3590 Posts Found

In response to society’s demand for a stronger emphasis on business ethics, in light of recent publicity concerning unethical business practices, and in trying to be in compliance with new federal and state regulatory laws, many businesses have created or strengthened ethics programs. These programs are most effective when they flow out of a culture that values practicing business legally and ethically. However, there are … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jere E. Yates | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Ethics

I like people who are alive. People who are alive are hard to control. They have ideas, aspirations, and feelings, including anger. Nice people have the bad habit of letting me down. Nice people don’t offer me anything I have not thought of before. Nice people don’t save me from my mistakes. Nice people end up acting on feelings they have always had but never … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: CEO Refresher | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Few things provide greater satisfaction or joy than to learn that another feels that something you have said or done has been of help to them. This is especially true when it occurred with no thought of something in return.

Content: Quotation | Author: John Wooden | Source: CEO Refresher | Subjects: Communication, Leadership, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Personality / Behavior

In a specific culture, people usually respond well to receiving very detailed and segmented information about what is expected of each of them. If you need to give instructions to a team member from this kind of culture, focus on what that person needs to accomplish and when. Conversely, if you need to motivate, manage, or persuade someone from a holistic culture, spend time explaining … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Erin Meyer | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: International, Management, Organizational Behavior

People make decisions—often in very different ways. Learn more about five distinct styles and the preferences that shape them.

Content: Article | Authors: Dan P. Lovallo, Olivier Sibony | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say, and two-thirds thinking about him and what he is going to say.

Content: Quotation | Subjects: Communication, Leadership, Management, Persuasion

Group dynamics can lead otherwise sensible individuals to make (or agree to) decisions they might not come to on their own. Executives need to be on the lookout for group biases and their undesirable results. Here are four common manifestations of the “group effect” and some suggestions for countering them.

Content: Article | Authors: Paul Rogers, Todd Senturia | Source: Bain & Company | Subject: Organizational Behavior

There are three factors involved in resistances: age, emotion and public stance. First of all, the longer your neural networks have been running one way, the harder it is to rewire them. Unfortunately, that’s just a fact of life. Number two, the things that you feel very strongly about emotionally are the hardest to change your mind about. And three, particularly for people who are … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Howard E. Gardner | Source: CIO Magazine | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

When I say story or narrative, I have a pretty elaborate definition. There has to be a protagonist. There have to be goals. There have to be obstacles people can identify with. There has to be an ultimate resolution—hopefully a positive one. It’s not the same as having a message or a vision or a slogan. It’s a more encompassing, realistic, enveloping thing.

Content: Quotation | Author: Howard E. Gardner | Source: CIO Magazine | Subject: Storytelling

I don’t believe behavior change lasts unless people’s minds change voluntarily. I’m interested in leadership that’s overt and mind-changing that’s intentional.

Content: Quotation | Author: Howard E. Gardner | Source: CIO Magazine | Subjects: Change Management, Leadership, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Why don’t organizations create process-oriented structures and start focusing the needed attention on process issues? Unfortunately, there are some good reasons. Processes aren’t the only thing in organizations that need attention. Business functions, which are focused on the skills and capabilities needed to solve organizational problems, deserve some attention too. Geographically-based structures are an acknowledgement that business is different in different parts of the world, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Thomas H. Davenport | Source: Babson Insight | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Process

Bureaucracy was developed to solve the problem of how to get work done by people who might not have the skills, experience, motivation or training to make wide-ranging decisions, but who could do work that was carefully prescribed and circumscribed. By limiting the scope of latitude through defined positions, rules and procedures, organizations could leverage the talents of those few at the top who had … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Allan Cohen | Source: Babson Insight | Subjects: Bureaucracy, Management, Organizational Behavior

The best companies use culture as both a sword and a shield, to improve performance and reduce risk.

Content: Article | Author: Joel Greenwald | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, working with the anthropologist Russell Hill, pieced together the average English household’s Christmas card network. The researchers were able to report, for example, that about a quarter of cards went to relatives, nearly two-thirds to friends, and 8 percent to colleagues. The primary finding of the study, however, was a single number: the total population of the households each set of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Drake Bennett | Source: BusinessWeek | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Dr. W. Edwards Deming taught that 90-95 percent of performance problems were the results of the processes people work within, not individual performance. Unfortunately, focusing on individual performance increases fear as employees know they will be held accountable for things they cannot control. Fear drives unproductive behaviors such as blaming, withholding information and self-protection. Rather than driving problems out into the open and encouraging collaborative, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: John Bernard | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Many leaders inadvertently stand in the way of superior performance. Here’s how to avoid the hindrance trap. And to check your own performance, take our interactive survey.

Content: Article | Authors: Kannan Ramaswamy, William Youngdahl | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

How’s your performance evaluation system working for you? There’s very good evidence to suggest it is ineffective. If performance evaluations were a drug, they would not get FDA approval—at least as they’re done in most organizations. About 20 percent of the time they make things better, 20 percent of the time they make things worse, and 60 percent of the time, meh. Yet we keep … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

By encouraging employees to both seek and provide help, rewarding givers, and screening out takers, companies can reap significant and lasting benefits.

Content: Article | Author: Adam Grant | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

‘Social engineering’ is a mechanistic logic that traces its rootstock to Isaac Newton and has been propagated aggressively by twentieth-century microeconomic theory. This worldview holds that businesses and organizational processes are reducible to a kind of physics. Unfortunately, social systems in general, and businesses in particular, are phenomena of organized complexity. There are definite limits to what physics (and its pragmatic cousin, engineering) can accomplish. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Richard T. Pascale | Source: ManagementFirst | Subject: Organizational Behavior

We are all prisoners of the familiar. And that means we don’t get up in the morning and say, ‘I think I’ll go out and make myself as uncomfortable as I can by dealing with someone who is very different from me.’

Content: Quotation | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior