Understanding and Managing Organizational Behavior

Understanding  and Managing Organizational

Preface

In the sixth edition of Understanding and Managing Organizational Behavior, we keep to our theme of providing students with the most contemporary and up-to-date account of the changing issues involved in managing people in organizations. In revising this book, we have continued our focus on making our text relevent and interesting to students—something we have learned from feedback received from instructors who tell us the text engages students and encourages them to make the effort necessary to assimilate the text material. We continue to mirror the changes taking place in the real world of work by incorporating recent developments in organizational behavior and research and by providing vivid, current examples of the way managers and employees of companies large and small have responded to the changing workplace. Indeed, we have increased our focus on small businesses and startups and the organizational behavior challenges their employees face. Chapter 1 discusses contemporary organizational behavior issues and challenges; it also provides an approach to understanding and managing organizational behavior that sets the scene for the rest of the book. 

In Part One, Individuals in Organizations

We underscore the many ways in which people can contribute to organizations and how an understanding of factors such as personality, emotional intelligence, creativity, and motivation can help organizations and their members channel effort and behavior in ways that promote the achievement of organizational objectives and the well-being of all organizational stakeholders including employees. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 provide extensive coverage of personality, emotional intelligence, mood and emotion, values and ethics, and the proactive management of diversity; importantly, we link these factors to important behaviors and determinants of organizational effectiveness. Chapter 5 conveys the variety of ways in which organizational members can and do learn, with a new emphasis on continuous learning through creativity.

Our treatment of the important issue of work motivation is divided into two chapters. In Chapter 6, we provide an integrated account of work motivation and the latest development in motivation theory and research. Chapter 7 then focuses on how to create a motivating work environment through job design, organizational objectives, and goal setting. Chapter 8 addresses the changing nature of the employment relationship and the implications of factors such as outsourcing, performance appraisal, pay differentials, and boundaryless careers for motivation and performance. Lastly, in Chapter 9, we focus on the stressors people face, how they can be effectively managed, and how to find a balance between work and other aspects of life. Overall,  Part One reflects both contemporary theorizing and research and the challenges and opportunities facing organizations and their members.

In Part Two, Group and Team Processes

We bring together the many ways in which organizational members work together to achieve organizational objectives, the challenges they face, and how to achieve real synergies. Chapters 10 and 11 focus on the key factors that lead to effective work groups and teams. Chapter 12 provides an updated treatment of leadership, particularly transformational leadership in organizations. Chapter 13 contains our discussion of power, politics, conflict, and negotiation. In Chapter 14, we discuss how the latest developments in information technology have changed the nature of communication in and between organizations. The final chapter in this part, Chapter 15, provides updated coverage of decision making,  knowledge management, and innovation.

Part Three, Organizational Processes

Separates our treatment of organizational structure and organizational culture to allow for an integrated treatment of organizational culture and to underscore the importance of ethics. Chapter 16 focuses on organizational design, structure, and control and the factors that affect important organizational design choices. Chapter 17 presents an integrated treatment of organizational culture and ethical behavior. It focuses on the informal and formal social processes in organizations that affect the ways people behave, the sources of organizational culture, including organizational ethics, and the nature, causes, and consequences of ethical behavior. We also discuss the factors that can lead to unethical behavior. Finally, Chapter 18 provides updated coverage of organizational change and development to reflect current realities in the very dynamic environment in which organizations operate.

In summary

The organization and content of our book keeps to its goal of providing instructors and students with a cutting-edge coverage of organizational behavior topics and issues that our users have appreciated in prior editions. For students, we provide a treatment of organizational behavior that allows for self-assessment because it (1) is comprehensive, integrated, and makes important theories and research findings accessible and interesting to them; (2) is current, up-to-date, and contains expanded coverage of significant contemporary issues including ethics, diversity, globalization, and information technology; (3) uses rich, real-life examples of people and organizations to bring key concepts to life and provide clear managerial implications; and, (4) is experiential and applied. Our extensive and engaging end-of-chapter experiential exercises contained in “Exercises in Understanding and Managing Organizational Behavior” give students the opportunity to catch the excitement of organizational behavior as a fluid, many-faceted discipline, and they allow students to develop and practice their own skills.

Our challenge in revising Understanding and Managing Organizational Behavior has been to incorporate and integrate the latest advances in theorizing and research and provide a thorough and contemporary account of the factors that influence organizational behavior. Importantly, we strived to convey this knowledge to students in a very readable, applied, hands-on format to increase their understanding and enjoyment of the learning process.

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