehensive social cognitive theory (SCT),63 and we (Stajkovic and Luthans) in turn have translated this SCT into the theoretical foundation for organizational behavior.64 SCT is much more compre hensive than the cognitive or behavioristic pproaches by themselves and its predecessor, social learning theory. Specifically, SCT recognizes the importance of behaviorism’s contingent environmental consequences, but also includes cognitive processes of selfregulation. “The social part acknowledges the social origins of much of human thought and action (what individuals learn by being part of a society), whereas the cognitive portion recognizes the influential contribution of thought processes to human motivation, attitudes, and action.”65 Similar to the social learning model in Figure 1.3, SCT explains organizational behavior in terms of the bidirectional, reciprocal causation among the organizational participants (e.g., unique personality characteristics such as conscientiousness), the organizational environment (e.g., the perceived consequences such as contingent recognition from the supervisor or pay for increased productivity), and the organizational behavior itself (e.g., previous successful or unsuccessful sales approaches with customers). In other words, like social learning, in an SCT theoretical framework, organizational participants are at the same time both products (as in the behaviorism approach) and producers (as in the cognitive approach) of their personality, respective environments, and behaviors. Bandura goes beyond social learning with SCT by explaining the nature of the bidirectional reciprocal influences through the five basic human capabilities summarized in Figure 1.4.

Figure 1.3

Figure 1.4

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FIGURE 1.4 The Basic Human Capabilities According to Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory (SCT).
Source: Alexander D. Stajkovic and Fred Luthans, “Social Cognitive Theory and Self-Efficacy: Going beyond Traditional Motivational and Behavioral Approaches,” Organizational Dynamics, Spring 1998, p. 65.

Symbolizing Employees process visual experiences (customer named Applegate) into cognitive models (apple) that then serve as guides for future actions (remembering his name easily).

Forethought Employees plan their actions (what I am going to do), anticipate the consequences (what I am going to get for it), and determine the level of desired performance (what my performance goal is).

Observational Employees learn by observing the performance of referent (peers or supervisors) and credible others (high performers), and the consequences they receive for their actions (what they get for it).

Self-regulatory Employees selfcontrol their actions by setting internal standards (aspired level of performance) and by evaluating the discrepancy between the standard and the performance (where do I stand?) in order to improve it.

Self-reflective Employees reflect back on their actions (how did I do?) and perceptually determine how strongly they believe they can successfully accomplish the task in the future given the context (0 – 100% certainty).

FIGURE 1.5 A Conceptual Model for the Study of Organizational Behavior: An Evidence-Based Approach.
Environmental Context 2. Globalization, Diversity, & Ethics Organizational Context 3. Design & Culture 4. Reward System

Dynamics 8. Communication & Decision Making 9. Stress & Conflict 10. Power & Politics

Managing & Leading for High Performance 11. Groups & Teams 12. Behavioral Management 13. Leadership Processes 14. Great Leaders

Social Cognitive Theory

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Cognitive Processes 5. Personality, Perception & Attitudes 6. Motivational Processes and Application 7. Positive Organizational Behavior and Psychological Capital

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THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE TEXT
The conceptual model used to structure this text is shown in Figure 1.5. As indicated, social cognitive theory is the foundation and consists of the reciprocal interaction among the environmental and organizational context (Part One, Chapters 2–4); cognitive processes (Part Two, Chapters 5–7); and, importantly, the organizational behavior itself, which produces and is a product of the environmental/organizational context and the cognitive processes. At a more macro level are graphic depiction of the dynamics (not necessarily the outcomes) of organizational behavior (Part Three, Chapters 8–10). Finally, at an applied level is the graphic representation of the role that managing and leading for high performance (Part Four, Chapters 11–14) play in the conceptual framework for organizational behavior. Obviously, this conceptual framework gives only a bare-bones sketch of organizational behavior rather than a full-blown explanation. Nevertheless, it can serve as a point of departure for how this text is organized. It helps explain why particular chapters are covered and how they relate to one another. As the chapters unfold, some of the fine points will become clearer and some of the seemingly simplistic, unsupported statements will begin to make more sense. Figure 1.5 serves merely as the welcoming mat to the study of the exciting, but still developing, field of organizational behavior.
Figure 1.5

