Organizational Behavior: A Diagnostic Approach (7th Edition) (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

For courses in Organizational Behavior, Human Relations, and Industrial Psychology. By adopting a diagnostic approach, this text encourages students and managers to describe situations completely, diagnose the organizational behavior, prescribe the best practices or most appropriate behavior for given organizational situations, and then act effectively in those situations. Each chapter's introductory scenario describes a real-world situation. End-of-chapter activities and end-of-part cases give students the opportunity to practice their diagnostic and action skills.

From the Publisher

The Fifth Edition continues to integrate theory, research, and applications. Each chapter is divided into two parts: (1) text, where OB theories and research are presented, along with current examples from organizations around the world, and (2) activities, including case exercises, self-assessment exercises, group activities, and ABC video exercises. The book retains its strong emphasis in diversity issues -- multiculturalism, gender, and multinationalism. This is not a cut-and-dry approach to OB: Gordon's underlying viewpoint assumes that more than one perspective in OB can be right. She prepares students to analyze organizational situations in a variety of ways, rather than just one. To this end, the author presents her acclaimed diagnostic approach. This approach integrates diagnosis -- discribing, understanding, and explaining behavior -- and action -- controlling, managing, or influencing behavior -- to bridge the gap between comprehension and understanding. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 7 edition (June 19, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0130328472
• ISBN-13: 978-0130328472
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #700,787 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Old style type and graphics, writing doesn't flow., March 3, 2003

By A Customer

It's not a book that makes you want to read it, I find myself just skimming through it. The author can barely go a page without mentioning "the dot-com global workplace", I find that very annoying. There are some interesting case studies but she doesn't give any suggested outcomes so the reader is left wondering what is the best course of action.

5.0 out of 5 stars "Search within the book" would have helped, March 3, 2006

By	J. Douglas Orton "DrNatSecMgt" (Ashburn, Virginia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a former colleague of Dr. Gordon's, I used the third and fourth editions of the book. Today I'm working with an executive doctoral student on a work-family question, which Dr. Gordon has published research on in 2000, and hoped to see if there were a few pages devoted to this topic in this book. Unfortunately, now I'm stuck because the publishers have not activated the "Search within the Book" function. How in 2006 can the publishers not have signed up for that function in Amazon? So I'm sure the book is solidly researched, but I guess I won't get to see it for a few weeks, by which time I will have moved on to other topics.

1.0 out of 5 stars Excessive examples, choppy writing, poor proofreading, November 22, 2003

By A Customer

The book provides useful diagnostic tools and challenging activities and case studies. However, the writing style of the author is poor and very choppy, making it difficult to follow the material. The author uses an excessive amount of real-world examples, but does little justice to covering and explaining the theory and concepts of the subject material.

I purchased a used 7th edition of this text book through Amazon.com. The pervious owner of my book (a student, I assume) noted several errors in the book. For example, in Chapter 3, "The Diverse Workforce:...", page 81, heading "INDIVIDUAL VALUES AND ATTITUDES", subheading "Values", paragraph 2, sentence 1, the published text states:

"Core values are more susceptible to change, and peripheral values are less susceptible (to change)."

However, the sentence in my text book was manually corrected by the previous owner (at the direction of an instructor at another educational institution, I assume) to read:

"Core values are less susceptible to change, and peripheral values are more susceptible (to change)."

When I first read the sentence, I could not agree with what the author had stated. So I did a search on Google.com and verified from other sources that the author had incorrectly stated this premise.

In Chapter 9, Activity 9-5 Behavior Description Questionnaire, page 319, the book provides a table for scoring a 30 statement behavior questionnaire. The activity requires one to select between an A or B statement which is characteristic of their own behavior. However, item number 6 in the scoring table shows two A answers, and item number 7 in the scoring table shows two B answers, making it impossible to obtain an accurate assessment of one's behavior pattern, unless one is able to clearly understand the subject material and correct the scoring table.

These are just a few of the errors noted in the 7th edition of this publication. It appears the author has not adequately proofread the final product.