Management (管理学) PRIMANOnlineLectureCh14.docVIP

chapter 14 - Dynamics of Behavior in Organizations online Lecture MANAGER’S CHALLENGE Since the day Kevin Kelly left a full-time journalism career to run his family’s California company, Emerald Packaging—a maker of plastic bags for the food industry—he’s successfully solved many management problems. But suddenly Kelly feels out of his league. Kelly has been accustomed to thinking of himself as on top of his game, chief architect of the company’s growing sales and profits. But lately he’s noticed a disturbing situation. Managers at the company seem to have lost the drive to push through new ideas and proposals that can keep Emerald thriving, and Kelly catches himself complaining about his subordinates without taking steps to improve things. Realizing that everyone is under stress from several years of rapid growth, Kelly hires a pack of new, young managers to reinforce his exhausted troops. Surprisingly, though, things just seem to get worse, with the new managers feeling adrift and the old-timers seeming even less focused than before. Then Kelly has a revelation that both unnerves and excites him. Rather than complain about his managers’ shortcomings, Kelly realizes that he has to remake himself, change his own attitude. Kelly wants to become a mentor who shapes positive attitudes in others and to knit the newcomers and long-time employees into a cohesive and productive team. ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR Organizational behavior, commonly referred to as OB, is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to the study of human attitudes, behavior, and performance in organizations. The concepts and principles of organizational behavior are important because human beings make decisions to control how the organization will acquire and use resources. People distract from the firm’s strategy by engaging in conflict and misunderstandings, or pool their talents and perspectives to do more as a group than as individuals. By understanding what causes people to behave as they