Mgt provided us with a good basis for understanding organizational behavior by exploring the most essential elements of organizations and how they function. In Week Two our exploration of organizations will become more specific by examining the most basic working elements of the workplace: people. This course will eventually ask us to contemplate the complexities of people working together in groups and teams but, in order to get our studies off to the best start we will begin by considering how individuals function within the workplace.
Most students can easily describe themselves however their descriptions are often based upon their internal view of how they see themselves or how they hope others view them. In order for a person to improve their relationships they must gain an accurate understanding of how others see them. Week Two will examine the diversity among individuals and how our differences affect the way we interact with others in the workplace.
Most of today's employees want to be involved and expect to have some level of responsibility in helping to meet organizational goals. They want more autonomy to make their own decisions and to accomplish their own goals. Still, employees want to have a personal life and place a very high value on their personal freedoms. More and more employers report that today’s workers often turn down overtime wages in order to spend more time doing what they enjoy! This fact demonstrates how important individual freedoms are. Each worker is different in the way they view the workplace and each has a unique set of expectations for what makes them feel happy and successful in their work.
Success in the new workplace requires a set of skills for working successfully with a broad mix of people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, different ages and genders, and different domestic and national cultures. When people think of diversity they primarily think of differences in age, race, ethnicity,