Case Study#1

Dressing down for success

It is so hard to dress for success these days. For Jack Steeg, Vice President for Sales at the Internet-partner division of Dell Computer in Austin, Texas, choosing what to wear to work used to be a no-brainer. He would put on a white shirt, tie, and suite and be done with it. But with the introduction of casual dress rules, picking an office wardrobe has become a major task. That is why Steeg, 51, recently hired image consultant Sherry Maysonave to give him some pointers on choosing casual outfits that befit his station.

It is the ultimate sartorial irony: Less restrictive dress codes were supposed to make life more comfortable for everyone. Instead, with the old rules gone, many people are in a state of dress-down confusion. As a result, companies are refining their dress policies or hiring consultants such as Maysonave to help.

Of course, there are some general guidelines that will keep you from getting too far off the mark. Fashion experts say men usually cannot go wrong with a sports coat in muted colours and flannel or gabardine trousers. Shirts, whether button-down or knit pullover, must have a collar. Women can wear pantsuits or tailored paints with a sweater set.

Beyond that, the rules get fuzzy. For one thing, they vary by region and industry. Not surprisingly, the East Coast and Midwest are more conservative than the West Coast. About 50% of the financial, insurance and real estate companies allow casual dress once a week, but just 34% permit it all the time, according to the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM). The SHRM says 44% of all businesses have adopted all-casual, all the time policies, up from 36% in 1998.

Companies have also learnt that if they do not lay down specific policies, the word ‘dress casual’ can be subject to wide interpretation. Three years ago, when Development Counselors expanded its Casual Friday dress-code to five days a week, its 25 employees were delighted. But then, they started wearing just anything they wanted –torn jeans, gym clothes, tube tops. Things got so out of hand that management formed a committee to devise an official dress policy. It then attached the new guidelines to employee handbook.

Tow years ago, the Austin office of Kennedy-Wilson International, a Los Angeles commercial real estate firm, adopted a casual Friday policy and sent out a brief statement about appropriate dress, nixing such items as sundresses and jogging suits. More recently, when the introduced a new arrangement –business casual Monday through Thursday and plain casual on Friday, they revised the requirements considerably. Example: Monday through Thursday men have to wear shirts with collars and muted patterns; Friday, Hawaiian shirts are OK.

When companies turn to image consultants, they are usually seeking guidance for more than just deciding whether, say, open toed shoes are acceptable. They also must make sure policies are not potentially discriminating. Ideally, that means that if you indicate specific restrictions t women, you ought to do the same for men, and vice versa. Sometimes, these things are held up legally for weeks. Some consultants conduct seminars for managers in how to enforce the rules. Isbecque, for example, leads role playing exercises, holding up photographs of specific infractions and asking participants to demonstrate how they would confront a guilty employee. The bottom line is that although suits and tie may never regain their once ubiquitous presence in the workplace, companies are stopping well short of anything that goes.

Questions for discussion:
Discuss the issue of dress code in contemporary organizations.
Present arguments in for and against dress code at the workplace.
From perception point of view, why do you think there is such a variation in how employees interpret dress policies? What, if anything, should be done for the differing perceptions?
How the people in India would respond to casual dress policy at the workplace?

(Courtesy: Organizational Behaviour by Fred Luthans, (10th edition) McGrawHill International Edition, 2005)

OB Handout # 2

Perceptip and Attribution

What is perception?
According to Stephen P Robbins, Perception is a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment. The term originated from a Latin word ‘percepio’ meaning receiving, collecting, action of taking possession, apprehension with the mind or senses.

Fred Luthans has defned Perception as a complicated interactions of selection, organization and interpretation of stimuli. According to Luthans, the perceptual process comprises of External environment—Confrontation—Registration—Interpretation—Feedback—Behaviour—Consequence.


Perceptual Process

Objects in the environment—Observation—Perceptual Selection—Perceptual Organization—Interpretation—Response

Perceptual Selectivity
Perceptual selection is the process by which people filter out irrelevant or less significant information so that they can deal with the most important matters.

