Organizational Behavior: Key Concepts and Applications

Posted on Feb 2, 2025 in Energy Resources, Fuels, and Explosives Engineering

What is Organizational Behavior?

Organizational Behavior (OB) is the study of what people think, feel, and do in an organization. Organizational effectiveness refers to an organization’s ability to transform inputs into outputs while maintaining a healthy culture.

Values and Corporate Social Responsibility

Values are stable, evaluative beliefs that guide people towards specific outcomes. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to organizational activities that benefit society and the environment beyond legal obligations.

Key Anchors of Organizational Behavior

Organizational Behavior is based on several key anchors:

  1. Systematic research: Using a structured approach to investigate organizational phenomena.
  2. Practical orientation: Applying research findings to real-world organizational challenges, such as the MARS model.
  3. Multidisciplinary: Drawing on insights from various fields, including psychology, sociology, and economics.
  4. Contingency: Recognizing that actions may have different consequences in different situations.
  5. Multiple levels of analysis: Examining behavior at the individual, team, and organizational levels.

Modern Workspace Developments

Several factors are shaping the modern workspace:

  1. Diversity and Inclusion:
    • Diversity refers to the presence of individuals with a variety of characteristics.
    • Inclusion involves valuing people of all identities, allowing them to be themselves, and enabling them to contribute to the organization.
    • Diversity can be surface-level (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, age) or deep-level (e.g., psychological characteristics, personality, beliefs, values).
  2. Work-life integration: Effectively engaging in various work and non-work roles with a low degree of conflict.
  3. Remote work: Performing work duties from locations other than the traditional office.
  4. Employment relationships: The nature of the connection between employees and employers.

The MARS Model of Individual Behavior

The MARS model explains individual behavior as a result of four factors:

  • Motivation (M): Internal forces that affect a person’s direction, intensity, and persistence of effort.
  • Ability (A): Natural aptitudes and learned capabilities required to complete a task successfully.
  • Role Perceptions (R): The degree to which people understand their job duties.
  • Situational Factors (S): External factors that influence behavior.

Types of Individual Behavior

Several types of individual behavior are important in organizations:

  1. Task Performance: Voluntary goal-directed behaviors that contribute to organizational objectives. This includes:
    • (A) Proficient: Performing work efficiently and accurately.
    • (B) Adaptive: Responding effectively to change.
    • (C) Proactive: Taking initiative and introducing new work patterns.
  2. Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs): Forms of cooperation and helpfulness that support the organization’s social and psychological context (e.g., helping coworkers).
  3. Counterproductive Work Behaviors (CWBs): Voluntary behaviors that have the potential to directly or indirectly harm the organization (e.g., conflict, harassment).
  4. Joining and Staying with the Organization: Employee retention and commitment.
  5. Maintaining Attendance: Showing up for work as scheduled.

Personality in Organizations

Personality refers to the relatively enduring pattern of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize a person, along with the psychological processes behind those characteristics. Personality is shaped by both nature (genetic or hereditary factors) and nurture (past experiences).

The Five-Factor Model of Personality

The Five-Factor Model (also known as the Big Five) identifies five broad personality dimensions:

  1. Conscientiousness: Describes people who are organized, dependable, and goal-focused. It is the best predictor of task performance.
  2. Agreeableness: Describes people who are trusting, helpful, tolerant, good-natured, and selfless.
  3. Neuroticism: Describes people who are anxious, insecure, and depressed.
  4. Openness to Experience: Describes people who are imaginative, creative, and curious.
  5. Extraversion: Describes people who are outgoing, talkative, sociable, and assertive. It is the second-best predictor of task performance.

The Dark Triad

The Dark Triad consists of three socially undesirable personality traits:

  1. Machiavellianism: Characterized by a strong motivation to succeed at others’ expense and a belief that deceit is a natural way to achieve goals.
  2. Narcissism: Characterized by a belief in one’s superiority and entitlement.
  3. Psychopathy: Characterized by a tendency to be sinister, dominating, and manipulative.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is an instrument designed to measure elements of Jungian personality theory, particularly preferences regarding perceiving and judging information.

  • Gathering Information:
    • Sensing: Focuses on factual and quantitative information.
    • Intuition: Relies on insight and subjective experience.
  • Making Decisions:
    • Thinking: Emphasizes cause-and-effect logic.
    • Feeling: Considers emotional responses to options.
  • Lifestyle:
    • Perceiving: Prefers to be open, curious, and flexible.
    • Judging: Prefers structure and order.

Types of Values

Values can be categorized into four quadrants:

  1. Openness to Change: The extent to which a person is motivated to pursue innovative ways. Includes self-direction, stimulation, and hedonism.
  2. Self-Enhancement: How much a person is motivated by self-interest. Includes achievement, power, and hedonism.
  3. Conservation: The extent to which a person is motivated to preserve the status quo. Includes security, tradition, and conformity.
  4. Self-Transcendence: The motivation to promote the welfare of others and nature. Includes universalism and benevolence.

Values influence our choices, frame our perceptions of reality, and help regulate the consistency of our behavior.

Four Ethical Principles

Four key ethical principles guide decision-making:

  1. Utilitarianism: Seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
  2. Individual Rights: Respecting fundamental rights of all individuals.
  3. Distributive Justice: Ensuring that benefits and burdens are distributed equitably.
  4. Ethic of Care: Recognizing a moral obligation to help others within one’s relational sphere.