Organizational Behavior Exam

Organizational Behavior 15th Ed

What Is Organizational Behavior?

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Robbins and Judge

Chapter 1

Welcome to this Organizational Behavior course that uses the 15th edition of the textbook, Organizational Behavior by Robbins and Judge. This is considered among the most widely used OB textbooks in the world. Robbins and Judge are recognized as definitive aggregators of OB concepts, applications and practices. The course and this book will provide you with a resource that will benefit you throughout your degree program and your professional life.

Chapter 1 Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter you should be able to:

Demonstrate the importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace.

Describe the manager’s functions, roles and skills.

Define organizational behavior (OB).

Show the value to OB of systematic study.

Identify the major behavioral science disciplines that contribute to OB.

Demonstrate why few absolutes apply to OB.

Identify the challenges and opportunities managers have in applying OB concepts.

Compare the three levels of analysis in this book’s OB model.

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The first chapter entitled “What is Organizational behavior,” begins by defining eight learning objectives for the chapter. These lay a foundation understanding for the origins of OB and its applications in management and organizational existence. You should focus on this chapter to ground yourself effectively as a starting place for the more complex and significant concepts through the book. We will take each of these objectives and concentrate on its presentation to ensure your acquisition of base knowledge and competencies in OB.

Demonstrate the Importance of Interpersonal Skills in the Workplace

Understanding OB helping to determine manager effectiveness

Leadership and communication skills that are critical as a person progresses in a career

Lower turnover of quality employees

Higher quality applications for recruitment

Better financial performance

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LO 1

Interpersonal Skills Result In…

Managers need a whole cadre of skills to create a productive workplace, including technical and quantitative skills. However, leadership and communication skills are critical to organizational success. When managers have solid interpersonal skills, there are positive work outcomes for the organization. These outcomes include lower turnover of strong employees, improved recruitment pools for filling employment positions, and a better bottom line.

Describe the Manager’s Functions, Roles And Skills

Manager: Someone who gets things done through other people in organizations.

Organization: A consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more people that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals.

Planning, organizing, leading, and controlling are the most often studied.

Mintzberg concluded that managers perform ten different, highly interrelated roles or sets of behaviors attributable to their jobs.

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A Manager is someone in the organization who gets things done through the efforts of other people. It is important to keep in mind that an organization is defined as a social entity comprised of two or more people and can be found at any level within the organization. Henri Fayol of France originally defined the functions of management that became the cornerstone for management study for almost 100 years. These functions are currently defined as planning, organizing, leading and controlling. When thinking about these functions one realization comes forward. They all involve the interpersonal skills of communication for their effective implementation. And. Henry Mintzberg, no you do not have to be named Henry to be a management theorist, looked at management differently when he defined the 10 roles of managers. Again, think on these roles and you will find that they again involve implementation through the interpersonal skills of communication.

Describe the Manager’s Functions, Roles And Skills

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LO 2

Insert Exhibit 1.1

In fact, if you look at the three categories of roles suggested by Mintzberg following his research, you’ll note the distribution of communication and interpersonal skills such as tact, diplomacy, and the like, focusing on both internal and external audiences in the role’s activities. For this reason, developing the interpersonal skills introduced in this course are essential to the professional development of young professionals. It is essential to managerial success.

Describe the Manager’s Functions, Roles And Skills

Management Skills

Technical Skills–The ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. All jobs require some specialized expertise, and many people develop their technical skills on the job.

Human Skills–Ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually and in groups, describes human skills.

Conceptual Skills–The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations.

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A study published in the Harvard Business Review in 1960 and in continuing studies throughout the 1980s, three types of skills were attributed to managerial activity. These skills were found to be applied in different ratios depending on the managerial level in the organization. The underlying message here is that young professionals are hired for what they do and veteran professionals are hired for what they think. This is why we have the phenomenon of a CEO from one industry’s company being hired as the CEO of a company in a completely different industry.

Effective Versus Successful Managerial Activities

Luthans and associates found that all managers engage in four managerial activities.

Traditional management.

Communication.

Human resource management.

Networking.

