Organizational Behavior

By Masud Mohammad Pervez

Every organization have their own objectives to achieve the ultimate target. To achieve those objectives the management should operate their employees in a proper way. In this lesson we will try to understand what is organizational behavior means and what are the main goals of erganizational behavior.

Keith Davis defined “Organizational Behavior is the study and application of knowledge about how people as individual or as groups act within organizations.”

Again it can be said that OB is like a tool, by which the mgt. teams are understood or justified the nature of employees and take an appropriate decision to lead the organization purport. At last we can say that OB is valuable for examining the dynamics of relationships with the small groups, both formal teams and informal groups.

There are some goals of organizational behavior which are as follows:

Describe: The first goal is to describe, systematically how people behave under a variety of conditions. Achieving this goal allows managers to communicate about human behavior at work using a common language.

Understand: A second goal is to understand any people behave as they do. The managers would be frustrated if they could talk about behavior of their employees, but not understand the reasons behind those actions.

Predict: The managers would have capacity to predict which employees might be dedicated and productive or which ones might have absent, cause problem. And thus the managers could take preventive actions.

Control: The final goal of OB is to control and develop some human activity at work. Since managers are held responsible for performance outcome, they are vitally interested in being able to make an impact on employee behavior, skill development, team effort, and productivity. Managers need to be able to improve results through the actions they and their employees take, and organizational behavior can aid them in their pursuit of this goal.

Organizations operate their functional activities by some elements, which affect organizations.

People: People make up the internal social system in the organization. They consist of individuals and groups. Groups may be large or small, formal and informal, official or unofficial. Human organization changes every day. People are living, thinking and feeling beings that created the organization and try to achieve the objectives and goals.

Structure: Structure defines the formal relationship and use of people in the organization. Different people in an organization are given different roles and they have certain relationship with others. Those people have to be related in some structural way so that their work can be effectively coordinated.

Technology: The technology imparts the physical and economic conditions within which people work. With their bear hands people can do nothing. So they are given assistance of building, machines, tools, processes and resources. The nature of technology depends very much on the nature of the organization, influences the work or working conditions.

Social System: Social system provide external environment within which organization operates. A single organization can not exist alone. It is a part of the whole. A single organization can not give everything and therefore there are many other organizations. All these organizations influence each other.

In this lesson we are going to discuss about the fundamental concepts of organizational behavior which is related with the people and the organization and after that we will discuss the various models of organizational behavior.

In every field of social science, or even physical science, has a philosophical foundation of basic concepts that guide its development. There are some certain philosophical concepts in organizational behavior also. The concepts are-

Individual differences:

Every individual in the world is different from others. This idea is supported by science. Each person is different from all others, probably in million ways, just as each persons DNA profile is different.

The idea of individual difference comes originally from psychology. From the day of birth, each person is unique, and individual experiences after birth tend to make people even more different.

Perception:

Peoples perceptions are also differ when they see an object. Two people can differently present a same object. And this is occurring for their experiences. A person always organizes and interprets what he sees according to his lifetime of experience and accumulated value.

Employees also see work differently for differ in their personalities, needs, demographics factors, past experiences and social surrounding.

A whole person:

An employee’s personal life is not detached from his working life. As an example, A women who attend the office at 8:30 AM is always anxious for her children’s school time (if her children able to attend the school or not). As a result, its impact falls on her concentration that means her working life. For this reason, we cannot separate it. So manager should treat an employee as a whole person.

Motivated behavior:

An employee has so many needs inside him. So, they want to fulfill those needs. That’s why; they had to perform well in the organization. Some motivations are needed to enrich the quality of work. A path toward increased need fulfillment is the better way of enriches the quality of work.

Desire for involvement:

Every employee is actively seeking opportunities at work to involve in decision-making problems. They hunger for the chance to share what they know and to learn from the experience. So, organization should provide them a chance to express their opinions, ideas and suggestion for decision-making problem. A meaningful involvement can bring mutual benefit for both parties.

Value of the person:

An employee wants to be treated separately from other factor of production (land, capital, labor). They refuse to accept the old idea that they are simply treated as economic tools because they are best creation of almighty Allah. For this reason, they want to be treated with carrying respect, dignity and other things from their employers and society.

The nature of organization

There are two assumptions as to nature of organization.

Social Systems:

Organizations are social systems and governed by social and psychological laws. They have social roles and status. Their behavior influenced by their group’s individual drives. Organization environment in a social system is dynamic. All parts of the system are interdependent.

Mutual interest:

In order to develop the organization behavior mutually of interest organizations and people is necessary. Organizations need people and people in tern need organizations. People satisfy their needs through organization and organization accomplish their goal through people.

