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KEY TAKEAWAY
Organizational performance can be viewed along three dimensions—
financial, social, and environmental—collectively referred to as the triple
bottom line, where the latter two dimensions are included in the definition of

CSR. While there remains debate about whether organizations should consider
environmental and social impacts when making business decisions, there is
increasing pressure to include such CSR activities in what constitutes good
principles of management. This pressure is based on arguments that range from
CSR helps attract and retain the best and brightest employees, to showing that
the firm is being responsive to market demands, to observations about how
some environmental and social needs represent great entrepreneurial business
opportunities in and of themselves.
EXERCISES
1. Why is financial performance important for organizations?
2. What are some examples of financial performance metrics?
3. What dimensions of performance beyond financial are included in the
triple bottom line?
4. How does CSR relate to the triple bottom line?
5. How are financial performance and CSR related?

1.5 Performance of Individuals and Groups
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Understand the key dimensions of individual-level performance.
2. Understand the key dimensions of group-level performance.
3. Know why individual- and group-level performance goals need to be
compatible.
Principles of management are concerned with organization-level outcomes
such as economic, social, or environmental performance, innovation, or ability to
change and adapt. However, for something to happen at the level of an organization,
something must typically also be happening within the organization at the individual
or team level. Obviously, if you are an entrepreneur and the only person employed by
your company, the organization will accomplish what you do and reap the benefits of
what you create. Normally though, organizations have more than one person, which
is why we introduce to you concepts of individual and group performance.
Individual-Level Performance
Individual-level performance draws upon those things you have to do in your
job, or in-role performance, and those things that add value but which aren’t part of
your formal job description. These “extras” are called extra-role performance
or organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). At this point, it is probably simplest
to consider an in-role performance as having productivity and quality dimensions
associated with certain standards that you must meet to do your job. In contrast,
OCBs can be understood as individual behaviors that are beneficial to the
organization and are discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal
[1]
reward system.

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