Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A. Behavior in organizations ......................................................................... 3
B. Thé SlimStuderen-method.......................................................................10
C. Interview with Polonia Molengraaf (author) ...........................................12
D. Tentamens halen? Volg een tentamentraining bij Capita Selecta! ...........14
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
*Note that, since this example summary has been published before the first lecture, it is
based on last year’s lecture.
A. Behavior in organizations
The following chapter summarizes the definition of Organizational Behavior. Moreover,
we will discuss some other important disciplines and definitions in this field of study.
Interpersonal skills
In order for companies to perform at their best, their employees need to perform at their
highest level. To achieve this, managers need to develop their interpersonal skills; these
skills have proven to make the workplace more interesting and pleasant since it creates
more understanding about the wants and needs of the employees. These interpersonal
skills can be divided into good people skills and good technical skills.
From the lecture…
“Organizational Behavior focuses on how to improve factors that make organizations
more effective. Managers need to develop their interpersonal skills to be effective.”
Organizations and managers
An organization is a consciously coordinated social unit that functions on a relatively
continuous basis and is composed of two or more people to achieve a common goal or
set of goals. A manager is someone who gets things done by delegating tasks to others.
In order to achieve their goals, they must direct the activities of others, allocate
resources and make decisions.
Managerial functions
A manager’s functions can be divided into four categories: planning, organizing, leading
and controlling. Planning is about setting goals, and establishing an overall strategy for
achieve these goals. This function increases the most as managers move from lowerlevel to middle management. Organizing entails the distribution of resources and tasks
in such way that the goals can be achieved. Important here is to provide clear directions
to all people within this structure. The leading function is about connecting to the
employees on an interpersonal level. The manager must encourage, inspire and motivate
their employees to perform at their best possible level. Then, the controlling function
entails checking whether or not the set goals have been met.
Managerial roles
Based on a study of Henry Mintzberg, we can say that managers perform 10 different,
highly related roles, that can be grouped into the interpersonal role, informational role
and decisional role.
Within the interpersonal role, we can distinguish three main roles. Within the
figurehead role, the manager has a symbolic and ceremonial function. Also, all managers
perform a leadership role. Then, the third role within this section is that of the liaison.
According to Mintzberg, this means contacting outsiders to find necessary information.
Informational roles exist from the need for managers to collect or provide information.
In the role of monitor, the manager talks to other people and reads magazines in order
to learn about changes in the market and the plans of the competition. Managers also act
as a conduit to transmit information to organizational members. This is the disseminator
role. Moreover, managers perform a spokesperson role when they represent the
organization or institution to outsiders.
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
Lastly, Mintzberg defined a category of decisional roles. There is the entrepreneur role,
wherein managers initiate and oversee new projects that need to improve the
organization’s performance.
When managers discuss issues and bargain with other units to gain advantages they
perform the negotiator role. The resource allocator role entail the allocation of human,
physical and monetary resources. Finally, there is the role of disturbance handler, when
acting upon unforeseen problems.
The table below summarizes the different leadership roles.
General roles
Interpersonal roles
Informational roles
Decisional roles
Sub-roles
Figurehead, leadership, liason
Monitor, disseminator, spokesperson
Entrepreneur, negotiator, resource allocator,
disturbance handler
Managerial skills
Researcher Robert Katz has defined three different necessary managerial skills, namely:
 Technical skills: the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise;
 Human skills: the ability to understand, work with and motivate others;
 Conceptual skills: the mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex problems.
Managerial activities
Managers all engage in four kinds of managerial activities. There is the traditional
management, which revolves around decision making, planning and controlling. The
second activity entails exchanging information and processing paperwork; we call this the
communication category. Then there is networking, which is about socializing and
interacting with outsiders. Lastly, everything that includes the motivating, disciplining
and training of people is called human resource management.
For successful managers it holds that they mostly engage in networking activities. On the
contrary, effective managers contribute most of their time in communication activities.
Overall it is absolutely essential to recognize the importance of managing people.
Organizational Behavior
There is a field of study that has investigated the impact that certain conditions can have
on behavior within organizations; Organizational Behavior. It is a distinct area of
expertise with a common body of knowledge, and it studies individuals, groups, and
structure within organizations. It also includes core topics of motivation, leadership
behavior and power, interpersonal communication, group structure and processes,
learning, attitude development and perception, change processes, conflict, work design
and work stress.
Combining intuition and systematic study
In social science, the systematic approach uncovers important facts and relationships
that will secure a base that enables researchers to make more accurate predictions of
behavior. There are certain fundamental consistencies underlying the behavior of all
individuals that can be identified and then modified to reflect individual differences.
These fundamental consistencies are very important, because they allow predictability.
Systematic study looks at relationships in an attempt to attribute causes and effects,
and basing our conclusions on scientific evidence. Evidence-based management
(EBM) is an approach that complements systematic study, and involves taking
managerial decisions based on the best available scientific evidence.
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
“There are two types of research methods: systematic observation (behavior is
systematically observed and recorded), and experimental research. The first allows
for the study of variables and their relationships, the second for studying causality.”
Both systematic study and EBM add to intuition, or those “gut feelings” about “why I do
what I do” and “what makes others tick”. Even though intuition can be useful at times, it
cannot be fully trusted when making decisions. The best is to enhance intuitive views
with a systematic analysis.
“The best predictions of behavior are made from a combination of a good theory,
systematic study (and some intuition).”
Disciplines of Organizational Behavior
Organizational Behavior finds its building blocks in several different disciplines. Amongst
them is the discipline of psychology. Psychology is involved with the measurement and
the explanation of behavior of humans and other animals. Another discipline OB relates
to is social psychology. This discipline is a mixture between psychology and sociology.
It focuses on people’s influence on one another. Sociology looks at the way people
behave in relation to their social environment. Finally, OB also derives some elements
from anthropology. This is the study about human beings in general and their activities.
Difficulties
One difficulty for OB is that there are practically no universal principles which would be
able to explain all types organizational behavior, but it can be said that OB concepts
must reflect situational or contingency conditions.
Another challenge is to respond to globalization. The world has become a global village.
Therefore the manager’s job is constantly changing. It is likely that you will be
transferred to another division or subsidiary in another country. As a consequence, you
will face other needs, aspirations and attitudes, and cultures. It is necessary to
understand their differences in order to make your management style work.
Also, the fear for terrorism is not to be underestimated. Security precautions should be
taken to be able to deal with employees’ fears.
Workforce diversity exists when organizations become a heterogeneous mix of people
in terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Accommodating to the
needs of all these groups can be a real challenge for companies. Either way, companies
should embrace diversity.
Customer service
Nowadays in developed countries, the majority of employees work in service jobs. These
jobs all have in common that they require substantial interaction with the customers of
these organizations. Organizations and companies cannot exist without customers, and
therefore it is essential that employees understand what it takes to please their
customers. Managers need to create a customer-responsive culture. OB can provide
guidance to help managers in this respect. An environment in which employees are
willing to do what is necessary to please the customer, be friendly, accessible,
knowledgeable and prompt in responding to customer needs should be created. It might
be necessary to improve people skills.
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
Innovation and change
Fostering innovation and mastering the art of change are essential for successful
organizations. They will survive if they succeed to maintain their flexibility, improve their
quality on a frequent basis, and beat their competition by a constant stream of
innovative products and services.
Temporariness
Organizations should be fast and flexible in order to survive. This implies that employees
and managers mostly work in a climate which is temporary. Jobs are being redesigned;
tasks are being done by flexible teams rather than individuals. Companies are relying
more and more on temporary workers, jobs are being subcontracted to other firms, and
pensions are being redesigned to move with people when they change jobs. Finally,
companies are in a state of flux. Today’s managers and employees must learn to cope
with temporariness.
Employed at networked organizations
Technology changes like the Internet and the ability to link computers within
organizations, allow people to communicate and work together even though they may be
located in different countries. It gives the opportunity to become independent
contractors, who can communicate via computers to workplaces around the world with
flexible workforce based on the demand of their customers. The manager’s job is
different in a networked organization. When it comes to managing people “online” this
requires different techniques than are needed in dealing with people who are physically
present. OB can provide valuable insights to help develop those skills.
Work-life balance
Many employees are complaining that the lines between work and non-work time have
become blurred, which creates personal conflicts and stress:
 The creation of global organizations means their world never sleeps;
 Communication technology allows employees to do their work at home, in their
cars or at the beach;
 Organizations are asking employees to put in longer hours;
 Fewer families have only one single person working.
In fact, evidence indicates that balancing work and life demands now surpasses job
security as an employee priority. Many students say that attaining a balance between
work and personal life is a primary career goal. OB supplies a number of suggestions to
guide managers in designing workplaces and jobs that can help employees deal with
work-life conflicts.
Work environment
Some organizations are trying to realize a competitive advantage by fostering a positive
work environment. A real growth area in OB research has been positive organizational
scholarship, which concerns on how organizations develop human strength, foster vitality
and resilience, and unlock potential. Studies look into how these measures within
organizations affect them, with a focus on the positive effects.
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
Ethical behavior
Today many employees are facing ethical dilemmas; situations in which they need to
define right and wrong conduct. What is good ethical behavior? Differentiating right from
wrong seems logical, but can be very confusing and hard. The confidence and trust of
employees in management has decreased and they are more and more uncertain about
appropriate ethical behavior in their organizations. Managers need to improve ethical
behavior and can achieve this by:
 Writing and distributing codes of ethics to guide employees;
 Offering seminars, workshops and other training programs;
 Providing in-house advisors, who can be contacted (anonymously) for assistance
in dealing with ethical issues;
 Creating protection mechanisms for employees who reveal internal unethical
practices.
Managers need to create an ethically healthy environment for their employees in which
they can work productively with a minimal number of ethically doubtful situations.
Developing an OB model
A model is an abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of a real-world
phenomenon. The basic OB model contains:
 Individual level;
 Group level;
 Organizations systems level.
The three basic levels are basically used as building blocks; each level is constructed on
the previous level.
The dependent variables
A dependent variable is the key factor that you want to explain or predict, and that is
affected by some other factor. Primary dependent variables in OB are:
 Productivity;
 Absenteeism;
 Turnover;
 Job satisfaction.
Productivity
Productivity means that the company is able to achieve its goals by transferring inputs to
outputs at the lowest cost. In order to reach this, the company must achieve
effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness is successfully meeting the needs of the
clients and efficiency is to realize it at the lowest cost. Likely measures of organizational
efficiency include return on investment, profit per dollar of sales, and output per hour of
labor.
In organizations in service industries it is necessary to include attention to customer
needs and to measure how effectively these needs are met. In these types of businesses
there is a clear chain of cause and effect. The attitude and behavior of the employees
affects that of the customers, resulting in the organization’s productivity.
Absenteeism
Absenteeism is defined as the failure to report to work. For employers this implies huge
costs and disruption of daily work. Because the workflow is disrupted it is often necessary
to delay important decisions. Levels of absenteeism beyond the normal range have a
direct impact on effectiveness and efficiency within these companies or organizations.
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
Turnover
The voluntary and involuntary permanent withdrawal from an organization is called
turnover. Increased recruiting, selection and extra training costs are the result from a
high turnover rate. Besides that, it can disrupt the efficiency of an organization when
knowledgeable and experienced personnel leaves. In that case, replacements must be
found for positions of responsibility. However, when the “right” people are leaving the
company, meaning non-performers, it can be positive, because employers are able to
replace the positions with better/higher skilled and motivated people, and it might create
opportunities for promotions. However, often turnover involves the loss of respected
employees and valuable performers. In that case it disrupts the organization’s
effectiveness.
