Organizational Behavior in short called as OB is concerned with the study of the behavior and interaction of people in restricted or organized settings. It involves understanding people and predicting their behavior, and knowledge of the means by which their behavior is influenced and shaped. Organizational Behavior is thus of great concern to anyone who organizes, creates, orders, directs, manages, or supervises the activities of others. It is also of concern to those who build relationships between individuals, groups of people, and different parts of organisation between different organizations, for all these Activities are founded on human interactions.
Meaning of Organizational Behavior
- It is the study and application of knowledge about how people act within organisation. It is a human tool for human benefit and human development.
- It is directly concerned with the understanding, predicting, and controlling of human behavior.
- It represents the behavioral approach to management not the whole of management.
- It is not to be equated with the industrial psychology. For E.g., organizational structure and management processes, say, decision making play a direct role in Organizational Behavior, but they are indirectly discussed in industrial psychology.
- It is directly concerned with the conceptual and human side of management, but not with the technical side.
- Keith Davis: As a study of human behavior at work.
- Fred Luthans: As understanding, prediction and control of human behavior in the organisation.
- Stephen Robbins: As a study that investigates the impact, individuals, groups and structure have on human behavior within the organisation.
- S. K. Kapoor: As a systematic study of actions and reactions, the people working in an organisation in order to improve the overall organizational performance.
Elements or Factors of Organizational Behavior
- The People - An Organisation is a well-knit social system. People work in organisation. They constitute individuals and groups. Even in groups, there could be formal as well as informal classifications. People join organizations to achieve their objectives. Although people have a few things in common, each person is individualized, just as their palm prints. Heredity, endowment, social institutions contribute their share toward make up of individuals. The objective of Organization Behavior is to develop a Better Employee, A better citizen and a better man.
- The structure - In organizations we find two types of social systems, namely, the formal, and the informal, both of which coexist. It means that an organization's environment is dynamic, and not static. All parts are interdependent and each part is influenced by other parts. People need organisation, and organisation need people, is to state the obvious. If there is no sense of mutuality, there is any reason why at all organisation cannot attain their objectives without the people element there in, and so is true in reverse.
- The Environment - All organization's operate within an external environment. An organisation is a larger part of a social system. The external environment influences the Attitudes of people, affect work conditions, and provide resources.
- The Technology - Technology helps people work with machines, tools, and the like. Thus, they are able to produce more of goods and services, and offer them to the society. It helps people to do better work, but technology elements have both cost and benefit implications.
The important fundamental concepts of organizational behavior
- Every individual is different - Every person is different with respect to his/her age, education, knowledge, skills, attitude, physical health, mental health, personality, etc. Therefore, each person should be treated separately while managing people.
- Every individual is a complete person - The employee has his/her individual knowledge, skills, attitude, opinions, views, likes-dislikes, family background, social background, biases/ prejudices, etc. People spend more than half their lifetime in the organizations for which they work. Naturally, they expect to be happy on-the-job as well as off-the-job.
- All behavior has Cause-effect Relationship - Every person behaves as per his/her thought process and believes that the behavior is correct, because the person has certain beliefs and faith. It is necessary for managers to understand these beliefs and faiths of the people and also the cause-effect relationship behind the behavior, if they want to be effective in their managerial functions.
- Every individual has self-esteem - People are different from machines and materials. They can think, smile, laugh; they have feelings and emotions. They have self-respect and prestige. They are live entities, unlike machines or tools and equipment. Therefore, they should not be treated like machines or materials.
- An organisation is a social system - an organisation is a social system. Therefore, the organizational behavior of people depends upon the social and psychological values and systems.
- Mutual interests are inter-dependent - As organisation needs people, people too need the organisation. The organisation wants to fulfil its objectives of production of goods and services. The employees working in an organisation have their personal goals, for example, individual career goals, family goals, etc.
- A total view of the organisation – the organizational structure, the management-employee relationships, the interpersonal and the inter-group relationships, the total personality of the employee, and the organisation as a total system. This helps managers understand human behavior in the organisation. In turn, this results in the necessary co-ordination between the three major factors viz., organisation, management and employees.
Organizational behavior is behavioral science?
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| 4 primary goals of Organizational Behavior |
Contributing Disciplines to Organizational behavior?
- Psychology - Individual or general psychology has been defined in many ways- It is called the science of soul, the science of mind, the science of behavior. Psychology seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes the behavior of men. Psychology attempts to study individual behavior. Psychologists concern themselves with perception, learning, personality, training, job satisfaction, leadership and motivation.
- Sociology - Sociologists have contributed to the areas of group dynamics, organisation theory and structure, bureaucracy, power and conflict. Sociology focuses attention on people in relation to fellow human beings.
- Social Psychology - These deals with interpersonal behavior. In a broad sense, we can say that social behavior involves one of the three basic reactions. When an individual meets another individual, there is social interaction. Bach individual affects the other individual with whom he comes into contact and is in turn affected by them. Secondly, the Individual may be interacting with a group- Then also, behavior gets affected. Finally, interaction of one group with the other groups.
- Anthropology - Anthropology is the science of man. Anthropologists study society, particularly the primitive ones to learn about human beings and their activities. How we behave is a function of culture- Our individual values system will affect our attitudes and behavior on the job. Thus, anthropology teaches how our culture affects organizational Behavior.
FAQs
Why is the study of OB important for managers?
With the growing number of organisation, rapidly changing technologies and increasing complexity of organizational structures, the importance of people in the organization's cannot be over-emphasized. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, people were considered ‘commodities' that could be ‘hired' and ‘fired' but, during the last 100 years, things have changed very fast. Both, the employers and the employees have realized that the relationship between them is not that of ‘Master Servant', but like ‘Partners in progress'. Therefore, understanding people has become important, if not more important, as understanding machines and materials. People are called ‘Human Resources' because they are not commodities, but have become resources. Managements have become aware that they have to treat their employees as human beings and not as machines or materials. Therefore, understanding the ‘Organizational Behavior’ of their employees has become extremely important for the managers of tomorrow. In the modern world, organizations are becoming increasingly complex with rapidly changing technology. As a result, organizations are demanding more and more from their employees. People are living resources with feelings, emotions and responses unlike machines or commodities. They cannot be treated like machines or materials but need psychological treatment. Hence, the study of organizational behavior is of utmost importance today.
