Organizational Behavior

Topics Covered:

1. Introduction to Organizational Behavior
2. Nature of organizational behavior
3. Characteristics of Organizational Behavior
4. Objectives of Organizational Behavior
5. Challenges and Opportunities of Organizational Behavior
6. Approaches to Organizational Behavior

Organizational behavior is directly concerned with the understanding, prediction, and control of human behavior in organizations. This area of study examines human behavior in a work environment and determines its impact on job structure, performance, communication, motivation, leadership, etc.

Nature of Organizational Behavior:

• A separate field of study and not a discipline only.
• An interdisciplinary approach
• An applied science
• A normative science
• A humanistic and optimistic approach
• A total system approach

Characteristics of Organizational Behavior:

• Organizational behavior is a rational thinking, not an emotional feeling about people.
• Organizational behavior seeks to balanced human and technical values at work.
• Organizational behavior integrates behavioral sciences.
• Organizational behavior is both a science and an art, the knowledge about human behavior in organizations leans towards being science.
• Organizational behavior exists at multiple like levels. Behavior occurs at the individual, the group, and the organizational systems levels.
• Organizational behavior does not exist in vacuum. Organizations are made up of both social and technical components and therefore characterized as social technical.

Objectives of Organizational Behavior:

• Job satisfaction
• Finding the right people
• Organizational culture
• Leadership and conflict resolution
• Understanding employees better
• Understand how to develop good relatives
• Develop a good team
• Higher productivity

Challenges and Opportunities of Organizational Behavior:

• Improving people’s skills
• Improving quality and productivity
• Total quality management (TQM)
• Managing workforce diversity
• Responding to globalization
• Empowering people
• Coping with temporariness
• Stimulating innovation and change
• Emergence of E-organization and E-commerce
• Improving ethical behavior
• Improving customer service
• Helping employees balance work-life conflicts
• Flattening world

Approaches to Organizational Behavior:

1. Human Resources Approach: This approach recognizes the fact that people are the central resource in any organization and that they should be developed towards higher levels of competency, creativity, and fulfillment. In the human resources approach, the role of managers changes from structuring and controlling to supporting.
2. Contingency Approach: The contingency approach is based on the premise that methods or behaviors which work effectively in one situation fail in another. Results differ because situations differ, the manager’s task, therefore, is to identify which method will, in a particular situation, under particular circumstances and at a particular time, best contribute to the attainment of organization’s goals.
3. Productivity Approach: Productivity is a measure of an organization’s effectiveness. It also reveals the manager’s efficiency in optimizing resource utilization. For example; if better organizational behavior can improve job satisfaction, a human output or benefit occurs. In the same manner, when employee development programs lead to better citizens in a community a valuable social output occurs.
4. Systems Approach: The systems approach to Organizational Behavior views the organization as a united, purposeful system composed of interrelated parts. This approach gives managers a way of looking at the organization as a whole, whole person, whole group, and the whole social system. A systems view should be the concern of every person in an organization.
5. Inter-disciplinary Approach: Organizational behavior is an integration of all other social sciences and disciplines such as psychology, sociology, organizational theories etc. They all are interdependent and influence each other. The man is studied as a whole and therefore, all disciplines concerning man are integrated.