Introduction to Organizational Behavior

Organizations are social inventions for accomplishing goals through group efforts. There are three significant
aspects in the above definition.
1. Social inventions; the word social as a derivative of society, basically means gathering of people.
Organizations will cease to exist if there were no people to run these organizations even if other things
remain. Accordingly it is the people that primarily make up organizations.
2. Accomplishing goals: an organization is not simply a group of people at a given place. All organizations
have reasons for their existence. These reasons are the goals towards which all organizational efforts are
directed. The degree of achievement of such goals reflects the overall performance and effectiveness of
the organization.
3. Group effort: people both as members of the society at large and as a part of an organization interact
with each other and are interdependent since interdependency is necessary for survival and success.

Organizational behavior
The organization’s work get done through people individually or collectively, on their own or in collaboration
with technology. Therefore, the management of organizational behavior is central to management task – a task
that involves the capacity to “understand” the behavior pattern of individuals, groups and organizations, to
“predict” what behavioral responses will be elicited by various managerial actions and finally to use this
understanding and these predictions to achieve control.

Organizational behavior can be defined as “the study of human behavior in an organizational setting the
interface between human behavior and the organizational context, and the organization itself.”

The above definition has three facets - the individual behavior, the organization and the interface between the
two. Each individual brings to an organization a unique set of beliefs values attitudes and other personal
characteristics and these characteristics of all individuals must interact with each other in order to create an
organizational setting.

The organizational behavior is specifically concerned with work related behavior that takes place in
organizations. Organizational behavior is a synthesis of many fields of study and is built upon contributions
from a number of behavioral disciplines. The predominant area of psychology is concerned with the study of
individual behavior behavioral disciplines affect the group dynamics and the organizational system. The
interdisciplinary influences on organizational behaviors are as follows
1. Psychology: Psychology is a science that seeks to study, understand, measure, explain and possibly
change the behavior of humans. Relative to organizational environment, it assists in understanding
motivation at work, individual and interpersonal perceptions, functioning of personality, effects of
training, leadership effectiveness, job satisfaction and attitude measurement. It also studies such
behavior patterns as fatigue, boredom and monotony that impede efficient work performance. It also
studies methodology for behavior modification so as to facilitate replication of desirable behaviors.

2. Sociology: Sociology as a science has a major impact on the field of organizational behavior. It involves
the study of social systems in which individuals exercise their social roles in relation to their fellow
human beings, be it within the family or within the organization. Some of the organizational processes
considered our group dynamics, organizational structure, bureaucracy, power and conflict.
3. Social psychology: While psychology deals with individual behavior and sociology deals with group
behavior, the social psychology examines interpersonal behavior. The social psychologists are
concerned with intergroup collaboration, group decision making and integration of individual needs with
group activities. Another area under investigation by social scientists is the effect of change on
individuals and how people adjust to change both in individual and group context.

4. Industrial Psychology: Industrial psychology helps to understand the individual reactions to industrial
environment. It involves selection and placement of individuals into particular jobs through
psychological tests, study of mental health as affected by physical industrial environment, impact of
organizational structure on human performance and the types of jobs affecting safety and morale of
workers.

5. Anthropology: Anthropology primarily studies the cultural impact on individual behavior. It is our
cultural heritage that builds our value system and our sense of right and wrong which in turn affects our
norms of acceptable behavior. The differences in behavior under the same set of circumstances can be
traced to cultural upbringing and the values learnt in the cultural environment. Thus the behavior to
some degree can be predicted on the basis of cultural generalities.

6. Political science: Political science, even though considered as the study of political systems has many
ingredients that directly affect human behavior in organizations. Since politics dominates every
organization to some degree. Many themes of interest directly related to organizational behaviors are
political manipulation, allocation of power, conflict and conflict resolution, coalition for power and self
interest enhancement.

7. Economics: Economics aids in the understanding of economic conditions at any given time. Economic
policies of the government, allocation of scarce resources to different competing alternatives and all
those factors affect the organizational climate. Organizational behavior has learnt a great deal from such
economic factors as labour market dynamics, cost benefit analysis marginal utility analysis, human
resource planning and forecasting, and decision making.

8. Engineering: Engineering, especially the industrial engineering branch, has contributed significantly in
the areas of time and motion study, work measurement, work flow analysis job design and wage and
salary administration. Each of these areas have some impact on organizational behavior.