Summary

This chapter first gives a brief overview of the significant challenges currently facing management. Besides the new workplace, environmental changes such as globalization, and recognition and management of diversity and ethics represent a paradigm shift. This shift is characterized by new rules, new boundaries, and, importantly, new behaviors that are essential for organizations and managers to be successful or even survive. This new paradigm facing management requires a new perspective and not only an appreciation of the human, behavioral side of management but also apply the greatly expanding research findings for more effective practice. After first identifying the existing knowing-doing gap, the evidence-based approach used by this text over the years and the now call for evidencebased management (EBM) is summarized. The historical roots starts this evidence-based approach to organizational behavior. The beginnings are usually attributed to the famous Hawthorne studies, which had several phases (illumination, relay, bank wiring studies) and often-overlooked implications for modern management. Whereas the Hawthorne studies are often unfairly dismissed because of methodological flaws, today’s organizational behavior field is characterized by rigorous scientific methodology. Both theory development and research designs are given considerable attention. Specifically, the attempt is made to eliminate or minimize the threats to internal validity through carefully designed experiments. Field studies are used over laboratory studies whenever possible in order to have more external (generalizable) validity. Because organizational behavior is a relatively new field, it must be precisely defined: the understanding, prediction, and management of human behavior in organizations. It is also important to see how OB (micro, theoretical) relates to other closely related disciplines such as organization theory or OT (macro, theoretical), organizational development or OD (macro, applied), and human resource management or HRM (micro, applied). Finally, it is important to provide a theoretical foundation to develop a specific model that can be used as a conceptual framework for this text. The cognitive, the behavioristic, and the more integrative social cognitive theories are used for such a foundation. The cognitive model gives the human being more “credit” and assumes that behavior is purposive and goal oriented.

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Cognitive processes such as expectancy and perception help explain behavior. The behavioristic approach deals with observable behavior and the environmental contingencies of the behavior. Classical behaviorism explained behavior in terms of S-R, whereas more modern behaviorism gives increased emphasis to contingent consequences, or R-S. The social cognitive approach emphasizes that the person, the environment, and the behavior itself are in constant interaction with one another and reciprocally determine one another. This social cognitive approach incorporates both cognitive and behavioristic elements and is used as the theoretical foundation for the organizational behavior model used as the conceptual framework to structure this evidence-based text.

Ending with Meta-Analytic Research Findings
OB PRINCIPLE FOR EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE
Because a growing number of important concepts and techniques have a stream of research findings, meta-analysis can be conducted on them. The meta-analysis results provide the basis for organizational behavior (OB) principles for effective evidence-based practice.

Meta-Analysis Results:
The end of each chapter will report the result of usually one but in some cases two or three representative meta-analyses. The stated principles, relevant to each chapter, are based on these meta-analytic findings. A results section will report the number of studies and participants and the meta-analytic average effect statistic d. Importantly, to make these metaanalytic results as user friendly as possible, the d effect size is transformed using Grissom’s (see source below) table to a percentage “probability of superior outcome of one treatment over another.” Besides this percentage probability evidence to support the “OB Principle,” this section will also briefly discuss any moderating contingencies that were found and give the full citation of the meta-analysis in a source line like that below from Grissom’s conversion of d to probability of success.

Conclusion:
Each chapter’s Ending with Meta-Analytic Research Findings is patterned after this presentation: statement of OB Principle for Evidence-Based Practice, Meta-Analysis Results, and Conclusion. The purpose of the conclusion is to tie the principle back to the chapter topic and make some final comments. The contribution of meta-analysis at this stage of development of the organizational behavior field is that it is able to draw overall, sound evidence-based conclusions (i.e., state principles) from a large number of studies (often over 100) and usually thousands of subjects. Instead of just choosing one study here or there to support (or not support) a statement, meta-analysis provides a quantitative summary of individual studies across an entire body of research evidence on a given concept (e.g., conscientiousness or self-efficacy) or technique (e.g., job characteristics model or organizational behavior modification). Many of the meta-analyses conducted to date on relevant topics in this text are included as being representative, but as research continues to accumulate, many meta-analytically derived OB principles exist and will be forthcoming.
Sources: Robert J. Grissom, “Probability of the Superior Outcome of One Treatment over Another,” Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 79, No. 2, 1994, pp. 314–316. For those wanting more information on meta-analysis, see: L. V. Hedges and I. Olkin, Statistical Methods for Meta Analysis, Academic Press,

