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What is Organizational Behavior?

Author: Sammy Collins
by Sammy Collins
Posted: Feb 10, 2019

History and Evolution of Organizational Behavior Studies

Its legacy has been there prevalent and omnipresent from the times of the industrial forefathers and is now more meticulously practiced in the digital era of industrialization. Firstly, for a layman, organizational Behavior strictly deals in the psychoanalysis between the human Behavior and the organizational settings under a specific environment. The primary motive for such a study is to develop an idea or an analogy of sorts, based on the observation about each individual and their performance, satisfaction and response rate under specific departments.

Several other inter-disciplinary and relative subjects such as sociology, psychology and economics and their practical approach are intertwined in order to diversify the results and analyse the data further. In the 19th century, the arrival of scientific precision and management helped increase the accuracy to pinpoint detail which culminated in academic induction of the same. Works of the yesteryear greats like Mayo, Fayol, Herzberg, etcetera on the principles underlying OB and its associated aspects was eye-opening for plenty of imminent industrialists and firms in the future, near and distant. This precisely dwells on the nuances of the term Organizational Behavior in the modern-day management terminology.

Organizational Behavior Definition

OB is the study of human conduct or attitude in a workplace, based on certain factors or against some distinct parameters. This field of study essentially relates and encompasses the strategic finesse in advancement of organizational efficacy and boost the overall productivity. It's also another channel for self-introspection and inter-communal interaction analysis; helps gain perspective on different approaches by a single firm to better its working environment. For example, Google and IBM carried out a survey for its employees in relation to the working conditions present in the workplace and the recommended improvements. Against the costs incurred, both the firms (a decade back) improved its own workplace agenda and outsourced it worldwide to its respective branches. The result was the increased satisfaction and productivity of the firms.

Features of Organizational Behavior

Firms in the modern times are apprehensive of the teams that they hire and deploy under certain working conditions. Hence, they use this study to determine the best fit of a candidate in managerial positions. In a nutshell, as the famous saying goes, a man is known by the company he keeps; similarly, a captain is known by the players he trains with. Thus, the same code is applied in managerial strategies as an evaluative measure to test out the potential leaders within a group. Hence, the need of the OB study is absolute and justified.

Objectives of Organizational Behavior

Basically, for fresh eyes and minds, OB study group is a divergence of two groups- the set of employees in an organization and the managerial groups of the same. Both have different tasks, however. The employees provide the elementary aspect of the analysis such as working conditions, productivity agenda, inter-departmental strategies, intercommunication skills and the various merits and demerits associated with the same; contrary to that, the leader groups or the supervisors provide a different perspective to the higher levels of functioning within the hierarchy.

Fundamental Concepts of Organizational Behavior

The delineated graphic within the firm's external affairs and the internal compartmentalization within the niche of the firm's core set-up is the incumbent result of their feedback's and group investigative discussions. Both have a link to the fact that people look at the face value of the company's rules and regulations, which are binding to all and simultaneously, get an overall idea how to minimize the barriers to increase the potency and the market value. The characteristics of the pattern comprise goal alignments and target specifics, levels of statistical and quantitative analysis, human resources and workforce, the satisfaction criteria and level of the employees concerned and a mechanized access. The group study also embraces the challenges and the opportunities that come within the said parameters of a company's goals.

Main Challenges and Opportunities of Organizational Behavior
  • Age- a concern for the majority in a firm, which might uphold traditional values specific to the region. For example, an Indian company has different terms of endearment and levels of compassion for the elderly, irrespective of their performance output or time-specific target achievements. However, the same can't be said for an European company which has a zero-tolerance policy on curbing or penalising defaulters, irrespective of their seniority. Thus, the latter helps itself in creating a divide between social compassion and work ethics, without stretching the norms and not retarding the productivity levels.
  • Gender- till the 21st century, most companies, even though they were tier-1 by stature, were on the threshold of a worldwide protest agenda regarding the emancipation and upliftment of women's status in the workforce. Including the salary, the perks and the treatment within the working environment, the female centric groups held group discussions and staged conferences and even single interviews of major female icons to prove that they are par on most terms with their male counterpart. However, not so long ago, did the companies across the earth, in major GDP-above-average countries finally realise and penned a new charter of rules and policies benefiting women, in terms of pay-scale, skills evaluation, leave quota and so on. The extent of these policies, however, enraged the other gender, due to the fallacy that female power was disillusioned under the benefit that males are cheaper and less valued and hence, mal-treated. Clearly, as most journalists would describe it, it was a nip in the bud for the ant who bit the elephant.
Limitations of Organizational Behavior

National origin- in certain countries, including the G8 members, it's a delusion that some countries are better off with providing valuable cheap and sustainable labour while others are necessary for the brainpower. A significant lot of rules had been discussed and re-amended to change the same, but in vain. OB study clearly manifest that employees show signs of distress under a supervisor and a company of a different nationality. And managers, of late, have started to realise that outsourcing is not a one-way street anymore. The employees can choose to sue or leave, citing disinterest or mismanagement and appalling working conditions and the only victim would be the employer and the firm(s) concerned. Therefore, it could be said that there are three major limitations of organizational Behavior exists that are Behavioral biasness, unethical manipulation of individuals and the rule of diminishing returns.

Organizational Behavior Model

The above-mentioned model of organizational Behavior has three different levels built on the prior one. These levels are individual level, group level and organizational level. These three levels jointly influence on the human outputs in any organization.

Key Forces Affecting Organizational Behavior

In the current developing and changing business environment identified key factors that affect organizational Behavior's has been proved to be connected with each other. These factors are technology, people, structure and environment.

Contributing Disciplines to the Organizational Behavior field

It has been noticed that important and varied disciplines in this field help this principle to grow more enrichingly. The main disciplines are psychology studies, anthropology, economics, sociology, political sciences and social psychology.

4 Approaches to Organizational Behavior studies

It has been noticed that four major approaches of organizational Behavior's are the outcome of researches done by various experts in the field. These approaches are "contingency approach, systems approach, Human resources approach and productivity approach".

Research Methodology of Organizational Behavior

Most of the solutions relate to the fact that employee efficacy is a direct result of employee satisfaction. Long work hours, overtime non-payment dues, unhealthy working conditions always act as a blockade to the long-term content of the employees, resulting in lower productivity rates, more absenteeism and a distorted aura in the workplace for fresh inductees.

Reasons for Studying Organizational Behavior

The OB study suggest and recommends the firms and the managerial groups to make a drastic change, effective immediately, with respect to the certain parameters expected by the working force for betterment of the company.

Conclusion

OB is not based on common sense but on region-based and systems-based approach. It regulates its observations within the previous framework of rules. Post investigation and a thorough reasoning examination, the research committee demarcates its recommendations as per the priority and the impact. Thereafter, the governing body of the concerned firm and the managerial groups set out to assign the practice of such recommendations with immediate effect, notwithstanding the negligible amount of impact it would have on the work rhythm.

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Author: Sammy Collins

Sammy Collins

Member since: Feb 02, 2019
Published articles: 1

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