MANAGEMENT – DUE TONIGHT AT 10PM EST – ORIGINAL WORK

1.       1a. Define Organizational Behavior, outline why it is important to understand this field of study, and provide examples of areas in which OB application can be important.

 

2.       1b. Time management becomes a much more critical skill to master as you move up in responsibility in a position. There are a lot more demands on your time and different people and groups competing for the same resources.

What do you feel is the most difficult aspect of getting others in a group to change their approach as a project or task begins to change in scope? Is it getting the buy-in of the other team members to change focus, or assist each other in accomplishing a task to complete it on time, or getting the group to re-shift processes to attain a modified goal? Do you know people who really struggle to adjust when a project shifts in scope or time requirements?

 

3.       1c.  Your example of the company motto at the FFSC shows how the group has embraced this concept and you demonstrated it with your own personal actions. This shows how deeply ingrained the culture of the company can become and how it shapes how we address issues.

 

Do you think you could work in a company where there was not a focus on service but one on product delivery?

 

 

4.       1d.  You mention the role of leadership in shaping organizational behavior and that is an important element.

 

Have you ever worked in a company where the leadership seemed to always be fighting among themselves to gain the most power and they forgot how this impacted the other members of the company because they felt they had to pick sides?

 

5.       1e. Do you think that companies are focusing more now on studying the research related to behavioral influences than in the past because the cost of hiring new people is quite high, or do you think there is more emphasis on just finding “bodies” to fill a position?

 

6.       1f.,  In your work experience, how do most people learn about the expected behaviors that the company wants to see exhibited? Is is done through training, or on the job practice, or leadership role modeling the expected behavior, or some other means?

 

2.  What type of assessments and evaluations might you use to determine the characteristics of your employees? Does the type of tool used make a difference? Why?

 

2a. Do you think that companies in different fields need to define key characteristics they need for that field up front? For example, would a person who worked in a call center need to have a different personality profile than one who worked in a medical office?

Have you ever taken assessment tests that you felt did not represent your “true” profile?

 

2b. There is a significant investment of money required to administer and interpret these tests. What is your viewpoint on how a company should determine if they want to employ these assessments?

 

2c. It is very important that we define up front the skill sets that we want to measure because your example illustrates what happens when we measure the wrong factors for a task. 

One area where we can apply the same tests for all members of a company is personality profiling. In this case we are looking to measure the personality style of each of the employees: who are the dominants, and who are the introverts, and who are the socializers?  This would give us good information that we could use to form a team of roofers for a building project. For example, if all of the personalities were dominant, then there could be issues with fighting for control of the group. If all were non-assertive, then they might wait for someone to give them direction and would not make decisions on their own.