3590 Posts Found

The mind-set that accompanies the victory need is completely different from the one that accompanies the need for achievement. The need for achievement mind-set focuses primarily on end users or customers and how best to meet their needs. The victory need mind-set focuses on competitors and how best to out-perform them. This latter perception leads to organisational behaviour with negative consequences for all concerned: the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: TheWorkingManager.com | Subject: Organizational Behavior

People do care about the truth of an idea, but they also want to tell stories that produce strong emotion, and that second tendency sometimes gets in the way of the first.

If we could understand what kinds of stories succeed beyond all expectations, even when they are not true, we might be able to take legitimate information, about health for example, and change people’s behavior … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Communication, Organizational Behavior

Gender differences are a primary — maybe even the central — part of our schema. They are the first differentiator. In the workplace, what goes along with our thinking that someone is a male or female? A lot. A ton. We are just hugely invested in all kinds of preconceived ideas about what men and women can do. The unfortunate part is that what we … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Gallup Management Journal | Subject: Women in Business

The problem with workplace bullying is that many bullies are hard to identify because they operate surreptitiously under the guise of being civil and cooperative. Although workplace bullying is being discussed more than ever before, and there may eventually be specific legislation outlawing such behavior, organizations cannot afford to wait for new laws to eradicate the bullies in their midst. In order to survive, organizations … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: John Richardson, Linnea B. McCord | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Organizations are characterized by inertia and there are good reasons for this. Reliability and accountability are valued attributes of organizations. These qualities are strengthened by predictable routines and structures, which create inertia as a byproduct.

Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Over the last 100 years, four distinct contexts of business leadership have emerged in the West: paternal-mechanistic, humanistic, holistic, and spiritual-based. Each context represents a fundamental change in how we view the nature of business leadership. As we embrace and fulfill these contexts of business leadership, we believe it will naturally fuel a fundamental change in the nature of business itself, such that business and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Debra Ruth Miller, William C. Miller | Source: Global Dharma Center | Subject: Organizational Behavior

What I’ve learned about business owners and human beings is that they respect wisdom but obey pain.

Content: Quotation | Source: BusinessWeek | Subjects: Personality / Behavior, Wisdom

Things bring people together. They oblige them to interact, and to enter into exchanges. Every day, organisations and institutions of all sorts are formed around things. Things create social situations that, in some cases, their participants are no more than dimly aware of and, in others, use ruthlessly to their advantage. Thus things take on a “social density”, contributing to and reinforcing certain kinds of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: Organizational Behavior

An organisation’s unwillingness to change comes from the myopia of its leadership. An inability to change, on the other hand, comes from its processes.

Companies can be classified according to these two dimensions. Captive companies are those that are willing but not able to change. Arrogant companies have the ability to change, but are unwilling to do so. Legacy companies are neither willing nor able … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

Women executives who leave the corporate world when they hit a glass ceiling, want to raise a family fulltime or decide to focus on other interests, encounter frustrating roadblocks in their attempts to re-enter the workforce, according to new Wharton research. To overcome the obstacles, women should confront the difficulties they face and prepare for their return to the labor force the moment they leave, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Women in Business

David West proposes that a key distinction exists between those who seek to control time and those who are willing to respond to it (Monochrons vs. Polychrons).

Content: Article | Author: David West | Source: TheWorkingManager.com | Subjects: Miscellaneous, Organizational Behavior

Empowerment can be abandonment when employees are given responsibility without guidance or training. A vice president who suddenly shows up one day and tells his plant manager that he will have sign-off authority for $1 million instead of the $5,000 he formerly had isn’t empowering his employee, he’s setting him up to fail.

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Twenty years ago, a fortysomething man didn’t feel the immense pressure to be a great dad that he feels today. If you were a C-suite executive and had kids at home, taking care of them was the job of your wife, community, school, church, and the Little League coach. And people were OK with that. Societal expectations weren’t that you were going to spend thirty … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Women in Business

Get away from the grand eloquence and echoing emptiness of the conventional mission (or vision or values) statements. Make them more than buzzwords to really mean something to employees’ day-to-day.

Content: Article | Author: N. Dean Meyer | Source: CIO Magazine | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Four steps to ensure that the right decisions are made by the right people.

Content: Article | Authors: Michael C. Jensen, Peter Jacobs | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Once an organization decentralizes, localized decision-making restores diversity of opinion and offers the opportunity to tap into a wide body of knowledge. But there’s a problem: How do you aggregate that knowledge? Similar to the issues created by a competitive internal culture, the transfer of power away from the center toward the frontline employees often results in local knowledge not being shared throughout the organization. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Many managers believe that a good corporate culture can encourage employees to share their opinions and solve the diversity requirement, but with few exceptions corporate cultures work against the sharing of dissimilar ideas. In the competing schools of thought on culture — team versus competitive — both models embody elements that undermine collective intelligence. The team concept, based on fostering familiarity and friendly cooperation between … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

At a time when many corporations are engaged in unrelenting searches for ways to improve operations and reduce costs, there is one aspect of organizational life that has largely escaped scrutiny: Performance Appraisal. Perhaps this is because performance appraisals have become an unquestioned fact of life in most large organizations. As with most unquestioned facts, a critical examination can prove beneficial.

In this article, the author … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Fred Nickols | Source: Corporate University Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

This article discusses the statement: It is possible to speed up corporate growth – but not infinitely. Today start-up, tomorrow at the stock exchange – this is impossible for some practical reasons. The question is, however, how fast an organization can develop from start-up with a team of five to a business with 50+ people. For this discussion, Greiners model of Five Phases of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Oliver Recklies | Source: TheManager.org | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Today business, politics, education, and society in general are driven by four negative motivations: fear, greed, anger, and self-assertion. When we are controlled by these negative emotions, we trust both ourselves and others less, and we tend to act from a small place inside ourselves.

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior