chapter - Pearson

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Chapter 1 Organizational Behavior and Management
jobs of the other group members, and workers regularly rotated jobs, so their work
experiences were less repetitive and boring. In addition, each worker was taught procedures
for analyzing the jobs within the group and was encouraged to find ways to
improve the way tasks were done. Work group members timed each other using
stopwatches and continually attempted to find better ways to perform their jobs. In
the old plant, GM had employed 80 managers to perform this analysis. Now, in the
new plant, self-managed work groups not only perform job analysis but also take
responsibility for monitoring product quality.
With all workers divided into self-managed work groups, what role do managers
play in the new factory? At NUMMI, a manager’s job is defined explicitly in
terms of providing workers with support. In the new work system, the manager’s role
is not to directly monitor or supervise group activities but to find new ways to facilitate
these activities and give a group advice on how to improve work procedures. In
setting up NUMMI’s organization, the plant’s upper management gave each group
the authority to make its own decisions; however, group members and management
are jointly responsible for coordinating and controlling work activities to maintain
and improve organizational performance. Why did employees buy into this new
work system? A number of factors came into play: NUMMI’s no-layoff policy, extensive
worker training, and the use of flexible work groups, which give workers, not
managers, control over how things are done on the production line.5
In May 1997, the NUMMI plant produced its 3-millionth vehicle, and it
received J. D. Powers & Associates’ Bronze Plant Award for quality. In 1999,
General Motors and Toyota signed a new five-year cooperative agreement to work
on advanced technology vehicles, one result of which was the innovative new Toyota
Echo model introduced in 2000.6 At NUMMI, a new approach to managing behavior
has increased performance and well-being for workers and the organization, and
both managers and workers are committed to working together to continually
improve performance. ■
At the reopened Fremont plant, action to improve performance was possible
only when managers realized the need to rethink the way they managed organizational
behavior at all three levels of analysis. First, upper management changed organizational-level
characteristics by moving from a system in which managers analyzed
and controlled jobs and work processes to one in which self-managed teams controlled
all aspects of a given task. At the group level, each team was given the authority
and responsibility for designing group members’ tasks and for monitoring and
controlling members’ behavior. At the individual level, work-group members
became responsible for learning a wider range of tasks and for monitoring their own
performance level so that performance could be increased at all levels in the plant. As
the NUMMI story shows, the effective management of organizational behavior
requires managers and workers alike to consider the impacts and effects of individual,
group, and whole-organization characteristics as they try to achieve organizational
goals. It requires them to continuously evaluate and find new and improved
ways of managing organizational behavior to improve performance.
■ ■ ■
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND MANAGEMENT
A working knowledge of organizational behavior is important to individuals at all
levels in the organization because it helps them to appreciate the work situation and
how they should behave to achieve their own goals (such as promotion or higher
income). But knowledge of organizational behavior is particularly important to managers.
A significant part of a manager’s job is to use the findings of organizational