Organizational Behavior Trends

Organizational Behavior Plans

The behavior patterns and beliefs that shape an organization's culture have the profound ability to enable or prevent the company from achieving its strategic objectives. By becoming clear about the kind of culture that supports the organization's vision and business strategy, the organization will have the ability to target culture change efforts in order to align its organization's culture to achieve strategic success. The influence of ethics on decision-making, as well as focus on the impact of technology on work-related stress plays a large roll. The values, beliefs, and norms expressed in an organization's actual practices and behavior may be different from what the business strives to be as an organization, and what values it hopes for. Globalization, diversity, being flexible, flat, and networking are all different trends that are part of the ever-changing organizations of today. Increasingly globalized sales, manufacturing, research, management, movement from direct exports to having sales offices in different countries to having manufacturing to all functions spread across the globe, increasingly globalized labor market are all reasons more businesses are becoming more globalized. Diversity covers areas such as workforce getting more heterogeneous sexually, racially, culturally, and individually. Being flexible in an organization is to allow processes and people respond differently to different situations, fewer detailed rules and procedures, encouragement for initiative, lifetime employability, not lifetime employment. When an organization is flat it operates with fewer levels of management, workers that are empowered to make decisions, and have fewer differences in responsibility across levels. When a company is networked they tend to have a cross-unit team structures and typically utilize outsourcing and downsizing, when trying to manage their budgets (Borgatti, 2001).

Influence of Ethics

Sometimes when decisions are made there are certain areas the decision maker must be aware of. They need to know when to be sensitive to morally charged situations. There are some steps that need to be followed when making these types of decisions. Identifying the problem is the first and maybe the most important step in decision making. It helps the decision maker focus on a path to gather the most accurate supporting data available. The decision maker must have the ability to look behind the technical requirements of the job to see the moral dimensions. The use of their ethical resources to determine relevant moral standards involved. They also need to be in touch with their moral intuition. Next the decision maker must think of feasible alternatives to the issue. The person then should ask what the likely consequences are of various decisions. They should remember to take into account good or bad consequences not just for you, your profession, organization or patients, but for all affected persons. Be honest about your own stake in particular outcomes and encourage others to do the same. Use ethical resources to identify morally significant factors in each alternative would be the next step in the process. Principles, moral models, being fair and personal judgments are tools that are used in this step. The next step would be to propose and test possible resolutions. Asking questions are the best tools for this step. Some questions would be what is the impact on the ethical performance of others? Are you making it easier or harder for them to do the right thing? Are you setting a good example? Once these are answered the last thing to do is to choose the decision that is being made. This means accepting responsibility for your choice. It also means accepting the possibility that you might be wrong or that you will make a less than optimal decision. Regardless, the decision was made ethically. Taking the emotion out and looking at the problem will always guide the decision-maker