chapter - Pearson
chapter - Pearson
chapter - Pearson
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Organizational effectiveness<br />
The ability of an organization to<br />
achieve its goals.<br />
Management<br />
The process of planning, organizing,<br />
leading, and controlling an<br />
organization’s human, financial,<br />
material, and other resources to<br />
increase its effectiveness.<br />
Manager<br />
Any person who supervises one or<br />
more subordinates.<br />
Top-management team<br />
High-ranking executives who plan<br />
a company’s strategy so that the<br />
company can achieve its goals.<br />
Chapter 1<br />
Organizational Behavior and Management<br />
11<br />
behavior researchers, and the tools and techniques they have developed, to increase<br />
organizational effectiveness, the ability of an organization to achieve its goals.<br />
Management is the process of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling<br />
an organization’s human, financial, material, and other resources to increase its<br />
effectiveness. A manager is anybody who supervises one or more subordinates. Lou<br />
Gerstner, CEO of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), for example,<br />
is IBM’s top manager; he has ultimate responsibility for all 150,000 of IBM’s<br />
employees. The sales manager of IBM’s southern region, who controls 300 salespeople,<br />
is also a manager, as is the manager (or supervisor) in charge of an IBM computer<br />
service center who supervises five service technicians.<br />
Managers at all levels confront the problem of understanding and managing<br />
the behavior of their subordinates. Gerstner has to manage IBM’s top-management<br />
team, high-ranking executives who plan the company’s strategy so that it can achieve<br />
its goals. The sales manager has to manage the sales force so that it sells the mix of<br />
mainframe, mini, and personal computers that best meet customers’ informationprocessing<br />
needs. The service manager has to manage technicians so that they<br />
respond promptly and courteously to customers’ appeals for help and quickly solve<br />
their problems. (Traditionally, IBM has been well known for its high-quality customer<br />
service and responsiveness.)<br />
Each of these managers faces the common challenge of finding ways to help<br />
the organization achieve its goals. A manager who understands how individual,<br />
group, and organizational characteristics affect work attitudes and behavior can begin<br />
to experiment to see whether changing one or more of these characteristics might<br />
increase the effectiveness of the organization and the individuals and groups that<br />
comprise it. The study of organizational behavior helps managers meet the challenge<br />
of improving organizational effectiveness by providing them with a set of tools:<br />
■<br />
■<br />
■<br />
A manager can work to raise a worker’s self esteem or beliefs about his or<br />
her ability to accomplish a certain task in order to increase the worker’s<br />
productivity or job satisfaction.<br />
A manager can change the reward system to change workers’ beliefs about<br />
the extent to which their rewards depend on their performance.<br />
A manager can change the design of a person’s job or the rules and procedures<br />
for doing the job to reduce costs, make the task more enjoyable, or<br />
make the task easier to perform.<br />
Managerial Functions and Roles<br />
As we mentioned earlier, the four principal functions or duties of management are<br />
planning, organizing, leading, and controlling human, financial, material, and other<br />
resources to allow an organization to achieve its goals. 7 And, as our examples<br />
showed, managers knowledgeable about organizational behavior are in a good position<br />
to improve their ability to perform these functions (see Figure 1.3).<br />
Planning<br />
Deciding how best to allocate and<br />
use resources to achieve organizational<br />
goals.<br />
Planning. In planning, managers establish their organization’s strategy—that is,<br />
they decide how best to allocate and use resources to achieve organizational goals. At<br />
Southwest Airlines, for example, CEO Herb Kelleher’s strategy is based on the goal<br />
of providing customers with low-priced air travel. 8 To accomplish this goal,<br />
Southwest uses its resources efficiently. For example, Southwest uses only one kind<br />
of plane, the Boeing 737, to keep down operating, training, and maintenance costs;<br />
employees cooperate and share jobs when necessary to keep down costs; and its use<br />
of the Internet is state of the art and one of the easiest to use in the industry.