Meaning of OB

The Smart and Healthy Workplace Awards are given every year to organizations that create friendly, creative, healthy, and safe working environments for their employees. The award panel comprising eminent industry leaders and academicians assesses the companies across five areas including employee participation, health and safety, employee development, work-life balance, and employee recognition. The top three companies are selected by the award panel from a pool of over 100 nominated companies. The winners of this years awards are: PharmaLife Corporation, Mindcell Mechanica, and Weyland Dynamic. PharmaLife Corporation: The company had a partnership with a top Indian university to conduct training programs for employees in areas such as, leadership, team building, stress management, collaborative decision making, and motivation. Employees reported less conflict and improved job performance. Mindcell Mechanica: Based in Kolkata, this mobile solution provider had helped its employees develop soft skills through workshops and seminars and encouraged them to test new ideas during work-related activities. This had increased employee participation and satisfaction. Weyland Dynamic: The company had witnessed 50 percent less attrition compared to the previous year. This is attributed to the fact that Weyland had initiated an employee wellness program and created an ombudsman for employee work and personal issues. Now, that you have read the information presented, ask yourself how does paying careful attention to human behavior in workplace settings plays an important role in the success of an organization? In this unit, you will be introduced to the concept of OB, its evolution, the different management functions and their relevance to OB, the challenges and opportunities of OB, and the contributions of other disciplines to OB.

Definitions of OB
Organizational behavior or OB is the study of human behavior, attitudes, and performance in organizations. The study of OB is mainly concerned with the psychosocial, interpersonal, and behavioral dynamics in organizations. Stephen P.Robbins defines OB as A field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organizations effectiveness." According to this definition, OB is a field of study with a common body of knowledge. It studies the three determinants of behavior in organizations. They are individuals, groups, and structures. It applies the knowledge acquired about individuals and groups, and the effect of structure on behavior in order to make organizations work more effectively. Now, let us look at how understanding the organizational context helps in comprehending OB.

Structures, group,individual

Determinants of Behavior in Organizations

The Organizational Context

A comprehensive understanding of OB requires both an understanding of human behavior and an understanding of the organizational context within which human behavior is practiced. The organizational context is the specific setting within which OB is enacted. It includes:

Organizations as Systems
Organizations are systems of interacting components, such as people, tasks, technology, and structure. These internal components also interact with components in the organizations task environment. Organizations as open systems have people, technology, structure, and purpose, which interact with elements in the organizations environment.

The Formal and Informal Organization

The formal organization is the part of the system that has legitimacy and official recognition. The informal organization is the unofficial part of the organization. The informal organization was first fully appreciated as a result of the Hawthorne studies conducted during the 1920s and 1930s. It was during the interview study, the third of the four Hawthorne studies that the researchers began to develop a fuller appreciation for the informal elements of the organization.

Nature of OB
Organizational behavior is an eclectic field of study that integrates the behavioral sciences into the study of human behavior within organizations. Human behavior in organizations is not an exact science. One of the failures of the scientific management movement was its belief that human behavior can be easily predicted. OB involves the study of abstract ideas, such as valance and expectancy in motivation, as well as the study of tangible matters, such as observable behaviors and physiological symptoms of distress at work. Therefore, learning about OB is a multidimensional activity. It involves three stages: mastery of basic objective knowledge, skill development, and application of knowledge and skills. Mastery of basic objective Knowledge

Skill development

Applicaqtion of Skill & Knowledge

Three Stages of Learning about OB

Mastery of Basic Objective Knowledge

Acquiring objective knowledge requires basic and applied research. It involves the cognitive mastery of theories, conceptual models, and research findings.

Skill Development

The study of OB requires skill development and the mastery of abilities is essential to successful functioning in organizations. Some of the essential skills identified by the U.S. Department of Labor are:

Resource management skills, such as time management. Information management skills, such as data interpretation. Personal interaction skills, such as team work. Systems behavior and performance skills, such as cause-effect relations. Technology utilization skills, such as troubleshooting.

Developing skills is different from acquiring objective knowledge in that it requires structured practice and feedback.

Application of Knowledge and Skills

It requires the integration of objective knowledge and skill development in order to apply both appropriately in specific organizational settings.

Scope of OB
Cooperative relationships help organizations to achieve their objectives. OB provides the means to understand and achieve cooperative group relationships through interaction, reshuffling of members among groups, avoidance of winlose situations, and focus on the overall group objectives.

Management Functions
Managers get things done through the efforts of other people. They make decisions, allocate resources, and guide the activities of others to attain organizational goals. The four basic management functions that are performed by managers are: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.

Basic Management Functions

Planning
It is a function that includes defining an organizations goals, establishing the strategy for accomplishing those goals, and developing plans to coordinate activities.

Organizing
This function involves determining what tasks need to be completed, who is to do them, how the tasks need to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made.

Leading
This function includes motivating employees, directing the activities of others, selecting the most effective communication channels, and resolving conflicts among the organizations members.

Controlling
This function involves monitoring activities to make sure that they are being achieved as planned and correcting any significant deviations.

Management Roles and Skills

Management Roles
Managers need to play multiple roles while performing their duties. In the late 1960s, Henry Mintzberg, a graduate student at MIT, studied the case of five managers and their roles at their work places. He concluded that managers perform various highly interrelated roles. These roles can be grouped into: interpersonal roles, informational roles, and decisional roles. Figure 1-2 shows the three categories of roles performed by managers.

Figure 1-2: Mintzbergs Managerial Roles

Management Skills
Managers need to be equipped with various skills and competencies to achieve the organizations goals. Robert Katz has identified three essential management skills: technical, human, and conceptual.

Technical Skills
Managers should have the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. Some of the technical skills required by managers include: accountancy, marketing, information systems, and so on. Many managers develop their technical skills on the job.

Human Skills
Managers should have the ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually and in groups. Many managers are technically proficient, but lack interpersonal skills. Managers need to be good listeners, understand the needs of others, and solve organizational conflicts.

Conceptual Skills
Managers should possess the mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations. They should be able to rationally process and interpret information.

Effective versus Successful Managerial Activities

Fred Luthans and his associates studied more than 450 managers and focused on the activities that managers engage in. They grouped the activities into: traditional management, communication, human resources management, and networking.

Traditional management - Decision making, planning, and controlling Communication - Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork Human resource management - Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and training Networking - Socializing, politicking, and interacting with others