SlideShare a Scribd company logo
Visit https://testbankbell.com to download the full version and
explore more testbank or solutions manual
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th
Edition Stephen P. Robbins Timothy A. Judge
_____ Click the link below to download _____
http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-
organizational-behavior-15th-edition-stephen-p-robbins-
timothy-a-judge/
Explore and download more testbank or solutions manual at testbankbell.com
Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.
Test Bank for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition
Stephen P. Robbins Timothy A. Judge
http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-organizational-
behavior-15th-edition-stephen-p-robbins-timothy-a-judge/
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 18th Edition,
Stephen P. Robbins, Timothy A. Judge
http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-organizational-
behavior-18th-edition-stephen-p-robbins-timothy-a-judge/
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 16/E 16th
Edition Stephen P. Robbins, Timothy A. Judge
http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-organizational-
behavior-16-e-16th-edition-stephen-p-robbins-timothy-a-judge/
Test Bank for Pharmacology and the Nursing Process, 8th
Edition, Linda Lane Lilley, Shelly Rainforth Collins Julie
S. Snyder
http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-pharmacology-and-the-
nursing-process-8th-edition-linda-lane-lilley-shelly-rainforth-
collins-julie-s-snyder/
Test Bank for Advanced Accounting, 14th Edition, Joe Ben
Hoyle, Thomas Schaefer Timothy Doupnik
http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-advanced-
accounting-14th-edition-joe-ben-hoyle-thomas-schaefer-timothy-
doupnik-3/
Psychology 4th Edition Schacter Test Bank
http://testbankbell.com/product/psychology-4th-edition-schacter-test-
bank/
Test Bank for Learning and Behavior Active Learning 6th
Edition by Chance
http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-learning-and-behavior-
active-learning-6th-edition-by-chance/
Solution Manual for Handbuch zur deutschen Grammatik, 6th
Edition
http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-handbuch-zur-
deutschen-grammatik-6th-edition/
Marriages Families and Intimate Relationships 3rd Edition
Williams Sawyer Wahlstrom Test Bank
http://testbankbell.com/product/marriages-families-and-intimate-
relationships-3rd-edition-williams-sawyer-wahlstrom-test-bank/
Test Bank for Memmlers Structure and Function of the Human
Body, 9th Edition: Cohen
http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-memmlers-structure-and-
function-of-the-human-body-9th-edition-cohen/
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 1
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
Solution Manual for Organizational
Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins
Timothy A. Judge
FULL DOWNLOAD CHAPTER AT: HTTPS://TESTBANKBELL.COM/PRODUCT/SOLUTION-
MANUAL-FOR-ORGANIZATIONAL-BEHAVIOR-15TH-EDITION-STEPHEN-P-ROBBINS-
TIMOTHY-A-JUDGE/
CHAPTER 1
What Is
Organizational Behavior?(ppt 1-1)
Click on the title when connected to the Internet to access teaching notes.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, students should be able to (ppt 1-2):
1. Demonstrate the importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace.
2. Describe the manager’s functions, roles and skills.
3. Define organizational behavior (OB).
4. Show the value to OB of systematic study.
5. Identify the major behavioral science disciplines that contribute to OB.
6. Demonstrate why few absolutes apply to OB.
7. Identify the challenges and opportunities managers have in applying OB concepts.
8. Compare the three levels of analysis in this book’s OB model.
INSTRUCTOR RESOURCES
Instructors may wish to use the following resources when presenting this chapter:
Text Exercises
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 2
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
Myth or Science – “Most Acts of Workplace Bullying Are Men Attacking Women” (p. 12, IM p.
24)
An Ethical Choice – Can You Learn from Failure? (p. 24, IM p. 25)
GlOBalization – Does National Culture Affect Organizational Performance (p. 30, IM p. 27)
Point/CounterPoint – Lost in Translation (p. 31, IM p. 28)
Questions for Review (p. 32, IM p. 30)
Experiential Exercise – Workforce Diversity (p. 32, IM p. 33)
Ethical Dilemma – Jekyll and Hyde (p. 33, IM p. 35)
Text Cases
Case Incident 1 ”Lesson for ‘Undercover‘ Bosses” (p. 34, IM 37)
Case Incident 2 Era of the Disposable Worker (p. 35, IM p. 39)
INSTRUCTOR’S CHOICE - Companies Dealing with OB Issues (IM p. 41)
This section presents an exercise that is NOT found in the student's textbook. Instructor's Choice
reinforces the text's emphasis through various activities. Some Instructor's Choice activities are
centered around debates, group exercises, Internet research, and student experiences. Some can
be used in-class in their entirety, while others require some additional work on the student's part.
The course instructor may choose to use these at anytime throughout the class—some may be
more effective as icebreakers, while some may be used to pull together various concepts covered
in the chapter.
WEB EXERCISES (IM p. 42)
At the end of each chapter of this instructor’s manual, you will find suggested
exercises and ideas for researching the WWW on OB topics. The exercises
“Exploring OB Topics on the Web” are set up so that you can simply photocopy
the pages, distribute them to your class, and make assignments accordingly. You
may want to assign the exercises as an out-of-class activity or as lab activities with
your class.
SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGERS
A. Managers need to develop their interpersonal, or people, skills to be effective in their
jobs.
B. Organizational behavior (OB) investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and
structure have on behavior within an organization, and it applies that knowledge to make
organizations work more effectively.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 3
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
C. Specifically, OB focuses on how to improve productivity; reduce absenteeism, turnover,
and deviant workplace behavior; and increase organizational citizenship behavior and job
satisfaction. Specific implications for managers are below:
1. Some generalizations provide valid insights into human behavior, but many are
erroneous. Organizational behavior uses systematic study to improve predictions of
behavior over intuition alone.
2. Because people are different, we need to look at OB in a contingency framework,
using situational variables to explain cause-and-effect relationships.
3. Organizational behavior offers specific insights to improve a manager’s people skills.
4. It helps managers to see the value of workforce diversity and practices that may need
to be changed in different countries.
5. It can improve quality and employee productivity by showing managers how to
empower their people, design and implement change programs, improve customer
service, and help employees balance work–life conflicts.
6. It can help managers cope in a world of temporariness and learn how to stimulate
innovation.
7. Finally, OB can guide managers in creating an ethically healthy work climate.
This chaper begins with a vinette entitled, “The New Normal.” The details of this story might be disheartening to read,
but they accurately reflect some of the problems faced by the contemporary workforce. The story also highlights
several issues of interest to organizational behavior researchers, including motivation, emotions, personality, and
communication. Through the course of this book, you’ll learn how all these elements can be studied systematically.
You’ve probably made many observations about people’s behavior in your life. In a way, you are already proficient
at seeing some of the major themes in organizational behavior. At the same time, you probably have not had the
tools to make these observations systematically. This is where organizational behavior comes into play. And, as
we’ll learn, it is much more than common sense, intuition, and soothsaying.
BRIEF CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. The Importance of Interpersonal Skills (ppt 1-3)
A. Understanding OB helps determine manager effectiveness
B. Technical and quantitative skills are important early in careers
C. Leadership and communication skills are critical as person progresses in career
D. Lower turnover of quality employees
E. Higher quality applications for recruitment
F. Better financial performance
II. What Managers Do (ppt 1-4)
A. Definitions
1. Manager: Someone who gets things done through other people. They make decisions,
allocate resources, and direct the activities of others to attain goals.
2. Organization: A consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more people
that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of
goals.
B. Management Functions (ppt 1-4)
1. French industrialist Henri Fayol wrote that all managers perform five management
functions: plan, organize, command, coordinate, and control. Modern management
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 4
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
scholars have condensed these functions to four: planning, organizing, leading, and
controlling.
C. Management Roles (ppt 1-5)
1. Introduction
a. In the late 1960s, Henry Mintzberg studied five executives to determine what
managers did on their jobs. He concluded that managers perform ten different,
highly interrelated roles or sets of behaviors attributable to their jobs.
2. The ten roles can be grouped as being primarily concerned with interpersonal
relationships, the transfer of information, and decision making. (Exhibit 1-1)
a. Interpersonal Roles: Figurehead, Leader, Liaison
b. Informational Roles: Monitor, Disseminator—a conduit to transmit information to
organizational members, represent the organization to outsiders
c. Decisional Roles: Entrepreneur, Disturbance handlers, Resource allocator,
Negotiator role
D. Management Skills (ppt1-6)
1. Technical Skills--The ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. All jobs
require some specialized expertise, and many people develop their technical skills on
the job.
2. Human Skills--Ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both
individually and in groups, describes human skills.
3. Conceptual Skills--The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations
E. Effective Versus Successful Managerial Activities
1. Luthans and his associates studied more than 450 managers. They found that all
managers engage in four managerial activities. (ppt 1-7 )
a. Traditional management.
b. Communication.
c. Human resource management.
d. Networking.
e. Successful managers are defined as those who were promoted the fastest (Exhibit
1–2) (ppt 1-8)
F. A Review of the Manager’s Job
1. One common thread runs through the functions, roles, skills, and activities
approaches to management: managers need to develop their people skills if they are
going to be effective and successful.
III. Enter Organizational Behavior (ppt 1-9)
A. Introduction
1. Organizational Behavior: OB is a field of study that investigates the impact that
individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations for the
purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s
effectiveness.
2. OB studies three determinants of behavior in organizations: individuals, groups, and
structure.
IV. Complementing Intuition with Systematic Study (ppt 1-10)
A. Introduction
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 5
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
1. Each of us is a student of behavior
B. The systematic approach used in this book will uncover important facts and relationships
and will provide a base from which more accurate predictions of behavior can be made.
1. Systematic Study of Behavior
a. Behavior generally is predictable if we know how the person perceived the
situation and what is important to him or her.
C. Evidence-Based Management (EBM)
1. Complements systematic study
2. Argues for managers to make decisions on evidence
D. Intuition
1. Systematic study and EBM add to intuition, or those “gut feelings” about “why I do
what I do” and “what makes others tick.”
2. If we make all decisions with intuition or gut instinct, we’re likely working with
incomplete information.
E. Use a combination
V. Disciplines That Contribute to the OB Field (ppt 1-11)
A. Introduction
1. Organizational behavior is an applied behavioral science that is built upon
contributions from a number of behavioral disciplines.
2. The predominant areas are psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology,
and political science.
3. Exhibit 1–3 overviews the major contributions to the study of organizational
behavior. (ppt 1-12)
B. Psychology (ppt 1-13)
1. Psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the
behavior of humans and other animals.
C. Social Psychology (ppt 1-13)
1. Social psychology blends the concepts of psychology and sociology.
D. Sociology (ppt 1-14)
1. Sociologists study the social system in which individuals fill their roles; that is,
sociology studies people in relation to their fellow human beings.
E. Anthropology (ppt 1-14)
1. Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their
activities.
VI. There Are Few Absolutes in OB (ppt 1-15)
A. Introduction
1. There are few, if any, simple and universal principles that explain organizational
behavior.
2. Contingency variables—situational factors are variables that moderate the
relationship between the independent and dependent variables. (ppt 1-16)
VII.Challenges and Opportunities for OB (ppt 1-17)
A. Introduction
1. There are many challenges and opportunities today for managers to use OB concepts.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 6
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
B. Responding to Economic Pressure (ppt 1-17)
1. In economic tough times, effective management is an asset.
2. In good times, understanding how to reward, satisfy, and retain employees is at a
premium. In bad times, issues like stress, decision making, and coping come to the
fore.
C. Responding to Globalization (ppt 1-18)
1. Increased Foreign Assignments
2. Working with People from Different Cultures
3. Overseeing Movement of Jobs to Countries with Low-cost Labor
D. Managing Workforce Diversity (ppt 1-19)
1. Workforce diversity acknowledges a workforce of women and men; many racial and
ethnic groups; individuals with a variety of physical or psychological abilities; and
people who differ in age and sexual orientation.
E. Improving Customer Service (ppt 1-20)
1. Today the majority of employees in developed countries work in service jobs.
2. Employee attitudes and behavior are associated with customer satisfaction.
F. Improving People Skills (ppt 1-21)
1. People skills are essential to managerial effectiveness.
G. Stimulating Innovation and Change (ppt 1-22)
1. Successful organizations must foster innovation and master the art of change.
2. Managers must stimulate employees’ creativity and tolerance for change.
H. Coping with “Temporariness” (ppt 1-23)
1. OB provides help in understanding a work world of continual change, how to
overcome resistance to change, and how to create an organizational culture that
thrives on change.
I. Working in Networked Organizations (ppt 1-24)
1. Networked organizations are becoming more pronounced.
2. Manager’s job is fundamentally different in networked organizations. Challenges of
motivating and leading “online” require different techniques.
J. Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts (ppt 1-25)
1. The creation of the global workforce means work no longer sleeps. Workers are on-
call 24-hours a day or working nontraditional shifts.
2. Balancing work and life demands now surpasses job security as an employee priority.
K. Creating a Positive Work Environment (ppt 1-26)
1. Organizations like General Electric have realized creating a positive work
environment can be a competitive advantage.
L. Improving Ethical Behavior (ppt 1-27)
1. Ethical dilemmas are situations in which an individual is required to define right and
wrong conduct.
VIII. Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model (ppt 1-28)
D. An Overview
1. A model is an abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of some real-world
phenomenon. (Exhibit 1–4 The OB Model)
2. It proposes three types of variables (inputs, processes, and outcomes) at three levels
of analysis (individual, group, and organizational).
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 7
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
3. The model proceeds from left to right, with inputs leading to processes, and processes
leading to outcomes.
E. Inputs (ppt 1-29)
1. Inputs are the variables like personality, group structure, and organizational culture
that lead to processes.
2. Group structure, roles, and team responsibilities are typically assigned immediately
before or after a group is formed.
3. Finally, organizational structure and culture are usually the result of years of
development and change as the organization adapts to its environment and builds up
customs and norms.
F. Processes (ppt 1-30)
1. If inputs are like the nouns in organizational behavior, processes are like verbs.
2. Processes are actions that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in as a result
of inputs and that lead to certain outcomes.
3. At the individual level, processes include emotions and moods, motivation,
perception, and decision-making.
4. At the group level, they include communication, leadership, power and politics, and
conflict and negotiation.
5. Finally, at the organizational level, processes include human resource management
and change practices.
G. Outcomes (ppt 1-31)
1. Outcomes are the key variables that you want to explain or predict, and that are
affected by some other variables.
2. At the group level, cohesion and functioning are the dependent variables.
3. Finally, at the organizational level we look at overall profitability and survival.
4. Attitudes and stress (ppt 1-32)
a. Employee attitudes are the evaluations employees make, ranging from positive to
negative, about objects, people, or events.
b. Stress is an unpleasant psychological process that occurs in response to
environmental pressures.
c. The belief that satisfied employees are more productive than dissatisfied
employees has been a basic tenet among managers for years, though only now has
research begun to support it.
5. Task performance (ppt 1-32)
a. The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing your core job tasks is a
reflection of your level of task performance.
b. Obviously task performance is the most important human output contributing to
organizational effectiveness, so in every chapter we devote considerable time to
detailing how task performance is affected by the topic in question.
6. Citizenship behavior (ppt 1-33)
a. The discretionary behavior that is not part of an employee’s formal job
requirements, and that contributes to the psychological and social environment of
the workplace, is called citizenship behavior.
b. Successful organizations need employees who will do more than their usual job
duties—who will provide performance beyond expectations.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 8
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
c. Evidence indicates organizations that have such employees outperform those that
don’t.
d. As a result, OB is concerned with citizenship behavior as an outcome variable.
7. Withdrawal behavior (ppt 1-33)
a. Withdrawal behavior is the set of actions that employees take to separate
themselves from the organization.
b. There are many forms of withdrawal, ranging from showing up late or failing to
attend meetings to absenteeism and turnover.
c. Employee withdrawal can have a very negative effect on an organization.
d. Absenteeism also costs organizations significant amounts of money and time
every year.
e. All organizations, of course, have some turnover.
f. So why do employees withdraw from work?
i. As we will show later in the book, reasons include negative job attitudes,
emotions and moods, and negative interactions with co-workers and
supervisors.
8. Group cohesion (ppt 1-34)
a. Group cohesion is the extent to which members of a group support and validate
one another at work.
b. When employees trust one another, seek common goals, and work together to
achieve these common ends, the group is cohesive; when employees are divided
among themselves in terms of what they want to achieve and have little loyalty to
one another, the group is not cohesive.
c. Companies attempt to increase cohesion in a variety of ways ranging from brief
icebreaker sessions to social events like picnics, parties, and outdoor adventure-
team retreats.
9. Group functioning (ppt 1-34)
a. In the same way that positive job attitudes can be associated with higher levels of
task performance, group cohesion should lead to positive group functioning.
b. Group functioning refers to the quantity and quality of a group’s work output.
c. In some organizations, an effective group is one that stays focused on a core task
and achieves its ends as specified.
d. Other organizations look for teams that are able to work together collaboratively
to provide excellent customer service.
e. Still others put more of a premium on group creativity and the flexibility to adapt
to changing situations. In each case, different types of activities will be required
to get the most from the team.
10. Productivity (ppt 1-35)
a. The highest level of analysis in organizational behavior is the organization as a
whole.
b. An organization is productive if it achieves its goals by transforming inputs into
outputs at the lowest cost. Thus requires both effectiveness and efficiency.
c. Popular measures of organizational efficiency include return on investment, profit
per dollar of sales, and output per hour of labor.
d. Service organizations must include customer needs and requirements in assessing
their effectiveness.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 9
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
11. Survival (ppt 1-35)
a. The final outcome we will consider is organizational survival, which is simply
evidence that the organization is able to exist and grow over the long term.
H. Having reviewed the input, process, and outcome model, we’re going to change the
figure up a little bit by grouping topics together based on whether we study them at the
individual, group, or organizational level.
1. As you can seen in Exhibit 1-5, we will deal with inputs, processes, and outcomes at
all three levels of analysis, but we group the chapters as shown here to correspond
with the typical ways that research has been done in these areas. (ppt 1-36)
2. It is easier to understand one unified presentation about how personality leads to
motivation, which leads to performance, than to jump around levels of analysis.
3. Because each level builds on the one that precedes it, after going through them in
sequence you will have a good idea of how the human side of organizations
functions. (Exhibit 1-5)
IX. Summary and Implications for Managers
A. Managers need to develop their interpersonal, or people, skills to be effective in their
jobs.
B. Organizational behavior (OB) investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and
structure have on behavior within an organization, and it applies that knowledge to make
organizations work more effectively.
C. Specifically, OB focuses on how to improve productivity; reduce absenteeism, turnover,
and deviant workplace behavior; and increase organizational citizenship behavior and job
satisfaction. Specific implications for managers are below: (ppt 1-37)
1. Some generalizations provide valid insights into human behavior, but many are
erroneous. Organizational behavior uses systematic study to improve predictions of
behavior over intuition alone.
2. Because people are different, we need to look at OB in a contingency framework,
using situational variables to explain cause-and-effect relationships.
3. Organizational behavior offers specific insights to improve a manager’s people skills.
4. It helps managers to see the value of workforce diversity and practices that may need
to be changed in different countries. (ppt 1-38)
5. It can improve quality and employee productivity by showing managers how to
empower their people, design and implement change programs, improve customer
service, and help employees balance work–life conflicts.
6. It can help managers cope in a world of temporariness and learn how to stimulate
innovation.
7. Finally, OB can guide managers in creating an ethically healthy work climate.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 10
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
EXPANDED CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. The Importance of Interpersonal Skills
A. Understanding OB helps determine manager effectiveness
B. Technical and quantitative skills are important early in careers
C. Leadership and communication skills are critical as person progresses in career
D. Lower turnover of quality employees
E. Higher quality applications for recruitment
F. Better financial performance
G. Companies with reputations as a good place to work—such as Starbucks, Adobe
Systems, Cisco, Whole Foods, Google, American Express, Amgen, Pfizer, and
Marriott—have a big advantage when attracting high performing employees.
H. A recent national study of the U.S. workforce found that:
1. Wages and fringe benefits are not the reason people like their jobs or stay with
an employer.
2. More important to workers is the job quality and the supportiveness of the
work environments.
3. Managers’ good interpersonal skills are likely to make the workplace more
pleasant, which in turn makes it easier to hire and retain high performing
employees. In fact, creating a more pleasant work environment makes good
economic sense.
I. Managers cannot succeed on technical skills alone, they must have people skills.
II. What Managers Do
A. Definitions
1. Manager: Someone who gets things done through other people. They make
decisions, allocate resources, and direct the activities of others to attain goals.
2. Organization: A consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more
people that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common
goal or set of goals.
B. Management Functions
1. French industrialist Henri Fayol wrote that all managers perform five
management functions: plan, organize, command, coordinate, and control.
Modern management scholars have condensed to these functions to four:
planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
2. Planning requires a manager to:
a. Define Goals (Organizational, Departmental, Worker Levels).
b. Establish an Overall Strategy for Achieving Those Goals.
c. Develop a Comprehensive Hierarchy of Plans to Integrate and
Coordinate Activities.
3. Organizing requires a manager to:
a. Determine what tasks are to be done.
b. Who is to be assigned the tasks.
c. How the tasks are to be grouped.
d. Determine who reports to whom.
e. Determine where decisions are to be made (centralized/ decentralized).
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 11
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
4. Leading requires a manager to:
a. Motivate employee.
b. Direct the activities of others.
c. Select the most effective communication channels.
d. Resolve conflicts among members.
5. Controlling requires a manager to:
a. Monitor the organization’s performance.
b. Compare actual performance with the previously set goals.
c. Correct significant deviations.
