Challenges and Opportunities for Organizational Behavior

A. Introduction

1. There are many challenges and opportunities today for managers to use OB concepts.

B. Responding to Globalization

1. Organizations are no longer constrained by national borders.

2.Globalization affects a manager’s people skills in at least two ways.

First,if you are a manager,you are increasingly likely to find yourself in a foreign assignment.

Second,even in your own country,you are going to find yourself working with bosses,peers,and other employees who were born and raised in different cultures.

C. Managing Workforce Diversity

1.Workforce diversity is one of the most important and broad-based challenges currently facing organizations.

2.While globalization focuses on differences between people from different countries,workforce diversity addresses differences among people within given countries.

3. Workforce diversity means that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender,race,and ethnicity. It is an issue in Canada,Australia,South Africa,Japan,and Europe as well as the United States.

4.A melting-pot approach assumed people who were different would automatically assimilate.

5.Employees do not set aside their cultural values and lifestyle preferences when they come to work.

6. The melting pot assumption is replaced by one that recognizes and values differences.

7.Members of diverse groups were a small percentage of the workforce and were,for the most part,ignored by large organizations (pe-1980s);now:47 percent of the U.S. labor force are women Minorities and immigrants make up 23 percent.More workers than ever are unmarried with no children.

8.Workforce diversity has important implications for management practice.

Shift to recognizing differences and responding to those differences

Providing diversity training and revamping benefit programs to accommodate the different needs of employees

D. Improving Quality and Productivity

1. Total quality management (TQM) is a philosophy of management...