Deviant workplace behavior
Deviant workplace behavior is voluntary behavior that violates significant
organizational norms and, in doing so, threatens the well-being of the organization or its
members. It is essential that managers understand why an employee is acting like this,
because otherwise the problem will never be solved.
Deviant workplace behavior is an important concept, because it relates to dissatisfaction.
Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) is discretionary behavior that is not part
of an employee’s formal job requirements, but nevertheless promotes the effective
functioning of the organization. Employees doing more than their normal duties (and thus
performing beyond expectations), are vital for successful organizations. OB is concerned
with OCB as a dependent variable.
Job satisfaction
This is the final dependent variable to be discussed. Job satisfaction is defined as a
positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. It
represents an attitude rather than a behavior. Job satisfaction has become a primary
dependent variable for two reasons:
 Its demonstrated relationship to performance factors;
 Value preferences held by many OB researchers.
That satisfied employees are more productive than dissatisfied employees was a belief
among managers for years, but now research has proved the satisfactionperformance relationship.
Independent variables
An independent variable is the presumed cause of some change in a dependent variable.
The independent variables are:
 Individual-level variables;
 Group-level variables;
 Organization system-level variables.
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
Individual level variables
People enter organizations with certain characteristics that will influence their behavior at
work. The most obvious are personal or biographical characteristics like age, gender and
marital status. Personality characteristics are a person’s emotional framework, values,
attitudes and ability. These factors will be discussed as independent variables. There are
four other individual-level variables which each have proven effect on employees
behavior, namely:
 Perception;
 Individual decision making;
 Learning;
 Motivation.
Group level variables
People’s behavior in groups is different from their behavior when they are alone.
Therefore, researchers have studied group behavior. Later on the dynamics of group
behavior will be explained.
Organization system level variables
The design of the formal organization, the organization’s internal culture, and the
organization’s human resource policies and practices (selection processes, training and
development programs, performance evaluation methods) all have an impact on the
dependent variables.
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
B. Thé SlimStuderen-method
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
If you have any thoughts for us to improve the quality of the summaries, you can e-mail
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On behalf of the whole team of SlimStuderen.nl
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
C. Interview with Polonia Molengraaf (author)
Who are you?
My name is Polonia Molengraaf
and I’m 20 years old. I’m a third
year student in law at Erasmus
University Rotterdam. As an
author I’ve written a summary for
SlimStuderen.nl
Why did you become an author
for SlimStuderen.nl?
When I’m studying myself, I
always write summaries for own
practice. In that way, I take in the
study material well and I use it as
a way of reference when I’m
preparing my exams. Because I
already used to write summaries
myself, I decided to inquire about and to apply for the authorship for a certain course
that I was going to follow during the next semester.
What do you do as an author at SlimStuderen.nl?
During my interview with the study manager of the study of law I received a manual,
which we discussed during this interview. In this manual, it is stated exactly what
SlimStuderen.nl expects of its authors and how you should handle certain things as an
author yourself. Here you should think of lay-out, but also for example the style of
writing of the summary.
Besides the manual, I received a weekly planning during the interview. I was allowed to
fill in this planning myself. I liked this a lot because in this way I could decide the
workload myself, keeping my usual schedule in mind. The deadline on which the entire
summary has to be finished is well before the exam. This ensures that you still have
plenty of time to study for your exams and that you are very well prepared for one of
your courses already!
Every week, I received an e-mail of the study manager about my progress and the
quality of the summary. The study manager always told me what was good about my
summary and what could still be improved. These improvements could refer to the
content, spelling and grammar or to the lay-out of my summary.