Perceptual Selection is determined by

External Factors

Internal Factors


External Factors affecting perceptual selection:

Size: The larger the size, the more likely it is to be perceived. The tallest person in the office will invariably be noticed.
Intensity: The more intense an external factor (bright light, loud noise, high pitch sound etc.) the more likely it is to be perceived. One may notice that the TV commercials always have high pitch as compared to normal telecast.
Contrast: External factors that stand out against the background or things that are not which people expect are more likely to be perceived.
Motion: A moving factor is more likely to be perceived than stationary factor. Films (motion pictures) attract people more than a static picture.
Repetition: A repeated factor is more likely to be noticed. Marketing managers use this principle in trying to get attention of the prospective customers.
Novelty and familiarity: Either novelty or familiarity will can attract attention. People would quickly notice a person riding an elephant on a busy street in Delhi. On the other hand, one is likely to spot a familiar face in a crowd or a familiar voice even if there is a lot of noise and confusion.

A combination of these or similar factor may be operating at any time to affect perception. Along with the internal factors, they determine whether any particular stimulus is more or less likely to be noticed.


Internal factors affecting perceptual selection:

Personality: Personality has an interesting influence on what and how people perceive. For example, conscientious people tend to pay more attention to external environmental cues than does a less conscientious person. Less conscientious persons are impulsive, careless, and irresponsible. They see their environment as hectic and unstable which affects the way they make perceptual selections. On the other hand, more conscientious people organize their perceptions into neat categories, allowing themselves to retrieve data quickly and in an organized manner. In other words, they are careful, methodical, and disciplined in making perceptual selections.


Learning: Learning determines the development of perceptual sets. A perceptual set is an expectation of a particular interpretation based on past experiences with the same or an identical object. In organizational settings, past experiences of the managers and employees influence their perceptions to a great extent.

Motivation: A person’s most urgent needs and desires at any particular time can influence perception. People perceive things that promise to help satisfy their needs and that they have found rewarding in the past. Also, according to Pollyanna principle, people process pleasant event more efficiently and accurately than they do unpleasant events. For example, an employee who receives both positive and negative feedback during the appraisal meeting may more easily and clearly remember the positive statements than the negative ones.

Perceptual Organization

Figure-ground: Perceived objects stand out as separable from their general background. In the context of organizations, a company may import a new technology in order to compete in the globalized economy. Here import of a new technology is a figure and global competitive environment is the background. The employees will immediately notice the installation of new technology whereas the global competitive environment is not visible by naked eyes.
Perceptual grouping: There is a general tendency among individuals to group several stimuli together into a recognizable pattern. There are certain underlying uniformities in grouping. When simple constellations of stimuli are presented to people, they tend to group them together by closure, continuity, proximity, and similarity.

Closure: An individual may perceive a whole while one actually does not exists. The person’s perceptual process closes the gaps that are unfilled by from sensory inputs. In a formal organization, employees may either see a ‘whole’ that does not exits or not be able to put the pieces together into a ‘whole’ that does exists. For example, head of a project team may take the view that the entire team agrees to his plan of action whereas there are differing views among the team members, which remains unarticulated in a formal manner. On the other hand, a functional team might view/perceive that their objectives are the objectives of the whole company.
Continuity: An individual tend to perceive continuous lines/patterns. This leads to inflexible thinking on the part of organizational members (both managers and employees). Thus, only the obvious, continuous patterns or relationships are perceived. For example, a new design for some production process or product may be limited to obvious flows or continuous lines/patterns. New innovative ideas or designs may not be perceived.
Proximity: A group of stimuli that are close together will be perceived as a whole pattern of parts belonging together. For example, several employees in an organization may be identified as a single group because of physical proximity. Several workers who work on a particular process may be viewed as a single whole. If the output is low and the supervisor reports a number of grievances from the group, the management may perceive that all the workers working on that particular process are trouble makers whereas in some of them might be loyal and dedicated employees.
Similarity: The greater the similarity of stimuli, the greater is the tendency to perceive them as a common group. Similarity is conceptually related to proximity but in most cases stronger than proximity. In an organization, all employees who wear blue collars may be perceived as a common group, when in reality, each employee is a unique individual. This might also lead to perceptual error termed as stereotyping.

Perceptual Constancy: There are two issues. While objective reality of stimuli remains unchanged, people’s subjective reality also remains constant. That is, the individual is likely to give meaning to stimuli in the same way whenever exposed to them unless and until objective reality has been revealed more broadly by way of undoing the perceptual errors. For example, a manager in the company who believes that female employees are poor performers would continue to have the same perception until and unless the latter prove that they are better than their male colleagues.

