Organizational Behaviour : An Introductory Text

Introduces students to a social science perspective on Organizational Behaviour, so they can critique and debate core research and ideas.

Students need to understand, critique and apply theories in organisational behaviour.  The fifth edition of this definitive, multidisciplinary text continues to set a benchmark in teaching of this area with new concepts, debates and exemplary supplementary material.

Students are encouraged to challengecurrent thinking critically in relation to their own ideas and experience, exploring alternative perspectives. Throughout, the text emphasises how organizational behaviour ideas and methods applyin practice, allowing students to gain the valuable skills and experience necessary for their future careers.

David Buchanan and Andrzej Huczynski, Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2004

The new edition of this successful text provides students and instructors with a definitive multidisciplinary approach to organizational behaviour. It provides concepts, theories, models and frameworks to help understand behaviour in organizations. Readers are encouraged to challenge current thinking critically in relation to their own ideas and experience, exploring alternative perspectives. Throughout, the text emphasizes how organizational behaviour ideas and methods apply in practice.

The widely-informed social science perspective and the clear, authoritative, and engaging writing style remain the same. Most of the pedagogical features of the fourth edition have been retained, including: learning outcomes and key concepts, stop exercises, recap and revision sections, cartoons and other illustrations, annotated springboards into further reading, an updated glossary and the unique Home viewing and OB in literature ideas.

New Invitation to see feature for this edition: an innovative journey into the domain of ‘visual literacy’, exploring how work and organizations are represented in photography and briefing students on how to ‘decode’ images from newspapers. Lecturers can readily introduce their own current images.

• New HRM is Old Hat:

• Are new developments in human resource management theory and practice simply a repackaging what OB has been advocating for a century?
• Networking, not working: Many co-ordination and communication problems have still to be overcome before virtual and physical organizational networks will be effective.
• You talk, I’ll try not to listen: Organizational communication, especially about change, is becoming increasingly important. However, research shows that employees don’t pay much attention to management communication, and that they don’t trust it.
• Cultures moving closer apart: Are the trends in globalization, the death of distance, and the dominance of English as the international business language offset by divergence in national values, attitudes and beliefs, and what are the implications for management style and teambuilding?
• Stop the bus, let’s get off: While the ability to cope with constant radical change has become a core individual and corporate competence, too much change too rapidly can damage personal and organizational effectiveness. Is it time for ‘painless change’?
• Love those rules, that hierarchy: Bureaucracy has had a bad press, but many commentators now praise the advantages of stable hierarchies, order, predictability, and status that it offers. What does this mean in an age of new organizational forms?
• Leaders - who needs them ?: Charismatic, visionary, transformational leaders were the ‘must have’ corporate fashion accessory in the late 1990s, but now we are witnessing a backlash. Are ‘celebrity bosses’ a dangerous curse?
• Labouring, not misbehaving: Demanding, aggressive and abusive customers are making it hard for employees to provide ‘service with a smile’, at a time when the key differentiator of a service or product is the manner in which it is provided. Are staff becoming ‘emotional labourers’?
  

Online support materials at www.booksites.net :
For instructors, a password-accessed Instructor’s Manual contains debriefings for all the chapter exercises in this text, additional lecture ideas, revision questions, and overhead masters.
For students, there is an open website with 2500, timed, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, true-false, and matching questions; all with feedback on incorrect answers, to help develop your subject knowledge and improve your understanding.

David Buchanan is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Leicester Business School, De Montfort University
Andrzej Huczynski is Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour in the Department of Business and Management, University of Glasgow

 

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