C. Management Roles (Exhibit 1-1)
1. Introduction
a. In the late 1960s, Henry Mintzberg studied five executives to
determine what managers did on their jobs. He concluded that
managers perform ten different, highly interrelated roles or sets of
behaviors attributable to their jobs.
b. The ten roles can be grouped as being primarily concerned with
interpersonal relationships, the transfer of information, and decision
making. (Exhibit 1-1)
2. Interpersonal Roles
a. Figurehead—duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature
b. Leader—hire, train, motivate, and discipline employees
c. Liaison—contact outsiders who provide the manager with information
These may be individuals or groups inside or outside the organization.
3. Informational Roles
a. Monitor—collect information from organizations and institutions
outside their own
b. Disseminator—a conduit to transmit information to organizational
members
c. Spokesperson—represent the organization to outsiders
4. Decisional Roles
a. Entrepreneur—managers initiate and oversee new projects that will
improve their organization’s performance.
b. Disturbance handlers—take corrective action in response to
unforeseen problems
c. Resource allocators—responsible for allocating human, physical, and
monetary resources
d. Negotiator role—discuss issues and bargain with other units to gain
advantages for their own unit
D. Management Skills
1. Introduction
a. Robert Katz has identified three essential management skills:
technical, human, and conceptual.
2. Technical Skills
a. The ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. All jobs
require some specialized expertise, and many people develop their
technical skills on the job.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 12
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
3. Human Skills
a. Ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both
individually and in groups, describes human skills.
b. Many people are technically proficient but interpersonally
incompetent.
4. Conceptual Skills
a. The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations.
b. Decision making, for example, requires managers to spot problems,
identify alternatives that can correct them, evaluate those alternatives,
and select the best one.
E. Effective Versus Successful Managerial Activities (Exhibit 1-2)
1. Fred Luthans and his associates asked: Do managers who move up most
quickly in an organization do the same activities and with the same emphasis
as managers who do the best job? Surprisingly, those managers who were the
most effective were not necessarily promoted the fastest.
a. Luthans and his associates studied more than 450 managers. They
found that all managers engage in four managerial activities.
1) Traditional management.
a.) Decision making, planning, and controlling.
b.) The average manager spent 32 percent of his or her
time performing this activity.
2) Communication.
a.) Exchanging routine information and processing
paperwork.
b.) The average manager spent 29 percent of his or her
time performing this activity.
3) Human resource management.
a.) Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing,
and training.
b.) The average manager spent 20 percent of his or her
time performing this activity.
4) Networking.
a.) Socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders.
b.) The average manager spent 19 percent of his or her
time performing this activity.
2. Successful managers are defined as those who were promoted the fastest:
(Exhibit 1–2)
a. Networking made the largest relative contribution to success.
b. Human resource management activities made the least relative
contribution.
c. Effective managers—defined as quality and quantity of performance,
as well as commitment to employees:
1) Communication made the largest relative contribution.
2) Networking made the least relative contribution.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 13
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
3) Successful managers do not give the same emphasis to each of
those activities as do effective managers—it is almost the
opposite of effective managers.
4) This finding challenges the historical assumption that
promotions are based on performance, vividly illustrating the
importance that social and political skills play in getting ahead
in organizations.
F. A Review of the Manager’s Job
1. One common thread runs through the functions, roles, skills, and activities
approaches to management: managers need to develop their people skills if
they are going to be effective and successful.
III. Enter Organizational Behavior
A. Introduction
1. Organizational Behavior: OB is a field of study that investigates the impact
that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations
for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an
organization’s effectiveness.
B. Organizational behavior is a field of study.
1. OB studies three determinants of behavior in organizations: individuals,
groups, and structure.
2. OB applies the knowledge gained about individuals, groups, and the effect of
structure on behavior in order to make organizations work more effectively.
3. OB is concerned with the study of what people do in an organization and how
that behavior affects the performance of the organization.
4. There is increasing agreement as to the components of OB, but there is still
considerable debate as to the relative importance of each: motivation, leader
behavior and power, interpersonal communication, group structure and
processes, learning, attitude development and perception, change processes,
conflict, work design, and work stress.
IV. Complementing Intuition with Systematic Study
A. Introduction
1. Each of us is a student of behavior:
2. A casual or commonsense approach to reading others can often lead to
erroneous predictions.
B. You can improve your predictive ability by replacing your intuitive opinions with a
more systematic approach.
C. The systematic approach used in this book will uncover important facts and
relationships and will provide a base from which more accurate predictions of
behavior can be made.
D. Systematic Study of Behavior
1. Behavior generally is predictable if we know how the person perceived the
situation and what is important to him or her.
2. Looks at relationships.
3. Attempts to attribute causes
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 14
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
4. Bases our conclusions on scientific evidence.
E. Evidence-Based Management (EBM)
1. Complements systematic study.
2. Argues for managers to make decisions on evidence.
3. But a vast majority of management decisions are made “on the fly.”
F. Intuition
1. Systematic study and EBM add to intuition, or those “gut feelings” about
“why I do what I do” and “what makes others tick.”
2. If we make all decisions with intuition or gut instinct, we’re likely working
with incomplete information.
3. Relying on intuition is made worse because we tend to overestimate the
accuracy of what we think we know.
4. We find a similar problem in chasing the business and popular media for
management wisdom. Information—like making an investment decision with
only half the data.
5. We’re not advising that you throw your intuition, or all the business press, out
the window.
6. What we are advising is to use evidence as much as possible to inform your
intuition and experience.
V. Disciplines That Contribute to the OB Field
A. Introduction (Exhibit 1-3)
1. Organizational behavior is an applied behavioral science that is built upon
contributions from a number of behavioral disciplines.
2. The predominant areas are psychology, sociology, social psychology,
anthropology, and political science.
3. Exhibit 1–3 overviews the major contributions to the study of organizational
behavior.
B. Psychology
1. Psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes
change the behavior of humans and other animals.
2. Early industrial/organizational psychologists concerned themselves with
problems of fatigue, boredom, and other factors relevant to working
conditions that could impede efficient work performance.
3. More recently, their contributions have been expanded to include learning,
perception, personality, emotions, training, leadership effectiveness, needs and
motivational forces, job satisfaction, decision- making processes, performance
appraisals, attitude measurement, employee selection techniques, work design,
and job stress.
C. Social Psychology
1. Social psychology blends the concepts of psychology and sociology.
2. It focuses on the influence of people on one another.
3. Major area—how to implement it and how to reduce barriers to its acceptance.
D. Sociology
1. Sociologists study the social system in which individuals fill their roles; that
is, sociology studies people in relation to their fellow human beings.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 15
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
2. Their greatest contribution to OB is through their study of groups in
organizations, particularly formal and complex organizations.
E. Anthropology
1. Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their
activities.
2. Anthropologists work on cultures and environments; for instance, they have
helped us understand differences in fundamental values, attitudes, and
behavior among people in different countries and within different
organizations.
VI. There Are Few Absolutes in OB
A. Introduction
1. There are few, if any, simple and universal principles that explain
organizational behavior.
2. Human beings are complex. Because they are not alike, our ability to make
simple, accurate, and sweeping generalizations is limited.
3. That does not mean, of course, that we cannot offer reasonably accurate
explanations of human behavior or make valid predictions. It does mean,
however, that OB concepts must reflect situational, or contingency,
conditions.
B. Contingency variables—situational factors are variables that moderate the
relationship between the independent and dependent variables.
C. Using general concepts and then altering their application to the particular situation
developed the science of OB.
D. Organizational behavior theories mirror the subject matter with which they deal.
VII. Challenges and Opportunities for OB
A. Introduction
1. There are many challenges and opportunities today for managers to use OB
concepts.
B. Responding to Economic Pressure
1. Deep and prolonged recession in 2008 that spread world-wide.
2. In economic tough times, effective management is an asset.
3. During these times, the difference between good and bad management can be
the difference between profit or loss.
4. In good times, understanding how to reward, satisfy, and retain employees is
at a premium. In bad times, issues like stress, decision-making, and coping
come to the fore.
C. Responding to Globalization
1. Increased Foreign Assignments
a. Organizations are no longer constrained by national borders.
b. Once there, you’ll have to manage a workforce very different in needs,
aspirations, and attitudes from those you are used to back home.
c. Working with people from different cultures.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 16
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
1) Even in your own country, you’ll find yourself working with
bosses, peers, and other employees born and raised in different
cultures.
d. Management practices need to be modified to reflect the values of the
different countries in which an organization operates.
2. Overseeing Movement of Jobs to Countries with Low-cost Labor
a. Managers are under pressure to keep costs down to maintain
competitiveness.
b. Moving jobs to low-labor cost places requires managers to deal with
difficulties in balancing the interests of their organization with
responsibilities to the communities in which they operate.
D. Managing Workforce Diversity
1. Workforce diversity is one of the most important and broad-based challenges
currently facing organizations.
2. While globalization focuses on differences between people from different
countries, workforce diversity addresses differences among people within
given countries.
3. Workforce diversity acknowledges a workforce of women and men; many
racial and ethnic groups; individuals with a variety of physical or
psychological abilities; and people who differ in age and sexual orientation.
4. Managing this diversity is a global concern.
5. The most significant change in the U.S. labor force during the last half of the
twentieth century was the rapid increase in the number of female workers.
E. Improving Customer Service
1. Today the majority of employees in developed countries work in service jobs.
a. Eighty percent of the U.S. labor force is in the service industry.
b. Examples include technical support reps, fast food counter workers,
waiters, nurses, financial planners, and flight attendants.
2. Employee attitudes and behavior are associated with customer satisfaction.
F. Improving People Skills
1. People skills are essential to managerial effectiveness.
2. OB provides the concepts and theories that allow managers to predict
employee behavior in given situations.
G. Stimulating Innovation and Change
1. Successful organizations must foster innovation and master the art of change.
2. Employees can be the impetus for innovation and change or a major stumbling
block.
3. Managers must stimulate employees’ creativity and tolerance for change.
H. Coping with “Temporariness”
1. Organizations must be flexible and fast in order to survive. Evidence of
temporariness includes:
a. Jobs must be continually redesigned.
b. Tasks being done by flexible work teams rather than individuals.
c. Company reliance on temporary workers.
d. Workers need to update knowledge and skills. Work groups are also in
a continuing state of flux.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 17
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
e. Organizations are in a constant state of flux.
2. Managers and employees must learn to cope with temporariness.
3. Learning to live with flexibility, spontaneity, and unpredictability.
4. OB provides help in understanding a work world of continual change, how to
overcome resistance to change, and how to create an organizational culture
that thrives on change.
I. Working in Networked Organizations
1. Networked organizations are becoming more pronounced.
2. Manager’s job is fundamentally different in networked organizations.
Challenges of motivating and leading “online” require different techniques.
J. Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts
1. The creation of the global workforce means work no longer sleeps. Workers
are on-call 24-hours a day or working nontraditional shifts.
2. Communication technology has provided a vehicle for working at any time or
any place.
3. Employees are working longer hours per week—from 43 to 47 hours per week
since 1977.
4. The lifestyles of families have changed—creating conflict: more dual career
couples and single parents find it hard to fulfill commitments to home,
children, spouse, parents, and friends.
5. Balancing work and life demands now surpasses job security as an employee
priority.
K. Creating a Positive Work Environment
1. Organizations like General Electric have realized creating a positive work
environment can be a competitive advantage.
2. Positive organizational scholarship or behavior studies what is ‘good’ about
organizations.
3. This field of study focuses on employees’ strengths versus their limitations as
employees share situations in which they performed at their personal best.
L. Improving Ethical Behavior
1. Ethical dilemmas are situations in which an individual is required to define
right and wrong conduct.
2. Good ethical behavior is not so easily defined.
3. Organizations are distributing codes of ethics to guide employees through
ethical dilemmas.
4. Managers need to create an ethically healthy climate.
VIII. Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model
A. An Overview
1. A model is an abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of some real-
world phenomenon. (Exhibit 1–4 The OB Model)
2. It proposes three types of variables (inputs, processes, and outcomes) at three
levels of analysis (individual, group, and organizational).
3. The model proceeds from left to right, with inputs leading to processes, and
processes leading to outcomes.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 18
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
4. Notice that the model also shows that outcomes can influence inputs in the
future.
B. Inputs
1. Inputs are the variables like personality, group structure, and organizational
culture that lead to processes.
2. These variables set the stage for what will occur in an organization later.
3. Many are determined in advance of the employment relationship.
4. For example, individual diversity characteristics, personality, and values are
shaped by a combination of an individual’s genetic inheritance and childhood
environment.
5. Group structure, roles, and team responsibilities are typically assigned
immediately before or after a group is formed.
6. Finally, organizational structure and culture are usually the result of years of
development and change as the organization adapts to its environment and
builds up customs and norms.
C. Processes
1. If inputs are like the nouns in organizational behavior, processes are like
verbs.
2. Processes are actions that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in as
a result of inputs and that lead to certain outcomes.
3. At the individual level, processes include emotions and moods, motivation,
perception, and decision-making.
4. At the group level, they include communication, leadership, power and
politics, and conflict and negotiation.
5. Finally, at the organizational level, processes include human resource
management and change practices.
D. Outcomes
1. Outcomes are the key variables that you want to explain or predict, and that
are affected by some other variables.
2. Scholars have emphasized individual-level outcomes like attitudes and
satisfaction, task performance, citizenship behavior, and withdrawal behavior.
3. At the group level, cohesion and functioning are the dependent variables.
4. Finally, at the organizational level we look at overall profitability and
survival. Because these outcomes will be covered in all the chapters, we’ll
briefly discuss each here so you can understand what the “goal” of OB will
be.
E. Attitudes and stress
1. Employee attitudes are the evaluations employees make, ranging from
positive to negative, about objects, people, or events.
2. For example, the statement, “I really think my job is great,” is a positive job
attitude, and “My job is boring and tedious” is a negative job attitude.
3. Stress is an unpleasant psychological process that occurs in response to
environmental pressures.
4. Some people might think that influencing employee attitudes and stress is
purely soft stuff, and not the business of serious managers, but as we will
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 19
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
show, attitudes often have behavioral consequences that directly relate to
organizational effectiveness.
5. The belief that satisfied employees are more productive than dissatisfied
employees has been a basic tenet among managers for years, though only now
has research begun to support it.
6. Ample evidence shows that employees who are more satisfied and treated
fairly are more willing to engage in the above-and-beyond citizenship
behavior so vital in the contemporary business environment.
7. A study of more than 2,500 business units also found that those scoring in the
top 25 percent on the employee opinion survey were, on average, 4.6 percent
above their sales budget for the year, while those scoring in the bottom 25
percent were 0.8% below budget.
8. In real numbers, this was a difference of $104 million in sales per year
between the two groups.
F. Task performance
1. The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing your core job tasks
is a reflection of your level of task performance.
2. If we think about the job of a factory worker, task performance could be
measured by the number and quality of products produced in an hour.
3. The task performance of a teacher would be the level of education that
students obtain.
4. The task performance of a consultant might be measured by the timeliness and
quality of the presentations they offer to the client firm.
5. All these types of performance relate to the core duties and responsibilities of
a job and are often directly related to the functions listed on a formal job
description.
6. Obviously task performance is the most important human output contributing
to organizational effectiveness, so in every chapter we devote considerable
time to detailing how task performance is affected by the topic in question.
G. Citizenship behavior
1. The discretionary behavior that is not part of an employee’s formal job
requirements, and that contributes to the psychological and social environment
of the workplace, is called citizenship behavior.
2. Successful organizations need employees who will do more than their usual
job duties—who will provide performance beyond expectations.
3. In today’s dynamic workplace, where tasks are increasingly performed by
teams and flexibility is critical, employees who engage in “good citizenship”
behaviors help others on their team, volunteer for extra work, avoid
unnecessary conflicts, respect the spirit as well as the letter of rules and
regulations, and gracefully tolerate occasional work-related impositions and
nuisances.
4. Organizations want and need employees who will do things that aren’t in any
job description.
5. Evidence indicates organizations that have such employees outperform those
that don’t.
6. As a result, OB is concerned with citizenship behavior as an outcome variable.
Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 20
Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
H. Withdrawal behavior
1. We’ve already mentioned behavior that goes above and beyond task
requirements, but what about behavior that in some way is below task
requirements?
2. Withdrawal behavior is the set of actions that employees take to separate
themselves from the organization.
3. There are many forms of withdrawal, ranging from showing up late or failing
to attend meetings to absenteeism and turnover.
4. Employee withdrawal can have a very negative effect on an organization.
a. The cost of employee turnover alone has been estimated to run into the
thousands of dollars, even for entry-level positions.
5. Absenteeism also costs organizations significant amounts of money and time
every year.
a. For instance, a recent survey found the average direct cost to U.S.
employers of unscheduled absences is 8.7 percent of payroll.
b. In Sweden, an average of 10 percent of the country’s workforce is on
sick leave at any given time.
6. It’s obviously difficult for an organization to operate smoothly and attain its
objectives if employees fail to report to their jobs.
a. The work flow is disrupted, and important decisions may be delayed.
In organizations that rely heavily on assembly-line production,
absenteeism can be considerably more than a disruption; it can
drastically reduce the quality of output or even shut down the facility.
b. Levels of absenteeism beyond the normal range have a direct impact
on any organization’s effectiveness and efficiency.
c. A high rate of turnover can also disrupt the efficient running of an
organization when knowledgeable and experienced personnel leave
and replacements must be found to assume positions of responsibility.
7. All organizations, of course, have some turnover.
a. The U.S. national turnover rate averages about 3 percent per month,
about a 36 percent turnover per year.
b. This average varies a lot by occupation, of course; the monthly
turnover rate for government jobs is less than 1 percent, versus 5 to 7
percent in the construction industry.
c. If the “right” people are leaving the organization—the marginal and
submarginal employees—turnover can actually be positive.
d. It can create an opportunity to replace an underperforming individual
with someone who has higher skills or motivation, open up increased
opportunities for promotions, and bring new and fresh ideas to the
organization.
e. In today’s changing world of work, reasonable levels of employee-
initiated turnover improve organizational flexibility and employee
independence, and they can lessen the need for management-initiated
layoffs.
8. So why do employees withdraw from work?
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
are still shown in a faded condition on a stone in the eastern
parapet, near the south end of the bridge. There certainly is such a
stone, and you may rather fancy than distinctly trace two outlines of
heads. The whole bridge is, as described by Burns, very old and
time-worn.
"Auld Brig appeared o' ancient Pictish race,
The very wrinkles Gothic in his face;
He seemed as he wi' Time had warstled lang,
Yet, teughly doure, he baide an unco bang."
There is a peculiar pleasure in standing on this old Brig, so exactly
has Burns enabled you to place yourself in the very scene that he
contemplated at the moment of conceiving his poem.
"A simple bard,
Unknown and poor, simplicity's reward,
Ae night, within the ancient burgh of Ayr,
By whim inspired, or haply pressed wi' care,
He left his bed, and took his wayward route,
And down by Simpson's wheeled the left about;
The drowsy Dungeon clock had numbered two,
And Wallace Tower had sworn the fact was true;
The tide-swollen Firth, wi' sullen sounding roar,
Through the still night dashed hoarse along the
shore.
All else was hushed as Nature's closed e'e;
The silent moon shone high o'er tower and tree;
The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam,
Crept, gently crusting, o'er the glittering stream."
From this scene "the drowsy dungeon clock" is removed, the old jail
having been pulled down; but Simpson's is still to be seen, a public
house at the end of the bridge on the side most distant from the
town; and Wallace Tower, I believe, however, almost wholly rebuilt
since then, and presenting now a very modernized aspect, rears
itself in a distant part of the town. Along the river side the "ancient
burgh of Ayr" presents its antiquated houses, roofs, and gables,
much as they did to the eye of Burns.
Ayr, though it stands on a flat, has still great charm of location, and
this you perceive as you set out to visit the birth-place and
monument of Burns, which lie about three miles south of Ayr. You
may, if you please, take the way along the shore; and here you have
the sea with its living billows, displaying at a distance opposite the
craggy mountain heights of Arran, and the Mull of Cantire.
Northward, Troon, with its new houses, may be seen standing on its
naked promontory, and southward, the Tower of Dunbere is a bold
but somber object on an elevated knoll on the margin of the ocean,
and far out southwest, Ailsacraig is descried, towering amid the
waters. It is a fine and animated scene. It was Sunday forenoon as I
advanced over the very level ground near the shore, toward Alloway.
People were walking on the beach enjoying the sunshine, breeze,
and glittering world of waters; lovers were seated among the
broomy hillocks, children were gathering flowers amid the crimson
glare of the heather; all had an air of beauty and gladness. To my
left lay a richly-wooded country, and before me, beyond Alloway and
the Doon, stretched the airy range of the Carrick Hills. It was the
direction which I was pursuing that Tam O'Shanter took from the
town to Alloway, for the old road ran that way; but there is a new
and more direct one now from Ayr, and into that, having been shown
the cottage where Mrs. Begg, Burns's sister, still lives, I struck. This
agreeable road I soon saw diverge into two, and asked a poor man
which of the two led to Burns's monument. At the name of Burns,
the poor man's face kindled with instant animation. "I am going part
of the way, sir," he said, "and will be proud to show it you." I begged
him not to put himself at all out of his way. "Oh," said he, "I am
going to look at my potato plot which lies out here." We fell into
conversation about Burns; the way again showed a fresh branch,
which was the way to his potato field; but the poor fellow gave a
hesitating look; he could not find it in his heart to give up talking
about Burns, and begged that I would do him the honor to allow him
to walk on with me. "But your potatoes, my friend?" "Oh! they'll tak
no harm, sir. The weather's very growing weather; one feels a
natural curiosity to see how they thrive, but that will do next Sunday,
if you would allow me to go on with you?"
