Contents
Organisational
Behaviour
Rationale
Organizational Studies, Organizational Behavior, and Organizational Theory are related terms for the academic study of organizations, examining them using the methods of economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, and psychology. Related practical disciplines include human resources (HR) and industrial and organizational psychology.
|
 |
Today's Videos
- Connect with us on http://www.youtube.com/finntrack
- Google's Playlists
Teaching and Learning Resources
Click on the titles below
Learning
Organizational Learning is an area of knowledge within organizational theory that studies models and theories about the way an organization learns and adapts.
In Organizational development (OD), learning is a characteristic of an adaptive organization, i.e., an organization that is able to sense changes in signals from its environment (both internal and external) and adapt accordingly. (see adaptive system). OD specialists endeavor to assist their clients to learn from experience and incorporate the learning as feedback into the planning process.
- How organizations learn
- Organizational knowledge
- Individual vs. Organizational Learning
- Learning organization
- Diffusion of innovations
- Knowledge capture
- Knowledge Management
- Knowledge organization
- knowledge transfer
- Activity Theory
- community of practice
- Learning organization
- Organizational memory
- Organizational empowerment
- Organizational engineering
- Collaborative learning
- Educational psychology
- References and further reading
Stress
Tutorials
Readings
Stress Management encompasses techniques intended to equip a person with effective coping mechanisms for dealing with psychological stress, with stress defined as a person's physiological response to an internal or external stimulus that triggers the fight-or-flight response.
 |
External links |
Individual Differences. Assessing Individual Differences
Tutorials
Readings
The science of psychology studies people at three levels of focus captured by the well known quote: “Every man is in certain respects (a) like all other men, (b) like some other men, (c) like no other man" (Murray, H.A. & C. Kluckhohn, 1953).
Individual Differences Psychology focuses on this second level of study. It is also sometimes called Differential Psychology because researchers in this area study the ways in which individual people differ in their behavior. This is distinguished from other aspects of psychology in that although psychology is ostensibly a study of individuals, modern psychologists often study groups or biological underpinnings of cognition. For example, in evaluating the effectiveness of a new therapy, the mean performance of the therapy in one group might be compared to the mean effectiveness of a placebo (or a well-known therapy) in a second, control group. In this context, differences between individuals in their reaction to the experimental and control manipulations are actually treated as errors rather than as interesting phenomena to study. This is because psychological research depends upon statistical controls that are only defined upon groups of people. Individual difference psychologists usually express their interest in individuals while studying groups by seeking dimensions shared by all individuals but upon which individuals differ.
|
 |
Learning Styles. It is commonly believed that most people favor some particular method of interacting with, taking in, and processing stimuli or information. Based on this concept, the idea of individualized "learning styles" originated in the 1970s, and has gained popularity in recent years. A learning style is the method of learning particular to an individual that is presumed to allow that individual to learn best. It has been proposed that teachers should assess the learning styles of their students and adapt their classroom methods to best fit each student's learning style.
- Individual differences psychology
- Education
- Montessori method
- Learning
- Constructivism (learning theory)
- Metacognition
- Cognitive styles
- Big Five personality traits
- Forer effect
- References
- Infed's David A. Kolb on Experiential Learning
- online VARK Learning Style Test
- Learnativity: Learning Styles
- Introduction to learning styles by Ann Harris, Ferl, Becta
- The effect of Learning Styles, Work attitude and Motivation on Lifelong Learning
- Ageless Learner
- Big Dog's ISD Page
- NC State University (Online Test)
- Reaching the second tier learning and teachong styles in college science education
- Learning styles and strategies - Richard M. Felder
- University of Minnesota resources on learning styles
- Myers-Brigg and learning styles
- Tutorial on learning styles
- Indiana State University learning styles site
- Paragon learning styles inventory
- James Madison University learning styles site
- University of South Dakota learning styles resources
- Learning Styles Explained
- Scientific and social significance of assessing individual differences: "sinking shafts at a few critical points".
 |
Journal of Individual Differences |
Motivation and Job Satisfaction
Tutorials
Readings
Job satisfaction describes how content an individual is with his or her job. It is a relatively recent term since in previous centuries the jobs available to a particular person were often predetermined by the occupation of that person's parent. There are a variety of factors that can influence a person's level of job satisfaction; some of these factors include the level of pay and benefits, the perceived fairness of the promotion system within a company, the quality of the working conditions, leadership and social relationships, and the job itself (the variety of tasks involved, the interest and challenge the job generates, and the clarity of the job description/requirements).
