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FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Organizational behavior starts with a set of fundamental concepts revolving around the nature of the people and organizations. They are discussed below:

A)  The Nature of the People:

1.     Individual differences: People have much in common, but each person in the world is also individually different. Each one is different from all others, probably in million of ways, just as each of their fingerprints is different, as far as we know. The belief that each person is different from all others is typically called the law of individual difference.

2.    Perception: People look at the world and see things differently. People used an organized framework that they have built out of a lifetime of experiences and accumulated values. This is another ways in which people insist on acting like human being rather than rational machine.

3.    A whole person: Although some organizations may wish they could employ only a person’s skill or brain, they actually employ a whole person, rather than certain characteristics. Different human brain may be differently studied, but in the final analysis they are all part of one system making up a whole person.

4.    Motivated behavior: In the case of needs, people are motivated not by what we think they ought to have but by what they themselves want. Motivation is essential to the operation of the organization. No matter how much technology and equipment an organization has, these things can not be put to use until they are released and guided by people who have been motivated.

5.    Desire for involvement: People wish to feel good about themselves. This is reflected in their drive for self-efficacy, or the belief that one has the necessary capabilities to perform a task, fulfill role of expectations, make a meaningful contribution, seeking opportunities at work to become involved in relevant decisions, thereby contributing their talents and ideas to the organizational success.

6.    Value of the person: People deserved to be treated differently than other factors of production because they are of a higher order in the universe. This demand for respect and an opportunity for development suggest strongly that organization must treat employees in an ethical fashion. More and more firms are recognizing this need and responding with a variety of program to ensure a higher standard of ethical performance.

B)  The Nature of the Organizations:

1.     Social system: The existence of a social system implies that the organization environment is one of dynamic change, rather than a static set of relations as pictured on an organization chart. People’s behavior is influenced by their group as well as by their individual drives. In fact, the two sets of social systems exist side by side in organizations. One is formal (official) social system and another is informal social system.

2.    Mutual interest: Organization needs people and people also need organization. They are formed and maintained on the basis of some mutually interest among their participants. Furthermore, when the organization goals and actions are ethical, mutually creates a triple reward system in which individual, organizational and social objectives are all met.

DEVELOPING AN ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR MODEL

A model is an abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of some real-world phenomenon. OB model proposes that there are three levels of analysis, as we move from the individual level to the organization system level.

Individual Level

This metaphor indicates that people enter organizations with certain intact characteristics that will influence their behavior at work. The more obvious of these are personal or biographical characteristics, personality characteristics, an inherent emotional framework, values and attitudes and basic ability levels.

 Group Level

The behavior of people in groups is more than the sum total of all the individual acting in their own way. The complexity of our model increased when we acknowledge that people’s behavior when they are in groups is different from their behavior when they are alone. This part dominates communication pattern, leadership, power and politics, and level of conflict affect group behavior.

 Organization System Level

Just as groups are more than the sum of their individual members, so are organizations more than the sum of their member groups. The design of the formal organization; the organization internal culture; and the organization internal human resource policies and practices all are the factors of this portion.

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CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

There are a lot of challenges and opportunities today for managers to use Organizational behavior concepts. The critical issues for which Organization behavior offers solutions are:

1. The creation of a global village: The world has truly become global village. As multinational companies develop operations world wide, as workers chase job opportunities across national borders, managers have to become capable of working with people from different cultures.
2. Workforce diversity: Workforce diversity addresses differences among people within given countries. It means that Organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, race and ethnicity. When diversity is not managed properly, there is potential for higher turnover, more difficult communication and more interpersonal conflicts. So workforce diversity has important implications for management practice.
3. Improving quality and productivity: Toward Improving quality and productivity, managers are implementing programs such as TQM (Total Quality Management) and Reengineering programs that require extensive employee involvement. The Organizational behavior offers important insights into helping managers work through those programs.
4. Improving people skills: Organizational behavior represents relevant concepts and theories that can help a manager to predict and explain the behavior of people at work. In addition, it also provides insights into specific people skills that can be used on the job. Organizational Behavior also helps at improving a manager's interpersonal skills.
5. Management control to empowerment: In the 1980s, managers were encouraged to get their employees to participate in work related decisions. But now managers are going considerably further by allowing employees full control of their work. In so doing, 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.
6. Stability and flexibility: Now days, change is an ongoing activity for most managers. The study of Organizational behavior can provide important insights into helping a manager better understand a work world of continual change and how to overcome resistance to change . So today's managers and employees must learn to cope with temporariness.

Improving ethical behavior: Today's manager needs to create an ethically healthy climate for his or her employees where they can do their work productively and confront a minimal degree of ambiguity regarding what constitutes right and wrong behavior.