I assured him that nothing would give me greater pleasure. I only
feared that I might keep him out too long, for I must see all about
Burns's birth-place, Kirk Alloway, the Brig of Doon, the monument,
and every thing of the kind. It was now over noon, and must be his
dinner hour. He said, "No; he never had dinner on a Sunday; for
years he had accustomed himself to only two meals on that day,
because he earned nothing on it, and had ten children! But he
generally took a walk out into the country, and got a good mouthful
of fresh air, and that did him a deal of good."
I looked more closely at my new companion. He was apparently
sixty, and looked like a man accustomed to dine on air. He was of a
thin and grasshopper build; his face was thin and pale, his hair
grizzled; yet there was an intelligence in his large gray eyes, but it
was a sad intelligence, one which had long kept fellowship with
patience and suffering. His gray coat, and hat well worn, and his
clean but coarse shirt-collar, turned down over a narrow band of a
blue cotton tie neckerchief, with its long ends dangling over his
waistcoat, all denoted a poor, but a careful and superior man. I can
not tell what a feeling of sympathy came over me; how my heart
warmed toward the poor fellow. We went on; gay groups of people
met us, and seemed to cast looks of wonder at the stranger and his
poor associate; but I asked myself whether, if we could know, as
God knows, the hearts and merits of every individual of those well-
dressed and laughing walkers, we should find among them one so
heroic as to renounce his Sunday dinner as a perpetual practice,
because he "earned nothing on that day, and had ten children?" Was
there a man or a woman among them who, if they knew this heroic
man as I now knew him, would not desire to give him, for that one
day at least, a good dinner, and as much pleasure as they could?
"My friend," said I, "I fear you have had more than your share of
hardship in this life?"
"Nay," he replied, "he could not say that. He had had to work hard,
but what poor man had not? But he had had many comforts; and
the greatest comfort in life had been, that all his children had taken
good ways; if I don't except," and the old man sighed, "one lad, who
has gone for a soldier; and I think it a little ungrateful that he has
never written to us since he went, three years ago. Yet I hear that
he is alive and well, in Jamaica. I can not but think that rather
ungrateful," he added; "but of a' Robin Burns's poems, there's none,
to my thinking, that comes up to that one—Man was made to
Mourn."
I could not help again glancing at the thin, pale figure, which went
as softly at my side as if it were a ghost, and could not wonder that
Burns was the idol of the poor throughout Scotland, and that the
Sunday wanderer of his native place had clung so fondly to the
southern visitor of the same sacred spot.
"Can you explain to me," I asked, "what it is that makes Burns such
a favorite with you all in Scotland? Other poets you have, and great
ones; out of the same class, too, you had Hogg, but I do not
perceive the same instant flash, as it were, of an electric feeling
when any name is named but that of Burns."
"I can tell," said he, "why it is. It is because he had the heart of a
man in him. He was all heart and all man; and there's nothing, at
least in a poor man's experience, either bitter or sweet, which can
happen to him, but a line of Burns springs into his mouth, and gives
him courage and comfort if he needs it. It is like a second Bible."
I was struck with the admirable criticism of the poor artisan. What
acuteness of genius is like the acuteness of a sharp experience, after
all? I found that, had I picked the whole county of Ayr, I could not
have hit on a man more clearly aware of the real genius of Burns,
nor a more excellent guide to all that related to him hereabouts. He
now stopped me. We were on the very track of Tam O'Shanter.
"Kirk Alloway was drawing nigh,
Where ghaists and houlets nightly cry.
By this time he was cross the ford,
Where in the snaw the chapman smoored:
And past the birks and meikle stane
Where drunken Charley brak 's neck-bane.
And through the whins, and by the cairn
Where hunters found the murdered bairn;
And near the thorn aboon the well
Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel."
The whins, the birks were gone: all was now one scene of richest
cultivation; but in the midst of a cottager's garden still projected the
"meikle stane" from the ground, in a potato bed. To this, by
permission of the cottager, we advanced, and from this spot my
guide pointed out the traditionary course of Tam on that awful night
when
"Before him Doon pours all his floods;
The doublin' storm roars through the woods,
And lightnings flash from pole to pole."
Some of these scenes lay yet far before us; as the well
"Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel,"
which is just on the banks of the Doon itself. Anon we reached the
cottage in which Burns was born. This stands on the right-hand side
of the road, about a quarter of a mile from Kirk Alloway and the Brig
o' Doon. It is a genuine Scotch cottage of two rooms on the ground
floor, thatched and whitewashed. It is now, and has been long, a
little public house. It stands close up to the road, and over the door
is a portrait of Burns, an evident copy from the portrait by Nasmyth,
and under it, in large and noticeable letters, "Robert Burns, the
Ayrshire Poet, was born under this roof, the 25th Jan., A.D. 1759. Died
A.D. 1796, aged 37-1/2 years."
It is well known to most readers that this house was built by Burns's
father, and that about a week after Robert, his first child, was born,
the roof fell in during a tempest at midnight, and that mother and
child had to be carried forth in a hurry, through the storm and
darkness, to a cottage, which still remains, not far off, on the
opposite side of the road. Robert Burns was born in what is now the
kitchen, in one of those recess beds so common in Scotch cottages.
This is still shown to visitors by the occupiers of the house. The
better room, in which the guests are entertained, that nearest to the
town of Ayr, bears abundant marks of the zeal of these visitors. The
walls are well written over with names, but not in that extraordinary
manner that the walls of Shakspeare's birth-place at Stratford are.
The rage here has taken another turn, that of cutting the names into
the furniture. There are two plane-tree tables, which are cut and
carved in the most singular completeness. There does not seem to
be left space, neither on the top, the sides, nor the legs, even for
another initial. There were formerly three of these tables, but one of
them was sold some years ago. There is a cupboard and chairs all
cut over, the chairs having been obliged to be renewed, but the
fresh ones are now as much cut as ever. We were informed by Mrs.
Gondie, the widow of the old miller, John Gondie, of Doonside Mill,
who had lived in the house nearly forty years, that the lease of the
property had been bought of Burns's father, by the Shoemaker's
Company of Ayr, for one hundred and sixty guineas; but that the
property now let for £45 a year; and that the said Shoemaker's
Company wishing again to raise the rent, the widow was going to
quit at Michaelmas last, and that another person had taken the
house and small piece of ground adjoining, at a rental of £60 a year.
Mrs. Gondie said that she had been once bid £15 for one of the
tables, but had refused it; that, however, being now about to quit
the premises, she had sold the chairs and tables to a broker at
Glasgow, who was announcing them as the actual furniture of Burns,
though it was well known that when Burns's father left this house for
Mount Oliphant, a few miles off, when Robert Burns was not seven
years of age, he took all his furniture with him. Conspicuous among
the carved names in this room was that of an ambitious Peter Jones,
of Great Bear Lake, North America.
Burns's father, who was, when he lived here, gardener to Mr.
Ferguson, of Doonholm, was a man of an excitable temperament,
but of a most upright disposition; and his mother, like the mothers of
most remarkable men, was a woman of clear, clever, and superior
mind, of a winning address, and full of ballads and traditions. From
both sides the son drew the elements of a poet; and we can well
imagine him sitting by the humble fireside of this cottage, and
receiving into his childish heart, from the piety of the father, and the
imaginative tales of the mother, those images of genuine Scottish life
which poured themselves forth as well in Tam O'Shanter as in the
grave and beautiful Cotter's Saturday Night.
Having insisted on my worthy guide getting some refreshment, we
again sallied forth to make a more thorough exploration of the
youthful haunts of the poet. And now, indeed, we were surrounded
by mementoes of him and of his fame on all hands. The cottage
stands on a pleasant plain; and about a quarter of a mile onward
you see, on the left hand of the road, the monument erected to his
memory: a dome, surmounted with a lyre and the significant wine-
cup, and supported on Corinthian pillars. On the opposite, that is, on
the right-hand side of the road, is the old Kirk of Alloway; beyond,
away to the right, is heard the sea, while the airy range of the
Carrick Hills stretches across, closing the landscape before you. At
their feet a mass of trees marks the course of the Doon; but, before
you reach any of these objects, you pass, on your left, the large
open field in which was held the Burns Festival on the 6th of August,
1844. The place where the wall had been broken down to admit the
procession was plainly discernible by its new mortar; and a fine crop
of corn was now waving where such thousands had, but a year
before, met in honor of the immortal exciseman.
Of this festival copious particulars are to be found in all the
newspapers of the day, but in none so complete and accurate as
"The Full Report" published by Mr. Maxwell Dick, the worthy
publisher of the Ayrshire News Letter at Irvine, one of the most
enthusiastic admirers of the genius of Burns, and of genius in
general. By this report it appears that the procession, forming on the
Low Green of Ayr, near the County Buildings, met at ten o'clock in
the morning, and consisted of the magistrates of the town, public
bodies, farmers, numerous freemasons' lodges, societies of
gardeners, archers, and odd fellows, King Crispin in his most
imposing style, with Souter Johnny in character, accompanied by
attendants with banners floating, and bands playing music of Burns's
songs. In this procession were seen gentlemen and noblemen, and
literary men of the highest distinction, from all parts of the empire.
It reached a mile along the high road, three abreast. The whole
number of persons present—that is, in the procession and on the
ground—was calculated at eighty thousand. A splendid triumphal
arch was erected at the cottage where the poet was born, and, as
the procession drew near it, the band played, "There was a Lad was
born in Kyle;" the vast multitude uncovered at once, and the flags
were lowered as they passed the humble but much respected spot.
Platforms were erected in various places, so that people could get a
coup-d'œil of the procession. As it approached Kirk Alloway, the old
bell, which still occupies the belfry, was set a ringing, and continued
so while the procession marched under the triumphal arch along the
new bridge. Deploying round toward the old bridge of Doon, the
circling line, partially obscured by the houses and trees, had a truly
picturesque effect; the waving banners, the music of the bands,
mellowed and echoed by "the banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,"
were deeply impressive. On reaching the Auld Brig, over which was
thrown a triumphal arch, the band struck up "Welcome, Royal
Charlie," while the procession, uncovering and lowering their flags,
passed over in front of the platform, on which stood the three sons
of Burns, his sister Mrs. Begg, her son, and two daughters. The
procession occupied at least an hour in coming from the new bridge
to the field, on entering which the band played "Duncan Gray,"
followed by "The Birks of Aberfeldy." A large circle was then formed
round the platform for the musicians in the field; and the whole
company, led by professional vocalists, joined in singing "Ye Banks
and Braes o' Bonnie Doon," and "Auld Lang Syne." The bands were
then stationed in various parts of the field: the regimental and
Glasgow St. Andrew's bands in the center of the field; the Kilwinning
and Cumnock bands at the cottage; and the bagpipers played at a
distance from the pavilion. There were two inclosures for dancing:
one near the head of the field, and the other on the brow
overlooking the Doon. Immediately after the procession was over,
the crowd were astonished by the sudden appearance of Tam
O'Shanter, "well mounted on his gray mare Meg," and a flight of
witches in full pursuit of her, till he reached and passed the keystone
of the arch of the Auld Brig. At two, the Earl of Eglinton took the
chair at the banquet in the pavilion, with Professor Wilson as
croupier. To the right of the chairman sat Robert Burns, Esq., the
eldest son of the poet; Major Burns, his youngest son; on the left,
Colonel Burns, second son of the poet; Mrs. Begg, Burns's sister;
and right and left, other members of the family, amid many noble
and distinguished persons: as Mrs. Thomson, of Dumfries, the Jessie
Lewars of the poet; Sir John M'Neill, late plenipotentiary to the court
of Persia; the lord-justice-general, the Countess of Eglinton, Alison,
the historian, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, Robert Chambers, of
Edinburgh, Douglas Jerrold, William Thom, the poet of Inverury, &c.,
&c. The chairs of the chairman and croupier were made of oaken
rafters from Kirk Alloway, and many mementoes of the poet
decorated the table. The scene in the pavilion is described as
splendid, and like one of fairy-land; and the most enthusiastic
speeches were made in honor of the poet, especially by the noble
chairman and the eloquent John Wilson.
It will be seen, by those acquainted with the ground, that the
procession had thus taken a course contrived to include every object
of interest connected with Burns here. It had passed the cottage of
his birth; passed between Kirk Alloway and his monument; crossed
by the new bridge over the Doon to the side of the river, and
returned over the old bridge, so as to see all "the banks and braes o'
bonnie Doon," and so entered the field of the festival, having entirely
encircled the monument. There, in full view of all these objects, the
cottage, the old ruins of the kirk, the monument, and the banks of
Doon, they celebrated—eighty thousand persons—the festival of his
honor, amid the music of his own enchanting songs, among which
were, "A Man's a Man for a' That;" "This is na my ain House;"
"Green Grow the Rashes, O;" "My Love she's but a Lassie yet;"
"What ye wha's in yon Toun."
This stirring and tumultuous expression of a nation's veneration was
gone by; silence had again fallen, as it were, with a musing sense of
the poet's glory on the scene; and with my worthy old guide I went
over the same ground leisurely, noting all its beauties and
characteristics. First, we turned into the grave-yard of Kirk Alloway.
Here stood the roofless old kirk, just such a plain, simple ruin as you
see in a hundred places in Ireland. One of the first objects that
arrests your attention is the bell in the little belfry, with a rope
hanging outside, only sufficiently low for the sexton, on any occasion
of funeral, to reach it with a hooked pole, and thus to prevent any
idle person ringing it at other times. This bell, when the parishes of
Alloway and Ayr were joined, was attempted to be carried away by
the authorities of Ayr, by no means to their honor, but the crofters of
Alloway manfully rose and resisted successfully the removal. There
are plenty of open windows where Tam O'Shanter could take a full
view of the uncanny dancing-party; and "the winnock bunker in the
east," a small window, "where sat Auld Nick, in shape o' beast," as
fiddler, is conspicuous enough. The interior of the kirk is divided by a
wall. The west-end division is the burial-place of the Cathcarts,
which is kept very neat. The other end, and where the witch-dance
met Tam's astonished eyes, is now full of briers and nettles, bearing
sufficient evidence of no recent displays of this kind. The kirk-yard is
crowded with tombs, and the first memorial of the dead which
meets your eye is the headstone of the poet's father, just before you
as you enter by the stile, with this inscription: "Sacred to the
memory of William Burns, farmer in Lochlea, who died Feb., 1784, in
the 63d year of his age; and of Agnes Brown, his spouse, who died
the 14th of Jan., 1820, in the 88th year of her age. She was interred
in Bolton Church-yard, East Lothian.
"O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains,
Draw near with pious reverence, and attend!
Here lie the loving husband's dear remains,
The tender father, and the generous friend.
The pitying heart that felt for human woe;
The dauntless heart that feared no human pride;
The friend of man, to vice alone a foe;
'For e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side.'"
This epitaph was written expressly for this tomb by Burns, the last
line being quoted from Goldsmith.
Advancing now to the new bridge, you stand between two
remarkable monuments of the poet. On your right hand, close on
the banks of the Doon, and adjoining the bridge, stands a handsome
villa, in beautiful grounds which occupy part of "the banks and
braes." This is the house of Mr. Auld, the enterprising hair-dresser of
Ayr, who was the first to recognize the genius of Thom the sculptor,
then a poor stone-mason of Ayr. Thom, seeing a picture of Tam
O'Shanter in Auld's window, requested the loan of it for a few days.
Being asked by Auld what he wanted it for, he said he had a notion
that he could make a figure from it. It was lent, and in a few days he
returned with a model of Tam in clay. Mr. Auld was so struck with the
genius displayed in it, that he suggested to Thom to complete the
group by adding Souter Johnny. That was soon done; and then, by
the assistance of Mr. Auld, the well-known group was cut in stone.
The enterprising hair-dresser now prepared to set out on an
expedition of exhibition of this group, the proceeds of which, I
understand, were agreed to be equally divided between Auld, Thom,
and the committee for a monument to Burns, near his birth-place.
Such was the success of the scheme, that Thom, I am told, received
£4000 as his share of the proceeds, which, however, he soon
contrived to lose by taking stone-quarries, and entering on building
schemes. Having lost his money, he retired to America. Auld, more
careful, quitted the wig-block and lather-brush, and building himself
a house, sat down as a country gentleman opposite to the
monument, which seems to be in his keeping. It has been said that
the monument committee never received any thing like a third of the
proceeds of the exhibition, or the monument might now be opened
free of cost to the public. That, however, is a point which the
committee and Mr. Auld must be best informed about. One thing is
certain, that Mr. Auld's present residence is a grand specimen of the
effect of the united genius of Burns, Thom, and Auld; an exciseman,
a stone-mason, and a barber. To the left hand of the road, opposite
to this monument, stands, in a pleasant garden, the other
monument of Burns, as already described, and which also, it seems,
partly owed its existence to the same bold enterprise of this barber
of Ayr, who seems actually to have had the art of "cutting blocks
with a razor." In this monument is no statue of Burns, but merely a
framed copy of that admirable colored print of Burns, published by
Mr. Maxwell Dick, of Irvine, from Nasmyth's picture; and on the table
in the center, the Bible and Testament given by Burns to his Mary at
their last parting near Montgomery Castle. These are two separate
volumes, and are displayed at the beginning of each, where Burns
has placed a masonic sign, and written his name, now nearly
obliterated; adding the two texts, Leviticus, xix., 12; Matthew, v., 33;
which are, "Ye shall not swear by my name falsely; I am the Lord;"
and, "Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the
Lord thine oaths." These precious volumes were known to be in the
possession of the sister of Burns's "Mary," in America; and a society
of young men, ardent admirers of Burns, resolved to regain them, if
possible, for the public. This, after great trouble and expense, they
finally effected, and here they are, objects certainly of the deepest
interest.
In a separate and small building in the same garden stands the
celebrated group, by Thom, of Tam and Souter Johnny. This,
however, it being Sunday, was, by an order of the authorities of Ayr,
not allowed to be seen, though the monument was. I asked the
youth who showed the monument if he could explain to me why it
was a sin to show the group, and not a sin to show the monument
on a Sunday; but the lad very properly replied that he did not
pretend to a metaphysical sagacity so profound; his business was to
show the monument, and not to show either the group or the
reason why; for that he referred me to the superior hair-splitting
piety and acumen of the corporate authorities of Ayr.
Quitting this garden, you encounter, at the foot of the new bridge, a
new inn called Burns's Inn and Hotel, with a fine painted sign, with a
blackbird singing upon a bough, with a crook and a house, and an
oak in the center of a shield laid on branches of olive and oak; and
over it the words, "Better a small bush than nae bield." The auld brig
is some little distance up the stream, and the view from it is very
beautiful. You are surrounded by "the banks and braes o' bonnie
Doon," steep, hung with orchards and fine woodland trees. At some
little distance still further up the stream, you descry the old mill of
Alloway, half buried in umbrageous trees, and all round rise sweet
woodland fields at the feet of the hills. The bridge is well carved over
with names, and overgrown with masses of ivy. Standing on this
remarkable old gray bridge, my companion exhibited a trait of
delicate and genuine feeling, which no man of the most polished
education in the school of politeness could have surpassed.
Gathering a sprig of ivy, he said, presenting it, "May be ye would like
to send this to your leddy in England; it's gathered just frae the
keystane." I accepted it with the liveliest pleasure, and it is now
carefully preserved where the good man wished it. We now returned
to Ayr, talking of Burns, his history, his poetry, and his fine qualities
all the way; and after one of the pleasantest rambles I ever made in
any company, I bid my old friend good-by at his door, leaving in his
hand a trifle to mend his Sunday supper. "But," said he, as I was
going away, "might I request the favor of your name, that I may
know who it was that I had the honor of a walk with to Burns's
monument, when I am thinking of it?" I told him; his face passed
from its usual paleness to a deep flush; and he exclaimed, "Eh, sir! I
ken yer name, and that o' yer leddy too, right weel!" Depend upon
it, the recollection of that walk has been as pleasant to my old friend
as to myself.
The next day, with a driver well acquainted with the country, I issued
forth in a gig to visit all the various residences of Burns, between Ayr
and Mauchline. Burns, in his life, seemed like a bird leaving its nest.
He took two or three short flights till he flew quite away to Dumfries.
At every move he got further from Ayr. He was like an emigrant, still
going on and on in one direction, and his course was southeast. First
he went, that is, with his father, to Mount Oliphant, a farm about
four miles from Alloway, where he lived from his sixth to his twelfth
year. This farm has nothing particular about it. It lies on a bare ridge
of hill, an ordinary little Scotch farm-steading, with bare and treeless
fields. Then he went on to another farm—to Lochlea, still further out
on this long, high, and bleak tract of country, near Tarbolton. This
farm ruined his father, and there he died. Lochlea is a neat farm-
house, lying in a hollow more sheltered than Mount Oliphant, but
still possessing no picturesque features. In fact, the family was
seeking, not the picturesque, but a livelihood. At Lochlea, Burns lived
till he was twenty-four, and here he attended the masonic lodge at
the Cross Keys, at Tarbolton, which still remains. There he became
acquainted with Mr. David Sillar, the schoolmaster of Tarbolton, and
addressed to him his Epistle to Davie. It was about three miles from
Tarbolton, but that was nothing to Burns, full of life and poetry. The
Bachelor's Society that, with David Sillar and other young men, he
formed there, had infinite charms for him. Humble were these
companions; in David Sillar's words,
"Of birth and blood we do not boast,
No gentry does our club afford,
But plowmen and mechanics we
In nature's simple dress record;"
but they were men after Burns's own heart. He judged of men as his
father had taught him:
"My father was a farmer upon the Camek Border,
And carefully he bred me up in decency and order;
He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne'er a
farthing,
For without an honest, manly heart, no man was
worth regarding."
