ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Topics Covered
Definition of OB What managers do? Why study of OB ? Where managers work? Management Functions Management Roles Management Skills Contributing disciplines to the OB field Challenges and Opportunities for OB

Organizational Behavior: Defined

A field of study that deals with the human behavior in organization. It is the analysis of how people behave both as individuals and as group in an organization and is becoming increasingly important now-a-days to extract the maximum output from employees. It also studies the various aspects of an organization that affect the human behavior like organizational change, structure and culture.

Why study of OB ?
OB helps individual to understand him as well as others better. To work as a team it is very important to understand individual behavior of team members. OB is helpful to managers to understand their employees better and to get efficient work done from them. OB helps in nourishing relations between employees. OB focuses on improving productivity, reducing absenteeism and turnover and increasing job satisfaction and organization commitment.

What managers do?

Managers are individuals who achieve goals through other people Managerial activities includes
Decision making Allocating resources Directing activities of others to achieve goals

Where managers work? (organization)

Organization is a consciously coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or a set of goals

Management Functions (Henry Fayol)

Planning

Organizing

Leading

Controlling

A process that includes defining goals, establishing strategy and developing plans to coordinate activities

Determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom and where decisions are to be made

A function that includes motivating employees, directing others, selecting the most effective communication channels and resolving conflicts

Monitoring activities to ensure they are being accomplished as planned and correcting any significant deviations

Mintzbergs Managerial Roles

Interpersonal Roles Figurehead Symbolic head; required to perform a number of routine duties of a legal or social nature Responsible for the motivation and direction of employees Maintains a network of outside contacts who provide favors and information Receives wide variety of information; serves as a nerve centre of internal and external information of the organization Transmits information received from outsiders or from other employees to members of the organization Transmits information to the outsiders on organizations plans, policies, actions and results; serves as expert on organizations industry Leader Liaison Informational Roles Monitor

Disseminator

Spokesperson

Decisional Roles Entrepreneur Searches organization and its environment for opportunities and initiates projects to bring about change Responsible for corrective action when organization faces important, unexpected disturbances Makes or approves significant organizational decisions Responsible for representing the organization at major negotiations

Disturbance Handler

Resource Allocator Negotiator

Management Skills(Robert Katz)

Technical Skills
The ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise

Human Skills
The ability to work with, understand and motivate other people, both individually and in groups

Conceptual Skills
The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations

Challenges and Opportunities for OB

1. Responding to globalization 2. Managing workforce diversity 3. Improving quality and productivity 4. Responding to the labor shortage 5. Improving customer service 6. Improving people skills 7. Empowering people 8. Coping with Temporariness 9. Stimulation innovation and change 10. Helping employees balance work/life conflicts 11. Improving ethical behavior

1. Responding to globalization :

Challenges and Opportunities for OB

a. Increased foreign assignments( challenge- different needs and attitudes of workforce ; opportunities- growth chance in foreign countries) b. Working with people from different culture(working with employees, bosses from different culture, what motivates you may not motivate them, your approach can make them uncomfortable, it is important to understand their culture and religion to work effectively with them. c. Coping with anti capitalism backlash(growth is accepted in US, Canada, Australia etc. but in France it is not so, because in France middle east law is totally different for various categories for example a rich person violated some traffic rules there and he was fines 217000 $. Mentality of those people is to soak rich. d. Differentiation of labor cost(in Canada 6$ is minimum wage rate but in china it is 30 cent, but American use Chinese products, clothes, electronics because these are cheap, but Chinese managers cant work in advance countries due to high labor cost and behavior of people. e. Managing people during the war time(it is very difficult to manage work force during war time because during war there is a fear all around and people may feel difficult to work and perform during those circumstances. i.e. Arab countries.

2. Managing workforce diversity It means mixture of people. In India different categories are working together and their thinking and culture is totally different i.e.
SC,ST,BC EX-DEFENCE PERSONS DISABLED PERSONS GENDER AGE CONTRACT BASIS/PERMANENT BASIS

3. IMPROVING QUALITY AND PRODUCTIVITY: It needs extensive employee involvement. Quality maintenance Process reengineering

4.Improving customer service Example: John Abraham came to know At 10.00 pm

that his American express gold card has lost and he requests to the bank on customer care line to issue a new one and he it could have been possible just because of good customer care service because the employees serving at customer care desk are fully satisfied from job and are really helpful.

5. Improving peoples skills It is very challenging for manager to improve peoples skills because resistance to change is always there.

6. Stimulating innovations of change An organizations employees can be the reason for innovation and change or can be major block

7. Coping with temporariness Most of the managers work in the climate of temporariness. Bank of Punjab, PNB employees are trained to use computers but it was not a part of their job 20 years back. Earlier assignment of jobs were permanent but now new duties can be assigned any line. Todays employees have to live with flexibility. Ob helps in controlling and overcome the resistance to change.

8. Helping employees balance work-life conflicts Employees want a job which gives them flexibility in work schedule. So that they can manage work life conflicts. Earlier timing was 8 hours a day from Monday to Friday but now it has increased, which is disturbing. Ob helps managers to design workplace and job that can help employees.

9. Responding to labor shortage To get work from less employees is very difficult but if a manager understand his employees well then he can get all work done through less employees also, all he need is just to understand behavior of his employees.

10.Empowering people To empower employees with the technical know-hows

11. Improving ethical behavior Due to excessive pressure worker may break rules and can be a part of questionable activities. OB helps in managing their behavior in this kind of situations.

Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field

Organizational behaviour is an applied behavioural science that is built on contributions from a number of behavioural disciplines. The major areas are psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and political science. Psychologys contributions have been mainly at the individual or micro level of analysis, while the other four disciplines have contributed to our understanding of macro concepts such as group processes and organization.

Contributing Disciplines to the OB Field

Psychology The science that seeks to measure, explain and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals
Learning Motivation Personality Emotions Perception Training

Leadership effectiveness

Psychology

Job satisfaction Individual decision making Performance appraisal Attitude management Employee selection Work design Work stress

Individual

Sociology The study of people in relation to their fellow human beings

Sociology

Group dynamics Work teams Communication Power Conflict Formal organization theory Organizational technology

Organization change
Organizational culture

Intergroup behavior

Organization system

Group

Social Psychology An area within psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology and that focuses on the influence of people on one another

Behavioral change

Attitude change
Social Psychology

Communication Group processes

Group

Group decision making

Anthropology The study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities
Comparative values Comparative attitudes Cross cultural analysis Anthropology Organizational culture Organizational environment Group

Organization system

Political Science The study of the behavior of individuals and groups within a political environment

Political Science

Conflict Intra organizational politics Power

Organization system

References
Book
Robbins Stephen P., Judge Timothy A., Sanghi Seema; Organizational Behavior; Chapter 1; 13th Edition; Page 6-30