Failure of a Business

Organizational Behavior, 12e

Chapter 1: What Is Organizational Behavior?

ISBN: 9780132431569 Author: Stephen P. Robbins, Timothy A. Judge

copyright © 2007 Prentice Hall, Inc. A Pearson Education Company

What Is Organizational Behavior?

The stellar universe is not so difficult of comprehension as the real actions of other people.

Marcel Proust

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Describe what managers do.

Define organizational behavior (OB).

Explain the value of the systematic study of OB.

Identify the contributions made to OB by major behavioral science disciplines.

List the major challenges and opportunities for managers to use OB concepts.

Identify the three levels of analysis in this book’s OB model.

Explain the need for a contingency approach to the study of OB.

What Defines a Successful Manager?

Meet Lakshmi Gopalkrishnan (see photo). She has undergraduate and master’s degrees in English from Delhi University and Georgetown University, respectively, and is completing her Ph.D. in English at the University of Washington. In 1995, she began working for Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. Lakshmi currently manages a team of 16 full-time employees and a varying number of contractors in Denmark, North Dakota, and Washington. She oversees a team of Web designers and marketing specialists; and she is responsible for marketing and Web strategy on a range of Microsoft products and solutions.

“My background is basically journalism,” says Lakshmi. “But I think I’m effective as a manager because I’ve developed my skills at managing individuals and teams. I’ve learned the importance of creating a compelling vision, the need to hire complementary skills, and how to inspire and challenge my team. For instance, I’ve learned that a clear and compelling vision inspires people to be part of something bigger than themselves. I’ve also learned that it takes time to understand what motivates each person. Each person...