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San Diego, 1985 and J. E. Hunter and F. L. Schmidt, Methods of Meta-Analysis, Sage, Beverly Hills, Calif., 1995. For a critical analysis and limitations of meta-analysis, see: P. Bobko and E. F. Stone-Romero, “Meta-Analysis May Be Another Useful Tool, but It Is Not a Panacea,” in G. R. Ferris (Ed.), Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, Vol. 16, JAI Press, Stamford, Conn., 1998, 359–397. Finally, to gain insight into teaching organizational behavior through such a principles approach, see: Edwin A. Locke, “The Epistemological Side of Teaching Management: Teaching through Principles,” Academy of Management Learning and Education, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2002, pp. 195–205.

Questions for Discussion and Review

1. What are some of the major challenges facing today’s and tomorrow’s organizations and management? Briefly describe these developments. 2. What is a paradigm? How will the paradigm shift affect management? What are the implications of this paradigm shift for organizational behavior? 3. Why do you think there is a “knowing-doing” gap and how can evidence-based management help close it? 4. Why do you feel the Hawthorne studies made such an important historical contribution to the study of organizational behavior? 5. Why are theory development and rigorous scientific methodology important to the field of organizational behavior? What role does validity play in the design of research studies? 6. How does organizational behavior relate to, or differ from, organizational development? Organization theory? Human resource management? 7. In your own words, identify and summarize the various theoretical frameworks for understanding organizational behavior. How does the social cognitive approach differ from the cognitive approach? How does the social cognitive approach differ from the behavioristic approach? 8. Explain the model for organizational behavior that is used in this text. This chapter sets the tone for the new paradigm environment. One dimension of this environment has been the dramatic increase in the number of nonjob or “telecommuters,” those that work from home or at least outside the organization. Inexpensive computers, the changing nature of jobs, and workers’ demands for a more flexible schedule have all contributed to this trend. Go to http://www.tjobs.com/ and look at the jobs that they offer specifically designed around telecommuting. In fact, Putnam Investments has a page dedicated to jobs available at home. Visit their site at http://www.putnaminv.com/. Then, click on “career opportunities.” You may also want to visit the International Telework Association Council’s (ITAC) site at www.workingfromhome.com. You will find many current articles on telecommuting at http://www.harveynash.com/usa/. Browse through these sites, and consider the following questions. 1. Would you consider a job that kept you at home for a significant part of the workweek? What would be the advantages of this? Disadvantages? 2. As a manager, consider the challenges of managing those who work at home or virtually out of the organization. What are your challenges? Consider, for example, how to monitor performance, motivate workers, and help them manage workplace problems. 3. Do you think the trend toward telecommuting will increase or decrease in the coming years? What impact will this have on some of the major topics in this text? Be as specific as you can by looking at the table of contents and Figure 1.5.

