3605 Posts Found

While studying teamwork, Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson chanced upon a seeming paradox: Well-led teams appeared to make more mistakes than average teams. Could this be true? As it turned out, good teams, which value communication, report more errors. In a recent research paper Edmondson and doctoral student Sara Singer explore this and other hidden barriers to organizational learning.

Content: Article | Author: Amy Edmondson | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Practitioners and academics have argued that an engaged workforce can create competitive advantage. These authors say that it is imperative for leaders to identify the level of engagement in their organization and implement behavioural strategies that will facilitate full engagement. In clear terms, they describe how leaders can do that.

Content: Article | Authors: Dan Crim, Gerard H. Seijts | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

One of the distinguishing features of people is that they have strong ideas about what is right and wrong. If you can resonate, collectively, with those ideas, then you can tap into people’s commitment and creativity to a far greater degree.

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

You know the type: coworkers who never have anything positive to say, whether at the weekly staff meeting or in the cafeteria line. They can suck the energy from a brainstorming session with a few choice comments. Their negativity can contaminate even good news. “We engage in emotional contagion,” says Wharton management professor Sigal Barsade. “Emotions travel from person to person like a virus.” Barsade … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Human beings are creatures of habit. Many of our actions are repetitive and require little conscious thought or effort. However, according to a new study, by predicting our behavior we can actually reinforce good habits and break bad ones. The study by INSEAD Assistant Professor of Marketing Pierre Chandon and four US-based Marketing professors is called ‘When Does the Past Repeat Itself? The Role of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Pierre Chandon | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Organizational Behavior

Positive people tend to do better in the workplace, and it isn’t just because people like them more than naysayers. Positive people cognitively process more efficiently and more appropriately. If you’re in a negative mood, a fair amount of processing is going to that mood. When you’re in a positive mood, you’re more open to taking in information and handling it effectively.

Content: Quotation | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Attitude, Organizational Behavior

You need a story to displace a story. Metaphors and stories are far more potent (alas) than ideas; they are also easier to remember and more fun to read. Ideas come and go, stories stay.

Content: Quotation | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Communication, Storytelling

Everybody knows that you need more prevention than treatment, but few reward acts of prevention. We glorify those who left their names in history books at the expense of those contributors about whom our books are silent. We humans are not just a superficial race (this may be curable to some extent); we are a very unfair one.

Content: Quotation | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Problems / Solutions

Group work is the name of the game in many companies. The thinking is that workers will learn more and help each other when they are put into groups composed of people with a variety of expertise. But does this always happen? Some recent research suggests that it may not … at least not always.

Content: Article | Author: Stuart Bunderson | Source: Discovery@Olin | Subject: Organizational Behavior

People don’t know how much you know, until they know how much you care.

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

The way we’ve taught managers to make decisions and consultants to analyze problems condemns them to taking action when it’s too late. The only way you can look into the future is with theory. And that’s a big leap for managers to take.

The key to good theory is good categorization–understanding the circumstances you’re in, and the circumstances you’re not in.

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Decision Making, Problems / Solutions

Leadership is not a matter of position but of relationships, and one-on-one, personal encounters are vital in building those relationships. In the end, people follow you because they believe it is in their interests to do so, not because you claim to be a leader, because others have designated you as leader, or because you have the resources and position of leadership. There’s no better … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jeswald W. Salacuse | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

According to a Stanford psychologist, you’ll reach new heights if you learn to embrace the occasional tumble.

Content: Article | Authors: Carol Dweck, Marina Krakovsky | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

As a 20-year veteran of change in corporate America, Peter Garber draws on his extensive experience as a human resource professional and international consultant to help managers and leaders anticipate and plan for the inevitable waves of change in their organizations.

10 Natural Forces for Business Success offers a wealth of new discoveries about how to build operational and personnel systems around the 10 natural forces … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Peter Garber | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

Managers don’t need pictures of hierarchy; they need visualizations of the wide-ranging connections that make up companies’ learning systems. Rather than charts showing who reports to whom, they need charts to show who knows what and whom, and who works most often with whom.

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

For any organization, the starting point of greatness is not in meeting expectations–whether of shareholders, board members, or constituents–but fulfilling a Purpose that fits the identity of the organization. For example, is a foundation charged primarily with discovery: inventing new approaches to helping people? Or with excellence: promoting a high standard of service and execution? Or with altruism: making greater numbers of people happy? Or … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Nikos Mourkogiannis | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

I sincerely hope that we’re seeing the end of retreats. This personalization of business relationships is misguided. For one thing, it’s expensive to have people climb poles or shoot at one another with paint guns. But the more depressing thing is that it’s taken us half a century to realize that when you remove everybody’s inhibitions, you create more problems than you solve. Regrettably, the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Training & Development

An inevitable and unfortunate part of the “I want to be me” movement has been the idea that there is no distinction between your business life and your personal life. People treat colleagues as friends and family-often to disastrous effect. Sexual harassment is a prime example. If you flirt with somebody at a party, that person can’t have you arrested. But if you flirt at … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Legal, Organizational Behavior

Want to make your meetings more productive? You may learn a thing or two from this gathering of warring gangs.

Content: Article | Author: John Wareham | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

A flipside of risk is trust. Trust is implicit in any dialogue between a company and its shareholders or any of its stakeholders. Trust is implicit in any discussion about the future in conditions of uncertainty…Any increased understanding of risk will tend to increase trust; while a dialogue that is risk-blind will tend to decrease trust especially over time as the unexpected inevitably occurs. By … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Risk Management, Trust