When a number of individuals begin to work at interdependent jobs, they often pass through several stages as they learn to work together as a team. The stages of team development life cycle are forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. This model of team development was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, who maintained that these phases are all necessary and inevitable and allow team growth. Though these are not followed rigidly, they do represent a broad pattern that may be observed and predicted in many settings across team’s time together. These stages are the result of a variety of questions and issues that team members face such as “who will be members of the team?” “Who will perform what functions?” “Who will contribute what?” “What rules will be followed?” “How can conflicts among members be resolved?” and so on. These typical stages of team development life cycle are Continue reading
Organizational Behavior
Understanding the Significance of Hawthorne Studies to Management
The Hawthorne experiments were conducted at Western Electric’s Hawthorne plant in Illinois, running from 1924 through 1932. These experiments were intended to examine how people would react to certain conditions such as light, heat, and humidity. These variables were altered and produced both expected and unexpected results. Further trials embarked as Professor George Elton Mayo brought an academic research team into the factory, which were among the most extensive social science studies ever conducted. These investigations have been heavily criticized for merely serving the interest of management. However, these accusations can be argued. The Hawthorne investigations did not only have enormous influence on the ‘human factors’ to management but also on the development of industrial psychology and sociology. Some maintain their opinion that the human relations approach is misinterpreted, leading to major failures. The Hawthorne studies were initially undertaken to investigate the relationship between physical work conditions and employers productivity. Continue reading
Major Leadership Theories in Management
Leadership is an integral part of management and plays a vital role in managerial operations. Leadership provides direction, guidance, and confidence to the employees and helps in the attainment of goals in much easier way. In business and industrial organizations, managers play the role of leader and acquire leadership of subordinates, their efforts towards the achievement of organizational goals and activate the individuals of an organization to make them work. Leadership influences behavior of the individuals. It has an ability to attract others and potential to make them follow the instructions. Individuals can be induced to contribute their optimum towards the attainment of organizational goals through effective leadership. Leadership acquires dominance and the followers accept the directives and control of a leader. Leadership provides direction and vision for future to an organization. A number of theories and approaches to study leadership have been developed. There are broadly three leadership theories Continue reading
Modern Theories of Organization
Modern organizational behavior has become complex. It synthesizes the classical and neoclassical theories of organization, while incorporating technological development. Modern theories of organization are classified into quantitative theory, system theory and contingency theory. 1. Quantitative Theory The quantitative theory includes operation research and quantification of the problem. It analyses the problems from quantifiable angles and provides solutions to complex problems only with the help of statistical and mathematical models such as linear and non-linear programming, game theory, decision tree, simulation and probability. Computers are used to solve management problems whereas mathematical models were previously used for the purpose. A large number of problems are solved with the use of simulation equations and computers. The development of equations requires specialized skills and advance knowledge of mathematics, statistics, economics and behavioral sciences. Models are tested while the context of the real world and use of operation research. Continue reading
Case Study: Analysis of Organizational Culture at Google
Google Inc came to life with the two brilliant people as the founder of the company. Those two were Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Both of them are a PhDs holder in computer science in Stanford University California. In their research project, they came out with a plan to make a search engine that ranked websites according to the number of other websites that linked to that site. Before Google was established, search engines had ranked site simply by the number of times the search term searched for appeared on the webpage. By the brilliant mind of Larry and Sergey, they develop the technology called PageRank algorithm. PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of document, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of measuring its relative importance within the set. All this in-depth research leads to Continue reading
The Behavioral Science Approach to Management
The behavioral science approach to management focuses on the psychological and sociological processes (attitude, motivations, group dynamics) that influence employee performance. While the classical approach focuses on the job of workers, the behavioral approach focuses on the workers in these jobs. Workers desisted the formal and impersonal approach of classical writers. Behavioral approach started in 1930. This gave rise to the Behavioral science approach to management. Two branches contributed to the Behavioral approach. Human Relations Movements: The human relations movement refers to the approach to management and worker productivity that takes into account a person’s motivation, satisfaction, and relationship with others in the workplace. The human relations movement grew from the Hawthorne studies. Development of Organisational Behavior: Pioneers of the human relation movement stressed inter-personal relations and neglected the group behavior patterns. This led to the development of field of organisational behavior. It respects a more. Interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional approach Continue reading