Perceptual Context: It gives meaning and value to simple stimuli in the environment. The organizational culture and structure provide the primary context in which workers and managers perceive things. Thus, a verbal order, an e-mail message, a new policy, a suggestion, a raised eyebrow, a pat on the back takes on special meaning and value when placed in the context of work organization.

Perceptual Errors:

Accuracy of judgment:
Similarity error: People are predisposed towards those having similar traits, socio-economic-cultural background.
Contrast error: People tend to compare among the available resources and thus arrive at a conclusion that might be far from the objective reality.
Race/gender/age bias: People’s perception may be tempered by their prejudices vis-à-vis race, gender, and age.
First impression error: People may hold a long-term view about a person or thing based on first impression.

Perceptual defense: People tend to defend the way they perceive things. Once established, a person’s way of viewing the world may become highly resistant to change. Sometimes, perceptual defense may have negative consequences. This perceptual error can result in manager’s inability to perceive the need to be creative in solving problems. As a result, the individual simply proceeds as in the past even in the face of evidence that business as usual is not accomplishing anything worthwhile.

Stereotyping: It is the belief that all members of a specific groups share similar traits and behaviour. Most often, a person is put into a stereotype because the perceiver knows only the overall category to which the person belongs. However, because each individual is unique, the real traits of the person are generally quite different from those that stereotype would suggest.

Halo effect: Under halo effect, a person is perceived on the basis of a single trait. It generally occurs during performance appraisal where the supervisor rates an employee on the basis of only one trait e.g. intelligence, punctuality, cooperativeness appearance etc.

Projection: It is the tendency of seeing one’s own traits in others. Thus, individuals project their own feelings, personality characteristics attitudes, or motives onto others. Projection may be especially strong for undesirable traits that the perceivers possess but fail to recognize in themselves. People whose personality traits include stingyness, obstinacy, and disorderliness tend to rate others higher on these traits than do people who do not have these traits.

(Keep watching for updates)

OB Handout # 1

Introduction to Organization

(Students are requested to study the textbooks by Fred Luthans and Stephen P Robbins for a better understanding of the subject)

What is an Organization?
Organization is a consciously coordinated social unit, composed of a group of people, which functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve common goal or a set of goals.

Organization is a collection of people who work together to achieve individual or organizational goals.

Organization is group of people with specific responsibilities acting together for achieving specific purpose.

Organization is a social arrangement that pursues collective goals.

Organization is a collection of people working together in a division of labour to achieve common purpose.

While Henry Fayol emphasized that the purpose of an organization was to get work done in a specialized, machine-like function, Peter Drucker proposed that ‘the organization is above all, social, it is people’.

According to Herbert Simon, an Organization influences its members by
Division of Labour
Standard Practices
Decision making
Communication
Training

What is behaviour?
Behaviour is the pattern of how a person responds to a stimulus.

Responses can be influenced by
Culture: the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization. These shared patterns identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group.
Attitude: a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's like or dislike for an item; mental position relative to a way of thinking or being. The current popular usage of attitude implies a negative mindset, a "chip on the shoulder" behavior, and an inner anger toward the prevailing majority of thought.
Emotion: a feeling that is private and subjective; a state of psychological arousal an expression or display of distinctive somatic and autonomic responses.
Values: beliefs of a person or social group in which they have an emotional investment (either for or against something)
Ethics: response based on what is right; the process of determining how one should hold the interests of various stakeholders, taking into account moral values/principles
Authority: the power or right to give orders or make decisions
Coercion: obtaining a response by use force; compelling a person to behave in an involuntary way (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats/intimidation
Persuasion: obtaining a response by convincing a person; the process of guiding people toward the adoption of an idea, attitude, or action by rational and symbolic (though not always logical) means. It is strategy of problem-solving relying on "appeals" rather than force.
Genetics: inherited from parents; pertaining to genes or any of their effects.

What is Organizational Behaviour?

A field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups and structures have on behaviour within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge towards improving an organization’s effectiveness.
–Stephen P Robbins

Organizational Behaviour is directly concerned with the understanding, prediction and control of human behaviour in organizations.
–Fred Luthans

An academic discipline concerned with understanding and describing human behaviour in an organizational environment. (This definition seeks to shed light on the whole complex human factor in organizations by identifying causes and effects of behaviour)
–Keith Davis

A systematic study of the nature of organizations: how they begin, grow, and develop and their influence on individuals, groups, organizations and institutions.
–Joe Kelly

A field that seeks knowledge of behaviour in organizational settings by systematically studying individual, group and organizational processes.
–Baron & Greenberg

The academic discipline of Organizational Behavior encompasses three broad areas:
Behavior of People in Organizations
OB draws on psychology, anthropology and sociology to gain insight into the behavior of individuals in organizational settings. Topics studied include:
perception, cognition, learning
personality and motivation
leadership, power, conformity, communication
decision making
Organizational Structure
Organizations consist of people organized to achieve organizational goals (like manufacture cars). One of the most important strategic elements of an organization is its structure: how the people are arranged so as to produce what the organization produces. Topics include:
task identification and division of labor
departmentation
coordination and control mechanisms
processes and procedures, such as promotion, hiring policies, compensation
organizational form (e.g., bureaucracy)
size
centralization of decision-making
the relationships among these variables
Behaviour of organizations
Just as we can study the interactions of individuals with the organization and with each other, we can also study the interactions of organizations with their environments, which include individual citizens and other organizations including the government. Some of the behaviors of organizations that we are interested in include:
adoption of new practices such as
downsizing
team-based structure
domestic partner benefits (e.g., partners of gay employees get full medical coverage)
re-engineering
environmental protection ("green" practices)
adaptation to changing conditions
global competition
increasing pace of technological change
changing social structure (e.g., status of women)

Why to study Organizational Behaviour?

Organizational Behaviour facilitates the process of explaining, understanding, predicting, maintaining and changing employee behaviour in an organizational setting.

Organizational Behaviour focuses on five levels of analysis:
Individual
Inter-personal
Group
Organizational
Environmental

Study of Organizational Behaviour becomes important because of broad nature and scope of the subject:
Organizational Behavioour is Inter-disciplinary: It integrates knowledge from various relevant disciplines e.g. Psychology, Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology, Economics, Medical Science, Engineering etc.

Organizational Behaviour is an Applied Science: It is oriented towards understanding the forces that affect behaviour so that their influences can be predicted, monitored and guided towards better and effective functioning of the organization.

Organizational Behaviour uses Scientific Methods: It follwos the scientific methods and uses logical theory in its investigation and answering the research questions. It is empirical, interpretative, critical and creative science.

Behavioural Orientation: It is directly connected with the human side of management. More precisely, it looks at all the management functions from behavioural perspective.

Contingency Approach: There are few absolutes in Organizational Behaviour. The approach is directed towards developing managerial actions that are most appropriate for a specific situation.

Challenges and Opportunities for Organizational Behaviour

Responding to globalization
Shifting Work/Employment Relationships
Work-life balance
Empowering people
Ethical behaviour
Responding to labour shortage
Improving people skill
Managing workforce diversity
Improving Quality and Productivity

Shifting Work-Employment Relationship
Robotized workplaces
Unmanned workstation
Officeless work
Open 24 hours, 24X7
Contract for work –Contract of work
Employed worker—Independent Contractor
Permanent—Temporary
Office—HomeShifting Work-Employment Relationship
Fixed—Flexible working hours
Jobs as property—Jobs as prosperity
Lifetime employment—Lifetime employability
Single task/career—multiple task career
Individual—Team
Functional—Cross-functional
Managers–Facilitators
Autonomous hierarchies—Independent Partnerships
Employee as a servant—Employee as a partner
Loyalty—Competence
Control—Commitment
Direction—Empowerment

Theoretical Framework of Organizational Behaviour

Behavioural Framework:
Behaviour can be best explained in terms of stimulus—Response. That is, a particular stimulus will lead to a particular response. However, responses can be conditioned or trained by presenting conditioned stimulus/consequences.

Classical Conditioning: Ivan Pavlov and John Watson developed this theory. According to this theory, learning/conditioning takes place when Stimulus-Response connection is established. Classical conditioning may be defined as a process in which a neutral stimulus, when repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus, becomes a conditioned stimulus that elicits a conditioned response.

This may be explained as under:
Unconditioned Stimulus—Unconditioned Response
Conditioned stimulus—Conditioned Response.

Ivan Pavlov developed the theory of classical conditioning on the basis of his famous experiment with dog. Whenever he presented meat powder (Unconditioned Stimulus) to the dog, it salivated (Unconditioned Response). The dog did not salivate when a bell rung (Neutral Stimulus/Conditioned Stimulus). Later, Pavlov rang the bell (Conditioned Stimulus) whenever he presented meat powder (Unconditioned Stimulus) to the dog. He repeated the exercise several times. Afterwards, Pavlov rang the bell (Conditioned Stimulus) without presenting the meat powder (Unconditioned Stimulus) and found that the dog actually salivated (Conditioned Response).

Critics of Classical Conditioning theory say that this theory at best explains reflexive (involuntary/automatic/impulsive) behaviour.

Operant Conditioning: B F Skinner developed Operant Conditioning theory in order to overcome the weaknesses of Classical Conditioning. In Operant Conditioning, responses to a particular stimulus occur on the basis on consequences of that response. Thus there is strong association between consequence and response to a particular stimulus.

This may be explained as under:
Stimulus—Response—Consequences—Future Response on the basis of consequence

Consequences can be any of the following:
Something good can begin or be presented
Something good can end or be taken away
Something bad can begin or be presented
Something bad can end or be taken away
Consequences have to be immediate and clearly linked to the responses.

Behavioural framework debunked the Freudian proposition that behaviour came from unconscious.

Cognitive Framework:
Cognition means a mental process involved in knowing, learning and understanding things. Edward Tolman propounded this theory in 1940s. According to cognitive Framework, cognition precedes response/behaviour and constitute inputs into person’s thinking, perception, problem solving and information processing.
The theory may be explained as under:
Stimulus-Cognition-Response

According to Tolman, behaviour of a person is determined by Expectancy, Demand and Intention based on his/her cognition. He developed this theory on the basis of his experiment with white rat. He found that a rat could learn to run through an intricate maze with a purpose and direction towards a goal (food). He observed that at each choice point in the maze, expectations were established. In other words, the rat learned to expect that certain cognitive cues associated with the choice point might eventually lead to food. If the rat actually received the food, the association between the cue and expectancy was established and learning occurred.

In Organizational Behaviour, Cognitive Framework has been applied mainly in motivation. Expectations, attributions, locus of control and goal-setting are all cognitive concepts that represent purposefulness of the subject.

Social Cognitive Framework:
This framework was developed by Albert Bandura who believes that human behaviour can best be explained in terms of a continuous reciprocal interaction among cognitive, behavioural and environmental determinants. Most of our responses are guided by observation and imitation.

According to this theory, human behaviour is determined by five basic capabilities:
Symbolizing: An individual associates a symbol to his future responses.
Forethought: An individual anticipates the consequences and accordingly makes a choice of responses.
Observational: An individual observes others before choosing his/her own responses.
Self-regulatory: an individual controls his/her action by setting internal standards (aspired levels of performance) and by evaluating discrepancy between the standard and the performance
Self-reflective: An individual reflects back on his/her actions and perceptually determine the causes of success or failure and possible measure to improve the quality of responses.

(P.S. feedback invited from the students to improve the content of the website. Send in your e-mails to jha.srirang@gmail.com)

Syllabus for PGDM(CRM)

Apeejay School of Management, New Delhi
PGDM (CRM) 2007-2009

Organizational Behaviour

Faculty: Dr Srirang Jha

Pedagogy:
Lectures
Case Studies
Project Work/Assignments

Evaluation:
Internal: 40%
Assignments/Surprise Tests: 15%
Mid-term exam: 15%
Class Participation: 5%
Attendance: 5%
External: 60%

Course Outline

1. Introduction to Organization Behaviour
2. Perception and Attribution
3. Personality and Attitudes
4. Job Satisfaction
5. Motivational Needs and Processes
6. Behaviour of Groups and Teams
7. Organizational Culture
8. Organziational Restructuring
9. Stress and Conflict
10. Leadership, Delegation and Empowerment

Reading List
Jon L. Pierce, Donald G. Gardner, Management & Organizational Behaviour, Thomson Learning
Luthans, Fred, Organizational Behaviour, McGraw Hill, New Delhi
Robbins, Stephen P., Organizational Behaviour,
Slocum, John W., and Hellriegel, Don, Fundamentals of Organizational Behaviour, Thomson Learning
Relevant Journals, Business Newspapers