Internet Exercise: Nonjobs or Telecommuting

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Real Case: The Big Squeeze on Workers
On his recent family vacation in Arizona, Peter Spina spent much of his time camped out under a palm tree while his kids splashed around in the Scottsdale Princess Hotel’s luxurious pool. Spina wasn’t lounging. He was working—hammering out deals on his cell phone in a mad dash to break new accounts at Vulcan Ventures Inc., where he’s publisher of The Sporting News. Spina says the downturn has forced him to work even longer hours than he did during the boom—about 15% more. Ditto for his sales force. Whereas once he had lots of bonus money to throw around, he now tries to make up for the tough slog by bringing popsicles to the office on hot days. The added hustling is one reason his team has racked up revenue gains of 46% this year in an abysmal ad market. “They’re working longer and harder,” says Spina. Much has been made of the recent upsurge in productivity. Although recessions usually bring slides in this efficiency measure, technology has made the economy more productive than ever before. But tell that to white-collar workers, and you’re likely to hear that the gains have come on their backs. Rather than bring relief, layoff survivors say, the downturn has only socked it to them more. They complain about managing the orphaned workloads of downsized colleagues, scouring new avenues for business, and fighting for high-profile posts so if the ax falls, it won’t hit them. “What we’re discovering is that in this early stage of recovery, not only are companies making people work harder, but, believe me, some people want to,” says J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. senior economist James E. Glassman. “They’re trying to protect their job security.” That gripping desperation is easy for companies to use in their favor. Mike Hewitt, director of client services at consulting firm Aquent, says he and his staff have been bending over backwards to meet with clients who don’t have any work for them so the company can get a jump on future business and be ready to roll when the rebound kicks in. But it’s not just fear that’s motivating today’s workplace. A number of other structural changes are also helping bosses to extract maximum productivity from their ranks. From the increased use of temps, to the reclassification of hourly workers into salaried employees ineligible for overtime pay, to the rise in variable pay that puts part of workers’ paychecks at risk, companies are now able to get more out of less. It’s hard to say just how much more, given the state of statistical record-keeping. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says overall weekly hours worked have dropped—in part due to manufacturers slashing hours. But economists say it’s impossible to draw an accurate picture from the BLS data. They note that the data is flawed because it often builds in an assumption that all levels of employees work 35 hours a week—managers and hourly staff alike. To which many economists reply: Come on. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. chief economist Stephen Roach, for example, believes the BLS numbers understate the number of hours worked, therefore overstating productivity. Still, whatever the numbers say, there’s no doubt that right now employees feel they have little choice but to accept the grueling loads. Despite some evidence of a rebound, the job market in many quarters is still weak. Job cuts are no longer a last resort in hard times but an ongoing tool for matching supply with demand. This is one reason some economists predict a replay, at least initially, of the early-1990s jobless recovery. Rather than scoop up more permanent hires at the first whiff of demand, economists say CEOs are likely to be leery, especially with economic data so mixed. Many have bad memories of boom-time hiring binges in which they took on mediocre people just to fill slots and then wound up having to pay weeks of costly severance. Instead, economists say CEOs are likely to focus first on extracting even more from their existing ranks until demand reaches a breaking point. The big question now, asks Mary Hammershock, vice-president for human resources for Silicon Valley’s Blue Martini Software, is “how much longer can you get people to do this when the upside has gone away?” Already, companies are looking first to bring in contract workers that they can quickly tap and zap without paying any benefits or severance. In fact, the temps have been the fastest growing sector of employment. And they aren’t accounted for as regular employees. This helps companies that use a lot of them, like Cisco Systems Inc., to drive up revenue per employee. The growing use of the just-in-time workforce is not the only means by which companies are priming the productivity pump. Workers complain that many employers are taking advantage of outdated labor laws by misclassifying them as salaried-exempt so they can skirt overtime pay. Already, Wal-Mart Stores, Taco Bell,

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Starbucks, and U-Haul, among others, have been slapped with class actions. In the case of General Dynamics Corp., this resulted in a $100 million award that is now on appeal. At Farmer’s Insurance, employees got $90 million. Some employers are so worried about the issue that they are now doing wage-and-hour audits. Another potential productivity enhancer: incentive pay, which enables bosses to motivate people to work harder during tough times to make up for lost wages. General Electric Co. will soon start factoring customer performance into employee pay, putting an even greater chunk of compensation at risk. Under this system, if a customer’s business suffers, so does the GE employee’s paycheck. Yet even as they push existing employees, companies also have to think about what’s down the road—the likely return of tight labor markets and a replay of the 1990s’ battle for talent. Demographers and labor experts note that the recession merely masked the deep skills shortages lurking within the labor force. “It will be even worse than it was in 2000,” predicts Texas Instruments Inc. Chairman, CEO, and President Tom Engibous.

