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Chapter 1 Organizational Behavior and Management 17 These technological, social, and cultural changes taking place in the world today pose many challenges for the men and women whose jobs require them to manage organizational behavior: ■ ■ ■ ■ How to use new information technologies to increase employee creativity and organizational learning. How to manage human resources to give an organization a competitive advantage. How to develop an ethical organizational culture How to manage workforce diversity ■ How to manage organizational behavior when an organization expands internationally and operates at a global level We introduce these five challenges here in Chapter 1 and examine them throughout the rest of the book. ■ ■ ■ CHALLENGE 1: USING NEW INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TO ENHANCE CREATIVITY AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING Creativity is the decision-making process that produces novel and useful ideas, ideas that lead to new or improved goods and services or to improvements in the way that they are produced. Today, using new information technologies to help people and groups to be creative and enhance organizational performance is a major management task. By 1991, U.S. companies spent more on IT than any other form of investment; by 2000, this spending doubled again from $80 billion to $160 billion a year and is forecast to double again in the next five years. 15 Information technology encompasses a broad array of communication media including voice mail, e-mail, voice conferencing, videoconferencing, the Internet, groupware and corporate intranets, car phones, fax machines, personal digital assistants, intelligent agents, and so on. By providing employees with easy and flexible access to stored and current information, IT promotes learning, allows for the easy exchange of know-how, and facilitates problem solving. 16 Insight 1.3 offers some examples of how IT can help organizations speed communication and decision making and promote creativity and organizational learning. INSIGHT I N F O R M A T I O N T1.3 E C H N O L O G Y HOW IT CAN ENHANCE INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP LEARNING In an effort to reduce costs, the textile fibers division of Du Pont, the giant chemical company, adopted early retirement incentives to reduce its workforce. Unexpectedly, about half of the division’s middle managers decided to take the early retirement package. At first, the division’s top managers panicked, wondering how work could get one if everyone left at the same time. But the division had recently installed an e-mail system and a corporate intranet that supplied employees with most of the information they needed to perform their tasks. Employees began to use it heavily and learned to
18 Chapter 1 Organizational Behavior and Management Here, a marketing manager in New York is using video teleconferencing to communicate to a research and development team in Silicon Valley their marketing vision for a new product launch. Such interactive sessions greatly speed decision making and enhance performance. make their own decisions, and over time the IT came to replace the division’s traditional reporting structure as a main means of control and actually speeded communication and decision making. 17 The advertising company, Chiat/Day, provides a vivid example of the use of IT to facilitate the development of new organizational skills. Undoubtedly, an advertising agency’s core competence involves heavy reliance on employees’ creativity, and Chiat/Day developed a sophisticated computer network to promote collaboration between employees and departments. No longer is information moved physically from person to person, but it is posted in the system and the computer notifies the right person that a file or advertising copy has been delivered to them. As a result, their old giant manila sacks and huge mechanical files have been replaced by “electronic job jackets” containing all needed information and digitized photographs.18 Legal reviews and proofreading comments are added electronically and relayed automatically to the central file. This procedure has completely eliminated the traditional role of managers and greatly increased operational efficiency. Hewlett-Packard (HP) uses laser printer engines developed and manufactured by Canon as a core component of its laser printers. Recently, HP introduced a revolutionary new printer, the VidJet Pro, which has required that specialists from each firm become more integrated with each other so that they can learn more about each other’s activities and problems.19 To achieve this, HP and Canon routinely use e-mail and voice mail to integrate their activities, yet as HP became more involved in the design of laser engines, and Canon in the design of better printers, richer modes of communication were required. Not wanting to sacrifice the time requirements of constant face-to-face meetings, both firms now rely on groupware, the Internet, and videoconferencing. Only with such technologies can designers and engineers meet in real time, or close to it, in order to exchange and discuss product specifications, prototype models, and so on. ■ As these examples suggest, there are many ways in which managers can use IT at all levels in the organization, between departments and divisions of the organization and between organizations to enhance learning, speed decision making, and promote creativity and innovation. Throughout this book, you will find many more examples of how this takes place as well as in-depth discussion of the importance of facilitating learning and creativity in managing organizational behavior today. ■ ■ ■ CHALLENGE 2: MANAGING HUMAN RESOURCES TO INCREASE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE The ability of an organization to produce goods and services that its customers want is a product of the behaviors of all its members—the behaviors of its top-management team, which plans the organization’s strategy; the behaviors that middle managers use to manage and coordinate human and other resources; and the behaviors of
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chapter - Pearson

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