The happier people are within their job, the more satisfied they are said to be. Job satisfaction is not the same as motivation, although it is clearly linked. Job design aims to enhance job satisfaction and performance, methods include job rotation, job enlargement and job enrichment. Other influences on satisfaction include the management style and culture, employee involvement, empowerment and autonomous work groups. Job satisfaction is a very important attitude which is frequently measured by organisations. The most common way of measurement is the use of rating scales where employees report their reactions to their jobs. Questions relate to rate of pay, work responsibilities, variety of tasks, promotional opportunities the work itself and co-workers. Some questioners ask yes or no questions while others ask to rate satisfaction on 1-5 scale (where 1 represents "not at all satisfied" and 5 represents "extremely satisfied").
External links
|
 |
Social Interaction
Tutorials
Readings
In social science, a social relation or social interaction refers to a relationship between two (i.e. a dyad), three (i.e. a triad) or more individuals (e.g. a social group). Social relations, derived from individual agency, form the basis of the social structure. To this extent social relations are always the basic object of analysis for social scientists. Fundamental enquiries into the nature of social relations are to be found in the work of the classical sociologists, for instance, in Max Weber's theory of social action. Further categories must be established in the abstract in order to form observations and conduct social research, such as Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (lit. "Community and Society") or "collective consciousness".
Disputes over the conduct of investigating social interaction relate to the core debates in sociology and the other social sciences: positivism (quantitative research) against antipositivism (qualitative research), structure against agency, structural functionalism against conflict theory, as well as the philosophy of social science itself.
Group and Inter-Group Behaviour
Tutorials
Readings
Group behaviour (or group behavior) in sociology refers to the situations where people interact in large or small groups. The field of group dynamics deals with small groups that may reach consensus and act in a coordinated way. Groups of a large number of people in a given area may act simultaneously to achieve a goal that differs from what individuals would do acting alone (herd behaviour). A large group (a crowd or mob) is likely to show examples of group behaviour when people gathered in a given place and time act in a similar way—for example, joining a protest or march, participating in a fight or acting patriotically.
Special forms of large group behaviour are:
2. spectators - when a group of people gathered together on purpose to participate in an event like theatre play, cinema movie, football match, a concert, etc.
3. public - exception to the rule that the group must occupy the same physical place. People watching same channel on television may react in the same way, as they are occupying the same type of place - in front of television - although they may physically be doing this all over the world.
4. Group behaviour differs from mass actions which refers to people behaving similarly on a more global scale (for example, shoppers in different shops), while group behaviour refers usually to people in one place. If the group behaviour is coordinated, then it is called group action.
5. Swarm intelligence is a special case of group behaviour, referring to the interaction between a group of agents in order to fulfil a given task. This type of group dynamics has received much attention by the soft computing community in the form of the particle swarm optimization family of algorithms.
- Why do people join groups
- Defining characteristics of groups
- Types of groups
- Group structure
- Stages of group development
- Intergroup dynamics and behaviour
- Intergroup conflict
- Improving the quality of intergroup relations
External links
- Managing Behaviour in Groups
- The Decision Maker Matters: Individual versus Group Behaviour in Experimental Beauty-Contest Games
Leadership
Tutorials
Readings
A Complete Guide to Leadership
- Concepts of Leadership (definition, principles, factors, process, etc.)
- The Four Pillars: Leadership, Management, Command, and Control
- Leadership Models (Four Framework Approach and the Managerial Grid)
- Human Behavior: Part I (Hierarchy of Needs, Hygiene and Motivation Factors, Theory X/Y)
- Human Behavior: Part II (ERG and Expectancy Theory)
- Leading (goal setting, supervision, inspiring, learning, powering and relationships)
- Direction (planning with the Shewhart Cycle, problem solving)
- Communication (active listening, feedback, speaking, nonverbal behaviors)
- Motivation (drive, counseling, value-based self-governance, performance
- Character (traits, attributes, principles)
- Leadership Styles (authoritarian, participative, delegative, forces)
- Growing A Team (teamwork, team leadership)
- Matrix Teams (cross-functional teams, forming, storming, norming, performing)
- Team Leadership Model (Hill's Team Model, interventions)
- Diversity (Diversity Continuum)
- Time Management (planning, big picture)
- Change (acceptance, leading the change)
- Learning Organization ( The Fifth Discipline, includes Learning Organization Profile)
- Meetings (preparing, conducting, follow-up)
- Mentoring (types of mentoring, finding a mentor, development, creating a mentorship program)
- Organizational Behavior (elements, models, Organization Development, action learning)
- Presentations (preparing for, voice, body, nerves)
- Strategy & Tactics (command and control)
- Visioning (creating visions, examples)
- OODA (observe, orient, decide, act)
- Transformational Leadership (New)
- Ethos and Leadership (Warrior Ethos for organizations)
- Horizontal Leadership: Bridging the Information Gap (moving beyond vertical leadership)
- After Action Review (steps, guidelines, and strategies for conducting an AAR)
External links
Work - The Classical Approach
Tutorials
Readings
Wage labour (or wage labor) is the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer, where the worker sells their labour under a formal or informal employment contract. These transactions usually occur in a labour market where wages are market determined.[1][2] In exchange for the wages paid, the work product generally becomes the undifferentiated property of the employer, except for special cases such as the vesting of intellectual property patents in the United States where patent rights are usually vested in the original personal inventor. A wage labourer is a person whose primary means of income is from the selling of his or her labour in this way.
In modern mixed economies such as that of the OECD countries, it is currently the dominant form of work arrangement. Although most work occurs following this structure, the wage work arrangements of CEOs, professional employees, and professional contract workers are sometimes conflated with class assignments, so that "wage labour" is considered to apply only to unskilled, semi-skilled or manual labour.
Marxism and the political economy of Paul Sweezy
Conflict and Consent in Work
Tutorials
Readings
Workplace conflict is a specific type of conflict that occurs in workplaces. The conflicts that arise in workplaces may be shaped by the unique aspects of this environment, including the long hours many people spend at their workplace, the hierarchical structure of the organization, and the difficulties (e.g. financial consequences) that may be involved in switching to a different workplace. In this respect, workplaces share much in common with schools, especially pre-college educational institutions in which students are less autonomous.
|
External links |
 |
Alternative Work Design
Tutorials
Readings
In organizational development (OD), work design is the application of Socio-Technical Systems principles and techniques to the humanization of work.
The aims of work design to improve job satisfaction, to improve through-put, to improve quality and to reduced employee problems, e.g., grievances, absenteeism.
External links
Structure and Control in Organizations
Tutorials
Readings
An organizational structure consists of activities such as task allocation, coordination and supervision, which are directed towards the achievement of organizational aims.[1] It can also be considered as the viewing glass or perspective through which individuals see their organization and its environment.[2]
Organizations are a variant of clustered entities.
An organization can be structured in many different ways, depending on their objectives. The structure of an organization will determine the modes in which it operates and performs.
Organizational structure allows the expressed allocation of responsibilities for different functions and processes to different entities such as the branch, department, workgroup and individual.
