Organisational Behaviour

SOFT SKILLS WORLD

Workshop plan

►Structure of the workshop

►Issues to explore in the workshop

►Historical overview

►Day long session

►Duration: 6 to 8 hours

► Any question?

Structure of the workshop

SOME RECOMMENDED SOURCES

Organization Studies

Organizational Science

Organization Behaviour

Human Relations

Harvard Business Review

Introduction to Organizational behaviour

Research in Organizational Behavior

Economists, Financial times…

Organizational behaviour (OB)

“the study of human behaviour in organizational

contexts with a focus on individual and group

processes and actions” (pp.2)

Issues to explore in the workshop

Issues to explore in the workshop

Hong Kong stock exchange, 1994

“An entitative approach [to organisations] fails to represent what it means to be human, misrepresents the qualities of the relational processes and, more

generally, grossly distorts

the relationships between

person and organisation”

(Hoskings and Morley 1991:IX)

Issues to explore in the workshop

“The relationship between a person and a context involves accommodation (changing oneself) and assimilation (changing the context)… people are both products of their contexts and participants in the shaping of those contexts.” (Hoskings and Morley, 1991:5)

Any Question?

Issues to explore in the workshop

The notion of an organisation as an imperative, absolute entity, is the direct outcome of historical transformations occurred in Europe and North America from the end of the 18th century onwards:

Before the 19th Century:

► Experience of Artisan work (e.g. Ironsmith)

Technical skills, personal competence and craft pride constitutive of the working process.

Industrial revolution in the 19th Century

Close relationship between the subject of work and his/her activity was lost

Historical overview

Early 20th Century: ‘Classical approach’

Advent of scientific management (F.W. Taylor)

Aim: controlling labour through science

Far-reaching process of establishing control and surveillance: to discipline the mind and body of the productive subject was the central concern.

Deconstruction of the task from „within‟

Rigid control over time and body movements

Conception and execution as separate domains in hierarchical relationships

Technology for social control

Historical overview

Historical overview

Historical overview

Hawthorne Studies and the Human RelationsMovement (Elton Mayo, 1923-1933)

Hawthorne studies: environment and productivity? Results: organizations are social systems, not just technical

economical systems Groups, teamwork, different job roles, human relations are of great

significance in organizations We are motivated by many needs Leadership should be modified to include concepts of human

relations

A new discipline of human behaviour and, by extension, Organisational behaviour. (1960s)

Systems Rationalist approach

Modern Approach

1. The organization seen as an open socio-technical system.

2. The existence of subsystems which interact with one another.

3. Management is a distinct subsystem which is responsible for direction and coordination of all other subsystems.

Organisation (open system view)

Transformation process outputsinputs

Historical overview

Andreas Gursky’s The factory

► People‟s subjectivity in relation to organisational processes.

► Political and cultural nature of social relations.

► Social construction of organisational reality, co-creation of the phenomenon you are seeking to study.

Historical overview

Symbolic-Interpretative perspective

To explore in the workshop

BY INTRODUCING

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES

TO THE UNDERSTANDING

OF PEOPLE AND

ORGANISATIONS, WE HOPE:

TO STIMULATE YOUR SEARCH

FOR NEW KNOWLEDGE,

CREATIVITY AND SKILLS AS

ORGANISATIONAL

PRACTITIONERS