Organizational Behavior

Organizational Behavior:

Organizational Behavior is the systematic study of the actions and attitudes that people exhibit within Organizations. The actions (or behaviors) that we are primarily concerned about are the ones that have proved to be determinants of employee performance. They are:

1. Productivity

2. Absenteesm

3. Turnover

4. Organizational Citizenship

The disciplines that have contributed to the study of Organizational Behavior are:

* Psychology

* Sociology

* Social Psychology

* Anthropology

* Political science

Of these Psychology's contribution is focused on the study of the Individual, and the rest are focused on group behavior and organizational systems.

The main goals of Organizational Behavior are to explain, predict and control human behavior in an organizational system. The third objective of OB, i.e. Control is the most controversial, because of its effect on Personal Behavior.

Managers can use today's OB concepts in a variety of different situations. For example, if you are on a foreign assignment and are asked to manage a foreign workforce, or if you have to work or manage an ethnically diverse team, you will be faced with a challenge of dealing with people whose cultures, attitudes and aspirations maybe very different from yours. This is where the ability to explain, predict and control behavior will become very necessary.

Managing workforce diversity is also a huge challenge facing managers today. The old "melting-pot" approach has been found to be not as effective, because people have been found to be hesitant to cast aside their cultural, ethnic, racial, gender or religious differences in an organization. Since assimilation has proved to be harder, Organizations are faced with the reverse problem where they have to be more accommodating of the differences in the workforce.

Individual values are classified using two different approaches:

1. The Rokeach Value