Organizational structure affects organizational action in two big ways. First, it provides the foundation on which standard operating procedures and routines rest. Second, it determines which individuals get to participate in which decision-making processes, and thus to what extent their views shape the organization’s actions.[2]
- Corporation
- Cross-functional team
- Group development
- Leadership
- Management
- Management consulting
- Organization development
- Organizational culture
- Parent company
- Team building
- Value network
- Text and Conversation Theory
- References
External links
- Organizational Structure, Environment and Performance: The Role of Strategic Choice
- Relating Porter's Business Strategies to Environment and Structure: Analysis and Performance Implications
Structure and Performance in Organizations
Tutorials
Readings
Organizational performance comprises the actual output or results of an organization as measured against its intended outputs (or goals and objectives).
According to Richard et al. (2009) organizational performance encompasses three specific areas of firm outcomes: (a) financial performance (profits, return on assets, return on investment, etc.); (b) product market performance (sales, market share, etc.); and (c) shareholder return (total shareholder return, economic value added, etc.).[1] The term Organizational effectiveness is broader.
Specialists in many fields are concerned with organizational performance including strategic planners, operations, finance, legal, and organizational development.
In recent years, many organizations have attempted to manage organizational performance using the balanced scorecard methodology where performance is tracked and measured in multiple dimensions such as:
- financial performance (e.g. shareholder return)
- customer service
- social responsibility (e.g. corporate citizenship, community outreach)
- employee stewardship
See also
External links
- Strategy, Structure, and Performance in Product Development: Observations from the Auto Industry
- Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS)
- Bargaining Structure, Corporatism and Macroeconomic Performance
Managerial Processes and Change
Tutorials
Readings
Management process is a process of planning and controlling the performance or execution of any type of activity, such as:
a project (project management process) or
a process, process management process, sometimes referred to as the process performance measurement and management system
The organization's senior management is responsible for carrying out its management process. However, this is not always the case for all management processes, for example, it is the responsibility of the project manager to carry out a project management process.[1]
See also
- project
- list of management topics
- list of project management topics
- project management
- project planning
- Human Resource Management Systems
Change management is a structured approach to shifting/transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. It is an organizational process aimed at helping employees to accept and embrace changes in their current business environment.[1]. In project management, change management refers to a project management process where changes to a project are formally introduced and approved.[2]
Example of Organizational Change
- Mission changes,
- Strategic changes,
- Operational changes (including Structural changes),
- Technological changes,
- Changing the attitudes and behaviors of personnel,
As a multidisciplinary practice that has evolved as a result of scholarly research, Organizational Change Management should begin with a systematic diagnosis of the current situation in order to determine both the need for change and the capability to change. The objectives, content, and process of change should all be specified as part of a Change Management plan.
Change Management processes may include creative marketing to enable communication between change audiences, but also deep social understanding about leadership’s styles and group dynamics. As a visible track on transformation projects, Organizational Change Management aligns groups’ expectations, communicates, integrates teams and manages people training. It makes use of performance metrics, such as financial results, operational efficiency, leadership commitment, communication effectiveness, and the perceived need for change to design appropriate strategies, in order to avoid change failures or solve troubled change projects.
Successful change management is more likely to occur if the following are included:
1. Benefits management and realization to define measurable stakeholder aims, create a business case for their achievement (which should be continuously updated), and monitor assumptions, risks, dependencies, costs, return on investment, dis-benefits and cultural issues affecting the progress of the associated work.
2. Effective Communications that informs various stakeholders of the reasons for the change (why?), the benefits of successful implementation (what is in it for us, and you) as well as the details of the change (when? where? who is involved? how much will it cost? etc.).
3. Devise an effective education, training and/or skills upgrading scheme for the organization.
4. Counter resistance from the employees of companies and align them to overall strategic direction of the organization.
5. Provide personal counseling (if required) to alleviate any change related fears.
6. Monitoring of the implementation and fine-tuning as required.
External links
- Explaining Development and Change in Organizations
- Business Process Change: A Study of Methodologies, Techniques and Tools
- Managerial Response to Changing Environments: Perspectives on Problem Sensing from Social Cognition
- Building the entrepreneurial corporation: New organizational processes, new managerial tasks
Organizational Culture
Tutorials
Readings
Organisational culture has been given a lot of attention in recent years. Culture consists of the shared values of an organisation - the beliefs and norms that affect every aspect of work life, from how people greet each other to how major policy decisions are made. The strength of a culture determines how difficult or easy it is to know how to behave in the organisation.
