Management Series: Introduction to OB

 The Field of Organizational Behaviour (OB)

Learning Outcomes:

1. Define organizational behaviour (OB).
2. Identify the major behavioural science disciplines that contribute to OB.
3. Identify managers’ challenges and opportunities in applying OB concepts.

Overview

• This topic introduces the concept of organizational behaviour.  The text's focus is that coupling individual understanding of behaviour gained through experience with that gained through systematic organizational behaviour (OB) analysis will help managers become more effective.
• Many of the important challenges being faced by today’s managers are described, as are the three levels of OB study.  The outline of the text is described in relation to these three levels.
  

Introduction

• Organizational behaviour looks at how individuals, groups, and structures can influence the behaviour within an organization.  The study is done so that we can use the knowledge to improve organizational outcomes and thereby its effectiveness. 
• Some key areas we will look at in this course are aspects of jobs and work and how they impact organizational effectiveness.  We will also look at work aspects such as absenteeism, employee turnover and productivity to see how various theories or practices influence these behaviours.  In addition, we will look at the intersection of human performance and management and how various practices can improve performance.

OB is a Systematic Study

• When we talk about engaging in a systematic study we are talking about looking at relationships.  By doing so we can better determine cause and effect and then by applying scientific evidence to our conclusions we are better able to predict behaviour. Evidence-based management (EBM) complements systematic study by applying scientific evidence to managerial decisions.
  • The vast majority of theories and models of human behaviour fall into two basic categories: an internal perspective and an external perspective. The internal perspective looks at workers’ minds to understand their behaviour. It is psychodynamically oriented, and its proponents understand human behaviour in terms of the thoughts, feelings, past experiences, and needs of the individual.
• Hence, OB is an applied behavioural science built on contributions from a number of behavioural disciplines, mainly psychology and social psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Psychology’s contributions have been mainly at the individual or micro level of analysis, while the other disciplines have contributed to our understanding of macro concepts such as group processes and organization.
• Early industrial/organizational psychologists studied the problems of fatigue, boredom, and other working conditions that could impede efficient work performance. More recently, their contributions have expanded to include learning, perception, personality, emotions, training, leadership effectiveness, needs, and motivational forces, job satisfaction, decision-making processes, performance appraisals, attitude measurement, employee-selection techniques, work design, and job stress
• Anthropology: the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities. Anthropologists’ work on cultures and environments has helped us understand differences in fundamental values, attitudes, and behaviour between people in different countries and within different organizations. Much of our current understanding of organizational culture, organizational environments, and differences among national cultures is a result of the work of anthropologists or those using their methods

 

Why Learn OB?

• In the workplace today there are many challenges and opportunities in the area of Organizational Behavior.  Understanding OB has never been more important for managers as organizations are changing at a much more rapid pace than historically seen.
• Management must recognise that the behavioural dimension embodies patterns of relationships between individuals and groups and this will produce different reactions, responses and behaviours according to how management structures the organisation.
• During economic difficulties, the need for effective managers is heightened.  Anyone can manage during good times, it is much tougher to manage through economic struggles.  Often when there are economic pressures managers are forced to make decisions based on resource constraints.  These situations may include laying off employees, motivating employees when there are limited resources, and encouraging employees when they are stressed about their futures.
• Keep in mind that the goal of OB is to understand and then predict behaviour so that we can improve organizational effectiveness.  This assumes there is consistency in behaviour and that we can systematically study to develop patterns that will increase the accuracy of our predictions.

It is more critical now than ever before, to learn OB concepts because we are in a rapidly changing environment. Managing organisational behaviour during changing times is challenging for at least three other reasons:

1. With the increasing globalization of organizations’ operating territory,
2. The increasing diversity of organizational workforces, and
3. The continuing demand for higher levels of moral and ethical behaviour at work.

In a dynamic and changing world, it is vital to adjust and adapt the organisation to changes that impact its internal and external environment. This can only be achieved if the people within the organisation are prepared to change. The behavioural approach will facilitate the achievement of such change by providing management with an understanding of individual psychology.

Managing organisations in a dynamic world require leadership as well as efficient management. The behavioural approach provides an understanding of the nature of leadership and its relevant traits, styles and power bases. It also recognises that different behaviours will be required in different situations for leadership to be continuously effective.

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Did You Know? The key work which defines the human relations approach comes from Elton Mayo's studies at the Hawthorne Plant of the Western Electric Company between 1927 and 1932. The background was that the researchers were trying to find the optimum level of lighting in the plant in order to maximise productivity. As such, it started out as a strictly scientific management approach. However, the surprising finding was that productivity increased among the group of workers being studied both when the level of illumination was increased and when it was decreased. Subsequent studies by Mayo led to the conclusion that what was affecting performance was the special attention being paid to the group of workers rather than any external physical factors. Their working lives had suddenly become more interesting because of the experiments which were taking place, they felt important and valued, and the result was increased enthusiasm for their jobs and higher output. This phenomenon has become known as the "Hawthorne effect". Having established from this that performance was related to psychological and sociological factors as well as purely physical ones and the organisational structure, Mayo went on to investigate what other forces were at play in the workplace. In summary, his findings were that: workers are strongly motivated by social needs (for social interaction, self-esteem and recognition, a sense of belonging and security) and seek satisfaction of those needs over and above any others, including the need for money once a certain level of remuneration as been achieved; individual workers belonged to groups at the workplace which had their own codes of behaviour, leaders and means of enforcement of the group norms (which included notions of what appropriate output standards were), constituting a whole "informal" organisation within the formal one. These startling discoveries shifted the entire emphasis in organisation and management thinking. Mayo demonstrated that human attitudes and behaviour seem to be what govern activity at the workplace, and what was required was to examine the needs and interaction of individuals, the ways in which groups operate and what this means for management. From the simple experiments of Elton Mayo, a vast body of work has now been built up about the nature of the human dimension to organisations.