Organizational Behavior: Concept, Characteristics, Importance

Organizational Behavior: Concept, Characteristics, Importance | Concept of Organization

Concept of Organization

Many activities in our daily life are concerned with organizations. Such organizations supply different goods and provide various services to facilitate our life. In general, organizations are the social units formed with the joint effort of many people. Organizations are established with the people to accomplish having common objectives with joint efforts. Schools, colleges, universities, hospitals department stores, NGOs, INGO, political parties, clubs, etc. are some examples of organizations. On the basis of objectives, an organization can be a business and social organization. Business organizations set the objectives of making a profit while social organizations set the objective of serving society.

Supporting these definitions and explanations, we can conclude that organizations are the forms of human association for the attainment of common goals in cooperation and coordination of joint effort. Organizations can be large or small but they set the fixed relationship between the individual with a certain division of responsibilities and authority. Authority defines the leadership which is obliged to fix the guidelines and procedures to attain common goals. Organizations perform various activities to attain predetermined goals in a dynamic business environment.

Concept of Organizational Behavior

Organizational behavior is the study of employee behavior in an organization. Employees are the backbone of any organization as their performance leads to organizational success. Human resources are the most dynamic resource among all resources of the organization because of their feeling and interpretation capabilities. People have different behavior in different situations like being alone, in a group, or while representing the organization. It is essential to know the way people interact within groups and organizations. Thus, the study of human behavior within an organizational setting for the best use of them in organizational benefit is called organizational behavior. It aims to apply a scientific approach to understanding and managing human resources through understanding their behavior. Different theories of organizational behavior can be used for optimizing the human output from individual and group interaction, cooperation, and coordination.

Organizational behavior is concerned with the study of people and their reactions in an organizational social system. It basically focuses on improving the performance of an organization through the optimal use of human resources available in the organization. Organizational behavior includes the study of individual behavior, group behavior, and organizational structure. It examines human behavior in a work setting and determines its impact on job structure, performance, communication, motivation, leadership, etc., and estimates effect in organizational performance.

In conclusion, organizational behavior is an approach of understanding, analyzing, and estimating the impact of individual, group, and organizational behavior and ways of dealing within the organization. It studies the individual psychology regarding how they perceive and react in an individual work setting when they work in a team and represent the organization. OB provides an important insight for formulating plans to improve organizational effectiveness. Does it basically concern about why do people behave differently in an organizational environment? What factors affect job performance, job satisfaction, job commitment, employee interaction, leadership, and managerial styles? And how can such behaviors be used in organizational benefits?

Characteristics of Organizational Behavior

Organizational behavior is a complex and dynamic phenomenon. It is characterized by the following features:

1. Multidisciplinary: Organizational behavior (OB) is developed from different disciplines like psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, etc. This covers such diverse areas to understand and predict individual behavior at the group, and organizational levels. The concepts of learning, perception, attitude, motivation, etc. are borrowed from psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Thus, organizational behavior is multidisciplinary in nature.

2. Goal-oriented: OB is oriented towards achieving organizational objectives. Organizational behavior tries to integrate both individual and organizational objectives so that both are achieved simultaneously. The main concern of OB is to obtain the organizational goals along with fulfilling the individual goals of employees.

3. Individual, group, and organizational study: OB is studied in different levels. We observe that people behave differently while being alone, in a group, and representing the whole organization. It requires studying their behaviors accordingly and estimating the effects in the organization. Thus, OB is a multi-level study at in individual level, group level, and organizational level. OB investigates the influence of each level of behavior on overall organizational effectiveness.

4. Study of human behavior in a dynamic environment: Every organization performs its activities in a dynamic environment. Changes in Political-Legal, Economic, Socio-cultural and Technological environments make the decision-making and implementation process more complex and challenging. OB facilitates several techniques to scan, predict and control the deviant behavior of people. For this, new issues and concepts need to be addressed in an organization. Concepts, issues, and issues under organizational behavior are updating and upgrading with changing situation.

5. Human cause and effect study: OB is a systematic study as it concerns with cause and effect relationship. Conclusions are drawn with evidence but not in intuitions of managers. It completely follows the system. For understanding, predicting, and controlling behavior, OB follows scientific tools, techniques, and decision-making criteria.

6. Normative science: Normative is the technique of testing and verifying before the generalization of fact. Organizational behavior is a normative science as it tests findings of various researches to workplace settings in a different organizational environment. Concepts, theories, and principles under organizational behavior are first tested in different situations.

7. A total system approach: Organization behavior follows a total system approach in analyzing an individual’s behavior keeping in view of psychological framework, interpersonal-orientation group Influence, and social and cultural factors. OB follows the input-processing-output mechanism. According to the total system approach, an organization receives several inputs from its human resources as well as environment such as knowledge, skills, perception, attitude, values, beliefs, etc. at the individual level, group level as well as organization level. Organizational systems like organizational culture, organizational structure, and design, work design and technology, human resource policies and practices, etc. are processed in this system. Human outputs like job satisfaction, citizenship behavior, absenteeism, turnover, productivity, etc. are the output of the system approach. Thus, for higher productivity of an organization, management should follow a total system approach.

8. Humanistic and Optimistic approach: Organizational behavior focuses on the study of human behaviors from a humanistic point of view. It is based on the needs and motivation of people with high concern. Further, OB believes that organizations can use the optimum potential of employees for their creativity, predictive capability. For this, organizational behavior integrates both humanistic and optimistic approaches.

9. Study of behavioral change: Organization behavior is dynamic as it is concerned with changing the behavior of individuals with changing global perspectives. Group norms, values, and interests are changing subjects. OB tries to change the behavior of individuals to make them socially acceptable and organizationally desirable. Dynamic organizational behavior makes people accept organizational change easily.

Importance of Organizational Behavior

The effectiveness of an organization depends upon the effectiveness of the employees. Values. beliefs. attitude and behavior of employees affect the job effectiveness and hence organizational growth With the global business movement; attitude and behavior of employees are also changing. Managers need to understand the behavior at the individual level, group level, and organization level This helps to control the deviant behavior timely. Thus, each manager must be able to understand and implement the concept of OB in an organization. The following points justify the importance of studying OB:

1. Understanding employee perception: Perception is the way in which people understand and think about people, things, events, and situations. It is the leading factor to change the attitude and behavior of people. OB provides sufficient knowledge to understand others’ perceptions. Managers can understand and predict the behavior of employees in a group as well as at the organization level. OB provides particular antecedents (background) cause behavior. This helps to identify controllable and uncontrollable antecedents of behavior.

2. Controlling human behavior: OB provides knowledge to understand and predict human behavior. It borrows theories from various disciplines so that the overall characteristics of employees can be easily understood. It helps managers to identify the deviant behavior of employees and change them as desired. Managers thus can easily maintain a good working environment to improve effectiveness and productivity.

3. Better industrial relations: OB helps to understand the perception, attitude, and behavior of people involved in different responsibilities of an organization. It helps managers to understand problems at an individual level, group level as well as organizational level. Misunderstandings can be solved promptly so that mutual understanding and respect can be maintained. This helps to maintain good industrial relations.

4. Employee motivation: OB suggests a number of tools and techniques to satisfy employees according to their needs and interests. OB identifies individual differences and similarities with understanding people at different levels. Such techniques motivate employees. Motivated employees increase organizational effectiveness.

5. Better utilization of resources: Organizations invest large capital in employee selection, training and development, reward management, and HR maintenance. If it is done without understanding individual needs and interests, such activities may not work for a purpose. OB helps managers to understand individuals correctly so that required and effective programs can be initiated to increase effectiveness. Thus, OB increases in utilization of organizational resources.