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Luthans and his research associates found the managers engage in four managerial activities. The activities are defined as Traditional management which is decision making, planning, and controlling. The average manager spent 32 percent of his or her time performing this activity. Communication is exchanging in routine information and processing paperwork. The average manager spent 29 percent of his or her time performing this activity. Human resource management includes motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and training. The average manager spent 20 percent of his or her time performing this activity. Networking is socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders. The average manager spent 19 percent of his or her time performing this activity

Effective Versus Successful Managerial Activities

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Insert Exhibit 1.2

Managers who were high performing in these activities were found to be fast- tracked through organizational promotion.

Define “Organizational Behavior” (OB)

OB is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness.

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Organizational behavior is a field of study that includes effects at all levels in the organization. An organization is comprised of sub-organizations and downward, depending on the size of the firm, to the individual level. When the concept and practices of OB are internalized and applied, they contribute to the manager’s accomplishing worthwhile outcomes for the benefit of the organization and those who work for it.

Show the Value to OB of Systematic Study .

Systematic Study of Behavior

Behavior generally is predictable if we know how the person perceived the situation and what is important to him or her.

Evidence-Based Management (EBM)

Complements systematic study.

Argues for managers to make decisions on evidence.

Intuition

Systematic study and EBM add to intuition, or those “gut feelings” about “why I do what I do” and “what makes others tick.”

If we make all decisions with intuition or gut instinct, we’re likely working with incomplete information.

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LO 4

Many people say that the ideas and concepts of OB are common sense. However, the systematic study of OB has come closer to finding ways to predict the behavior of individuals and groups with an understanding of the situation and composition of the people. Evidence-based management suggests that the scientific method of research can be applied to OB to find the effective relationships of predictable variables to find the probability or independent variables, the person and his or her behavior. Of course intuition is a decision-making and activity approach advocated by numerous managers and pundits. In reality, the contents of “intuition” are the results of experience and learning that are based-on facts and experiences. EBM and the systematic study of behavior enhance the understanding of these internal contributors to organization behavior.

Identify the Major Behavioral Science Disciplines That Contribute to OB

Organizational behavior is an applied behavioral science that is built upon contributions from a number of behavioral disciplines.

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OB is a behavioral social science that merges concepts from a number of different social sciences to apply specifically to the organizational setting at individual and group levels of analysis and concept development. The most significant social sciences are psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and political science. Look at each for a moment.

Identify the Major Behavioral Science Disciplines That Contribute to OB

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Insert Exhibit 1.3

Exhibit 1.3 from the text shows the contributions made by other disciplines to the development of organizational behavior. The predominant areas are psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and political science. Each of the disciplines has contributed specific concepts and theories to the study of OB and its increasing applications.

Identify the Major Behavioral Science Disciplines That Contribute to OB

Psychology

Psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals.

Social Psychology

Social psychology blends the concepts of psychology and sociology.

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Psychology focuses on the individual level by seeking to measure, explain, and sometimes change behaviors in individuals. This area of study offers insights in such areas as learning, training, decision making, and employee selection.

Social Psychology moves beyond individual analysis to look at group behavior and how individuals can influence on another. It blends together sociology and psychology and looks primarily at change, communication, and group interactions.

Identify the Major Behavioral Science Disciplines That Contribute to OB

Sociology

Sociologists study the social system in which individuals fill their roles; that is, sociology studies people in relation to their fellow human beings.

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.

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Sociology looks at the relationship between individuals and their environment. Sociologists’ main contribution to OB is through offering a better understanding of group behavior. It looks more at how a group operates within an organizational system. One key area that sociologists contribute to in OB is culture, a key factor in OB studies.

An Anthropologist studies societies to learn about the human beings and their activities. They help us understand the differences between different groups in terms of their values, attitudes, and behaviors.

Few Absolutes Apply to OB

There are few, if any, simple and universal principles that explain organizational behavior.

Contingency variables—situational factors are variables that moderate the relationship between the independent and dependent variables.

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There are few absolutes in organizational behavior. When making decisions, you must always take into account situational factors that can change the relationship between two variables. Every situation has the potential to have unseen factors or even known factors that can change rapidly. Open you minds to detecting these changes and unseen factors and being ready with optional responses is essential to effective management,

Few Absolutes Apply to OB

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Situational factors that make the main relationship between two variables change—e.g., the relationship may hold for one condition but not another.

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When making decisions, you must always take into account these situational factors that can change the relationship between two variables. For example, as seen in this chart, one message from a boss in an American culture can mean a completely different thing in another culture. It is always important to take context into account.

Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of OB Concepts

Responding to Economic Pressure

In economic tough times, effective management is an asset.

In good times, understanding how to reward, satisfy, and retain employees is at a premium. In bad times, issues like stress, decision making, and coping come to the fore.

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During economic difficulties, the need for effective managers is heightened. Anyone can manage during good times; it is much tougher to manage through economic struggles. Often when there are economic pressures, managers are forced to make decisions based on resource constraints. These situations may include laying off employees, motivating employees when there are limited resources, and encouraging employees when they are stressed about their futures.

Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of OB Concepts

responding to Globalization

increased Foreign Assignments

working with People from Different Cultures

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Organizations now exist in an environment with no national borders. As a result, the manager’s job has changed. They need to have a broader perspective when making decisions.

As foreign assignments increase. you will need to be able to manage a workforce that is different than what you may be used to and may bring different needs, aspirations and attitudes to the workplace.

You will also have individuals coming to work in your own country that come from different cultures and you will need to find ways to accommodate their needs and help them assimilate to your workplace culture.

Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of OB Concepts

Managing Workforce Diversity

Workforce diversity acknowledges a

workforce of women and men;

many racial and ethnic groups;

individuals with a variety of physical or psychological abilities;

and people who differ in age and sexual orientation.

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As the borders are disappearing, we are seeing more and more heterogeneity in the workplace. Managers today need to embrace diversity and find ways to manage it effectively. The changing demographics have shifted management philosophy in a way that recognizes and utilizes differences to create productivity, profitability, and welcoming cultures.

Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of OB Concepts

Improving Customer Service

Today the majority of employees in developed countries work in service jobs.

Employee attitudes and behavior are associated with customer satisfaction.

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Jobs world wide have begun to focus on service industries such as retail, banking, insurance, and communications. These jobs are different from manufacturing jobs in the basis for what makes them attractive to people to perform well. OB helps to identify the characteristics and situations that can be managed to make employees and managers more sensitive to customer satisfaction, the essential outcome to successful service delivery.

Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of OB Concepts

Improving People Skills

People skills are essential to managerial effectiveness.

OB provides the concepts and theories that allow managers to predict employee behavior in given situations.

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Organizations are comprised of people. Organizations cannot achieve desired outcomes without people. So skills to manage people successfully are essential to the effectiveness of anyone in a managerial or leadership role. OB provides the concepts and theories that help predict behavior to create a more effective organization, accomplishing desired goals.

Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of OB Concepts

Stimulating Innovation and Change

Successful organizations must foster innovation and master the art of change.

Employees can be the impetus for innovation and change or a major stumbling block.

Managers must stimulate employees’ creativity and tolerance for change.

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Today’s volatile economy and business environments mean that organizations and the people that comprise them must adopt innovation and change to counter major disruptions, modifications, and changes in the operational environment. Employees or managers in the operational core are closes to the firm’s policy implementation, process operation and output characteristics. They are best suited to suggestion innovation and change to improve the organization, its people, processes and products to successfully meet the challenge of the operational environment.

Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of OB Concepts

Coping with “Temporariness”

Organizations must be flexible and fast in order to survive.

Managers and employees must learn to cope with temporariness.

Learning to live with flexibility, spontaneity, and unpredictability.

OB provides help in understanding a work world of continual change, how to overcome resistance to change, and how to create an organizational culture that thrives on change.

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The volatile operational environments lead to a sense of “temporariness” in today’s organization. Responding effectively and efficiently to these modifications means that managers and leaders of the organization must learn to cope with the uncertainty and ambiguity of temporariness. They must adopt and practice flexibility, spontaneity and unpredictability to meet environmental challenges. OB is key to the skills needed to reduce resistance to change and to create successful organizational cultures.

Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of OB Concepts

Working in Networked Organizations

Networked organizations are becoming more pronounced.

A manager’s job is fundamentally different in networked organizations. Challenges of motivating and leading “online” require different techniques.

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Networked organizations are proliferating. These are organizations that are spread over geographic, time, or other boundaries that are overcome by connecting the places, people, and processes by technology. Managing and leading people who never see each other but who must work together in successful teams is a challenge to adopt skills different from traditional applications in management and leadership.

Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of OB Concepts

Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts

The creation of the global workforce means work no longer sleeps.

Communication technology has provided a vehicle for working at any time or any place.

Employees are working longer hours per week.

The lifestyles of families have changed—creating conflict.

Balancing work and life demands now surpasses job security as an employee priority.

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Because of the expansion of networked business to global competition, time is no longer a definable boundary of organizational activity and personnel responsibility. Managers and leaders of organizations must shoulder the responsibility to help employees to balance work and life roles to ensure they remain effective and viable members of the team. Lacking such concern by leaders and managers can allow employees to believe they must work twenty-four hours a day to cover global time. This can lead to personnel burn-out, ineffectiveness, and dissatisfied employees.

Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of OB Concepts

Creating a Positive Work Environment

Organizations have realized creating a positive work environment can be a competitive advantage.

Positive organizational scholarship or behavior studies what is ‘good’ about organizations.

This field of study focuses on employees’ strengths versus their limitations as employees share situations in which they performed at their personal best.

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Creating a positive work environment has been found to be a basis for employee satisfaction, increased productivity, and longevity of skilled personnel. Responsibility for positive work environments is not a part of traditional management practice but as the work environment has changed in terms of characteristics and behaviors of younger generations the focus on making work a good place to be is important to success.

Identify the Challenges and Opportunities of OB Concepts

Improving Ethical Behavior

Ethical dilemmas are situations in which an individual is required to define right and wrong conduct.

Good ethical behavior is not so easily defined.

Organizations are distributing codes of ethics to guide employees through ethical dilemmas.

Managers need to create an ethically healthy climate.

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Increased scrutiny by society and governmental entities has increased business concern with ethical behavior. Lapses in ethical behavior have resulted in everything ranging from public sanctions against businesses to legal penalties against a firm and its managers. Manager and leaders must focus on leading by example what constitutes appropriate ethical behavior by the organization and its people.

Three Levels of Analysis in This Book’s OB Model

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Exhibit 1-4

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This book proposes three types of variables, inputs, processes, and outcomes, at three levels of analysis, individual, group, and organizational.

The model proceeds from left to right, with inputs leading to processes, and processes leading to outcomes.

Notice that the model also shows that outcomes can influence inputs in the future.

Three Levels of Analysis in This Book’s OB Model

Inputs

Inputs are the variables like personality, group structure, and organizational culture that lead to processes.

Group structure, roles, and team responsibilities are typically assigned immediately before or after a group is formed.

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Inputs are factors that exist in advance of the employment relationships. For example, individual diversity characteristics, personality, and values are shaped by a combination of an individual’s genetic inheritance and childhood environment. Group structure, roles, and team responsibilities are typically assigned immediately before or after a group is formed.

Finally, organizational structure and culture are usually the result of years of development and change as the organization adapts to its environment and builds up customs and norms.

Three Levels of Analysis in This Book’s OB Model

Processes

If inputs are like the nouns in organizational behavior, processes are like verbs.

Processes are actions that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in as a result of inputs and that lead to certain outcomes.

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Processes are actions that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in as a result of inputs and that lead to certain outcomes.

At the individual level, processes include emotions and moods, motivation, perception, and decision-making.

At the group level, they include communication, leadership, power and politics, and conflict and negotiation.

Finally, at the organizational level, processes include human resource management and change practices.

Three Levels of Analysis in This Book’s OB Model

Outcomes

Outcomes are the key variables that you want to explain or predict, and that are affected by some other variables.

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Scholars have emphasized individual-level outcomes like attitudes and satisfaction, task performance, citizenship behavior, and withdrawal behavior.

At the group level, cohesion and functioning are the dependent variables.

Finally, at the organizational level we look at overall profitability and survival. Because these outcomes will be covered in all the chapters, we’ll briefly discuss each here so you can understand what the “goal” of OB will be.

Variables of Interest

Attitudes and stress

Employee attitudes are the evaluations employees make, ranging from positive to negative, about objects, people, or events.

Stress is an unpleasant psychological process that occurs in response to environmental pressures.

Task performance

The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing your core job tasks is a reflection of your level of task performance.

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The belief that satisfied employees are more productive than dissatisfied employees has been a basic tenet among managers for years, though only now has research begun to support. Some people might think that influencing employee attitudes and stress is purely soft stuff, and not the business of serious managers, but as we will show, attitudes often have behavioral consequences that directly relate to organizational effectiveness.

Task performance is the most important human output contributing to organizational effectiveness, so in every chapter we devote considerable time to detailing how task performance is affected by the topic in question.

Variables of Interest

Citizenship behavior

The discretionary behavior that is not part of an employee’s formal job requirements, and that contributes to the psychological and social environment of the workplace, is called citizenship behavior.

Withdrawal behavior

Withdrawal behavior is the set of actions that employees take to separate themselves from the organization.

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In today’s dynamic workplace, where tasks are increasingly performed by teams and flexibility is critical, employees who engage in “good citizenship” behaviors help others on their team, volunteer for extra work, avoid unnecessary conflicts, respect the spirit as well as the letter of rules and regulations, and gracefully tolerate occasional work-related impositions and nuisances.

Employee withdrawal can have a very negative effect on an organization. The cost of employee turnover alone has been estimated to run into the thousands of dollars, even for entry-level positions. Absenteeism also costs organizations significant amounts of money and time every year. For instance, a recent survey found the average direct cost to U.S. employers of unscheduled absences is 8.7 percent of payroll.

Variables of Interest

Group cohesion

Group cohesion is the extent to which members of a group support and validate one another at work.

Group functioning

Group functioning refers to the quantity and quality of a group’s work output.

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When employees trust one another, seek common goals, and work together to achieve these common ends, the group is cohesive; when employees are divided among themselves in terms of what they want to achieve and have little loyalty to one another, the group is not cohesive. And the greater the group’s cohesion, the greater is the effect of Group functioning that leads to effective outcomes with satisfying impact on group members.

Variables of Interest

Productivity

An organization is productive if it achieves its goals by transforming inputs into outputs at the lowest cost. This requires both effectiveness and efficiency.

Survival

The final outcome we will consider is organizational survival, which is simply evidence that the organization is able to exist and grow over the long term.

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Popular measures of organizational efficiency include return on investment, profit per dollar of sales, and output per hour of labor. Service organizations must include customer needs and requirements in assessing their effectiveness. These measures of productivity are affected by the behaviors of managers, employees, and supervisors. And, increased productivity leads to the ultimate goal of most organizations the survival of the firm.

Variables of Interest

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Insert Exhibit 1.5

As you can seen in Exhibit 1-5, we will deal with inputs, processes, and outcomes at all three levels of analysis, but we group the chapters as shown here to correspond with the typical ways that research has been done in these areas.

Managerial Summary

Organizational behavior uses systematic study to improve predictions of behavior over intuition alone.

Because people are different, we need to look at OB in a contingency framework, using situational variables to explain cause-and-effect relationships.

Organizational behavior offers specific insights to improve a manager’s people skills.

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This first chapter has tried to provide a firm foundation that will be the basis for the study, acquisition, and application of concepts and practices to make the young professional more successful in productivity, job satisfaction, and career development. The importance of a systematic study of OB has shown that it can improve predictability of behavior, It’s not prefect, but it provides excellent roadmaps to guide managers and leaders. These studies help to ensure that contingencies are placed to better understand people’s behaviors and how to influence them for the success of the person and the organization.

Managerial Summary

It helps managers to see the value of workforce diversity and practices that may need to be changed in different countries.

It can improve quality and employee productivity by showing managers how to empower their people, and help employees balance work–life conflicts.

It can help managers cope in a world of temporariness and learn how to stimulate innovation.

Finally, OB can guide managers in creating an ethically healthy work climate.

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OB helps managers see the value of the workforce and its individual characteristics. It can improve the quality and productivity of employees to increase satisfaction for employees in balancing work-life conflicts. With the temporary nature of the operation al environment, OB concepts can aid managers and leaders to cope with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the rapid changes.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.

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CONTACT US

E MAIL:

Archive

Do you need a similar assignment done for you from scratch? Order now!
Use Discount Code "Newclient" for a 15% Discount!