It was during his abode here that he wrote John Barleycorn; Corn
Riggs are Bonnie; Winter, a Dirge; the Death of Poor Mailie; Mailie's
Elegy; and Now Whistling Winds, &c. But the love affairs he was
now continually getting into, and the dissipations that he became
acquainted with at Kirkoswald and Irvine, at which places he spent
some months, rendered his poetical growth far less than it otherwise
might have been there. One incident in his life, and one of his most
beautiful poems consequent on it, however, arose out of an
attachment, which, though said to be formed at Mauchline, was
certainly cultivated here. Just below Tarbolton lies Montgomerie
Castle, beautifully situated amid its woods on the banks of the Faile,
where he fell in love with Mary Campbell. Here was the house at
which, according to his own beautiful poem, they used to meet, and
here it was that he finally took leave of her. She was dairy-maid in
the house then belonging to Colonel Hugh Montgomerie, afterward
Earl of Eglinton, and grandfather of the present earl.
"Ye banks, and braes, and streams around
The castle of Montgomerie,
Green be your woods and fair your flowers,
Your waters never drumlie.
There summer first unfaulds her robes,
And there they longest tarry,
For there I took my last farewell
Of my sweet Highland Mary."
There is a story mentioned in the Life of Burns of this parting being
on the banks of Ayr, and Cromek repeats it, adding that "the lovers
stood on each side of a small purling brook; they laved their hands
in the limpid stream, and, holding a Bible between them,
pronounced their vows to be faithful to each other."
All this may be true, for they took a day to this final solitary
enjoyment of each other's society in the woods before parting. They
might wander by the Ayr, and so on up to the Faile, and at some
small rivulet on the way perform this simple and affecting ceremony.
Mary was going to the Western Highlands to see her friends before
she married Robert Burns, but she died on her way back, and they
never met again. This Bible, as we have seen, has been recovered,
and is deposited in the monument at Alloway Wherever this
ceremony, however, took place, the parting assuredly took place
here. Burns says, not only that "there I took my last farewell," but
also
"How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk,
How rich the hawthorn's blossom,
As, underneath the fragrant shade,
I clasped her to my bosom."
There still stands the thorn, called by all the country "Highland
Mary's Thorn."
The house and park are sold or leased by the Earl of Eglinton to a
solicitor in Ayr. My driver appeared afraid of going into the park,
saying "the writer," that is, the solicitor, was a queer fellow, and
would not let any body go to the thorn, and certainly a large board
at each park gate, warning all persons to avoid those hallowed
precincts, appeared to confirm the man's opinion; but, having come
so far, I did not mean to pass without a glance at the parting scene
of Burns and Highland Mary. I bade him drive down to the house,
where I was speedily assured by the servants about that I was quite
at liberty to go to the tree. "How shall I know it?" "Oh! a child may
know it: it is all hacked, and the twigs broken, by people who carry
away some of it to keep." By these signs I readily recognized the
tree. It is not far from the house, close to the carriage drive, and on
the top of the slope that descends to the Faile, which murmurs on
beneath its sweet woodland shade.[30]
The last abode of Burns in Ayrshire was at Mossgiel. This is some
four miles beyond Tarbolton, and close to Mauchline, which is merely
a large village. Mossgiel farm lies, as it were, at the end of that long,
high, barren ridge of hills, which extends almost all the way from Ayr
thither, and on which Burns's father had sought a poor living, and
found ruin. It stands near the line of the slope which descends into
Mauchline, and overlooks a large extent of bleak and bare country,
and distant, bare hills. In the vales of the country, however, lie many
scenes of great beauty and classic fame. Such are the banks of the
Ayr, which winds on deep between its braes and woods, like the
Nith, the Doon, and the higher Clyde. Such are Stair, Logan,
Crukerne, Catrine, Dugald Stewart's place, and many others.
The farm of Mossgiel, which consists of about 118 acres, lies, as
observed, high, and as Gilbert, the brother of Burns, described it,
"on a cold, wet bottom." The farms occupied by the Burns family in
this part of the country were all of a thankless and ungenial kind; in
fact, they lacked the means to command better. The two brothers,
Robert and Gilbert, had taken this farm some time before their
father's death, in the hope of assisting the family in that poverty
which came still after them, spite of the most laborious exertion, like
an armed man, and which was weighing their father to the grave. At
his death they removed altogether from Lochlea, and with their
mother and sisters became here one household. Here Burns made
the firmest resolves of steadiness, industry, and thriving; but the
seasons were against him, and he soon became mixed up with all
the dissipations of Mauchline, where he established a club after the
fashion of that at Tarbolton. Very soon, too, he plunged into the
midst of Church disputes, in which his friend Gavin Hamilton, a
lawyer of the place, was personally embroiled. Here he wrote The
Holy Tuilzie, Holy Fair, Holy Willie's Prayer, The Ordination, The Kirk's
Alarm—those scalping poems, in which he lays bare to the skull
bone, bigotry, hypocrisy, and all sanctimonious bitterness in religion.
Here he fell in love with Jean Armour, the daughter of a stone-
mason of Mauchline, who, after many troubles, and much opposition
on the part of the family, became afterward his wife. Here he wrote
the greater part of his poems, and his very finest ones, and here he
broke forth upon the world like a new-risen sun, his poems, which
were first published at Kilmarnock, attracting such extraordinary
attention, that he was called to Edinburgh, and a new and more
complete edition there published, while he himself was introduced as
a sort of miracle to the highest circles of aristocracy and literature.
The four years which he lived here, though they were sinking him, in
a pecuniary point of view, into such a slough of despair that he
seriously resolved to emigrate to the West Indies, and only published
his poems to raise the means, were, as regarded his fame, glorious
and most interesting years. It was here that he might be said, more
expressly than any where else,
"To walk in glory and in joy,
Following his plow along the mountain side;"
for, spite of the iron destiny which seemed to pursue him, and in an
ungenial soil and the most untoward seasons, to endeavor to crush
him with "carking care," he was full of life and vigor, and often rose
in the entrancement of his spirit above all sense of earth and its
darkness. By the testimony of his cotemporaries, there were few
that could vie with him in all the operations of the farm. In mowing,
reaping, binding after the reapers, thrashing, or loading, there were
few who could compete with him. He stood five feet ten in height,
and was of singular strength and activity. He prided himself on the
straightness of the furrow that he drew, and the skill with which he
threw his corn in sowing. On one occasion, a man having succeeded
in a hard strife in setting up as many shocks in a given time, said,
"There, I am not far behind this time;" to which Burns replied, "In
one thing, John, you are still behind; I made a song while I was
stooking." Allan Cunningham says that his father, who was steward
to Miller of Dalswinton, Burns's landlord, and lived just opposite to
him at Ellisland, declared that "he had the handsomest cast of the
hand in sowing corn that he ever saw on a furrowed field." It was
here, then, at Mossgiel, that, young, vigorous, and full of desire to
advance in worldly matters, he worked assiduously with his brother
Gilbert in the fields, undivided in his attentions by the duties of the
Excise. But poetry, spite of all resolves to the contrary, came over
him like a flood. As his hand worked, his heart was full of inspiration,
and as Gilbert held the plow, Robert would come and walk beside
him, and repeat what he had just composed; or as they went with
the cart to carry out corn or bring home coals, he would astonish
him with some such display. "The verses to the Mouse and the
Mountain Daisy," says Gilbert, "were composed on these occasions,
and while the author was holding the plow. I could point out the
spot where each was composed. Holding the plow was a favorite
situation with Robert for poetic composition, and some of his best
verses were produced while he was at that exercise." With what
interest, then, do we look over the fields at Mossgiel, scarcely an
inch of which has not been strode over by Burns, while engaged at
once in turning up the soil, sowing or gathering its crops, and in
working out, in the depth of his mind, those compositions which
were to remain for all time the watchwords of liberty and of noble
thought. Besides the polemic poems already spoken of, here he
wrote Halloween; Address to the De'il; Death and Dr. Hornbrook, a
satire on the poor schoolmaster and self-appointed apothecary,
Wilson of Tarbolton, which drove him from the place, but only to
thrive in Glasgow; The Jolly Beggars; Man was made to Mourn; The
Vision; The Cotter's Saturday Night, which he very appropriately
repeated to Gilbert during a Sunday afternoon walk.
The very interesting scene of the creation of these exquisite poems
lies on the left hand of the road proceeding from Tarbolton to
Mauchline. The house stands at a field's distance from the road. It is
a thatched house with but and ben, just as it was, and the buildings
behind it forming two wings, exactly as he built his house at
Ellisland. To the northwest the house is well sheltered with fine, full-
grown trees. A handsome young mother, the farmer's wife, worthy
for her comely and intelligent look to have been celebrated by Burns,
told me that great numbers of people came to see the place, and
that it was very much as Burns left it. There were the barn, the byre,
the garden near, in all which the poet had labored like any other son
of earth for his daily bread, and on the yearly allowance—for every
one of the family had a specific allowance for clothes and pocket-
money—of seven pounds, which, says his brother, he never
exceeded! Very extravagant he could not have been. You see the
ingle where he sat and composed some of his most pathetic and
most humorous pieces. It is said to be in the spence, a better room,
which has a boarded floor, and the recess beds so common in
Scotland, that he chiefly wrote. Who can contemplate this humble
room, and recall the image of the young poet, with a heart of
melancholy, here inditing, Man was made to Mourn, or his Vision,
without the liveliest emotion? There is no feeling of utter sadness
more strongly expressed than in the opening of the Vision.
"The sun had closed the winter day,
The curlers quat their roaring play,
An' hunger'd mawkin ta'en her way
To kail-yard green,
While faithless snaws ilk step betray
Whare she has been.
"The threshers weary flinging tree
The lee-lang day had tired me;
And when the day had closed his e'e
Far i' the west,
Ben i' the spence, right pensively,
I gaed to rest
"There, lanely, by the ingle cheek,
I sate and eyed the spewing reek,
That filled with hoast-provoking smeek,
The auld clay biggin;
And heard the restless rattons squeak
About the riggin.
"All in this mottie, misty clime,
I backward mused on wasted time,
How I had spent my youthful prime
An' done naething
But stringin blethers up in rhyme,
For fools to sing.
"Had I to gud advice but harkit,
I might, by this, hae led a markit,
Or strutted in a bank and clarkit
My cash account.
While here, half mad, half fed, half sarket,
Is a' th' amount."
Gilbert, it seems, continued on this farm after Robert left for Ellisland
till 1800; and the next tenant had occupied it till but a year or two
ago, when the present young people came in.
Mauchline, at the distance of a few minutes, abounds with
recollections of Burns. There is the inn where Burns used to meet his
merry club. There is the church-yard where the scene of the Holy
Fair is laid, though the old church which stood in Burns's time has
disappeared, and a new one taken its place. Opposite to the church-
yard gates runs the street called "The Cowgate," up which he makes
Common Sense escape; just by is the house of "Posie Nansie,"
where Burns fell in with the "Jolly Beggars;" not far off is the public
house of John Dow, that Burns and his companions frequented at
the opening of the Cowgate. Posie Nansie, or Nance Tinnock's, was
the house mentioned in the Holy Fair, where the public crowded in
during the intervals of the service, having a back door most
convenient into the area.
"Now but an' ben, the change-house fills
Wi' yill-caup commentators;
Here's crying out for bakes and gills,
An' there the pint stoup clatters."
Every body can tell of the haunts and places of Burns and his jolly
companions in Mauchline. The women came out of their houses as
they saw me going about, and were most generously anxious to
point out every noted spot. Many of the older people remembered
him. "A fine, handsome young fellow, was he not?" I asked of an old
woman that would show me where Jean Armour lived. "Oh! jus a
black-avised chiel," said she, hurrying up a narrow street parallel to
the Cowgate; "but here lived Jean Armor's father. Come in, come,"
added she, unceremoniously opening the door, when an old dame
appeared, who occupied the house. "I am only going to show the
gentleman where Robin Burns's Jean lived. Come along, sir, come
along," continued she, hastening as unceremoniously up stairs; "ye
maun see where the bairns were born. Ha! ha! ha!" "Ha! ha! ha!"
screamed the old dame of the house, apparently highly delighted;
"ay, show the gentleman! show him! he! he! he!" So up went my
free-making guide, up went I, and up came the old lady of the
house. "There! there!" exclaimed the first old woman, pointing to a
recess bed in one of the chambers, "there were three o' Robin
Burns's bairns born. It's true, sir, as I live!" "Ay, gude faith is it," re-
echoed the old lady of the house, and the two gossips again were
very merry. "But ye maun see where Rob an' Jean were married!" so
out of the house the lean and nimble woman again hurried, and
again, at a rapid pace, led me down another narrow street just to
the back of what they call the castle, Gavin Hamilton's old house. It
was in Burns's time Gavin Hamilton's office, and in that office Burns
was married. It is now a public house.
Having taken a survey of all the scenes of Burns's youthful life here,
I proceeded to that house where he was always so welcome a guest
—the house of Gavin Hamilton itself. Though called the castle, it is,
in fact, a mere keep, with an ordinary house attached to it in a
retired garden. The garden is surrounded by lofty walls, with a
remarkably large tree in the center. The house, a mere cottage, is
huddled down in the far right-hand corner, and opposite to it stands
the old keep, a conspicuous object as you descend the hill into the
town. It is maintained in good order, and used as a laundry. A bare-
legged lassie was spreading out her wash on the grass-plot, who
informed me that not only was Gavin Hamilton dead, but his son
too, and that his son's widow and her children were living there. I
was shown the room where Burns, one Sunday, on coming in after
kirk, wrote the satirical poem of the Calf, on the clergyman. An
ordinary little parlor.
In traversing the streets of Mauchline, it was impossible to avoid not
only recalling all the witty jollity of Burns here, but his troubles that
wellnigh drove him from the land. The opposition of Jean Armour's
family; the tearing up of her secret marriage-lines by herself in her
despair; Burns's distraction, his poverty, his hidings from the
myrmidons of the law, and his daily thirteen miles' walk to correct
the proofs of his poems at Kilmarnock, to save postage. But now the
Muse which had made him poor refused to permit him to quit his
native land. Out burst the sun of his glory, and our scene changes
with this change to Edinburgh.[31]
To describe all the haunts of Burns in Edinburgh were a long affair.
They were the houses of all the great and gay: of the Gordons, the
Hamiltons, the Montgomeries, of the learned, and the beautiful. The
celebrated Duchess of Gordon, at that time at the zenith of beauty
and fashion, was one of his warmest admirers, and had him to her
largest parties. The young plowman of Ayrshire sat hob-nobbing in
the temples of splendor and luxury with the most distinguished in
every walk of life. Yet his haunts also lay equally among the humble
and the undistinguished. Burns was true to his own maxim, "a man's
a man for a' that;" and where there were native sense, wit, and
good-humor, there he was to be found, were it even in a cellar with
only a wooden stool to sit on. At his first arrival in Edinburgh he took
up his quarters with a young Ayrshire acquaintance, Richmond, a
writer's apprentice, in the house of a Mrs. Carfrae, Baxter's Close,
Lawn Market, where he had a share of the youth's room and bed.
From the most splendid entertainments of the aristocracy he
described himself as groping his way at night through the dingy
alleys of the "gude town to his obscure lodgings, with his share of a
deal table, a sanded floor, and a chaff bed, at eighteen pence a
week." This was during the winter and spring of 1786-7, on his first
visit to Edinburgh, where he became the great fashionable lion, and
while his new edition by Creech was getting out. In the spring,
finding his popularity had brought him so much under the public eye
that his obscure lodgings in the Lawn Market were not quite befitting
him, he went and lodged with his new acquaintance, William Nicol,
one of the masters of the High School, who lived in the Buccleugh
Road. In the winter of 1787, on his second visit to Edinburgh, he had
lodgings in a house at the entrance of James's Square, on the left
hand. As you go up East Register-street, at the end of the Register
House, you see the end of a house at the left-hand side of the top of
the street. There is a perpendicular row of four windows: the top
window belongs to the room Burns occupied. Here it was that he
was visited by the lady with whom at this time he corresponded
under the name of Sylvander, and she with him as Clarinda. His leg
had been hurt by an overturn of a carriage by a drunken coachman,
and he was laid up some time, and compelled to use crutches. Allan
Cunningham tells us that this lady "now and then visited the crippled
bard, and diverted him by her wit, and soothed him by her
presence." She was the Mrs. Mac of his toasts. A blithe, handsome,
and witty widow, a great passion or flirtation grew up between Burns
and her. In one of his letters to his friend, Richard Brown, December
30, 1787, he says, "Almighty love still reigns and revels in my
bosom, and I am at this moment ready to hang myself for a young
Edinburgh widow." In a letter of their correspondence which has
recently been published, he bids Clarinda look up at his window as
she occasionally goes past, and in another complains that she does
not look high enough for a bard's lodgings, and so he perceives her
only gazing at one of the lower windows. If we are to believe the
stanza of hers quoted by Burns, we must suppose Clarinda to have
been unhappily married:
"Talk not of love—it gives me pain—
For love has been my foe;
He bound me with an iron chain,
And plunged me deep in woe."
If it be true, as Allan Cunningham surmises, that those inimitable
verses in the song of "Ae fond kiss, and then we sever," which
expresses the pain of a final parting better than any other words
ever did, have reference to Clarinda, then Burns must have been
passionately attached to her indeed:
"Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me.
Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met, or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted."
Of the generous and true-hearted disposition of Clarinda, we shall
possess a juster idea when we reflect that Burns was not at this time
any longer the lion of the day. The first warm flush of aristocratic
flattery was over. The souls of the great and fashionable had
subsided into their native icy contempt of peasant merit. "What he
had seen and endured in Edinburgh," says honest Allan
Cunningham, "during his second visit, admonished him regarding the
reed on which he leaned, when he hoped for a place of profit and
honor from the aristocracy on account of his genius. On his first
appearance the doors of the nobility opened spontaneously, 'on
golden hinges turning,' and he ate spiced meats, and drank rare
wines, interchanging nods and smiles 'with high dukes and mighty
earls.' A colder reception awaited his second coming: the doors of
lords and ladies opened with a tardy courtesy; he was received with
a cold and measured stateliness, was seldom requested to stop,
seldom to repeat his visit; and one of his companions used to relate
with what indignant feelings the poet recounted his fruitless calls
and his uncordial receptions in the good town of Edinburgh."
It is related, that on one occasion being invited to dine at a
nobleman's, he went, and, to his astonishment, found that he was
not to dine with the guests, but with the butler! After dinner he was
sent for into the dining-room; and a chair being set for him near the
bottom of the table, he was desired to sing a song. Restraining his
indignation within the bounds of outward appearance, Burns
complied, and he sung,
'Is there, for honest poverty,
Wha hangs his head and a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
And dare be poor for a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
A man's a man for a' that!
"You see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
(Pointing to the nobleman at the head of the
table)
Who struts, and stares, and a' that,
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
A man's a man for a' that."
As the last word of these stanzas issued from his lips, he rose, and
not deigning the company a syllable of adieu, marched out of the
room and the house.
Burns himself expressed in some lines to Clarinda all this at this very
moment:
"In vain would Prudence, with her decent sneer,
Point to the censuring world and bid me fear:
Above that world on wings of love I rise,
I know its worst, and can that worst despise.
Wronged, slandered, shunned, unpitied,
unredressed,
The mocked quotation of the scorners' jest,
Let Prudence direst bodements on me fall—
Clarinda, rich reward! o'erpays them all."
But Clarinda could never be Burns's. To say the least of it, his
attachment to her was one of the least defensible things of his life.
Jean Armour had now the most inviolable claims upon him, and, in
fact, as soon as his leg was well enough, he tore himself from the
fascinations of Clarinda's society, went to Mauchline, and married
Jean.
But we must not allow ourselves to follow him till we have taken a
peep at the house of Clarinda at this time, where Burns used to visit
her, and where, no doubt, he took his melancholy farewell. This
house is in Potter's Row; now old and dingy-looking, but evidently
having been at one time a superior residence. It is a house
memorable on more accounts than one, having been occupied by
General Monk while his army lay in Edinburgh, and the passage
which goes under it to an interior court is still called the General's
Entrance. To the street the house presents four gabled windows in
the upper story, on the tops of which stand a rose, thistle, fleur-de-
lis, with a second rose or thistle to make out the four. The place is
now inhabited by the poorest people; and on a little shop window in
front is written up, "Rags and Metals bought!" The flat which was
occupied by Clarinda is now divided into two very poor tenements.
In the room which used to be Clarinda's sitting-room, a poor woman
was at once busy with her work and two or three very little children.
My companion told her that her house had been once frequented by
a great man; she said, "Oh yes, General Monk." When he, however,
added that he was then thinking of Robert Burns, this was news to
her, and seemed to give to the wretched abode quite a charm in her
eyes.
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade
Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.
Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and
personal growth!
testbankbell.com

More Related Content

PDF
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...
PDF
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...
PDF
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...
PDF
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...
PDF
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...
PDF
PDF Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robb...
PDF
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 18th Edition, Stephen P. Robbins...
PDF
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...
PDF Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robb...
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 18th Edition, Stephen P. Robbins...
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...

Similar to Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins Timothy A. Judge (20)

PDF
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 18th Edition, Stephen P. Robbins...
PDF
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...
PDF
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 18th Edition, Stephen P. Robbins...
PDF
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 18th Edition, Stephen P. Robbins...
PDF
Organizational Behavior Global 17th Edition Robbins Solutions Manual
PPTX
robbinsjudge_oraganisational behavior ppt
PPTX
Chapter 1 what is organizational behavior
PPTX
NOTE EMCEM - ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR.pptx
PPTX
Organizational Beahavior Ch1.pptx
PPTX
Organizational Beahavior Ch1.pptx
DOCX
Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. 1-1Copyright .docx
PPTX
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR_Module 1 _Personality.pptx
PPTX
Introduction.pptx
PPTX
robbinsjudge_ob17_inppt_01.pptx
PPT
TOPIC 1 What is OB.ppt
PDF
1 - Introduction to Organizational Behavior
PPTX
Organizational behavior; chapter 01
PPT
Ch01 what is Organizational behavior
PPTX
organizational behavior
PPT
Chapter 1 ob
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 18th Edition, Stephen P. Robbins...
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins ...
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 18th Edition, Stephen P. Robbins...
Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 18th Edition, Stephen P. Robbins...
Organizational Behavior Global 17th Edition Robbins Solutions Manual
robbinsjudge_oraganisational behavior ppt
Chapter 1 what is organizational behavior
NOTE EMCEM - ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR.pptx
Organizational Beahavior Ch1.pptx
Organizational Beahavior Ch1.pptx
Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. 1-1Copyright .docx
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR_Module 1 _Personality.pptx
Introduction.pptx
robbinsjudge_ob17_inppt_01.pptx
TOPIC 1 What is OB.ppt
1 - Introduction to Organizational Behavior
Organizational behavior; chapter 01
Ch01 what is Organizational behavior
organizational behavior
Chapter 1 ob
Ad

Recently uploaded (20)

PDF
Weekly quiz Compilation Jan -July 25.pdf
PDF
Chinmaya Tiranga quiz Grand Finale.pdf
PDF
grade 11-chemistry_fetena_net_5883.pdf teacher guide for all student
PDF
RMMM.pdf make it easy to upload and study
PDF
The Lost Whites of Pakistan by Jahanzaib Mughal.pdf
PDF
Chapter 2 Heredity, Prenatal Development, and Birth.pdf
PDF
Abdominal Access Techniques with Prof. Dr. R K Mishra
PDF
Trump Administration's workforce development strategy
PPTX
Final Presentation General Medicine 03-08-2024.pptx
PDF
VCE English Exam - Section C Student Revision Booklet
PPTX
IMMUNITY IMMUNITY refers to protection against infection, and the immune syst...
PPTX
Tissue processing ( HISTOPATHOLOGICAL TECHNIQUE
DOC
Soft-furnishing-By-Architect-A.F.M.Mohiuddin-Akhand.doc
PDF
Computing-Curriculum for Schools in Ghana
PDF
OBE - B.A.(HON'S) IN INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE -Ar.MOHIUDDIN.pdf
PDF
Anesthesia in Laparoscopic Surgery in India
PDF
Microbial disease of the cardiovascular and lymphatic systems
PDF
GENETICS IN BIOLOGY IN SECONDARY LEVEL FORM 3
PDF
3rd Neelam Sanjeevareddy Memorial Lecture.pdf
PDF
2.FourierTransform-ShortQuestionswithAnswers.pdf
Weekly quiz Compilation Jan -July 25.pdf
Chinmaya Tiranga quiz Grand Finale.pdf
grade 11-chemistry_fetena_net_5883.pdf teacher guide for all student
RMMM.pdf make it easy to upload and study
The Lost Whites of Pakistan by Jahanzaib Mughal.pdf
Chapter 2 Heredity, Prenatal Development, and Birth.pdf
Abdominal Access Techniques with Prof. Dr. R K Mishra
Trump Administration's workforce development strategy
Final Presentation General Medicine 03-08-2024.pptx
VCE English Exam - Section C Student Revision Booklet
IMMUNITY IMMUNITY refers to protection against infection, and the immune syst...
Tissue processing ( HISTOPATHOLOGICAL TECHNIQUE
Soft-furnishing-By-Architect-A.F.M.Mohiuddin-Akhand.doc
Computing-Curriculum for Schools in Ghana
OBE - B.A.(HON'S) IN INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE -Ar.MOHIUDDIN.pdf
Anesthesia in Laparoscopic Surgery in India
Microbial disease of the cardiovascular and lymphatic systems
GENETICS IN BIOLOGY IN SECONDARY LEVEL FORM 3
3rd Neelam Sanjeevareddy Memorial Lecture.pdf
2.FourierTransform-ShortQuestionswithAnswers.pdf
Ad

Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins Timothy A. Judge

  • 1. Visit https://testbankbell.com to download the full version and explore more testbank or solutions manual Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins Timothy A. Judge _____ Click the link below to download _____ http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for- organizational-behavior-15th-edition-stephen-p-robbins- timothy-a-judge/ Explore and download more testbank or solutions manual at testbankbell.com
  • 2. Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be interested in. You can click the link to download. Test Bank for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins Timothy A. Judge http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-organizational- behavior-15th-edition-stephen-p-robbins-timothy-a-judge/ Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 18th Edition, Stephen P. Robbins, Timothy A. Judge http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-organizational- behavior-18th-edition-stephen-p-robbins-timothy-a-judge/ Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 16/E 16th Edition Stephen P. Robbins, Timothy A. Judge http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-organizational- behavior-16-e-16th-edition-stephen-p-robbins-timothy-a-judge/ Test Bank for Pharmacology and the Nursing Process, 8th Edition, Linda Lane Lilley, Shelly Rainforth Collins Julie S. Snyder http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-pharmacology-and-the- nursing-process-8th-edition-linda-lane-lilley-shelly-rainforth- collins-julie-s-snyder/
  • 3. Test Bank for Advanced Accounting, 14th Edition, Joe Ben Hoyle, Thomas Schaefer Timothy Doupnik http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-advanced- accounting-14th-edition-joe-ben-hoyle-thomas-schaefer-timothy- doupnik-3/ Psychology 4th Edition Schacter Test Bank http://testbankbell.com/product/psychology-4th-edition-schacter-test- bank/ Test Bank for Learning and Behavior Active Learning 6th Edition by Chance http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-learning-and-behavior- active-learning-6th-edition-by-chance/ Solution Manual for Handbuch zur deutschen Grammatik, 6th Edition http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-handbuch-zur- deutschen-grammatik-6th-edition/ Marriages Families and Intimate Relationships 3rd Edition Williams Sawyer Wahlstrom Test Bank http://testbankbell.com/product/marriages-families-and-intimate- relationships-3rd-edition-williams-sawyer-wahlstrom-test-bank/
  • 4. Test Bank for Memmlers Structure and Function of the Human Body, 9th Edition: Cohen http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-memmlers-structure-and- function-of-the-human-body-9th-edition-cohen/
  • 5. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 1 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Solution Manual for Organizational Behavior, 15th Edition Stephen P. Robbins Timothy A. Judge FULL DOWNLOAD CHAPTER AT: HTTPS://TESTBANKBELL.COM/PRODUCT/SOLUTION- MANUAL-FOR-ORGANIZATIONAL-BEHAVIOR-15TH-EDITION-STEPHEN-P-ROBBINS- TIMOTHY-A-JUDGE/ CHAPTER 1 What Is Organizational Behavior?(ppt 1-1) Click on the title when connected to the Internet to access teaching notes. LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this chapter, students should be able to (ppt 1-2): 1. Demonstrate the importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace. 2. Describe the manager’s functions, roles and skills. 3. Define organizational behavior (OB). 4. Show the value to OB of systematic study. 5. Identify the major behavioral science disciplines that contribute to OB. 6. Demonstrate why few absolutes apply to OB. 7. Identify the challenges and opportunities managers have in applying OB concepts. 8. Compare the three levels of analysis in this book’s OB model. INSTRUCTOR RESOURCES Instructors may wish to use the following resources when presenting this chapter: Text Exercises
  • 6. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 2 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall Myth or Science – “Most Acts of Workplace Bullying Are Men Attacking Women” (p. 12, IM p. 24) An Ethical Choice – Can You Learn from Failure? (p. 24, IM p. 25) GlOBalization – Does National Culture Affect Organizational Performance (p. 30, IM p. 27) Point/CounterPoint – Lost in Translation (p. 31, IM p. 28) Questions for Review (p. 32, IM p. 30) Experiential Exercise – Workforce Diversity (p. 32, IM p. 33) Ethical Dilemma – Jekyll and Hyde (p. 33, IM p. 35) Text Cases Case Incident 1 ”Lesson for ‘Undercover‘ Bosses” (p. 34, IM 37) Case Incident 2 Era of the Disposable Worker (p. 35, IM p. 39) INSTRUCTOR’S CHOICE - Companies Dealing with OB Issues (IM p. 41) This section presents an exercise that is NOT found in the student's textbook. Instructor's Choice reinforces the text's emphasis through various activities. Some Instructor's Choice activities are centered around debates, group exercises, Internet research, and student experiences. Some can be used in-class in their entirety, while others require some additional work on the student's part. The course instructor may choose to use these at anytime throughout the class—some may be more effective as icebreakers, while some may be used to pull together various concepts covered in the chapter. WEB EXERCISES (IM p. 42) At the end of each chapter of this instructor’s manual, you will find suggested exercises and ideas for researching the WWW on OB topics. The exercises “Exploring OB Topics on the Web” are set up so that you can simply photocopy the pages, distribute them to your class, and make assignments accordingly. You may want to assign the exercises as an out-of-class activity or as lab activities with your class. SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGERS A. Managers need to develop their interpersonal, or people, skills to be effective in their jobs. B. Organizational behavior (OB) investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within an organization, and it applies that knowledge to make organizations work more effectively.
  • 7. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 3 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall C. Specifically, OB focuses on how to improve productivity; reduce absenteeism, turnover, and deviant workplace behavior; and increase organizational citizenship behavior and job satisfaction. Specific implications for managers are below: 1. Some generalizations provide valid insights into human behavior, but many are erroneous. Organizational behavior uses systematic study to improve predictions of behavior over intuition alone. 2. Because people are different, we need to look at OB in a contingency framework, using situational variables to explain cause-and-effect relationships. 3. Organizational behavior offers specific insights to improve a manager’s people skills. 4. It helps managers to see the value of workforce diversity and practices that may need to be changed in different countries. 5. It can improve quality and employee productivity by showing managers how to empower their people, design and implement change programs, improve customer service, and help employees balance work–life conflicts. 6. It can help managers cope in a world of temporariness and learn how to stimulate innovation. 7. Finally, OB can guide managers in creating an ethically healthy work climate. This chaper begins with a vinette entitled, “The New Normal.” The details of this story might be disheartening to read, but they accurately reflect some of the problems faced by the contemporary workforce. The story also highlights several issues of interest to organizational behavior researchers, including motivation, emotions, personality, and communication. Through the course of this book, you’ll learn how all these elements can be studied systematically. You’ve probably made many observations about people’s behavior in your life. In a way, you are already proficient at seeing some of the major themes in organizational behavior. At the same time, you probably have not had the tools to make these observations systematically. This is where organizational behavior comes into play. And, as we’ll learn, it is much more than common sense, intuition, and soothsaying. BRIEF CHAPTER OUTLINE I. The Importance of Interpersonal Skills (ppt 1-3) A. Understanding OB helps determine manager effectiveness B. Technical and quantitative skills are important early in careers C. Leadership and communication skills are critical as person progresses in career D. Lower turnover of quality employees E. Higher quality applications for recruitment F. Better financial performance II. What Managers Do (ppt 1-4) A. Definitions 1. Manager: Someone who gets things done through other people. They make decisions, allocate resources, and direct the activities of others to attain goals. 2. Organization: A consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more people that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals. B. Management Functions (ppt 1-4) 1. French industrialist Henri Fayol wrote that all managers perform five management functions: plan, organize, command, coordinate, and control. Modern management
  • 8. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 4 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall scholars have condensed these functions to four: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. C. Management Roles (ppt 1-5) 1. Introduction a. In the late 1960s, Henry Mintzberg studied five executives to determine what managers did on their jobs. He concluded that managers perform ten different, highly interrelated roles or sets of behaviors attributable to their jobs. 2. The ten roles can be grouped as being primarily concerned with interpersonal relationships, the transfer of information, and decision making. (Exhibit 1-1) a. Interpersonal Roles: Figurehead, Leader, Liaison b. Informational Roles: Monitor, Disseminator—a conduit to transmit information to organizational members, represent the organization to outsiders c. Decisional Roles: Entrepreneur, Disturbance handlers, Resource allocator, Negotiator role D. Management Skills (ppt1-6) 1. Technical Skills--The ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. All jobs require some specialized expertise, and many people develop their technical skills on the job. 2. Human Skills--Ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually and in groups, describes human skills. 3. Conceptual Skills--The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations E. Effective Versus Successful Managerial Activities 1. Luthans and his associates studied more than 450 managers. They found that all managers engage in four managerial activities. (ppt 1-7 ) a. Traditional management. b. Communication. c. Human resource management. d. Networking. e. Successful managers are defined as those who were promoted the fastest (Exhibit 1–2) (ppt 1-8) F. A Review of the Manager’s Job 1. One common thread runs through the functions, roles, skills, and activities approaches to management: managers need to develop their people skills if they are going to be effective and successful. III. Enter Organizational Behavior (ppt 1-9) A. Introduction 1. Organizational Behavior: OB is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness. 2. OB studies three determinants of behavior in organizations: individuals, groups, and structure. IV. Complementing Intuition with Systematic Study (ppt 1-10) A. Introduction
  • 9. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 5 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall 1. Each of us is a student of behavior B. The systematic approach used in this book will uncover important facts and relationships and will provide a base from which more accurate predictions of behavior can be made. 1. Systematic Study of Behavior a. Behavior generally is predictable if we know how the person perceived the situation and what is important to him or her. C. Evidence-Based Management (EBM) 1. Complements systematic study 2. Argues for managers to make decisions on evidence D. Intuition 1. Systematic study and EBM add to intuition, or those “gut feelings” about “why I do what I do” and “what makes others tick.” 2. If we make all decisions with intuition or gut instinct, we’re likely working with incomplete information. E. Use a combination V. Disciplines That Contribute to the OB Field (ppt 1-11) A. Introduction 1. Organizational behavior is an applied behavioral science that is built upon contributions from a number of behavioral disciplines. 2. The predominant areas are psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and political science. 3. Exhibit 1–3 overviews the major contributions to the study of organizational behavior. (ppt 1-12) B. Psychology (ppt 1-13) 1. Psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals. C. Social Psychology (ppt 1-13) 1. Social psychology blends the concepts of psychology and sociology. D. Sociology (ppt 1-14) 1. Sociologists study the social system in which individuals fill their roles; that is, sociology studies people in relation to their fellow human beings. E. Anthropology (ppt 1-14) 1. Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities. VI. There Are Few Absolutes in OB (ppt 1-15) A. Introduction 1. There are few, if any, simple and universal principles that explain organizational behavior. 2. Contingency variables—situational factors are variables that moderate the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. (ppt 1-16) VII.Challenges and Opportunities for OB (ppt 1-17) A. Introduction 1. There are many challenges and opportunities today for managers to use OB concepts.
  • 10. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 6 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall B. Responding to Economic Pressure (ppt 1-17) 1. In economic tough times, effective management is an asset. 2. In good times, understanding how to reward, satisfy, and retain employees is at a premium. In bad times, issues like stress, decision making, and coping come to the fore. C. Responding to Globalization (ppt 1-18) 1. Increased Foreign Assignments 2. Working with People from Different Cultures 3. Overseeing Movement of Jobs to Countries with Low-cost Labor D. Managing Workforce Diversity (ppt 1-19) 1. Workforce diversity acknowledges a workforce of women and men; many racial and ethnic groups; individuals with a variety of physical or psychological abilities; and people who differ in age and sexual orientation. E. Improving Customer Service (ppt 1-20) 1. Today the majority of employees in developed countries work in service jobs. 2. Employee attitudes and behavior are associated with customer satisfaction. F. Improving People Skills (ppt 1-21) 1. People skills are essential to managerial effectiveness. G. Stimulating Innovation and Change (ppt 1-22) 1. Successful organizations must foster innovation and master the art of change. 2. Managers must stimulate employees’ creativity and tolerance for change. H. Coping with “Temporariness” (ppt 1-23) 1. OB provides help in understanding a work world of continual change, how to overcome resistance to change, and how to create an organizational culture that thrives on change. I. Working in Networked Organizations (ppt 1-24) 1. Networked organizations are becoming more pronounced. 2. Manager’s job is fundamentally different in networked organizations. Challenges of motivating and leading “online” require different techniques. J. Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts (ppt 1-25) 1. The creation of the global workforce means work no longer sleeps. Workers are on- call 24-hours a day or working nontraditional shifts. 2. Balancing work and life demands now surpasses job security as an employee priority. K. Creating a Positive Work Environment (ppt 1-26) 1. Organizations like General Electric have realized creating a positive work environment can be a competitive advantage. L. Improving Ethical Behavior (ppt 1-27) 1. Ethical dilemmas are situations in which an individual is required to define right and wrong conduct. VIII. Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model (ppt 1-28) D. An Overview 1. A model is an abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of some real-world phenomenon. (Exhibit 1–4 The OB Model) 2. It proposes three types of variables (inputs, processes, and outcomes) at three levels of analysis (individual, group, and organizational).
  • 11. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 7 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall 3. The model proceeds from left to right, with inputs leading to processes, and processes leading to outcomes. E. Inputs (ppt 1-29) 1. Inputs are the variables like personality, group structure, and organizational culture that lead to processes. 2. Group structure, roles, and team responsibilities are typically assigned immediately before or after a group is formed. 3. Finally, organizational structure and culture are usually the result of years of development and change as the organization adapts to its environment and builds up customs and norms. F. Processes (ppt 1-30) 1. If inputs are like the nouns in organizational behavior, processes are like verbs. 2. Processes are actions that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in as a result of inputs and that lead to certain outcomes. 3. At the individual level, processes include emotions and moods, motivation, perception, and decision-making. 4. At the group level, they include communication, leadership, power and politics, and conflict and negotiation. 5. Finally, at the organizational level, processes include human resource management and change practices. G. Outcomes (ppt 1-31) 1. Outcomes are the key variables that you want to explain or predict, and that are affected by some other variables. 2. At the group level, cohesion and functioning are the dependent variables. 3. Finally, at the organizational level we look at overall profitability and survival. 4. Attitudes and stress (ppt 1-32) a. Employee attitudes are the evaluations employees make, ranging from positive to negative, about objects, people, or events. b. Stress is an unpleasant psychological process that occurs in response to environmental pressures. c. The belief that satisfied employees are more productive than dissatisfied employees has been a basic tenet among managers for years, though only now has research begun to support it. 5. Task performance (ppt 1-32) a. The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing your core job tasks is a reflection of your level of task performance. b. Obviously task performance is the most important human output contributing to organizational effectiveness, so in every chapter we devote considerable time to detailing how task performance is affected by the topic in question. 6. Citizenship behavior (ppt 1-33) a. The discretionary behavior that is not part of an employee’s formal job requirements, and that contributes to the psychological and social environment of the workplace, is called citizenship behavior. b. Successful organizations need employees who will do more than their usual job duties—who will provide performance beyond expectations.
  • 12. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 8 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall c. Evidence indicates organizations that have such employees outperform those that don’t. d. As a result, OB is concerned with citizenship behavior as an outcome variable. 7. Withdrawal behavior (ppt 1-33) a. Withdrawal behavior is the set of actions that employees take to separate themselves from the organization. b. There are many forms of withdrawal, ranging from showing up late or failing to attend meetings to absenteeism and turnover. c. Employee withdrawal can have a very negative effect on an organization. d. Absenteeism also costs organizations significant amounts of money and time every year. e. All organizations, of course, have some turnover. f. So why do employees withdraw from work? i. As we will show later in the book, reasons include negative job attitudes, emotions and moods, and negative interactions with co-workers and supervisors. 8. Group cohesion (ppt 1-34) a. Group cohesion is the extent to which members of a group support and validate one another at work. b. When employees trust one another, seek common goals, and work together to achieve these common ends, the group is cohesive; when employees are divided among themselves in terms of what they want to achieve and have little loyalty to one another, the group is not cohesive. c. Companies attempt to increase cohesion in a variety of ways ranging from brief icebreaker sessions to social events like picnics, parties, and outdoor adventure- team retreats. 9. Group functioning (ppt 1-34) a. In the same way that positive job attitudes can be associated with higher levels of task performance, group cohesion should lead to positive group functioning. b. Group functioning refers to the quantity and quality of a group’s work output. c. In some organizations, an effective group is one that stays focused on a core task and achieves its ends as specified. d. Other organizations look for teams that are able to work together collaboratively to provide excellent customer service. e. Still others put more of a premium on group creativity and the flexibility to adapt to changing situations. In each case, different types of activities will be required to get the most from the team. 10. Productivity (ppt 1-35) a. The highest level of analysis in organizational behavior is the organization as a whole. b. An organization is productive if it achieves its goals by transforming inputs into outputs at the lowest cost. Thus requires both effectiveness and efficiency. c. Popular measures of organizational efficiency include return on investment, profit per dollar of sales, and output per hour of labor. d. Service organizations must include customer needs and requirements in assessing their effectiveness.
