Understanding Organizational Behavior: A Comprehensive Guide
Understanding Organizational Behavior
What is Organizational Behavior?
Organizational Behavior (OB) examines how individuals and groups think, feel, and act within and around organizations. It encompasses:
- Employee behaviors, decisions, perceptions, and emotions
- Employee interactions
- Interactions with the external environment (customers, suppliers, community)
OB research spans individual, team, and organizational levels.
What are Organizations?
Organizations are groups of people working interdependently towards a shared purpose. They are characterized by:
- Collective identity
- Shared sense of purpose
The Importance of OB Knowledge
Why is OB Important to You?
- OB skills are crucial for career success, enabling sound decision-making, effective interactions, and understanding of social dynamics.
- OB topics are highly relevant to new hires.
- OB helps comprehend and predict workplace behavior.
- OB empowers individuals to influence workplace behavior.
- OB is relevant to everyone.
Why is OB Important to Organizations?
- OB is vital for organizational survival and success.
- OB improves financial performance, employee engagement, and profitability.
- OB enhances organizational effectiveness by aligning with the external environment, optimizing internal processes, and satisfying stakeholder needs.
Organizations as Open Systems
Organizations rely on the external environment for resources (inputs). Internal subsystems transform inputs into outputs, impacting the environment.
- OB knowledge helps organizations adapt to the external environment by aligning inputs, processes, and outputs with available resources.
- OB theories optimize internal processes, such as team performance, employee influence, and organizational culture.
Human Capital: A Competitive Advantage
- Human capital (knowledge, skills, abilities, creativity) is crucial for transforming inputs to outputs.
- Talent is valuable, difficult to replicate, and essential for organizational success.
- Effective organizations develop and retain human capital through motivation, rewards, feedback, and fair practices.
- OB enhances human capital by strengthening motivation, rewards systems, feedback mechanisms, and employee involvement.
Organizations and Stakeholders
- Organizations thrive by understanding, managing, and satisfying stakeholder needs.
- Stakeholders include customers, suppliers, communities, shareholders, governments, and others affected by the organization’s actions.
- OB principles guide stakeholder relations and corporate social responsibility (CSR).
- CSR emphasizes economic, social, and environmental sustainability, leading to improved financial performance, employee loyalty, and stakeholder relations.
Integrative Model of OB
Anchors of Organizational Behavior Knowledge
Workplace Trends
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
- Diversity encompasses surface-level (observable) and deep-level (values, beliefs) differences among individuals.
- Equity ensures fair treatment and distribution of benefits based on consistent, neutral, and transparent rules.
- Inclusivity fosters an environment where individuals feel valued, respected, and empowered to contribute authentically.
Work-Life Integration
Work-life integration involves effectively engaging in work and non-work roles while minimizing role conflict. Strategies include:
Remote Work
The MARS Model of Individual Behavior
Motivation
- Direction: Goal-oriented effort
- Intensity: Level of effort exerted
- Persistence: Duration of effort
Ability
- Aptitudes: Natural talents
- Learned capabilities: Acquired skills and knowledge
- Habits: Automatic behavioral tendencies
Role Perceptions
- Understanding of job duties and responsibilities
- Clarity on performance expectations
- Knowledge of preferred work procedures
Situational Factors
- External factors that can constrain or facilitate behavior
- Environmental cues that guide and motivate individuals
Types of Individual Behavior
- Task performance
- Organizational citizenship behaviors
- Counterproductive work behaviors
- Joining and staying with the organization
- Maintaining work attendance
Task Performance
Personality in the Workplace
What is Personality?
Personality refers to enduring patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that define an individual.
The Big Five Personality Factors
- Conscientiousness: Organized, dependable, goal-oriented
- Agreeableness: Trusting, helpful, cooperative
- Neuroticism: Anxious, insecure, emotionally unstable
- Openness to Experience: Imaginative, creative, curious
- Extroversion: Outgoing, talkative, assertive
The Dark Triad
- Machiavellianism: Manipulative, cunning, exploitative
- Narcissism: Grandiose, entitled, attention-seeking
- Psychopathy: Callous, remorseless, antisocial
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
- While popular, the MBTI has limitations in terms of validity and reliability.
- It categorizes individuals into types that may be overly simplistic and not mutually exclusive.
Values in the Workplace
Schwartz’s Model of Individual Values
Value Congruence
Value congruence refers to the similarity between an individual’s values and the organization’s values. High congruence is linked to job satisfaction, loyalty, and ethical decision-making.
Ethical Behavior
Ethical Principles
- Utilitarianism: Seeking the greatest good for the greatest number
- Individual Rights: Protecting fundamental human rights
- Distributive Justice: Ensuring fair distribution of benefits and burdens
- Ethic of Care: Emphasizing empathy, compassion, and helping others
Factors Influencing Ethical Behavior
- Moral Intensity: Significance of the ethical issue
- Moral Sensitivity: Ability to recognize ethical dilemmas
- Situational Factors: External influences on ethical conduct
Cultural Values
Cultural Diversity in Canada
- Canada embraces multiculturalism.
- Francophone and Anglophone Canadians exhibit distinct cultural values.
- Indigenous communities hold unique cultural perspectives, often emphasizing collectivism, low power distance, and a natural time orientation.
- Canadian and American values differ in areas such as tolerance, individualism, and the role of religion.