Ethics: In order to attract and retain valuable employees in an era in which good workers are constantly required away, ethical treatment is necessary. To succeed, organization must treat employees in an ethical fashion. Every Company is required to establish codes of ethics, publicized statements of ethical values, provided ethics training, rewarded employees for notable ethical behavior, publicized positive role models, and set up internal procedures to handle misconduct.

Autocratic Model

The autocratic model depends on power. Those who are in command must have the power to demand “you do this-or else,” meaning that an employee who does not follow orders will be penalized.

In an autocratic environment the managerial orientation is formal, official authority. This authority is delegated by right of command over the people to it applies.

Under autocratic environment the employee is obedience to a boss, not respect for a manager.

The psychological result for employees is dependence on their boss, whose power to hire, fire, and “perspire” them is almost absolute.

The boss pays minimum wages because minimum performance is given by employees. They are willing to give minimum performance-though sometimes reluctantly-because they must satisfy subsistence needs for themselves and their families. Some employees give higher performance because of internal achievement drives, because they personally like their boss, because the boss is “a natural-born leader,” or because of some other factor; but most of them give only minimum performance.

The Custodial Model

A successful custodial approach depends on economic resources.

The resulting managerial orientation is toward money to pay wages and benefits.

Since employees’ physical needs are already reasonably met, the employer looks to security needs as a motivating force. If an organization does not have the wealth to provide pensions and pay other benefits, it cannot follow a custodial approach.

The custodial approach leads to employee dependence on the organization. Rather than being dependence on their boss for their weekly bread, employees now depend on organizations for their security and welfare.

Employees working in a custodial environment become psychologically preoccupied with their economic rewards and benefits.

As a result of their treatment, they are well maintained and contended. However, contentment does not necessarily produce strong motivation; it may produce only passive cooperation. The result tends to be those employees do not perform much more effectively than under the old autocratic approach.

The Supportive Model

The supportive model depends on leadership instead of power or money. Through leadership, management provides a climate to help employees grow and accomplish in the interests of the organization the things of which they are capable.

The leader assumes that workers are not by nature passive and resistant to organizational needs, but that they are made so by an inadequately supportive climate at work. They will take responsibility, develop a drive to contribute, and improve themselves if management will give them a chance. Management orientation, therefore, is to support the employee’s job performance rather than to simply support employee benefit payments as in the custodial approach.

Since management supports employees in their work, the psychological result is a feeling of participation and task involvement in the organization. Employee may say “we” instead of “they” when referring to their organization.

Employees are more strongly motivated than by earlier models because of their status and recognition needs are better met. Thus they have awakened drives for work.

The Collegial Model

A useful extension of the supportive model is the collegial model. The term “collegial” relates to a body of people working together cooperatively.

The collegial model depends on management’s building a feeling of partnership with employees. The result is that employees feel needed and useful. They feel that managers are contributing also, so it is easy to accept and respect their roles in their organization. Managers are seen as joint contributors rather than as bosses.

The managerial orientation is toward teamwork. Management is the coach that builds a better team

The employee’s response to this situation is responsibility. For example employees produce quality work not because management tells them to do so or because the inspector will catch them if they do not, but because they feel inside themselves an obligation to provide others with high quality. They also feel an obligation to uphold quality standards that will bring credit to their jobs and company.

The psychological result of the collegial approach for the employee is self-discipline. Feeling responsible, employees discipline themselves for performance on the team in the same way that the members of a football team discipline themselves to training standards and the rules of the game.

In this kind of environment employees normally feel some degree of fulfillment, worthwhile contribution, and self-actualization, even though the amount may be modest in some situation. This self-actualization will lead to moderate enthusiasm in performance.

The System Model

An emerging model of organization behavior is the system model. It is the result of a strong search for higher meaning at work by many of today’s employees; they want more than just a paycheck and job security from their jobs. Since they are being asked to spend many hours of their day at work, they want a work context there that is ethical, infused with integrity and trust, and provides an opportunity to experience a growing sense of community among coworkers.

To accomplish this, managers must increasingly demonstrate a sense of caring and compassion, being sensitive to the needs of a diverse workforce with rapidly changing needs and complex personal and family needs.

In response, many employees embrace the goal of organizational effectiveness, and reorganize the mutuality of company-employee obligations in a system viewpoint. They experience a sense of psychological ownership for the organization and its product and services.

They go beyond the self-discipline of the collegial approach until they reach a state of self-motivation, in which they take responsibility for their own goals and actions.

As a result, the employee needs that are met are wide-ranging but often include the highest-order needs (e.g., social, status, esteem, autonomy, and self actualization).

Because it provides employees an opportunity to meet these needs through their work as their work as well as understand the organization’s perspectives, this new model can engender employees’ passion and commitment to organizational goals. They are inspired; they feel important; they believe in the usefulness and viability of their system for the common good.