  • 13. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 9 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall 11. Survival (ppt 1-35) a. The final outcome we will consider is organizational survival, which is simply evidence that the organization is able to exist and grow over the long term. H. Having reviewed the input, process, and outcome model, we’re going to change the figure up a little bit by grouping topics together based on whether we study them at the individual, group, or organizational level. 1. As you can seen in Exhibit 1-5, we will deal with inputs, processes, and outcomes at all three levels of analysis, but we group the chapters as shown here to correspond with the typical ways that research has been done in these areas. (ppt 1-36) 2. It is easier to understand one unified presentation about how personality leads to motivation, which leads to performance, than to jump around levels of analysis. 3. Because each level builds on the one that precedes it, after going through them in sequence you will have a good idea of how the human side of organizations functions. (Exhibit 1-5) IX. Summary and Implications for Managers A. Managers need to develop their interpersonal, or people, skills to be effective in their jobs. B. Organizational behavior (OB) investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within an organization, and it applies that knowledge to make organizations work more effectively. C. Specifically, OB focuses on how to improve productivity; reduce absenteeism, turnover, and deviant workplace behavior; and increase organizational citizenship behavior and job satisfaction. Specific implications for managers are below: (ppt 1-37) 1. Some generalizations provide valid insights into human behavior, but many are erroneous. Organizational behavior uses systematic study to improve predictions of behavior over intuition alone. 2. Because people are different, we need to look at OB in a contingency framework, using situational variables to explain cause-and-effect relationships. 3. Organizational behavior offers specific insights to improve a manager’s people skills. 4. It helps managers to see the value of workforce diversity and practices that may need to be changed in different countries. (ppt 1-38) 5. It can improve quality and employee productivity by showing managers how to empower their people, design and implement change programs, improve customer service, and help employees balance work–life conflicts. 6. It can help managers cope in a world of temporariness and learn how to stimulate innovation. 7. Finally, OB can guide managers in creating an ethically healthy work climate.
  • 14. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 10 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall EXPANDED CHAPTER OUTLINE I. The Importance of Interpersonal Skills A. Understanding OB helps determine manager effectiveness B. Technical and quantitative skills are important early in careers C. Leadership and communication skills are critical as person progresses in career D. Lower turnover of quality employees E. Higher quality applications for recruitment F. Better financial performance G. Companies with reputations as a good place to work—such as Starbucks, Adobe Systems, Cisco, Whole Foods, Google, American Express, Amgen, Pfizer, and Marriott—have a big advantage when attracting high performing employees. H. A recent national study of the U.S. workforce found that: 1. Wages and fringe benefits are not the reason people like their jobs or stay with an employer. 2. More important to workers is the job quality and the supportiveness of the work environments. 3. Managers’ good interpersonal skills are likely to make the workplace more pleasant, which in turn makes it easier to hire and retain high performing employees. In fact, creating a more pleasant work environment makes good economic sense. I. Managers cannot succeed on technical skills alone, they must have people skills. II. What Managers Do A. Definitions 1. Manager: Someone who gets things done through other people. They make decisions, allocate resources, and direct the activities of others to attain goals. 2. Organization: A consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more people that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals. B. Management Functions 1. French industrialist Henri Fayol wrote that all managers perform five management functions: plan, organize, command, coordinate, and control. Modern management scholars have condensed to these functions to four: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. 2. Planning requires a manager to: a. Define Goals (Organizational, Departmental, Worker Levels). b. Establish an Overall Strategy for Achieving Those Goals. c. Develop a Comprehensive Hierarchy of Plans to Integrate and Coordinate Activities. 3. Organizing requires a manager to: a. Determine what tasks are to be done. b. Who is to be assigned the tasks. c. How the tasks are to be grouped. d. Determine who reports to whom. e. Determine where decisions are to be made (centralized/ decentralized).
  • 15. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 11 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall 4. Leading requires a manager to: a. Motivate employee. b. Direct the activities of others. c. Select the most effective communication channels. d. Resolve conflicts among members. 5. Controlling requires a manager to: a. Monitor the organization’s performance. b. Compare actual performance with the previously set goals. c. Correct significant deviations. C. Management Roles (Exhibit 1-1) 1. Introduction a. In the late 1960s, Henry Mintzberg studied five executives to determine what managers did on their jobs. He concluded that managers perform ten different, highly interrelated roles or sets of behaviors attributable to their jobs. b. The ten roles can be grouped as being primarily concerned with interpersonal relationships, the transfer of information, and decision making. (Exhibit 1-1) 2. Interpersonal Roles a. Figurehead—duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature b. Leader—hire, train, motivate, and discipline employees c. Liaison—contact outsiders who provide the manager with information These may be individuals or groups inside or outside the organization. 3. Informational Roles a. Monitor—collect information from organizations and institutions outside their own b. Disseminator—a conduit to transmit information to organizational members c. Spokesperson—represent the organization to outsiders 4. Decisional Roles a. Entrepreneur—managers initiate and oversee new projects that will improve their organization’s performance. b. Disturbance handlers—take corrective action in response to unforeseen problems c. Resource allocators—responsible for allocating human, physical, and monetary resources d. Negotiator role—discuss issues and bargain with other units to gain advantages for their own unit D. Management Skills 1. Introduction a. Robert Katz has identified three essential management skills: technical, human, and conceptual. 2. Technical Skills a. The ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. All jobs require some specialized expertise, and many people develop their technical skills on the job.
  • 16. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 12 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall 3. Human Skills a. Ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually and in groups, describes human skills. b. Many people are technically proficient but interpersonally incompetent. 4. Conceptual Skills a. The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations. b. Decision making, for example, requires managers to spot problems, identify alternatives that can correct them, evaluate those alternatives, and select the best one. E. Effective Versus Successful Managerial Activities (Exhibit 1-2) 1. Fred Luthans and his associates asked: Do managers who move up most quickly in an organization do the same activities and with the same emphasis as managers who do the best job? Surprisingly, those managers who were the most effective were not necessarily promoted the fastest. a. Luthans and his associates studied more than 450 managers. They found that all managers engage in four managerial activities. 1) Traditional management. a.) Decision making, planning, and controlling. b.) The average manager spent 32 percent of his or her time performing this activity. 2) Communication. a.) Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork. b.) The average manager spent 29 percent of his or her time performing this activity. 3) Human resource management. a.) Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and training. b.) The average manager spent 20 percent of his or her time performing this activity. 4) Networking. a.) Socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders. b.) The average manager spent 19 percent of his or her time performing this activity. 2. Successful managers are defined as those who were promoted the fastest: (Exhibit 1–2) a. Networking made the largest relative contribution to success. b. Human resource management activities made the least relative contribution. c. Effective managers—defined as quality and quantity of performance, as well as commitment to employees: 1) Communication made the largest relative contribution. 2) Networking made the least relative contribution.
  • 17. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 13 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall 3) Successful managers do not give the same emphasis to each of those activities as do effective managers—it is almost the opposite of effective managers. 4) This finding challenges the historical assumption that promotions are based on performance, vividly illustrating the importance that social and political skills play in getting ahead in organizations. F. A Review of the Manager’s Job 1. One common thread runs through the functions, roles, skills, and activities approaches to management: managers need to develop their people skills if they are going to be effective and successful. III. Enter Organizational Behavior A. Introduction 1. Organizational Behavior: OB is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness. B. Organizational behavior is a field of study. 1. OB studies three determinants of behavior in organizations: individuals, groups, and structure. 2. OB applies the knowledge gained about individuals, groups, and the effect of structure on behavior in order to make organizations work more effectively. 3. OB is concerned with the study of what people do in an organization and how that behavior affects the performance of the organization. 4. There is increasing agreement as to the components of OB, but there is still considerable debate as to the relative importance of each: motivation, leader behavior and power, interpersonal communication, group structure and processes, learning, attitude development and perception, change processes, conflict, work design, and work stress. IV. Complementing Intuition with Systematic Study A. Introduction 1. Each of us is a student of behavior: 2. A casual or commonsense approach to reading others can often lead to erroneous predictions. B. You can improve your predictive ability by replacing your intuitive opinions with a more systematic approach. C. The systematic approach used in this book will uncover important facts and relationships and will provide a base from which more accurate predictions of behavior can be made. D. Systematic Study of Behavior 1. Behavior generally is predictable if we know how the person perceived the situation and what is important to him or her. 2. Looks at relationships. 3. Attempts to attribute causes
  • 18. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 14 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall 4. Bases our conclusions on scientific evidence. E. Evidence-Based Management (EBM) 1. Complements systematic study. 2. Argues for managers to make decisions on evidence. 3. But a vast majority of management decisions are made “on the fly.” F. Intuition 1. Systematic study and EBM add to intuition, or those “gut feelings” about “why I do what I do” and “what makes others tick.” 2. If we make all decisions with intuition or gut instinct, we’re likely working with incomplete information. 3. Relying on intuition is made worse because we tend to overestimate the accuracy of what we think we know. 4. We find a similar problem in chasing the business and popular media for management wisdom. Information—like making an investment decision with only half the data. 5. We’re not advising that you throw your intuition, or all the business press, out the window. 6. What we are advising is to use evidence as much as possible to inform your intuition and experience. V. Disciplines That Contribute to the OB Field A. Introduction (Exhibit 1-3) 1. Organizational behavior is an applied behavioral science that is built upon contributions from a number of behavioral disciplines. 2. The predominant areas are psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and political science. 3. Exhibit 1–3 overviews the major contributions to the study of organizational behavior. B. Psychology 1. Psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals. 2. Early industrial/organizational psychologists concerned themselves with problems of fatigue, boredom, and other factors relevant to working conditions that could impede efficient work performance. 3. More recently, their contributions have been expanded to include learning, perception, personality, emotions, training, leadership effectiveness, needs and motivational forces, job satisfaction, decision- making processes, performance appraisals, attitude measurement, employee selection techniques, work design, and job stress. C. Social Psychology 1. Social psychology blends the concepts of psychology and sociology. 2. It focuses on the influence of people on one another. 3. Major area—how to implement it and how to reduce barriers to its acceptance. D. Sociology 1. Sociologists study the social system in which individuals fill their roles; that is, sociology studies people in relation to their fellow human beings.
  • 19. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 15 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall 2. Their greatest contribution to OB is through their study of groups in organizations, particularly formal and complex organizations. E. Anthropology 1. Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities. 2. Anthropologists work on cultures and environments; for instance, they have helped us understand differences in fundamental values, attitudes, and behavior among people in different countries and within different organizations. VI. There Are Few Absolutes in OB A. Introduction 1. There are few, if any, simple and universal principles that explain organizational behavior. 2. Human beings are complex. Because they are not alike, our ability to make simple, accurate, and sweeping generalizations is limited. 3. That does not mean, of course, that we cannot offer reasonably accurate explanations of human behavior or make valid predictions. It does mean, however, that OB concepts must reflect situational, or contingency, conditions. B. Contingency variables—situational factors are variables that moderate the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. C. Using general concepts and then altering their application to the particular situation developed the science of OB. D. Organizational behavior theories mirror the subject matter with which they deal. VII. Challenges and Opportunities for OB A. Introduction 1. There are many challenges and opportunities today for managers to use OB concepts. B. Responding to Economic Pressure 1. Deep and prolonged recession in 2008 that spread world-wide. 2. In economic tough times, effective management is an asset. 3. During these times, the difference between good and bad management can be the difference between profit or loss. 4. In good times, understanding how to reward, satisfy, and retain employees is at a premium. In bad times, issues like stress, decision-making, and coping come to the fore. C. Responding to Globalization 1. Increased Foreign Assignments a. Organizations are no longer constrained by national borders. b. Once there, you’ll have to manage a workforce very different in needs, aspirations, and attitudes from those you are used to back home. c. Working with people from different cultures.
  • 20. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 16 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall 1) Even in your own country, you’ll find yourself working with bosses, peers, and other employees born and raised in different cultures. d. Management practices need to be modified to reflect the values of the different countries in which an organization operates. 2. Overseeing Movement of Jobs to Countries with Low-cost Labor a. Managers are under pressure to keep costs down to maintain competitiveness. b. Moving jobs to low-labor cost places requires managers to deal with difficulties in balancing the interests of their organization with responsibilities to the communities in which they operate. D. Managing Workforce Diversity 1. Workforce diversity is one of the most important and broad-based challenges currently facing organizations. 2. While globalization focuses on differences between people from different countries, workforce diversity addresses differences among people within given countries. 3. Workforce diversity acknowledges a workforce of women and men; many racial and ethnic groups; individuals with a variety of physical or psychological abilities; and people who differ in age and sexual orientation. 4. Managing this diversity is a global concern. 5. The most significant change in the U.S. labor force during the last half of the twentieth century was the rapid increase in the number of female workers. E. Improving Customer Service 1. Today the majority of employees in developed countries work in service jobs. a. Eighty percent of the U.S. labor force is in the service industry. b. Examples include technical support reps, fast food counter workers, waiters, nurses, financial planners, and flight attendants. 2. Employee attitudes and behavior are associated with customer satisfaction. F. Improving People Skills 1. People skills are essential to managerial effectiveness. 2. OB provides the concepts and theories that allow managers to predict employee behavior in given situations. G. Stimulating Innovation and Change 1. Successful organizations must foster innovation and master the art of change. 2. Employees can be the impetus for innovation and change or a major stumbling block. 3. Managers must stimulate employees’ creativity and tolerance for change. H. Coping with “Temporariness” 1. Organizations must be flexible and fast in order to survive. Evidence of temporariness includes: a. Jobs must be continually redesigned. b. Tasks being done by flexible work teams rather than individuals. c. Company reliance on temporary workers. d. Workers need to update knowledge and skills. Work groups are also in a continuing state of flux.
  • 21. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 17 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall e. Organizations are in a constant state of flux. 2. Managers and employees must learn to cope with temporariness. 3. Learning to live with flexibility, spontaneity, and unpredictability. 4. OB provides help in understanding a work world of continual change, how to overcome resistance to change, and how to create an organizational culture that thrives on change. I. Working in Networked Organizations 1. Networked organizations are becoming more pronounced. 2. Manager’s job is fundamentally different in networked organizations. Challenges of motivating and leading “online” require different techniques. J. Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts 1. The creation of the global workforce means work no longer sleeps. Workers are on-call 24-hours a day or working nontraditional shifts. 2. Communication technology has provided a vehicle for working at any time or any place. 3. Employees are working longer hours per week—from 43 to 47 hours per week since 1977. 4. The lifestyles of families have changed—creating conflict: more dual career couples and single parents find it hard to fulfill commitments to home, children, spouse, parents, and friends. 5. Balancing work and life demands now surpasses job security as an employee priority. K. Creating a Positive Work Environment 1. Organizations like General Electric have realized creating a positive work environment can be a competitive advantage. 2. Positive organizational scholarship or behavior studies what is ‘good’ about organizations. 3. This field of study focuses on employees’ strengths versus their limitations as employees share situations in which they performed at their personal best. L. Improving Ethical Behavior 1. Ethical dilemmas are situations in which an individual is required to define right and wrong conduct. 2. Good ethical behavior is not so easily defined. 3. Organizations are distributing codes of ethics to guide employees through ethical dilemmas. 4. Managers need to create an ethically healthy climate. VIII. Coming Attractions: Developing an OB Model A. An Overview 1. A model is an abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of some real- world phenomenon. (Exhibit 1–4 The OB Model) 2. It proposes three types of variables (inputs, processes, and outcomes) at three levels of analysis (individual, group, and organizational). 3. The model proceeds from left to right, with inputs leading to processes, and processes leading to outcomes.
  • 22. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 18 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall 4. Notice that the model also shows that outcomes can influence inputs in the future. B. Inputs 1. Inputs are the variables like personality, group structure, and organizational culture that lead to processes. 2. These variables set the stage for what will occur in an organization later. 3. Many are determined in advance of the employment relationship. 4. For example, individual diversity characteristics, personality, and values are shaped by a combination of an individual’s genetic inheritance and childhood environment. 5. Group structure, roles, and team responsibilities are typically assigned immediately before or after a group is formed. 6. Finally, organizational structure and culture are usually the result of years of development and change as the organization adapts to its environment and builds up customs and norms. C. Processes 1. If inputs are like the nouns in organizational behavior, processes are like verbs. 2. Processes are actions that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in as a result of inputs and that lead to certain outcomes. 3. At the individual level, processes include emotions and moods, motivation, perception, and decision-making. 4. At the group level, they include communication, leadership, power and politics, and conflict and negotiation. 5. Finally, at the organizational level, processes include human resource management and change practices. D. Outcomes 1. Outcomes are the key variables that you want to explain or predict, and that are affected by some other variables. 2. Scholars have emphasized individual-level outcomes like attitudes and satisfaction, task performance, citizenship behavior, and withdrawal behavior. 3. At the group level, cohesion and functioning are the dependent variables. 4. Finally, at the organizational level we look at overall profitability and survival. Because these outcomes will be covered in all the chapters, we’ll briefly discuss each here so you can understand what the “goal” of OB will be. E. Attitudes and stress 1. Employee attitudes are the evaluations employees make, ranging from positive to negative, about objects, people, or events. 2. For example, the statement, “I really think my job is great,” is a positive job attitude, and “My job is boring and tedious” is a negative job attitude. 3. Stress is an unpleasant psychological process that occurs in response to environmental pressures. 4. Some people might think that influencing employee attitudes and stress is purely soft stuff, and not the business of serious managers, but as we will
  • 23. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 19 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall show, attitudes often have behavioral consequences that directly relate to organizational effectiveness. 5. The belief that satisfied employees are more productive than dissatisfied employees has been a basic tenet among managers for years, though only now has research begun to support it. 6. Ample evidence shows that employees who are more satisfied and treated fairly are more willing to engage in the above-and-beyond citizenship behavior so vital in the contemporary business environment. 7. A study of more than 2,500 business units also found that those scoring in the top 25 percent on the employee opinion survey were, on average, 4.6 percent above their sales budget for the year, while those scoring in the bottom 25 percent were 0.8% below budget. 8. In real numbers, this was a difference of $104 million in sales per year between the two groups. F. Task performance 1. The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing your core job tasks is a reflection of your level of task performance. 2. If we think about the job of a factory worker, task performance could be measured by the number and quality of products produced in an hour. 3. The task performance of a teacher would be the level of education that students obtain. 4. The task performance of a consultant might be measured by the timeliness and quality of the presentations they offer to the client firm. 5. All these types of performance relate to the core duties and responsibilities of a job and are often directly related to the functions listed on a formal job description. 6. Obviously task performance is the most important human output contributing to organizational effectiveness, so in every chapter we devote considerable time to detailing how task performance is affected by the topic in question. G. Citizenship behavior 1. The discretionary behavior that is not part of an employee’s formal job requirements, and that contributes to the psychological and social environment of the workplace, is called citizenship behavior. 2. Successful organizations need employees who will do more than their usual job duties—who will provide performance beyond expectations. 3. In today’s dynamic workplace, where tasks are increasingly performed by teams and flexibility is critical, employees who engage in “good citizenship” behaviors help others on their team, volunteer for extra work, avoid unnecessary conflicts, respect the spirit as well as the letter of rules and regulations, and gracefully tolerate occasional work-related impositions and nuisances. 4. Organizations want and need employees who will do things that aren’t in any job description. 5. Evidence indicates organizations that have such employees outperform those that don’t. 6. As a result, OB is concerned with citizenship behavior as an outcome variable.
  • 24. Chapter 1 What Is Organizational Behavior? Page 20 Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall H. Withdrawal behavior 1. We’ve already mentioned behavior that goes above and beyond task requirements, but what about behavior that in some way is below task requirements? 2. Withdrawal behavior is the set of actions that employees take to separate themselves from the organization. 3. There are many forms of withdrawal, ranging from showing up late or failing to attend meetings to absenteeism and turnover. 4. Employee withdrawal can have a very negative effect on an organization. a. The cost of employee turnover alone has been estimated to run into the thousands of dollars, even for entry-level positions. 5. Absenteeism also costs organizations significant amounts of money and time every year. a. For instance, a recent survey found the average direct cost to U.S. employers of unscheduled absences is 8.7 percent of payroll. b. In Sweden, an average of 10 percent of the country’s workforce is on sick leave at any given time. 6. It’s obviously difficult for an organization to operate smoothly and attain its objectives if employees fail to report to their jobs. a. The work flow is disrupted, and important decisions may be delayed. In organizations that rely heavily on assembly-line production, absenteeism can be considerably more than a disruption; it can drastically reduce the quality of output or even shut down the facility. b. Levels of absenteeism beyond the normal range have a direct impact on any organization’s effectiveness and efficiency. c. A high rate of turnover can also disrupt the efficient running of an organization when knowledgeable and experienced personnel leave and replacements must be found to assume positions of responsibility. 7. All organizations, of course, have some turnover. a. The U.S. national turnover rate averages about 3 percent per month, about a 36 percent turnover per year. b. This average varies a lot by occupation, of course; the monthly turnover rate for government jobs is less than 1 percent, versus 5 to 7 percent in the construction industry. c. If the “right” people are leaving the organization—the marginal and submarginal employees—turnover can actually be positive. d. It can create an opportunity to replace an underperforming individual with someone who has higher skills or motivation, open up increased opportunities for promotions, and bring new and fresh ideas to the organization. e. In today’s changing world of work, reasonable levels of employee- initiated turnover improve organizational flexibility and employee independence, and they can lessen the need for management-initiated layoffs. 8. So why do employees withdraw from work?
  • 25. Another Random Scribd Document with Unrelated Content
  • 26. are still shown in a faded condition on a stone in the eastern parapet, near the south end of the bridge. There certainly is such a stone, and you may rather fancy than distinctly trace two outlines of heads. The whole bridge is, as described by Burns, very old and time-worn. "Auld Brig appeared o' ancient Pictish race, The very wrinkles Gothic in his face; He seemed as he wi' Time had warstled lang, Yet, teughly doure, he baide an unco bang." There is a peculiar pleasure in standing on this old Brig, so exactly has Burns enabled you to place yourself in the very scene that he contemplated at the moment of conceiving his poem. "A simple bard, Unknown and poor, simplicity's reward, Ae night, within the ancient burgh of Ayr, By whim inspired, or haply pressed wi' care, He left his bed, and took his wayward route, And down by Simpson's wheeled the left about; The drowsy Dungeon clock had numbered two, And Wallace Tower had sworn the fact was true; The tide-swollen Firth, wi' sullen sounding roar, Through the still night dashed hoarse along the shore. All else was hushed as Nature's closed e'e; The silent moon shone high o'er tower and tree; The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam, Crept, gently crusting, o'er the glittering stream." From this scene "the drowsy dungeon clock" is removed, the old jail having been pulled down; but Simpson's is still to be seen, a public house at the end of the bridge on the side most distant from the town; and Wallace Tower, I believe, however, almost wholly rebuilt since then, and presenting now a very modernized aspect, rears
  • 27. itself in a distant part of the town. Along the river side the "ancient burgh of Ayr" presents its antiquated houses, roofs, and gables, much as they did to the eye of Burns. Ayr, though it stands on a flat, has still great charm of location, and this you perceive as you set out to visit the birth-place and monument of Burns, which lie about three miles south of Ayr. You may, if you please, take the way along the shore; and here you have the sea with its living billows, displaying at a distance opposite the craggy mountain heights of Arran, and the Mull of Cantire. Northward, Troon, with its new houses, may be seen standing on its naked promontory, and southward, the Tower of Dunbere is a bold but somber object on an elevated knoll on the margin of the ocean, and far out southwest, Ailsacraig is descried, towering amid the waters. It is a fine and animated scene. It was Sunday forenoon as I advanced over the very level ground near the shore, toward Alloway. People were walking on the beach enjoying the sunshine, breeze, and glittering world of waters; lovers were seated among the broomy hillocks, children were gathering flowers amid the crimson glare of the heather; all had an air of beauty and gladness. To my left lay a richly-wooded country, and before me, beyond Alloway and the Doon, stretched the airy range of the Carrick Hills. It was the direction which I was pursuing that Tam O'Shanter took from the town to Alloway, for the old road ran that way; but there is a new and more direct one now from Ayr, and into that, having been shown the cottage where Mrs. Begg, Burns's sister, still lives, I struck. This agreeable road I soon saw diverge into two, and asked a poor man which of the two led to Burns's monument. At the name of Burns, the poor man's face kindled with instant animation. "I am going part of the way, sir," he said, "and will be proud to show it you." I begged him not to put himself at all out of his way. "Oh," said he, "I am going to look at my potato plot which lies out here." We fell into conversation about Burns; the way again showed a fresh branch, which was the way to his potato field; but the poor fellow gave a hesitating look; he could not find it in his heart to give up talking about Burns, and begged that I would do him the honor to allow him
  • 28. to walk on with me. "But your potatoes, my friend?" "Oh! they'll tak no harm, sir. The weather's very growing weather; one feels a natural curiosity to see how they thrive, but that will do next Sunday, if you would allow me to go on with you?" I assured him that nothing would give me greater pleasure. I only feared that I might keep him out too long, for I must see all about Burns's birth-place, Kirk Alloway, the Brig of Doon, the monument, and every thing of the kind. It was now over noon, and must be his dinner hour. He said, "No; he never had dinner on a Sunday; for years he had accustomed himself to only two meals on that day, because he earned nothing on it, and had ten children! But he generally took a walk out into the country, and got a good mouthful of fresh air, and that did him a deal of good." I looked more closely at my new companion. He was apparently sixty, and looked like a man accustomed to dine on air. He was of a thin and grasshopper build; his face was thin and pale, his hair grizzled; yet there was an intelligence in his large gray eyes, but it was a sad intelligence, one which had long kept fellowship with patience and suffering. His gray coat, and hat well worn, and his clean but coarse shirt-collar, turned down over a narrow band of a blue cotton tie neckerchief, with its long ends dangling over his waistcoat, all denoted a poor, but a careful and superior man. I can not tell what a feeling of sympathy came over me; how my heart warmed toward the poor fellow. We went on; gay groups of people met us, and seemed to cast looks of wonder at the stranger and his poor associate; but I asked myself whether, if we could know, as God knows, the hearts and merits of every individual of those well- dressed and laughing walkers, we should find among them one so heroic as to renounce his Sunday dinner as a perpetual practice, because he "earned nothing on that day, and had ten children?" Was there a man or a woman among them who, if they knew this heroic man as I now knew him, would not desire to give him, for that one day at least, a good dinner, and as much pleasure as they could?
  • 29. "My friend," said I, "I fear you have had more than your share of hardship in this life?" "Nay," he replied, "he could not say that. He had had to work hard, but what poor man had not? But he had had many comforts; and the greatest comfort in life had been, that all his children had taken good ways; if I don't except," and the old man sighed, "one lad, who has gone for a soldier; and I think it a little ungrateful that he has never written to us since he went, three years ago. Yet I hear that he is alive and well, in Jamaica. I can not but think that rather ungrateful," he added; "but of a' Robin Burns's poems, there's none, to my thinking, that comes up to that one—Man was made to Mourn." I could not help again glancing at the thin, pale figure, which went as softly at my side as if it were a ghost, and could not wonder that Burns was the idol of the poor throughout Scotland, and that the Sunday wanderer of his native place had clung so fondly to the southern visitor of the same sacred spot. "Can you explain to me," I asked, "what it is that makes Burns such a favorite with you all in Scotland? Other poets you have, and great ones; out of the same class, too, you had Hogg, but I do not perceive the same instant flash, as it were, of an electric feeling when any name is named but that of Burns." "I can tell," said he, "why it is. It is because he had the heart of a man in him. He was all heart and all man; and there's nothing, at least in a poor man's experience, either bitter or sweet, which can happen to him, but a line of Burns springs into his mouth, and gives him courage and comfort if he needs it. It is like a second Bible." I was struck with the admirable criticism of the poor artisan. What acuteness of genius is like the acuteness of a sharp experience, after all? I found that, had I picked the whole county of Ayr, I could not have hit on a man more clearly aware of the real genius of Burns, nor a more excellent guide to all that related to him hereabouts. He now stopped me. We were on the very track of Tam O'Shanter.
  • 30. "Kirk Alloway was drawing nigh, Where ghaists and houlets nightly cry. By this time he was cross the ford, Where in the snaw the chapman smoored: And past the birks and meikle stane Where drunken Charley brak 's neck-bane. And through the whins, and by the cairn Where hunters found the murdered bairn; And near the thorn aboon the well Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel." The whins, the birks were gone: all was now one scene of richest cultivation; but in the midst of a cottager's garden still projected the "meikle stane" from the ground, in a potato bed. To this, by permission of the cottager, we advanced, and from this spot my guide pointed out the traditionary course of Tam on that awful night when "Before him Doon pours all his floods; The doublin' storm roars through the woods, And lightnings flash from pole to pole." Some of these scenes lay yet far before us; as the well "Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel," which is just on the banks of the Doon itself. Anon we reached the cottage in which Burns was born. This stands on the right-hand side of the road, about a quarter of a mile from Kirk Alloway and the Brig o' Doon. It is a genuine Scotch cottage of two rooms on the ground floor, thatched and whitewashed. It is now, and has been long, a little public house. It stands close up to the road, and over the door is a portrait of Burns, an evident copy from the portrait by Nasmyth, and under it, in large and noticeable letters, "Robert Burns, the Ayrshire Poet, was born under this roof, the 25th Jan., A.D. 1759. Died A.D. 1796, aged 37-1/2 years."
  • 31. It is well known to most readers that this house was built by Burns's father, and that about a week after Robert, his first child, was born, the roof fell in during a tempest at midnight, and that mother and child had to be carried forth in a hurry, through the storm and darkness, to a cottage, which still remains, not far off, on the opposite side of the road. Robert Burns was born in what is now the kitchen, in one of those recess beds so common in Scotch cottages. This is still shown to visitors by the occupiers of the house. The better room, in which the guests are entertained, that nearest to the town of Ayr, bears abundant marks of the zeal of these visitors. The walls are well written over with names, but not in that extraordinary manner that the walls of Shakspeare's birth-place at Stratford are. The rage here has taken another turn, that of cutting the names into the furniture. There are two plane-tree tables, which are cut and carved in the most singular completeness. There does not seem to be left space, neither on the top, the sides, nor the legs, even for another initial. There were formerly three of these tables, but one of them was sold some years ago. There is a cupboard and chairs all cut over, the chairs having been obliged to be renewed, but the fresh ones are now as much cut as ever. We were informed by Mrs. Gondie, the widow of the old miller, John Gondie, of Doonside Mill, who had lived in the house nearly forty years, that the lease of the property had been bought of Burns's father, by the Shoemaker's Company of Ayr, for one hundred and sixty guineas; but that the property now let for £45 a year; and that the said Shoemaker's Company wishing again to raise the rent, the widow was going to quit at Michaelmas last, and that another person had taken the house and small piece of ground adjoining, at a rental of £60 a year. Mrs. Gondie said that she had been once bid £15 for one of the tables, but had refused it; that, however, being now about to quit the premises, she had sold the chairs and tables to a broker at Glasgow, who was announcing them as the actual furniture of Burns, though it was well known that when Burns's father left this house for Mount Oliphant, a few miles off, when Robert Burns was not seven years of age, he took all his furniture with him. Conspicuous among
  • 32. the carved names in this room was that of an ambitious Peter Jones, of Great Bear Lake, North America. Burns's father, who was, when he lived here, gardener to Mr. Ferguson, of Doonholm, was a man of an excitable temperament, but of a most upright disposition; and his mother, like the mothers of most remarkable men, was a woman of clear, clever, and superior mind, of a winning address, and full of ballads and traditions. From both sides the son drew the elements of a poet; and we can well imagine him sitting by the humble fireside of this cottage, and receiving into his childish heart, from the piety of the father, and the imaginative tales of the mother, those images of genuine Scottish life which poured themselves forth as well in Tam O'Shanter as in the grave and beautiful Cotter's Saturday Night. Having insisted on my worthy guide getting some refreshment, we again sallied forth to make a more thorough exploration of the youthful haunts of the poet. And now, indeed, we were surrounded by mementoes of him and of his fame on all hands. The cottage stands on a pleasant plain; and about a quarter of a mile onward you see, on the left hand of the road, the monument erected to his memory: a dome, surmounted with a lyre and the significant wine- cup, and supported on Corinthian pillars. On the opposite, that is, on the right-hand side of the road, is the old Kirk of Alloway; beyond, away to the right, is heard the sea, while the airy range of the Carrick Hills stretches across, closing the landscape before you. At their feet a mass of trees marks the course of the Doon; but, before you reach any of these objects, you pass, on your left, the large open field in which was held the Burns Festival on the 6th of August, 1844. The place where the wall had been broken down to admit the procession was plainly discernible by its new mortar; and a fine crop of corn was now waving where such thousands had, but a year before, met in honor of the immortal exciseman. Of this festival copious particulars are to be found in all the newspapers of the day, but in none so complete and accurate as "The Full Report" published by Mr. Maxwell Dick, the worthy
  • 33. publisher of the Ayrshire News Letter at Irvine, one of the most enthusiastic admirers of the genius of Burns, and of genius in general. By this report it appears that the procession, forming on the Low Green of Ayr, near the County Buildings, met at ten o'clock in the morning, and consisted of the magistrates of the town, public bodies, farmers, numerous freemasons' lodges, societies of gardeners, archers, and odd fellows, King Crispin in his most imposing style, with Souter Johnny in character, accompanied by attendants with banners floating, and bands playing music of Burns's songs. In this procession were seen gentlemen and noblemen, and literary men of the highest distinction, from all parts of the empire. It reached a mile along the high road, three abreast. The whole number of persons present—that is, in the procession and on the ground—was calculated at eighty thousand. A splendid triumphal arch was erected at the cottage where the poet was born, and, as the procession drew near it, the band played, "There was a Lad was born in Kyle;" the vast multitude uncovered at once, and the flags were lowered as they passed the humble but much respected spot. Platforms were erected in various places, so that people could get a coup-d'œil of the procession. As it approached Kirk Alloway, the old bell, which still occupies the belfry, was set a ringing, and continued so while the procession marched under the triumphal arch along the new bridge. Deploying round toward the old bridge of Doon, the circling line, partially obscured by the houses and trees, had a truly picturesque effect; the waving banners, the music of the bands, mellowed and echoed by "the banks and braes o' bonnie Doon," were deeply impressive. On reaching the Auld Brig, over which was thrown a triumphal arch, the band struck up "Welcome, Royal Charlie," while the procession, uncovering and lowering their flags, passed over in front of the platform, on which stood the three sons of Burns, his sister Mrs. Begg, her son, and two daughters. The procession occupied at least an hour in coming from the new bridge to the field, on entering which the band played "Duncan Gray," followed by "The Birks of Aberfeldy." A large circle was then formed round the platform for the musicians in the field; and the whole company, led by professional vocalists, joined in singing "Ye Banks
  • 34. and Braes o' Bonnie Doon," and "Auld Lang Syne." The bands were then stationed in various parts of the field: the regimental and Glasgow St. Andrew's bands in the center of the field; the Kilwinning and Cumnock bands at the cottage; and the bagpipers played at a distance from the pavilion. There were two inclosures for dancing: one near the head of the field, and the other on the brow overlooking the Doon. Immediately after the procession was over, the crowd were astonished by the sudden appearance of Tam O'Shanter, "well mounted on his gray mare Meg," and a flight of witches in full pursuit of her, till he reached and passed the keystone of the arch of the Auld Brig. At two, the Earl of Eglinton took the chair at the banquet in the pavilion, with Professor Wilson as croupier. To the right of the chairman sat Robert Burns, Esq., the eldest son of the poet; Major Burns, his youngest son; on the left, Colonel Burns, second son of the poet; Mrs. Begg, Burns's sister; and right and left, other members of the family, amid many noble and distinguished persons: as Mrs. Thomson, of Dumfries, the Jessie Lewars of the poet; Sir John M'Neill, late plenipotentiary to the court of Persia; the lord-justice-general, the Countess of Eglinton, Alison, the historian, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, Robert Chambers, of Edinburgh, Douglas Jerrold, William Thom, the poet of Inverury, &c., &c. The chairs of the chairman and croupier were made of oaken rafters from Kirk Alloway, and many mementoes of the poet decorated the table. The scene in the pavilion is described as splendid, and like one of fairy-land; and the most enthusiastic speeches were made in honor of the poet, especially by the noble chairman and the eloquent John Wilson. It will be seen, by those acquainted with the ground, that the procession had thus taken a course contrived to include every object of interest connected with Burns here. It had passed the cottage of his birth; passed between Kirk Alloway and his monument; crossed by the new bridge over the Doon to the side of the river, and returned over the old bridge, so as to see all "the banks and braes o' bonnie Doon," and so entered the field of the festival, having entirely encircled the monument. There, in full view of all these objects, the
  • 35. cottage, the old ruins of the kirk, the monument, and the banks of Doon, they celebrated—eighty thousand persons—the festival of his honor, amid the music of his own enchanting songs, among which were, "A Man's a Man for a' That;" "This is na my ain House;" "Green Grow the Rashes, O;" "My Love she's but a Lassie yet;" "What ye wha's in yon Toun." This stirring and tumultuous expression of a nation's veneration was gone by; silence had again fallen, as it were, with a musing sense of the poet's glory on the scene; and with my worthy old guide I went over the same ground leisurely, noting all its beauties and characteristics. First, we turned into the grave-yard of Kirk Alloway. Here stood the roofless old kirk, just such a plain, simple ruin as you see in a hundred places in Ireland. One of the first objects that arrests your attention is the bell in the little belfry, with a rope hanging outside, only sufficiently low for the sexton, on any occasion of funeral, to reach it with a hooked pole, and thus to prevent any idle person ringing it at other times. This bell, when the parishes of Alloway and Ayr were joined, was attempted to be carried away by the authorities of Ayr, by no means to their honor, but the crofters of Alloway manfully rose and resisted successfully the removal. There are plenty of open windows where Tam O'Shanter could take a full view of the uncanny dancing-party; and "the winnock bunker in the east," a small window, "where sat Auld Nick, in shape o' beast," as fiddler, is conspicuous enough. The interior of the kirk is divided by a wall. The west-end division is the burial-place of the Cathcarts, which is kept very neat. The other end, and where the witch-dance met Tam's astonished eyes, is now full of briers and nettles, bearing sufficient evidence of no recent displays of this kind. The kirk-yard is crowded with tombs, and the first memorial of the dead which meets your eye is the headstone of the poet's father, just before you as you enter by the stile, with this inscription: "Sacred to the memory of William Burns, farmer in Lochlea, who died Feb., 1784, in the 63d year of his age; and of Agnes Brown, his spouse, who died the 14th of Jan., 1820, in the 88th year of her age. She was interred in Bolton Church-yard, East Lothian.
  • 36. "O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains, Draw near with pious reverence, and attend! Here lie the loving husband's dear remains, The tender father, and the generous friend. The pitying heart that felt for human woe; The dauntless heart that feared no human pride; The friend of man, to vice alone a foe; 'For e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side.'" This epitaph was written expressly for this tomb by Burns, the last line being quoted from Goldsmith. Advancing now to the new bridge, you stand between two remarkable monuments of the poet. On your right hand, close on the banks of the Doon, and adjoining the bridge, stands a handsome villa, in beautiful grounds which occupy part of "the banks and braes." This is the house of Mr. Auld, the enterprising hair-dresser of Ayr, who was the first to recognize the genius of Thom the sculptor, then a poor stone-mason of Ayr. Thom, seeing a picture of Tam O'Shanter in Auld's window, requested the loan of it for a few days. Being asked by Auld what he wanted it for, he said he had a notion that he could make a figure from it. It was lent, and in a few days he returned with a model of Tam in clay. Mr. Auld was so struck with the genius displayed in it, that he suggested to Thom to complete the group by adding Souter Johnny. That was soon done; and then, by the assistance of Mr. Auld, the well-known group was cut in stone. The enterprising hair-dresser now prepared to set out on an expedition of exhibition of this group, the proceeds of which, I understand, were agreed to be equally divided between Auld, Thom, and the committee for a monument to Burns, near his birth-place. Such was the success of the scheme, that Thom, I am told, received £4000 as his share of the proceeds, which, however, he soon contrived to lose by taking stone-quarries, and entering on building schemes. Having lost his money, he retired to America. Auld, more careful, quitted the wig-block and lather-brush, and building himself a house, sat down as a country gentleman opposite to the
  • 37. monument, which seems to be in his keeping. It has been said that the monument committee never received any thing like a third of the proceeds of the exhibition, or the monument might now be opened free of cost to the public. That, however, is a point which the committee and Mr. Auld must be best informed about. One thing is certain, that Mr. Auld's present residence is a grand specimen of the effect of the united genius of Burns, Thom, and Auld; an exciseman, a stone-mason, and a barber. To the left hand of the road, opposite to this monument, stands, in a pleasant garden, the other monument of Burns, as already described, and which also, it seems, partly owed its existence to the same bold enterprise of this barber of Ayr, who seems actually to have had the art of "cutting blocks with a razor." In this monument is no statue of Burns, but merely a framed copy of that admirable colored print of Burns, published by Mr. Maxwell Dick, of Irvine, from Nasmyth's picture; and on the table in the center, the Bible and Testament given by Burns to his Mary at their last parting near Montgomery Castle. These are two separate volumes, and are displayed at the beginning of each, where Burns has placed a masonic sign, and written his name, now nearly obliterated; adding the two texts, Leviticus, xix., 12; Matthew, v., 33; which are, "Ye shall not swear by my name falsely; I am the Lord;" and, "Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." These precious volumes were known to be in the possession of the sister of Burns's "Mary," in America; and a society of young men, ardent admirers of Burns, resolved to regain them, if possible, for the public. This, after great trouble and expense, they finally effected, and here they are, objects certainly of the deepest interest.
