WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR (OB)?

OB is 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.
WHAT ARE THE CONTRIBUTING DISCIPLINES TO THE OB FIELD?
Organizational behavior is an applied behavioral science that is built upon contributions from a
number of behavioral disciplines. The predominant areas are psychology, sociology, social
psychology, anthropology, and political science.
Psychology
Psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of
humans and other animals. Early industrial/organizational psychologists concerned themselves
with problems of fatigue, boredom, and other factors relevant to working conditions that could
impede efficient work performance. More recently, their contributions have been 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.
Sociology
Sociologists study the social system in which individuals fill their roles; that is, sociology studies
people in relation to their fellow human beings. Their greatest contribution to OB is through their
study of group behavior in organizations, particularly formal and complex organizations.
Social Psychology
It focuses on the influence of people on one another. Social psychology blends the concepts of
psychology and sociology. Major areahow to implement it and how to reduce barriers to its
acceptance
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.
Anthropologists work on cultures and environments; for instance, they have helped us
understand differences in fundamental values, attitudes, and behavior among people in different
countries and within different organizations.
Political Science
Albeit, frequently overlooked as a contributing discipline, Political science studies the behavior
of individuals and groups within a political environment.

A LIST OF DISCIPLINES THAT HAVE CONSTITUTED OB
DESCRIBE THE VARIABLE OF THE CONCEPTUAL MODEL OF OB.
A model is an abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of some real-world phenomenon.
There are three levels of analysis in OB: (a) Individual Level, (b) Group Level and (c)
Organizational Systems Level. These three basic levels are analogous to building blocks; each
level is constructed upon the previous level.
THE DEPENDENT VARIABLES
Dependent variables are the key factors that you want to explain or predict and that are affected
by some other factor. The dependent variable of OB is as follows:
Productivity
It is the approach of achieving goals by transferring inputs to outputs at the lowest cost which
must be done both effectively and efficiency.
Absenteeism
Absenteeism is the failure to report to work because of which the workflow is disrupted and
often important decisions must be delayed. However, all absences are not bad. For instance,
illness, fatigue, or excess stress can decrease an employees productivityit may well be better
to not report to work rather than perform poorly.
Turnover
Turnover is the voluntary and involuntary permanent withdrawal from an organization. All
organizations have some turnover and the right people leavingunder-performing
employeesthereby creating opportunity for promotions, and adding new/fresh ideas, and
replacing marginal employees with higher skilled workers. However, Turnover often involves
the loss of people the organization does not want to lose.
J ob satisfaction
In general sense, Job satisfaction is the difference between the amount of rewards workers
receive and the amount they believe they should receive. Unlike the previous three variables,
job satisfaction represents an attitude rather than a behavior. It became a primary dependent
variable for two reasons: (a) Demonstrated relationship to performance factors and (b) The value
preferences held by many OB researchers,
Organizational citizenship
Organizational citizenship is discretionary behavior that is not part of an employees formal job
requirements, but that nevertheless promotes the effective functioning of the organization. Thus
desired citizenship behaviors include:
Constructive statements about work group and organization
Helping others on their team
Volunteering for extra job activities
Avoiding unnecessary conflicts
Showing care for organizational property
Respecting rules and regulations
Tolerating occasional work-related impositions.
THE INDEPENDENT VARIABLES
Organizational behavior is best understood when viewed essentially as a set of increasingly
complex building blocks: individual, group, and organizational system.
I ndividual-level variables:
The base, or first level, of our model lies in understanding individual behavior. People enter
organizations with certain characteristics that will influence their behavior at work. The more
obvious of these are personal or biographical characteristics such as age, gender, and marital
status; personality characteristics; an inherent emotional framework; values and attitudes; and
basic ability levels. There is little management can do to alter them, yet they have a very real
impact on employee behavior.
Besides, there are four other individual-level variables that have been shown to affect employee
behavior:
Perception
Individual decision making
Learning
Motivation
Group-level variables:
The middle level of our model lies in understanding behavior of groups. People behave
differently in groups than they do when alone. The behavior of people in groups is more than the
sum total of all the individuals acting in their own way. People in groups are influenced by:
Acceptable standards of behavior by the group
Degree of attractiveness to each other
Communication patterns
Leadership and power
Levels of conflict
Organizational System Level Variables:
The top level of our model lies in understanding organizations system level variables.
Organizational behavior reaches its highest level of sophistication when we add formal structure.
The design of the formal organization, work processes, and jobs; the organizations human
resource policies and practices, and the internal culture, all have an impact.
DESCRIBE THE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR OB BRIEFLY.
There are many challenges and opportunities today for managers to use OB concepts. These are:
Responding to Globalization
In these days, organizations are no longer constrained by national borders. Basically,
globalization affects a managers people skills in at least two ways. First, a manager may
possibly find him/her in a foreign assignment. Second, even in the own country, a manager may
find him/her self working with bosses, peers, and other employees who were born and raised in
different cultures. Because of these two reasons, understanding others cultural differences are
crucial to maintain effectiveness and efficiency in the workplace.
Managing Workforce Diversity
Workforce diversity is one of the most important and broad-based challenges currently facing
organizations. Workforce diversity means that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous
in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity. To cope with this workforce diversity manager need to
recognize differences among people and hence, respond to those differences by providing
diversity training and revamping benefit programs to accommodate the different needs of
employees.
Improving Quality and Productivity
Total quality management (TQM) is a philosophy of management that is driven by the constant
attainment of customer satisfaction through the continuous improvement of all organizational
processes. But implementing quality programs requires extensive employee involvement and
thus, managers must include employees, encourage them, motivate them, monitor them, evaluate
them and finally take corrective actions. These tasks require understanding the uniqueness of
individuals.
Responding to the Labor Shortage
The labor shortage is a function of low birth rates and low labor participation rates. Though
increasing the immigration does very little to solve the problem, managers must understand
human behavior and respond accordingly. It is because; wages and benefits are not always
enough to keep talented workers for a long period of time in one organization.
Improving Customer Service and People Skills
Employee attitudes and behavior are directly related to customer satisfaction and people skills
are essential to managerial effectiveness. Hence, OB provides the concepts and theories that
allow managers to predict employee behavior in given situations.
Empowering People
Empowering means giving others right to make decisions. Nowadays decision making is being
pushed down to the operating level, where workers are being given the freedom to make choices
about schedules and procedures and to solve work-related problems. Thus, managers are
empowering employees by putting them as in charge of what they do because of which managers
have to learn how to give up control and employees have to learn how to take responsibility for
their work and make appropriate decisions.
Coping with Temporariness
Temporariness refers to the unstable end state of existence of things. Because of this
unsteadiness, managers have always been concerned with change and the concept of continuous
improvement, for instance, implies constant change. To cope with this changing nature of things,
both managers and employees must learn to live with flexibility, spontaneity, and
unpredictability. Moreover, workers need to continually update their knowledge and skills to
perform new job requirements.
Stimulating Innovation and Change
It is said that, companies that maintain flexibility, continually improve quality, and beat their
competition to the marketplace with innovative products and services will be tomorrows
winners. But, in fact, employees are critical to an organizations ability to change and innovate
and successful organizations must foster innovation and the art of change.
Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts
Employees want jobs that allow flexibility and provide time for a life. But, the creation of the
global workforce means workers no longer sleeps and communication technology has provided a
vehicle for working at any time or any place. Thus, the lifestyles of employees in contrast with
their families have changed which have creating conflict. For example, dual career couples and
single parents find it hard to fulfill commitments to home, children, spouse, parents, and friends.