Every era laments about daunting challenges. However, even previous generations would
probably agree that effectively managing today’s organizations is very difficult. Ask anyone
today—management professors, practitioners, or students—what the major challenges are
in today’s environment, and the answer will be fairly consistent: A turbulent economy and
dangerous geopolitics preoccupy everyone’s concerns. However, at the organization level,
understanding global competition and diversity, and trying to solve ethical problems and
dilemmas come to the fore. These are unquestionably major issues facing contempory
organizations and are given major attention in this text. However, the basic premise and
assumptions of the field of organizational behavior in general, and of this text in particular,
are that managing the people—the human resources of an organization—have been, are, and
will continue to be, the major challenge and critical competitive advantage.
Globalization, diversity, and ethics serve as very important environmental or contextual
dimensions for organizational behavior. However, as Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart
and richest person in the world when he died, declared to this author over lunch a number
of years ago when asked what the answer was to successful organizations—“People are the
key!”The technology can be purchased and copied; it levels the playing field. The people,
on the other hand, cannot be copied. Although it may be possible to clone human bodies,
their ideas, personalities, motivation, and organization cultural values cannot be copied.
The human resources of an organization and how they are managed represent the competitive
advantage of today’s and tomorrow’s organizations. A recent study of over three hundred
companies for over 20 years provides evidence for this statement. The researchers
found that management of human resources through extensive training and techniques such
as empowerment resulted in performance benefits, but operational initiatives such as total
quality management or advanced manufacturing technology did not.
At first employees were considered a cost, then human resources, and now are becoming
widely recognized as “human capital”2 (what you know—education, experience, skills).
Recent research indicates that investing in this human capital results in desired performance
outcomes such as increased productivity and customer satisfaction.3 Even going beyond
human capital are more recently recognized “social capital”4 (who you know—networks,
connections, friends) and “positive psychological capital”5 (who you are—confidence,
hope, optimism, resiliency) and (who you are in terms of confidence, hope, optimism,
resiliency, and, more importantly, who you can become, i.e., one’s possible authentic self).
Although Chapter 7 will be specifically devoted to positive organizational behavior in general
and psychological capital in particular, let it be simply noted here that there is growing
research evidence that employees’ psychological capital is positively related to their performance
and desired attitudes.6 As the ultimate “techie” Bill Gates astutely observed: “The inventory, the value of my company, walks out the door every evening.”
……