  • 38. In a separate and small building in the same garden stands the celebrated group, by Thom, of Tam and Souter Johnny. This, however, it being Sunday, was, by an order of the authorities of Ayr, not allowed to be seen, though the monument was. I asked the youth who showed the monument if he could explain to me why it was a sin to show the group, and not a sin to show the monument on a Sunday; but the lad very properly replied that he did not pretend to a metaphysical sagacity so profound; his business was to show the monument, and not to show either the group or the reason why; for that he referred me to the superior hair-splitting piety and acumen of the corporate authorities of Ayr. Quitting this garden, you encounter, at the foot of the new bridge, a new inn called Burns's Inn and Hotel, with a fine painted sign, with a blackbird singing upon a bough, with a crook and a house, and an oak in the center of a shield laid on branches of olive and oak; and over it the words, "Better a small bush than nae bield." The auld brig is some little distance up the stream, and the view from it is very beautiful. You are surrounded by "the banks and braes o' bonnie Doon," steep, hung with orchards and fine woodland trees. At some little distance still further up the stream, you descry the old mill of Alloway, half buried in umbrageous trees, and all round rise sweet woodland fields at the feet of the hills. The bridge is well carved over with names, and overgrown with masses of ivy. Standing on this remarkable old gray bridge, my companion exhibited a trait of delicate and genuine feeling, which no man of the most polished education in the school of politeness could have surpassed. Gathering a sprig of ivy, he said, presenting it, "May be ye would like to send this to your leddy in England; it's gathered just frae the keystane." I accepted it with the liveliest pleasure, and it is now carefully preserved where the good man wished it. We now returned to Ayr, talking of Burns, his history, his poetry, and his fine qualities all the way; and after one of the pleasantest rambles I ever made in any company, I bid my old friend good-by at his door, leaving in his hand a trifle to mend his Sunday supper. "But," said he, as I was going away, "might I request the favor of your name, that I may
  • 39. know who it was that I had the honor of a walk with to Burns's monument, when I am thinking of it?" I told him; his face passed from its usual paleness to a deep flush; and he exclaimed, "Eh, sir! I ken yer name, and that o' yer leddy too, right weel!" Depend upon it, the recollection of that walk has been as pleasant to my old friend as to myself. The next day, with a driver well acquainted with the country, I issued forth in a gig to visit all the various residences of Burns, between Ayr and Mauchline. Burns, in his life, seemed like a bird leaving its nest. He took two or three short flights till he flew quite away to Dumfries. At every move he got further from Ayr. He was like an emigrant, still going on and on in one direction, and his course was southeast. First he went, that is, with his father, to Mount Oliphant, a farm about four miles from Alloway, where he lived from his sixth to his twelfth year. This farm has nothing particular about it. It lies on a bare ridge of hill, an ordinary little Scotch farm-steading, with bare and treeless fields. Then he went on to another farm—to Lochlea, still further out on this long, high, and bleak tract of country, near Tarbolton. This farm ruined his father, and there he died. Lochlea is a neat farm- house, lying in a hollow more sheltered than Mount Oliphant, but still possessing no picturesque features. In fact, the family was seeking, not the picturesque, but a livelihood. At Lochlea, Burns lived till he was twenty-four, and here he attended the masonic lodge at the Cross Keys, at Tarbolton, which still remains. There he became acquainted with Mr. David Sillar, the schoolmaster of Tarbolton, and addressed to him his Epistle to Davie. It was about three miles from Tarbolton, but that was nothing to Burns, full of life and poetry. The Bachelor's Society that, with David Sillar and other young men, he formed there, had infinite charms for him. Humble were these companions; in David Sillar's words, "Of birth and blood we do not boast, No gentry does our club afford, But plowmen and mechanics we In nature's simple dress record;"
  • 40. but they were men after Burns's own heart. He judged of men as his father had taught him: "My father was a farmer upon the Camek Border, And carefully he bred me up in decency and order; He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne'er a farthing, For without an honest, manly heart, no man was worth regarding." It was during his abode here that he wrote John Barleycorn; Corn Riggs are Bonnie; Winter, a Dirge; the Death of Poor Mailie; Mailie's Elegy; and Now Whistling Winds, &c. But the love affairs he was now continually getting into, and the dissipations that he became acquainted with at Kirkoswald and Irvine, at which places he spent some months, rendered his poetical growth far less than it otherwise might have been there. One incident in his life, and one of his most beautiful poems consequent on it, however, arose out of an attachment, which, though said to be formed at Mauchline, was certainly cultivated here. Just below Tarbolton lies Montgomerie Castle, beautifully situated amid its woods on the banks of the Faile, where he fell in love with Mary Campbell. Here was the house at which, according to his own beautiful poem, they used to meet, and here it was that he finally took leave of her. She was dairy-maid in the house then belonging to Colonel Hugh Montgomerie, afterward Earl of Eglinton, and grandfather of the present earl. "Ye banks, and braes, and streams around The castle of Montgomerie, Green be your woods and fair your flowers, Your waters never drumlie. There summer first unfaulds her robes, And there they longest tarry, For there I took my last farewell Of my sweet Highland Mary."
  • 41. There is a story mentioned in the Life of Burns of this parting being on the banks of Ayr, and Cromek repeats it, adding that "the lovers stood on each side of a small purling brook; they laved their hands in the limpid stream, and, holding a Bible between them, pronounced their vows to be faithful to each other." All this may be true, for they took a day to this final solitary enjoyment of each other's society in the woods before parting. They might wander by the Ayr, and so on up to the Faile, and at some small rivulet on the way perform this simple and affecting ceremony. Mary was going to the Western Highlands to see her friends before she married Robert Burns, but she died on her way back, and they never met again. This Bible, as we have seen, has been recovered, and is deposited in the monument at Alloway Wherever this ceremony, however, took place, the parting assuredly took place here. Burns says, not only that "there I took my last farewell," but also "How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk, How rich the hawthorn's blossom, As, underneath the fragrant shade, I clasped her to my bosom." There still stands the thorn, called by all the country "Highland Mary's Thorn." The house and park are sold or leased by the Earl of Eglinton to a solicitor in Ayr. My driver appeared afraid of going into the park, saying "the writer," that is, the solicitor, was a queer fellow, and would not let any body go to the thorn, and certainly a large board at each park gate, warning all persons to avoid those hallowed precincts, appeared to confirm the man's opinion; but, having come so far, I did not mean to pass without a glance at the parting scene of Burns and Highland Mary. I bade him drive down to the house, where I was speedily assured by the servants about that I was quite at liberty to go to the tree. "How shall I know it?" "Oh! a child may know it: it is all hacked, and the twigs broken, by people who carry
  • 42. away some of it to keep." By these signs I readily recognized the tree. It is not far from the house, close to the carriage drive, and on the top of the slope that descends to the Faile, which murmurs on beneath its sweet woodland shade.[30] The last abode of Burns in Ayrshire was at Mossgiel. This is some four miles beyond Tarbolton, and close to Mauchline, which is merely a large village. Mossgiel farm lies, as it were, at the end of that long, high, barren ridge of hills, which extends almost all the way from Ayr thither, and on which Burns's father had sought a poor living, and found ruin. It stands near the line of the slope which descends into Mauchline, and overlooks a large extent of bleak and bare country, and distant, bare hills. In the vales of the country, however, lie many scenes of great beauty and classic fame. Such are the banks of the Ayr, which winds on deep between its braes and woods, like the Nith, the Doon, and the higher Clyde. Such are Stair, Logan, Crukerne, Catrine, Dugald Stewart's place, and many others. The farm of Mossgiel, which consists of about 118 acres, lies, as observed, high, and as Gilbert, the brother of Burns, described it, "on a cold, wet bottom." The farms occupied by the Burns family in this part of the country were all of a thankless and ungenial kind; in fact, they lacked the means to command better. The two brothers, Robert and Gilbert, had taken this farm some time before their father's death, in the hope of assisting the family in that poverty which came still after them, spite of the most laborious exertion, like an armed man, and which was weighing their father to the grave. At his death they removed altogether from Lochlea, and with their mother and sisters became here one household. Here Burns made the firmest resolves of steadiness, industry, and thriving; but the seasons were against him, and he soon became mixed up with all the dissipations of Mauchline, where he established a club after the fashion of that at Tarbolton. Very soon, too, he plunged into the midst of Church disputes, in which his friend Gavin Hamilton, a lawyer of the place, was personally embroiled. Here he wrote The Holy Tuilzie, Holy Fair, Holy Willie's Prayer, The Ordination, The Kirk's
  • 43. Alarm—those scalping poems, in which he lays bare to the skull bone, bigotry, hypocrisy, and all sanctimonious bitterness in religion. Here he fell in love with Jean Armour, the daughter of a stone- mason of Mauchline, who, after many troubles, and much opposition on the part of the family, became afterward his wife. Here he wrote the greater part of his poems, and his very finest ones, and here he broke forth upon the world like a new-risen sun, his poems, which were first published at Kilmarnock, attracting such extraordinary attention, that he was called to Edinburgh, and a new and more complete edition there published, while he himself was introduced as a sort of miracle to the highest circles of aristocracy and literature. The four years which he lived here, though they were sinking him, in a pecuniary point of view, into such a slough of despair that he seriously resolved to emigrate to the West Indies, and only published his poems to raise the means, were, as regarded his fame, glorious and most interesting years. It was here that he might be said, more expressly than any where else, "To walk in glory and in joy, Following his plow along the mountain side;" for, spite of the iron destiny which seemed to pursue him, and in an ungenial soil and the most untoward seasons, to endeavor to crush him with "carking care," he was full of life and vigor, and often rose in the entrancement of his spirit above all sense of earth and its darkness. By the testimony of his cotemporaries, there were few that could vie with him in all the operations of the farm. In mowing, reaping, binding after the reapers, thrashing, or loading, there were few who could compete with him. He stood five feet ten in height, and was of singular strength and activity. He prided himself on the straightness of the furrow that he drew, and the skill with which he threw his corn in sowing. On one occasion, a man having succeeded in a hard strife in setting up as many shocks in a given time, said, "There, I am not far behind this time;" to which Burns replied, "In one thing, John, you are still behind; I made a song while I was stooking." Allan Cunningham says that his father, who was steward
  • 44. to Miller of Dalswinton, Burns's landlord, and lived just opposite to him at Ellisland, declared that "he had the handsomest cast of the hand in sowing corn that he ever saw on a furrowed field." It was here, then, at Mossgiel, that, young, vigorous, and full of desire to advance in worldly matters, he worked assiduously with his brother Gilbert in the fields, undivided in his attentions by the duties of the Excise. But poetry, spite of all resolves to the contrary, came over him like a flood. As his hand worked, his heart was full of inspiration, and as Gilbert held the plow, Robert would come and walk beside him, and repeat what he had just composed; or as they went with the cart to carry out corn or bring home coals, he would astonish him with some such display. "The verses to the Mouse and the Mountain Daisy," says Gilbert, "were composed on these occasions, and while the author was holding the plow. I could point out the spot where each was composed. Holding the plow was a favorite situation with Robert for poetic composition, and some of his best verses were produced while he was at that exercise." With what interest, then, do we look over the fields at Mossgiel, scarcely an inch of which has not been strode over by Burns, while engaged at once in turning up the soil, sowing or gathering its crops, and in working out, in the depth of his mind, those compositions which were to remain for all time the watchwords of liberty and of noble thought. Besides the polemic poems already spoken of, here he wrote Halloween; Address to the De'il; Death and Dr. Hornbrook, a satire on the poor schoolmaster and self-appointed apothecary, Wilson of Tarbolton, which drove him from the place, but only to thrive in Glasgow; The Jolly Beggars; Man was made to Mourn; The Vision; The Cotter's Saturday Night, which he very appropriately repeated to Gilbert during a Sunday afternoon walk. The very interesting scene of the creation of these exquisite poems lies on the left hand of the road proceeding from Tarbolton to Mauchline. The house stands at a field's distance from the road. It is a thatched house with but and ben, just as it was, and the buildings behind it forming two wings, exactly as he built his house at Ellisland. To the northwest the house is well sheltered with fine, full-
  • 45. grown trees. A handsome young mother, the farmer's wife, worthy for her comely and intelligent look to have been celebrated by Burns, told me that great numbers of people came to see the place, and that it was very much as Burns left it. There were the barn, the byre, the garden near, in all which the poet had labored like any other son of earth for his daily bread, and on the yearly allowance—for every one of the family had a specific allowance for clothes and pocket- money—of seven pounds, which, says his brother, he never exceeded! Very extravagant he could not have been. You see the ingle where he sat and composed some of his most pathetic and most humorous pieces. It is said to be in the spence, a better room, which has a boarded floor, and the recess beds so common in Scotland, that he chiefly wrote. Who can contemplate this humble room, and recall the image of the young poet, with a heart of melancholy, here inditing, Man was made to Mourn, or his Vision, without the liveliest emotion? There is no feeling of utter sadness more strongly expressed than in the opening of the Vision. "The sun had closed the winter day, The curlers quat their roaring play, An' hunger'd mawkin ta'en her way To kail-yard green, While faithless snaws ilk step betray Whare she has been. "The threshers weary flinging tree The lee-lang day had tired me; And when the day had closed his e'e Far i' the west, Ben i' the spence, right pensively, I gaed to rest "There, lanely, by the ingle cheek, I sate and eyed the spewing reek, That filled with hoast-provoking smeek, The auld clay biggin;
  • 46. And heard the restless rattons squeak About the riggin. "All in this mottie, misty clime, I backward mused on wasted time, How I had spent my youthful prime An' done naething But stringin blethers up in rhyme, For fools to sing. "Had I to gud advice but harkit, I might, by this, hae led a markit, Or strutted in a bank and clarkit My cash account. While here, half mad, half fed, half sarket, Is a' th' amount." Gilbert, it seems, continued on this farm after Robert left for Ellisland till 1800; and the next tenant had occupied it till but a year or two ago, when the present young people came in. Mauchline, at the distance of a few minutes, abounds with recollections of Burns. There is the inn where Burns used to meet his merry club. There is the church-yard where the scene of the Holy Fair is laid, though the old church which stood in Burns's time has disappeared, and a new one taken its place. Opposite to the church- yard gates runs the street called "The Cowgate," up which he makes Common Sense escape; just by is the house of "Posie Nansie," where Burns fell in with the "Jolly Beggars;" not far off is the public house of John Dow, that Burns and his companions frequented at the opening of the Cowgate. Posie Nansie, or Nance Tinnock's, was the house mentioned in the Holy Fair, where the public crowded in during the intervals of the service, having a back door most convenient into the area. "Now but an' ben, the change-house fills Wi' yill-caup commentators;
  • 47. Here's crying out for bakes and gills, An' there the pint stoup clatters." Every body can tell of the haunts and places of Burns and his jolly companions in Mauchline. The women came out of their houses as they saw me going about, and were most generously anxious to point out every noted spot. Many of the older people remembered him. "A fine, handsome young fellow, was he not?" I asked of an old woman that would show me where Jean Armour lived. "Oh! jus a black-avised chiel," said she, hurrying up a narrow street parallel to the Cowgate; "but here lived Jean Armor's father. Come in, come," added she, unceremoniously opening the door, when an old dame appeared, who occupied the house. "I am only going to show the gentleman where Robin Burns's Jean lived. Come along, sir, come along," continued she, hastening as unceremoniously up stairs; "ye maun see where the bairns were born. Ha! ha! ha!" "Ha! ha! ha!" screamed the old dame of the house, apparently highly delighted; "ay, show the gentleman! show him! he! he! he!" So up went my free-making guide, up went I, and up came the old lady of the house. "There! there!" exclaimed the first old woman, pointing to a recess bed in one of the chambers, "there were three o' Robin Burns's bairns born. It's true, sir, as I live!" "Ay, gude faith is it," re- echoed the old lady of the house, and the two gossips again were very merry. "But ye maun see where Rob an' Jean were married!" so out of the house the lean and nimble woman again hurried, and again, at a rapid pace, led me down another narrow street just to the back of what they call the castle, Gavin Hamilton's old house. It was in Burns's time Gavin Hamilton's office, and in that office Burns was married. It is now a public house. Having taken a survey of all the scenes of Burns's youthful life here, I proceeded to that house where he was always so welcome a guest —the house of Gavin Hamilton itself. Though called the castle, it is, in fact, a mere keep, with an ordinary house attached to it in a retired garden. The garden is surrounded by lofty walls, with a remarkably large tree in the center. The house, a mere cottage, is huddled down in the far right-hand corner, and opposite to it stands
  • 48. the old keep, a conspicuous object as you descend the hill into the town. It is maintained in good order, and used as a laundry. A bare- legged lassie was spreading out her wash on the grass-plot, who informed me that not only was Gavin Hamilton dead, but his son too, and that his son's widow and her children were living there. I was shown the room where Burns, one Sunday, on coming in after kirk, wrote the satirical poem of the Calf, on the clergyman. An ordinary little parlor. In traversing the streets of Mauchline, it was impossible to avoid not only recalling all the witty jollity of Burns here, but his troubles that wellnigh drove him from the land. The opposition of Jean Armour's family; the tearing up of her secret marriage-lines by herself in her despair; Burns's distraction, his poverty, his hidings from the myrmidons of the law, and his daily thirteen miles' walk to correct the proofs of his poems at Kilmarnock, to save postage. But now the Muse which had made him poor refused to permit him to quit his native land. Out burst the sun of his glory, and our scene changes with this change to Edinburgh.[31] To describe all the haunts of Burns in Edinburgh were a long affair. They were the houses of all the great and gay: of the Gordons, the Hamiltons, the Montgomeries, of the learned, and the beautiful. The celebrated Duchess of Gordon, at that time at the zenith of beauty and fashion, was one of his warmest admirers, and had him to her largest parties. The young plowman of Ayrshire sat hob-nobbing in the temples of splendor and luxury with the most distinguished in every walk of life. Yet his haunts also lay equally among the humble and the undistinguished. Burns was true to his own maxim, "a man's a man for a' that;" and where there were native sense, wit, and good-humor, there he was to be found, were it even in a cellar with only a wooden stool to sit on. At his first arrival in Edinburgh he took up his quarters with a young Ayrshire acquaintance, Richmond, a writer's apprentice, in the house of a Mrs. Carfrae, Baxter's Close, Lawn Market, where he had a share of the youth's room and bed. From the most splendid entertainments of the aristocracy he
  • 49. described himself as groping his way at night through the dingy alleys of the "gude town to his obscure lodgings, with his share of a deal table, a sanded floor, and a chaff bed, at eighteen pence a week." This was during the winter and spring of 1786-7, on his first visit to Edinburgh, where he became the great fashionable lion, and while his new edition by Creech was getting out. In the spring, finding his popularity had brought him so much under the public eye that his obscure lodgings in the Lawn Market were not quite befitting him, he went and lodged with his new acquaintance, William Nicol, one of the masters of the High School, who lived in the Buccleugh Road. In the winter of 1787, on his second visit to Edinburgh, he had lodgings in a house at the entrance of James's Square, on the left hand. As you go up East Register-street, at the end of the Register House, you see the end of a house at the left-hand side of the top of the street. There is a perpendicular row of four windows: the top window belongs to the room Burns occupied. Here it was that he was visited by the lady with whom at this time he corresponded under the name of Sylvander, and she with him as Clarinda. His leg had been hurt by an overturn of a carriage by a drunken coachman, and he was laid up some time, and compelled to use crutches. Allan Cunningham tells us that this lady "now and then visited the crippled bard, and diverted him by her wit, and soothed him by her presence." She was the Mrs. Mac of his toasts. A blithe, handsome, and witty widow, a great passion or flirtation grew up between Burns and her. In one of his letters to his friend, Richard Brown, December 30, 1787, he says, "Almighty love still reigns and revels in my bosom, and I am at this moment ready to hang myself for a young Edinburgh widow." In a letter of their correspondence which has recently been published, he bids Clarinda look up at his window as she occasionally goes past, and in another complains that she does not look high enough for a bard's lodgings, and so he perceives her only gazing at one of the lower windows. If we are to believe the stanza of hers quoted by Burns, we must suppose Clarinda to have been unhappily married: "Talk not of love—it gives me pain—
  • 50. For love has been my foe; He bound me with an iron chain, And plunged me deep in woe." If it be true, as Allan Cunningham surmises, that those inimitable verses in the song of "Ae fond kiss, and then we sever," which expresses the pain of a final parting better than any other words ever did, have reference to Clarinda, then Burns must have been passionately attached to her indeed: "Who shall say that Fortune grieves him, While the star of hope she leaves him? Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me; Dark despair around benights me. Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met, or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted." Of the generous and true-hearted disposition of Clarinda, we shall possess a juster idea when we reflect that Burns was not at this time any longer the lion of the day. The first warm flush of aristocratic flattery was over. The souls of the great and fashionable had subsided into their native icy contempt of peasant merit. "What he had seen and endured in Edinburgh," says honest Allan Cunningham, "during his second visit, admonished him regarding the reed on which he leaned, when he hoped for a place of profit and honor from the aristocracy on account of his genius. On his first appearance the doors of the nobility opened spontaneously, 'on golden hinges turning,' and he ate spiced meats, and drank rare wines, interchanging nods and smiles 'with high dukes and mighty earls.' A colder reception awaited his second coming: the doors of lords and ladies opened with a tardy courtesy; he was received with a cold and measured stateliness, was seldom requested to stop, seldom to repeat his visit; and one of his companions used to relate
  • 51. with what indignant feelings the poet recounted his fruitless calls and his uncordial receptions in the good town of Edinburgh." It is related, that on one occasion being invited to dine at a nobleman's, he went, and, to his astonishment, found that he was not to dine with the guests, but with the butler! After dinner he was sent for into the dining-room; and a chair being set for him near the bottom of the table, he was desired to sing a song. Restraining his indignation within the bounds of outward appearance, Burns complied, and he sung, 'Is there, for honest poverty, Wha hangs his head and a' that? The coward slave, we pass him by, And dare be poor for a' that. For a' that, and a' that, A man's a man for a' that! "You see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, (Pointing to the nobleman at the head of the table) Who struts, and stares, and a' that, Though hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that. For a' that, and a' that, A man's a man for a' that." As the last word of these stanzas issued from his lips, he rose, and not deigning the company a syllable of adieu, marched out of the room and the house. Burns himself expressed in some lines to Clarinda all this at this very moment: "In vain would Prudence, with her decent sneer, Point to the censuring world and bid me fear: Above that world on wings of love I rise,
  • 52. I know its worst, and can that worst despise. Wronged, slandered, shunned, unpitied, unredressed, The mocked quotation of the scorners' jest, Let Prudence direst bodements on me fall— Clarinda, rich reward! o'erpays them all." But Clarinda could never be Burns's. To say the least of it, his attachment to her was one of the least defensible things of his life. Jean Armour had now the most inviolable claims upon him, and, in fact, as soon as his leg was well enough, he tore himself from the fascinations of Clarinda's society, went to Mauchline, and married Jean. But we must not allow ourselves to follow him till we have taken a peep at the house of Clarinda at this time, where Burns used to visit her, and where, no doubt, he took his melancholy farewell. This house is in Potter's Row; now old and dingy-looking, but evidently having been at one time a superior residence. It is a house memorable on more accounts than one, having been occupied by General Monk while his army lay in Edinburgh, and the passage which goes under it to an interior court is still called the General's Entrance. To the street the house presents four gabled windows in the upper story, on the tops of which stand a rose, thistle, fleur-de- lis, with a second rose or thistle to make out the four. The place is now inhabited by the poorest people; and on a little shop window in front is written up, "Rags and Metals bought!" The flat which was occupied by Clarinda is now divided into two very poor tenements. In the room which used to be Clarinda's sitting-room, a poor woman was at once busy with her work and two or three very little children. My companion told her that her house had been once frequented by a great man; she said, "Oh yes, General Monk." When he, however, added that he was then thinking of Robert Burns, this was news to her, and seemed to give to the wretched abode quite a charm in her eyes.
  • 53. Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to specialized publications, self-development books, and children's literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system, we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading. Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and personal growth! testbankbell.com