Like many CEOs, Engibous faces the tough job of balancing the need to juice profits right now with the longer term goal of cultivating his choice employees. That’s why he has launched a “re-recruiting initiative” at TI, asking workers what they need—days off, new assignments, a different boss—to keep them satisfied right now. For companies that squeeze too hard, it probably already is too late. 1. Do you agree or disagree with the feeling of many downsizing survivors that increased productivity “comes on their backs”? What does this mean and how does this have implications for managing these employees? 2. What impact can employing temporary, just-in-time workers have for employers? For existing full-time employees? For the temporary workers? 3. On balance, on the basis of this case, do you believe the challenges facing the management of human resources will be easier or more difficult in the near future? Why?

Organizational Behavior Case: How Is This Stuff Going to Help Me?
Jane Arnold wants to be a manager. She enjoyed her accounting, finance, and marketing courses. Each of these provided her with some clear-cut answers. Now the professor in her organizational behavior course is telling her that there are really very few clear-cut answers when it comes to managing people. The professor has discussed some of the emerging challenges and the historical background and ways that behavioral science concepts play a big role in the course. Jane is very perplexed. She came to school to get answers on how to be an effective manager, but this course surely doesn’t seem to be heading in that direction. 1. How would you relieve Jane’s anxiety? How is a course in organizational behavior going to make her a better manager? What implications does an evidence-based approach have? 2. Why did the professor start off with a brief overview of emerging challenges? 3. How does a course in organizational behavior differ from courses in fields such as accounting, finance, or marketing?

Organizational Behavior Case: Too Nice to People
John has just graduated from the College of Business Administration at State University and has joined his family’s small business, which employs 25 semiskilled workers. During the first week on the job, his grandfather called him in and said: “John, I’ve had a chance to observe you working with our employees for the past two months and, although I hate to, I feel I must say something. You are just too nice to people. I know they taught you that human behavior stuff at the university, but it just doesn’t work here. I remember when we discussed the Hawthorne

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studies when I was in school and everybody at the university seemed excited about them, but believe me, there is more to managing people than just being nice to them.” 1. How would you react to your grandfather’s comments if you were John? 2. Do you think John’s grandfather understood and interpreted the Hawthorne studies correctly? 3. What phases of management do you think John’s grandfather has gone through in this family business?

Do you think he understands the significance of recent trends in the environment and how the new paradigm will affect his business? 4. How would you explain to your grandfather the new perspective that is needed and how the study of an evidence-based approach to organizational behavior will help the business be successful in the new paradigm?

Organizational Behavior Case: Conceptual Model: Dream or Reality?
Hank James has been section head for the accounting group at Yake Company for 14 years. His boss, Mary Stein, feels that Hank is about ready to be moved up to the corporate finance staff, but it is company policy to send people like Hank to the University Executive Development Program before such a promotion is made. Hank has enrolled in the program; one of the first parts deals with organizational behavior. Hank felt that after 14 years of managing people, this would be a snap. However, during the discussion on organizational behavior, the professor made some comments that really bothered Hank. The professor said:
Most managers know their functional specialty but do a lousy job of managing their people. One of the problems is that just because managers have a lot of experience with people, they think they are experts. The fact is that behavioral scientists are just begin ning to understand human behavior. In addition, to effectively manage people, we also have to somehow be able to better predict and control organizational behavior. Some models are now developed and research is accumulating that we hope will help the manager better understand, predict, and manage organizational behavior.

Hank is upset by the fact that his professor apparently discounts the value of experience in managing people, and he cannot see how a conceptual framework that some professor dreamed up and some esoteric research can help him manage people better. 1. Do you think Hank is justified in his concerns after hearing the professor? What role can experience play in managing people? 2. What is the purpose of conceptual frameworks such as those presented in this chapter? How would you weigh the relative value of studying theories and research findings versus “school-of-hard-knocks” experience for the effective management of people? 3. Using the conceptual framework presented in the chapter, how would you explain to Hank that this could help him better manage people in his organization?