I experienced these moments of feedback as very pleasant. It does not only help you in
keeping up with the material, but it also teaches you to look critically at your own
summary. Besides, this critical way of looking comes in handy while writing essays for
my study. By the way, I thought the study manager was very sincere. Although he looks
very carefully at your progress, he gives founded criticism and when my summary was of
good quality this was certainly mentioned.
How did you experience the authorship for SlimStuderen.nl
I liked working as an author for SlimStuderen.nl As mentioned before, I used to write
summaries myself regularly. Now I actually did exactly the same but I got paid to do so.
Too read the book does cost some time, but unknowingly you are studying at the same
time.
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
One big advantage of being an author is that you can choose the course for which you
want to write a summary yourself. In that way, you are well prepared for your exam.
Moreover, you work at home which means that you can decide when you want to work
on your summary. I liked this because in this way I could write the summary piece for
piece when I had some free time in between other obligations.
I think the guidance that SlimStuderen.nl offers is very good. I found the intensive
contact with the study manager very pleasant. SlimStuderen.nl has paid a lot of attention
to my work and I noticed that they appreciated my summaries.
Finally, could you mention some features that come with working at
SlimStuderen.nl?
 Good guidance;
 Independently;
 Communication;
 Flexible;
 Instructive;
 Good reward.
Tip: Do you think you would like writing a summary for SlimStuderen.nl? Please send
your CV + motivation to [email protected]. We will contact you without any
obligations to see what the possibilities are.
SlimStuderen.nl: An ideal combination of working and studying!
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
D. Tentamens halen? Volg een tentamentraining bij Capita Selecta!
Beste eerstejaars studenten,
Na een mooie vakantie en introductie periode is er een serieuzere periode aangebroken:
tijd om te studeren!
Om je net dat ene steuntje in de rug te geven, is er de mogelijkheid om bijlessen voor je
tentamen vakken te volgen bij Capita Selecta. Als grootste en oudste tentamentrainer
zorgen wij dat jij optimaal voorbereid je tentamens in gaat!
Wat is een Capita-cursus?
Capita Selecta is de standaard keuze voor studenten en er wordt dan ook vaak
gesproken over “even een Capitaatje nemen”. Maar wat doet Capita Selecta precies om
jou door je tentamentijd te loodsen?
Door het spreiden van de lesmomenten in 3, 4 of 5 lessen van 3 uur zorgt onze beste
student-docent er voor dat jij de kneepjes van het vak leert. Doordat we met kleine
groepen werken (max. 12 personen) is er voldoende ruimte voor jouw vragen en wordt
er intensief geoefend met (oude) tentamens.
Capita repetitoren
Onze student-docenten, ofwel repetitoren, worden streng geselecteerd waardoor er altijd
iemand voor de klas staat die én de stof goed beheerst én het goed kan uitleggen aan
jou. Deze combinatie is voor ons erg belangrijk en kwaliteit staat dan ook hoog in het
vaandel.
Fulltime klantenservice:
Omdat er zoveel studenten gebruik maken van onze tentamentrainingen hebben wij
sinds 2013 een professionele klantenservice. Wij worden graag op de hoogte gehouden
over onze cursussen en zijn daarom op werkdagen van 09.30 tot 16.00 bereikbaar. Ook
voor al jouw vragen kun je bellen naar 010-2142394 of een mailtje sturen naar
[email protected].
Genieten van je studententijd!:
Wij begrijpen maar al te goed dat er nog veel meer dingen te doen zijn naast studeren
en daarom werken wij met veel studie- en studentenverenigingen samen. In de meeste
gevallen ontvang je korting op onze cursus via jouw vereniging, vergeet hier niet naar te
informeren!
Namens heel het team van Capita Selecta, wens ik je een mooi begin van je
studententijd. Hopelijk zien we je in één van onze Capita-cursussen!
Groetjes,
Loes Hellemons
Business Unit Manager Capita Selecta
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Example Summary IBA, Organizational Behavior 2014-2015
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Use the following code: EUIB12.
The code is valid until November 30th.
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