9. Medicine: Medicine is perhaps the newest field affecting organizational behavior. The primary area of
interest is work related stress, tension and depression. The study of causes and consequences of stress
and use of medical drugs to reduce it, is fast becoming an area of study within the organizational setting.

10. Semantics: Semantics, one of the more recent disciplines, helps in the study of communications within
the organization. Misunderstood and misdirected communication or simply lack of communication
creates many behavioral problems. Accordingly total, right and properly understood communication is
very important in effective and efficient performance as per directives.
Challenges and opportunities for organizational behavior

Organizational behavior is a dynamic subject. It is ever evolving, keeping in mind, specially the progress in
science and technology, changes in the commercial and economic world, complexities of job itself, etc. This
continually changing field of organizational behavior throws up many challenges and opportunities for the
managers, some of which are discussed below:

1. Globalisation organizations are no longer constrained by regional or National borders. Today's business
is mostly market driven where the demands exist irrespective of distance between locations, climatic
conditions. The business operations are expanded to gain the market share and remain on the top of the
rank. Globalisation affects managerial skills in at least two ways: managing a work force that is likely to
have very different needs aspirations and attitudes from the ones in their home countries; and
understanding the culture of local people and how it has shaped them and accordingly to learn to adapt
one's management style to these differences is very critical for success of business operations. One of
the main personality traits required to handle this is to have sensitivity to understand the individual
differences among people and exhibit tolerance to it.
Managing workforce diversity workforce diversity is one of the most important and broad-based challenges
currently facing organizations while globalisation focuses on differences between people from different
countries workforce diversity addresses the differences among people within the given countries it means
employing different categories of employees who are heterogeneous in terms of gender race ethnicity relation
community physically disadvantaged elderly people et cetera the primary reason to employee heterogeneous
category of employees is to type the talents and potentialities harnessing the innovativeness obtaining a
synergistic effect among the diverse workforce the aim is to treat everyone alike and recognise individual
differences and respond to those differences in ways that will ensure employee retention and greater
productivity if workforce diversity is managed effective management is likely to acquire greater benefits such
as creativity and innovation as well as improving decision making skills by providing different perspectives on
the problems
Total quality management tqm is a philosophy of management that is driven by the constant attainment of
customer satisfaction through the continuous improvement of all organizational processes and effort is required
to improve both quality and productivity that must influence the employees employees are the major force in
carrying out changes but also will participate actively in Planning those changes regular communication both
formal and informal with all staff at all levels is a must two way communication at all levels must be promoted
identifying training needs and relating them with individual capabilities and requirements is a must top
management participation and commitment and a culture of continuous improvement must be established
Improving people skills technological changes structural changes environmental changes are accelerated at a
faster rate in organizations only if the employees and executives are equipped to possess the required skills to
adapt to these changes that two different categories of skills managerial skills and Technical skills some
managerial skills include listening skills motivating skills planning and organising skills leaving skills problem
solving skills decision making skills etc. These skills can be enhanced by organising a series of training and
development programmes career development programmes induction and socialization
Empowering people empowerment is defined as putting employees in charge of what they do by eliciting some
sort of ownership in them the concept of self managed teams where workers operate largely without a boss is
used by many organizations due to the implementation of empowerment concepts across all the levels the
relationship between managers and the employees is reshaped and in doing so manages now have to learn how
to give up control and employees have to learn how to take responsibility for their work and take appropriate
decisions if all the employees are empowered if will drastically change the type of leadership styles power
relationships the way the work is designed and the style in which organizations are structured
Coping with temporary nested a change is an ongoing activity for most managers the concept of continuous
improvement employees constant change in the past there used to be a long period of stability which was
occasionally broken up by short period of change but at the present the change process is an ongoing activity
you to competitiveness in developing new products and services with better features everyone in the
organization today faces permanent temporary nurse the actual jobs that workers perform are in a permanent
State of flux so workers need to continually update their knowledge and skills to perform new job requirement
moreover in order to cope with temporary nice they have to learn to live with flexibility spontaneity and
unpredictability
Motivating Innovation and change successful organizations must Foster Innovation and change otherwise they
will become extinct in due course of time and from their field of business which we will go to those
organizations that maintain flexibility continually improve the quality and beat the competition with a constant
stream of innovative products and services so it's a challenge for managers to stimulate employee's creativity
and tolerance for change.