1. Introduction to Organisational Behaviour
Management, Organisation
& Communication
Faculty of International Business & Communication
D. Jutten

2. What is Organisational
Behaviour?
The field of OB is the study of people at work.
• OB studies the influence which…
- Individuals,
- Groups and
- Organisations
…have on behaviour within organisations

3. Why do we need to
study it?
• Managers have all sorts of people problems:
• Bosses with poor communication skills
• Employees’ lack of motivation
• Conflict between team members
• Employee resistance because of reorganisation
Understanding of human behaviour plays an
important role in determining a manager’s
effectiveness .

4. What is the Goal of
studying OB?
• Learn to Understand, Predict & Change human
behaviour concerning employment-related issues like:
• Jobs
• Work
• Absenteeism
• Employment turnover
• Productivity
• Human performance
• Management

5. Focus of OB
• Motivation
• Leader behaviour and power
• Interpersonal communication
• Group structure and processes
• Perceptions and attitudes
• Personality, emotions and values
• Change processes
• Conflict and negotiations
• Work design

6. Contributing disciplines
• Psychology: measure, explain and change individual
behaviour
• Social psychology: focuses on people’s influences on
one another
• Sociology: study of people in relation to their social
environment
• Anthropology: study of societies for the purpose of
learning about human beings and their activities

7. Why is it difficult to predict
someone’s behaviour?
• People are complex and diverse
• People often act very differently in the same
situation
• We behave differently in different situations
ex: church/party
We need to take contingency variables (or
situational conditions) into account

8. Challenges and opportunities
for OB
• Globalisation
• Workforce Diversity: Organisations are heterogeneous
• gender
• age
• race
• ethnicity
• sexual orientation
• disability
• religion

9. Managing Workforce
Diversity
• increasing creativity
• improvement of
decision making
• different
perspective on
problems
• improving quality
and productivity
• improving customer
services
• improving people
skills
• stimulating
innovation and
change
• improving ethical
behaviour
• creating a positive
work environment

10. PERSONALITY TRAITS
AND WORK VALUES
Organizational Behaviour: Chapter 2

11. What is personality?
• The growth and development of
someone’s whole psychological system
• Definition by Gordon Allport: “the dynamic
organisation within the individual of those
psychological systems that determine his
unique adjustments to his environment”
• The sum total of ways in which an
individual reacts to and interact with others

12. Personality determinants
• Heredity or environment?
• Research shows heredity is of more
importance
• Physical stature
• Facial attractiveness
• Gender
• Temperament
• Muscle composition and reflexes
• Energy level
• Biological rhythms

13. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI)
16 personality types:
• Extraverted versus introverted
• Sensing versus intuitive
• Thinking versus feeling
• Judging versus perceiving

14. Big Five Model
video
• Openness to experience
• Conscientiousness
• Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Emotional stability ( or Neuroticism)
• Acronym: OCEAN
Assignment: Do the personality test on: learnMyself.com and
hand in the overal result of the five dimensions next week
(click on green button “start advanced”)

15. Other personality traits relevant
to OB
• Core self-evaluation
• Self-Monitoring
• Type A Personality
• Type B Personality
• Proactive Personality

16. Values
• Represent basic convictions that “a specific mode of
conduct or end-state of existence is personally or
socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of
conduct or end-state of existence.”
• What is right or wrong; good or bad?

17. Values
Two factors:
• Content  is something important?
• Intensity  how important?
Value system:
• The hierarchy of values
• Freedom, pleasure, respect, honesty, obedience,
equality

18. Terminal vs Instrumental
Values
• Terminal  desirable end states  goals to achieve
• Instrumental  preferable modes of behaviour  or
the means of achieving the terminal values
• E.g: a comfortable (prosperous) life vs ambitious
behaviour (hardworking, aspiring)

19. Generational Values
• Veterans
• Boomers
• Xers
• Nexters
• Hardworking,
conservative
• Succes, ambition, dislike
of authority
• Work/life balance, team
oriented
• Confident, self-relient but
team oriented

20. Linking an individual’s
personality and values to the
workplace
• Person-job fit
• Person-job fit theory (by
John Holland)
• satisfaction is highest and
turnover is lowest when
personality and
occupation are in
agreement
• Person-organisation fit
• with organisational
changes it is more
important that
employees’ personalities
fit the overall
organisation’s culture
than the specific job

21. Hofstede Dimensions
Hofstede’s Framework for Assessing
Cultures
• Power distance
• Individualism vs collectivism
• Masculinity vs femininity
• Uncertainty avoidance
• Long-term vs short-term orientation

22. Criticism on Hofstede
• Based on single company
• Study is 30 yrs old and world has changed
• Fall of soviet union
• Transformation CEEC’s
• End of apartheid in South Africa
• Spread of Islam
• Rise of China as global power

23. GLOBE
• 9 dimensions which resemble
Hofstede
• Added were:
• Human orientation
• Performance orientation

24. Thank you for your attention!
For next week read chapters 3 & 4.