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An organization’s conception of human capital is manifest in its culture, and culture is inculcated by process and behavior guidelines that are passed along as one employee imitates another. The process is most effective when the capacity for self-expression in the ranks is consonant with expectations set at the top and an autonomous spirit flourishes.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sally Helgesen | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Culture, Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Why is ultimately a question of purpose: Why do we exist? In most organizations, people are not encouraged to keep asking questions. As a result, people resign themselves to living with difficulties that they could actually resolve if they had a way to frame their knowledge within a larger solution.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ikujiro Nonaka | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Organizational Behavior

The “Hawthorne effect,” a concept familiar to all students of social science, has had a profound influence both on the direction and design of research over the past 75 years. The Hawthorne effect is named after a landmark set of studies conducted at the Hawthorne plant in the 1920s. The first and most influential of these studies is known as the “Illumination Experiment.” Both academics … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: John A. List, Steven D. Levitt | Source: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Businesspeople are mostly in the dark about how their organizational design — the “lines and boxes” signifying reporting relationships in a hierarchy — should be arranged. But most businesspeople can tell when it’s working and when it’s not, because they know when they’re in the “flow zone.” A number of researchers, most prom­inently the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, have identified the value of flow, the state … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Brian Dive | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Ever since companies decided that maybe they should measure how their workers are doing and give the better performers a raise, employers have married employee performance appraisals with annual salary reviews.

Within a short period of time, the argument began over whether the two should be linked and, if so, to what extent. One facet of that ongoing debate is whether the size of pay increase … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Steve Moulton | Source: Action Insight | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Self-image at work is a critical and often overlooked factor in the process of change. People change jobs and careers, but rarely do they think about changing their self-image. Perhaps that’s because self-image operates just below awareness, but still colors our perceptions, emotions and actions. Leaders who are not conscious of this fact tend to cling to their old self-image that keeps them from changing. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Rick Lash | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Groups with diverse functional expertise, education, or personality can increase performance by enhancing creativity or group problem-solving. In contrast, more visible diversity, such as race, gender, or age, can have negative effects unless it’s managed properly, says Stanford Business School Professor Margaret Neale.

Content: Article | Author: Margaret Neale | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Organizational Behavior

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Even though people seek trade because of self-interest…nevertheless an economy can operate effectively only on the basis of trust among different parties.

Content: Quotation | Author: Amartya Sen | Source: The New York Review of Books | Subjects: Economics, Trust

Power made me a coat. For a long time I kept it in the back of my closet. I didn’t like to wear it much but I always took good care of it. When I first started wearing it again, it smelled like mothballs. As I wore it more, it started fitting better, and stopped smelling like mothballs.

I was afraid if I wore the coat … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: J. Ruth Gendler | Source: Hold this Thought | Subjects: Personal Development, Power / Authority

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.

Content: Quotation | Author: Stephen R. Covey | Source: Hold this Thought | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Business literature is replete with stories of unethical behavior in executive suites and board rooms, yet everyone is potentially capable of falling into the same traps. With a little insight into the psychological traps that increase the probability that individuals will behave unethically, perhaps such behavior can be curbed. To date, the authors have delineated a total of 45 traps, including “Obedience to Authority,” “Need … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Paul Hersey EdD, Robert Hoyk PhD | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Ethics, Organizational Behavior

And the antidote to fear? Pull people out of their panic and self-protective impulses by first acknowledging the difficulties, then raising their eyes and hearts to a possibility of success.

At that point you can take advantage of their newly available and hopeful energy to make that possibility a reality.

Content: Quotation | Author: Erika Andersen | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Change Management, Fear / Doubt, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Rather than attempt to manage behavior with reasons or rewards, we’ll be more effective if we manage the ideas that drive behavior. As one experiment has shown, an idea can change not just how we think, but how we feel. Subjects were shown a picture of a woman crying and brain scans showed enhanced activity in the emotion-generating amygdala. But when the researchers changed the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Charles Jacobs | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Personality / Behavior, Storytelling

Because a story is not an argument, it doesn’t summon up reason in defense. Stories ask only that we entertain them, and when we do, we rehearse the view of the world they embody. If we fnd it more attractive or a better ft with our experience, we adopt it. Because stories are experiences, they address both the intellect and emotions that drive our decision-making.

Sociologists … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Charles Jacobs | Source: ChangeThis | Subject: Storytelling

What The Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo’s landmark book on a prison experiment at Stanford University, tells us about the dangers of corporate conformity.

Content: Article | Author: James O’Toole | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Organizational Behavior

While companies assume there is necessarily a trade-off between efficiency and responsiveness in a constrained environment, research shows that only those organizations operating near the performance frontier (the optimal performance a company can achieve) should expect trade-offs. The companies that operate away from the frontier have the potential to improve both … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Atanu Chaudhuri, Craig Giffi, Kumar Kandaswami, Shalabh Kumar Singh | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

The U.S. Supreme Court benefits from differences of opinions among the justices. Research that included studying how teams make decisions says when a narrow majority exists, pressure of the minority forces the majority to think with more complexity and to consider diverse evidence, says Stanford Business School Professor Deborah Gruenfeld.

Content: Article | Author: Deborah H. Gruenfeld | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Organizational Behavior

The purpose of this article is to examine how organizational culture influences the likelihood of success for change strategies, and to provide tools for the reader to apply within his or her organization. In particular, the Integrated Cultural Framework (ICF), which was adapted by the authors from the work of Hofstede and Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, is introduced. The ICF has been used to analyze culture … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Don Goodwin, Mark Mallinger, Ph.D., Tetsuya O’Hara | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Organizational Behavior

The practice of assigning letter grades to jobs has had perverse consequences. Aligning jobs with accountability is a much better idea.

Content: Article | Author: Brian Dive | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior