Ebook: Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior

Welcome to the sixth and updated edition of Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior.
This book is designed for courses in organizational behavior and management that focus
on the application of organizational behavior knowledge to achieve enhanced productivity and satisfaction in the workplace. Organizational behavior is about human behavior
on the job. Knowledge of organizational behavior is, therefore, an important source from
which any manager or corporate professional may draw. The same information that can
drive a manager to excel can also assist individual organizational contributors in becoming more adaptive and effective. Nonmanagerial professionals, technology workers, sales
representatives, and service providers benefit from the insight and analysis that organizational behavior provides, as do managers and prospective managers. All are welcome
under the umbrella of organizational behavior.
Organizational behavior, because of its key contributions in driving workforce productivity, is a standard part of the curriculum in schools and colleges of business, management, and public administration. The case for the relevance of organizational behavior
was stated recently by Bob Funk, the chairman, CEO, and founder of Express Employment Professionals, one of the nation’s largest job agencies. Funk observes that getting
ahead in today’s world starts with skills. Yet hard skills and experience are only part of
the equation, and not the important half. “So many people do not realize how important
soft skills (essentially interpersonal skills) are to unlocking job opportunity,” he says.*
As a result of interest in the field, research and writing about the field proliferates. To
provide just an overview of this vast amount of information, many introductory textbooks
are quite lengthy, easily filling 800 pages or more. To soften the impact of such encyclopedic approaches to the study of organizational behavior, many of these books also
lavishly layer figures and photographs onto their extended narratives. Many of the new,
briefer textbooks are simply condensed versions of the longer books.
Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior takes a briefer, more focused, and more applied approach to learning about the field. Instead of trying to dazzle with a baffling array
of concepts, research findings, theories, and news clippings, this book concentrates on
only the most useful ideas. It blends clear and thoughtful exposition of traditional topics,
such as motivation, with topics of more recent origin, such as creativity, virtual teams,
knowledge management, diversity, and cultural intelligence.
Although each chapter packs a lot of information, chapters consistently emphasize the
essential and the practical. A major strategy was to de-emphasize elaborate theories and
findings that are no longer the subject of active research, practice, or training programs.
However, we did not permit our concern for brevity to strip the text down to a sterile
outline devoid of human interest, examples, and useful applications. Most of the brief
textbooks on organizational behavior sacrifice cases, self-quizzes, discussion questions,
and in-action inserts. Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior, however, injects all of
these elements into its pages and still stays concise.
The size and scope of this book are well suited to college courses that supplement a
core textbook with journal articles, major projects, specialty textbooks, online information, or other instructional media. In addition, the comprehensiveness of Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior, combined with its brevity, makes it suitable for workplace organizational training programs about human behavior. The student who masters this textbook will not only acquire an overview of and appreciation for organizational behavior
research, literature, theory, and opinion, but will also develop a feel for managing and influencing others through the application of systematic knowledge about human behavior.