Mgmt 310 Reading Notes

•  Converger has one right answer, Diverger has no right answers
• Solution - Organize employees into small groups and teams based upon the work task they needed to complete in order to satisfy the customer

• Created IT team -> develop  and improve proprietary software
• Operations group -> handle dat-to-day implementation  of system and manage communication between customer and organization
• Materials management/logistics -> thought of most cost efficient way to obtain product and ship it.

• Providing good customer service is the most vital link between customers and a company

• He decentralized authority – urged people to think of ways to better meet customer needs

• From beginning encouraged employees to have great customer service, Employees’ first task is satisfying the customer. To ensure all employees are motivated to provide excellent service they are all given stock.
• The best way to gain such an understanding of people at work, and the forces that shape their work behavior is to study organizational behavior.
• Organization -  A collection of people who work together and coordinate their actions to achieve individual and organizational goals

• Goals are what individuals are trying to accomplish by being members of an organization. (ie. Earning a lot of money)
• Goals are also what the organization as a whole is trying to accomplish. (ie. Making a profit to reward stock holders.)
• An effective organization achieves its goals
• Organizations exist to provide goods and services that people want
• Most people make their living by working in or for some kind of company or organization
• All who desire to become future owners/managers all benefit from the study of organizational behavior

• Organizational Behavior (OB) – The study of factors that affect how individuals and groups act in organizations and how organizations respond to their environments.

• Important to understand how people behave because most people work for an organization at some point in their lives are affected both positively and negatively.

• Understanding OB can enhance the positive and reduce the negative.

• OB – Provides a set of tools  that allow people to understand, analyze, and describe behavior in organization

• Also allows managers to improve, enhance, or change work behaviors so that individuals, groups, and the whole organization can achieve their goals.

• 3 Main levels of OB – Full understanding is impossible if you don’t examine the factors that affect behavior at each level.

• Individual – Group – Organization

• Group – Two or more people who interact to achieve their goals
• Team – A group in which members work together intensively and develop team specific routines to achieve a common goal.
• Virtual Team – A group whose members work together via electronic means and may never actually meet.

• Values and beliefs in an organization influence how people interact with each other outside the organization. This is also done through Organizational culture which also helps to have people work toward achieving the organizations goals.
• Principle task of organizational structure is to encourage people to work hard and coordinate their efforts to ensure high levels of organizational performance
• Managers – Persons who supervise the activities of one or more employees.

• Managers at all levels confront the problem of understanding the behavior or their subordinates and responding appropriately.

• OB research shows that organizations that have taught employees how to work as a team are more effective than those that haven’t.
• Top Management Teams – High ranking execs who plan a company’s strategy so that the company can achieve its goals.

• A manager who understands how characteristics affect/shape work attitudes and behavior can experiment by changing characteristics to see what might increase effectiveness of the organization.

• Organizational Effectiveness – The ability of an organization to achieve its goals.

• Key challenge is how to encourage all org. members to work effectively for their own benefit and benefit of the company.

• Scientific Process – Cyclical model – Induction -> Deduction -> Verification

• A. Observations of organizational behavior – Induction – the process researchers use to explain spec observations. B. General explanations for organization – Deduction – The process of making specific predictions. C. Specific predictions about organizational behavior – Verification – The process of determining whether predictions are accurate by making specific observations about OB.

• Sureness of action is a fundamental expression of tacit knowledge
• Conversion can be tacit-to-tacit (watching somebody, then doing it); tacit-to-explicit (doing it, then describing it); explicit-to-tacit (reading about it, then doing it).

• we’re most used to is explicit-to-explicit, The result, whenever knowledge translates from one form to another, is liberated energy, innovation, and performance.

• The conversion and exchange of knowledge are going on all of the time within and among individuals. That process becomes more complicated when a conversion is from an individual to an organization.
• Trust is a subtle, but key, factor in the success of any project in which individual knowledge is converted to organizational knowledge.
• Groupware, masterfully facilitated, allows people to play around with ideas in a virtual space.
• How you can cultivate the sharing of tacit knowledge among people in your organization.

• Watch. Observe what your people do and how they do it.
• Create an environment of trust, respect, and commitment, beginning with you.
• Let people learn by doing.
• In any training exercise, allow time for reflection and interpersonal exchange.

• Four styles of learning – Concrete experience abilities (CE), Reflective observation (RO), Abstract conceptualization (AC), and Active experimentation (AE).
• CE – Must be able to involve self fully, openly, and without bias in new experiences, Feeling
• RO – Reflect on and observe these experiences from multiple perspectives,
• AC – Create concepts that integrate observations into logically sound theories.
• AE – Use theories to make decisions and solve problems
• Two primary dimensions to learning process

• First represents  the concrete experiencing of events at one end and abstract conceptualization at the other
• Second has active experimentation at one extreme and reflective observation at the other.

• The Learning-Style Inventory (LSI) measures an individual’s relative emphasis on the four learning abilities.
• Four dominant types of learning styles

• Converger – Dominant learning abilities are AC and AE. Practical application of ideas is greatest strength.
• Diverger – Opposite strengths of converger. Best at CE and RO. Very imaginative
• Assimilator – Dominant abilities fall into AC and RO. Best at creating theoretical models
• Accommodator – Opposite of assimilator. Best at CE and AE, greatest strength lies in doing things, carrying out plans and experiments, and involving himself in new experiences. Often seen as pushy and most likely to be found in action-orientated jobs.

• 2 goals in experimental learning

• Learn the specifics of a particular subject matter and learn about ones strengths and weaknesses as a learner.

...