Organisational Behaviour

The Organisational Context

Explaining Organisational Behaviour

• What is organisational behaviour?
• Research and practice
• Human resource management

Environment

• Analysing the organisation’s environment
• Ethical behaviour
• Corporate social responsibility

Technology

• The importance of technology
• Teleworking
• The politics of technology
• Socio-technical systems

Culture

• Rise of organisational culture
• Aspects of culture
• Organisational socialisation
• Perspectives on culture
• Cultural strength and organisational performance
• Types of organisational culture
• National cultures

Individuals in Organisations

Communication

• Interpersonal communication
• Verbal communication
• Non-verbal communication
• Cultural differences in communication style
• Impression management
• Emotional intelligence
• Organisational communication

Perception

• Selectivity and organisation
• Perceptual sets and perceptual worlds
• Perceptual sets and assumptions
• Perceptual errors

Motivation

• Extreme jobs and boreout
• Drives, motives and motivations
• Content theories
• Process theories
• Social process of motivating others
• Empowerment, engagement and high performance

Learning

• Learning process
• Behaviourist approach to learning
• Cognitive approach to learning
• Behaviour modification versus socialisation
• Behavioural self-management

Personality

• Definition
• Personality types and traits
• The big 5
• Stress and its management
• Development of the self
• Nomothetic and idiographic
• Selection methods

Groups and Teams in Organisations

Group Formation

• Definitions of groups
• Types of group tasks
• The Hawthorne Studies
• Group orientated view of organisations
• Formal and informal groups
• Group formation
• Group development
• Groups and teams

Group Structure

• Group structure and process
• Status structure
• Power structure
• Liking structure
• Role structure
• Leadership structure
• Communication structure
• Virtual teams

Individuals in Groups

• The individual and the group
• Group influences on individuals’ behaviour
• Group influences on individuals’ performance
• Group influences on individuals’ perceptions
• Deindividuation
• Individual influences on group attitudes and behaviours

Teamworking

• Team work design
• Types of team
• Action, advice, production and project teams
• Ecological framework for analysing work team effectiveness

Organisation Structures

Work Design

• Scientific management
• Taylorism
• Fordism
• Deskilling

Elements of Structure

• Organisation structuring
• Types of job
• Line, staff and functional relationships
• Roles in organisations
• Formalisation
• Sexuality and the informal organisation
• Centralisation versus decentralisation

Organisation Design

• Weber and bureaucracy
• Fayol and classical management theory
• Mintzberg’s management roles
• Contingency approach
• Strategic choice

Organisational Architecture

• Era of self-contained organisation structures
• Era of horizontal organisation structures
• Era of boundaryless organisations
• Collaboration with suppliers, competitors and third parties

Management Processes

Change

• Making it happen and making it stick
• Transformational change
• Change and the individual
• Readiness and resistance
• Participation and dictatorship
• Organisation and development

Leadership

• Leadership versus management
• Trait spotting
• Style counselling
• Context fitting
• New leadership
• Distributed leadership

Decision-Making

• Models of decision-making
• Decision conditions: risk and programmability
• Individual and group decision-making
• Problem and group decision-making
• Organisational decision-making

Managing Conflict

• Emotional labour
• Contrasting frames of reference: unitarist, pluralist and interactionist
• The radical frame of reference
• Conflict frame of reference
• Coordination, failure and conflict

Organisational Power and Politics

• Organisations – rational or political
• Organisation politics
• Power in organisations
• Power and influence
• Women and organisation politics