Organization Studies
CHAPTER ONE
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND OPPORTUNITY
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
1. Define organizational behavior.
2. Identify four action steps for responding positively in times of change.
3. Identify the important system components of an organization.
4. Describe the formal and informal elements of an organization.
5. Understand the diversity of organizations in the economy, as exemplified by the six focus organizations.
6. Recognize the opportunities that change creates for organizational behavior.
7. Demonstrate the value of objective knowledge and skill development in the study of organizational behavior.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Chapter 1 contains four major sections. The four sections are “Human Behavior in Organizations,” “The Organizational Context,” “Change Creates Opportunities,” and “Learning About Organizational Behavior.”
Section One: “Human Behavior in Organizations”
Section one contains information that supports Learning Objectives 1 and 2. It begins by defining organizational behavior as the study of individual behavior and group dynamics in organizational settings.
Section one also includes some discussion regarding the two basic categories of theories and models of human behavior. The first category includes theories and models of human behavior with an internal perspective, and the second includes those with an external perspective. The internal perspective seeks to understand behavior by considering factors inside the person. The external perspective seeks to understand behavior by considering factors outside the person.
Organizational behavior, as a blend of six other disciplines, draws on contributions from psychology (the science of human behavior), sociology (the science of society), engineering (the applied science of energy and matter), anthropology (the science of the learned behavior of human beings), management (the...
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