This note is a summary of Charles Handy's model describing the 4 main types of corporate culture, taken from his book "Gods of Management".
Handy - Gods of Management
Handy suggests that we can classify organisations into a broad range of four cultures. The formation of ‘culture’ will depend upon a whole host of factors including company history, ownership, organisation structure, technology, critical business incidents and environment, etc.
The four cultures he discusses are Power’, ‘Role’, ‘Task’ and 'People’. The purpose of the analysis is to assess the degree to which the predominant culture reflects the real needs and constraints of the organisation. Handy uses diagrammatic representation to illustrate his ideas:
Read More ...
Power and Organizations
Tutorials
Readings
Power is the ability to get what you want. As what you want is often constrained by other people, the use of power often includes changing or influencing what others think, believe and do. It is at the heart of all techniques of changing minds.
Further information on power:
- French and Raven's: five forms of power are the most common classification.
- Hobbes and Power: Thomas Hobbes' 17th century view.
- Power Corrupts: And absolute power easily corrupts absolutely.
- Power Enhancers: that increase the efficacy of your power.
- Powerlessness: How we convince ourselves.
- Power Types: that extent and simplify other lists.
- Soft Power: Being subtle, yet powerful.
- Stages of Personal Power: From powerless to wisdom.
- Strategic Contingencies Theory: become irreplaceable.
- Three Dimensions of Power: channels, intent and deliberateness.
- Toffler's Three Forms of Power: Violence, wealth and knowledge.
- Powerful People: What powerful people do.
- Power in Organizations: How it happens in companies.
- Power and Lies: Powerful people can lie more.
Read More ...
Markets and Occupations
Tutorials
- Markets and Occupations
- Labour Markets
- Labour Markets, Wages and Industrial Relations
- Labour Market Flexibility
Readings
Labor economics seeks to understand the functioning and dynamics of the market for labor. Labor markets function through the interaction of workers and employers. Labor economics looks at the suppliers of labor services (workers), the demands of labor services (employers), and attempts to understand the resulting pattern of wages, employment, and income.
In economics, labor is a measure of the work done by human beings. It is conventionally contrasted with such other factors of production as land and capital. There are theories which have developed a concept called human capital (referring to the skills that workers possess, not necessarily their actual work), although there are also counter posing macro-economic system theories that think human capital is a contradiction in terms.
- Compensation and measurement
- Demand for labour and wage determination
- Two ways of analysing labour markets
- The macroeconomics of labour markets
- Neoclassical microeconomics of labour markets
- Information approaches
- Search models
- Criticisms of labor economics and recent research
- Ageing workers EU-OSHA
- The Labour Economics Gateway - Collection of Internet sites that are of interest to labour economists
- Labour & Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, Changing Labour Markets Project
- W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research
- ILO: Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM). 5. ed. Sept. 2007
- LabourFair Resources - Link to Fair Labour Practices
- Labour Research Network - Labour research programme treating various fields
- The Labour Market and Industrial Relations
Activity
Gender and Employment
Tutorials
Readings
Equal opportunity, or equality of opportunity, is a controversial[1] decision-making standard[2] without a precise definition[3][4] involving fair choices within the public sphere.[4] While it generally describes “open and fair competition” with equal chances for achieving sought–after jobs or positions[5] as well as an absence of discrimination,[6][5][7] the concept is elusive with a “wide range of meanings.”[8] It is hard to measure, and implementation poses problems[4] as well as disagreements about what to do.[9] It is being applied to increasingly wider areas beyond employment[6][10] including lending, housing, voting rights, and elsewhere.[2]
The essence of the equality of opportunity is a stipulation that all people should be treated similarly, unhampered by artificial barriers or prejudices or preferences, except when particular “distinctions can be explicitly justified.”[2] The aim is that important jobs should go to those “the most qualified”––persons most likely to perform ably in a given task––and not to go to persons for arbitrary or irrelevant reasons, such as circumstances of birth, upbringing, friendship ties to whoever is in power,[4] religion, sex,[11] ethnicity,[11] race, caste,[5] or “involuntary personal attributes” such as disability, age, or sexual preferences.[5][12] Chances for advancement are open to everybody interested[13] such that they have “an equal chance to compete within the framework of goals and the structure of rules established.”[14] The idea is to remove arbitrariness from the selection process and base it on some “pre-agreed basis of fairness, with the assessment process being related to the type of position,”[4] and emphasizing procedural and legal means.[5][10] It is opposed to nepotism[4] and plays a role in whether a social structure is seen as legitimate.[4][5][15] People with differing political viewpoints see it differently.[16] The concept is debated in different academic fields such as political philosophy, sociology and psychology.
In the classical sense, the equality of opportunity is closely aligned with the concept of equality before the law and ideas of meritocracy.[17]
Generally the terms “the equality of opportunity” and “equal opportunity” are interchangeable, with occasional slight variations: “the equality of opportunity” has more of a sense of being an abstract political concept, while “equal opportunity” is sometimes used as an adjective, usually in the context of employment regulations, to identify an employer, a hiring approach, or law. Equal opportunity provisions have been written into regulations and have been debated in courtrooms.[18] It is sometimes conceived as a legal right against discrimination.[19][20][5] It is an ideal which has become increasingly "widespread"[9] in Western nations during the last several centuries and is intertwined with social mobility, most often with upward mobility rags to riches stories:
The coming President of France is the grandson of a shoemaker. The actual President is a peasant's son. His predecessor again began life in a humble way in the shipping business. There is surely equality of opportunity under the new order in the old nation.
—The Montreal Gazette, 1906[21]
See also
- Universal access
- Meritocracy
- Egalitarianism
- Simultaneous Recruiting of New Graduates
- Equality of outcome
- Asset-based egalitarianism
- Affirmative action
- Affirmative action in the United States
- Women and children first (saying)
- Equality of autonomy
- Bona fide occupational qualifications
External links
United Kingdom
United States
Activity
Technology in the Workplace
Tutorials
Readings
New Systems of Work Organization
Tutorials
Readings
Systems theory is the [[system organization] study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research. The term does not yet have a well-established, precise meaning, but systems theory can reasonably be considered a specialization of systems thinking, a generalization of systems science, a systems approach. The term originates from Bertalanffy's General System Theory (GST) and is used in later efforts in other fields, such as the action theory of Talcott Parsons and the system-theory of Niklas Luhmann.
In this context the word systems is used to refer specifically to self-regulating systems, i.e. that are self-correcting through feedback. Self-regulating systems are found in nature, including the physiological systems of our body, in local and global ecosystems, and in climate - and in human learning processes.
- The Rise and Decline of Fordism and the Sea-Change in the Technological Advantage of Nations
- Systems theory at Principia Cybernetica Web
Organizations
- International Society for the System Sciences
- New England Complex Systems Institute
- System Dynamics Society
- Institute of Global Dynamic Systems, Canberra, Australia
Recommended Text
 |
Principles
of Organizational Behaviour Check the availability and buy your books from our Bookshop. |
 |
Managing
Behavior in Organizations, 4/E Jerald Greenberg
Check the availability and buy your books from our Bookshop. |
 |
On
the Pragmatics of Social Interaction - Jürgen Habermas Check
the availability and buy your books from our Bookshop. |
 |
Communication
and Power in Organizations: Discourse, Idealogy, and Domination Check the availability and buy your books from our Bookshop. |
Resources
- Historical Background of Organizational Behavior
- Introduction to Organizational Behaviour
- Organizational Behaviour
- Organizational Behaviour
 |
Journal
of Organizational Behavior
Copyright
© 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |