Katz and Kahn (1966) prefer to think of organizations as social systems that coordinate

peoples behaviour by means of roles, norms and values.

Organization is defined as a social group in which the members are differentiated as to

their responsibilities for the task of achieving a common goal.

Roles relate to the particular place and functions of an individual. These can be thought of
as group-based categories of position and activity.

Norms are attitudinal and behavioural prescriptions associated with these roles or
categories. They create expectations about how a person or group of people ought to think,
feel and behave.

Values are higher-level principles that are intended to guide this behaviour and the
organizations activity as a whole.

Features of Organization:
A group with a social identity, so that it has psychological meaning for all the
individuals who belong to it;
Characterized by coordination so that the behaviour of individuals is arranged and
structured rather than idiosyncratic;
Goal directed, so that this structure is oriented towards a particular outcome.

Theory of Scientific Management- the management of workers and their work was an exact
science and that the job of any manager was to perfect and implement that science to
discover and implement the one best way of doing any particular job.

Practice of soldiering or loafing led to collective under-achievement. Three root problems-

1. First, he argued that workers were often poorly selected for the jobs they
performed, so that a failure to achieve their maximum potential was inevitable.
2. Second, he pointed out that, under most existing systems of initiative and
incentive, it made sense to loaf because workers raised once they had been
achieved.
3. Finally, loafing was a tendency that arose naturally from the loss of ambition and
initiative, which takes place in workmen when they are herded into gangs instead of
being treated as separate individuals.

Remedies for the above mentioned problems:

1. Systematic selection- exhaustive testing (might lead a company to retain only one
worker in ten out of existing workforce)
2. Piecework incentive system. This involved rewarding each worker for higher
productivity and ensuring that the worker had faith that pay rates would not
subsequently be adjusted. Not to increase workers pay by more than 60%- otherwise
many workers will work irregularly and tend to become more or less shiftless.
3. Importance of individualizing each workman- managers needed to appeal directly
and constantly to the economic aspirations of individual workers, as personal
 ambition always has been and will remain a more powerful incentive to exertion
than a desire for the general welfare

Organizational Behaviour:
The field of study that seeks increased knowledge of all aspects of behaviour in
organizational settings through the use of scientific methods.
OR
A field of study that investigates the impact of individuals, groups, and structure on
behaviour within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward
improving an organizations effectiveness.

Characteristics or Features of Organizational Behaviour:

1. Scientific methods
2. Studies individual, groups and organizations
3. Interdisciplinary in nature
4. Used as the basis of enhancing organizational effectiveness and well being.

Organizational Behaviour focus on three levels of analysis

Individual-work related attitudes
Groups-team work
Organizations-organizational design
Organizational Behaviours two fundamental assumptions:
Open system: organizations are dynamic and always changing
No single best way to behave in orgdepend upon the situation

Metaphors of Organizational Behaviour: