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 essential skills for new hires.
- OB helps comprehend and predict workplace behavior.
- OB empowers individuals to influence workplace events.
- OB is relevant for everyone.
Why is OB Important to Organizations?
- OB is vital for organizational survival and success, leading to:
- Improved financial performance
- Higher employee engagement
- Increased profitability
- OB enhances organizational effectiveness by:
- Ensuring a good fit with the external environment
- Effectively transforming inputs to outputs through human capital
- Satisfying stakeholder needs
Organizations as Open Systems
Organizations rely on the external environment for resources (inputs). Internal subsystems transform these inputs into outputs, impacting the environment.
- OB knowledge helps organizations align with the external environment by adapting structures, cultures, and leadership styles.
- OB theories optimize internal processes, improving coordination, team performance, and organizational culture.
Human Capital: The Competitive Advantage
- Human capital (knowledge, skills, abilities, creativity) is crucial for transforming inputs to outputs.
- Talent is difficult to acquire, replicate, or replace with technology.
- Effective organizations develop and retain human capital through motivation, rewards, feedback, and fair practices.
- OB enhances human capital by strengthening motivation, rewards systems, 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).
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 focuses on fair treatment and organizational justice, applying consistent and neutral rules for distributing benefits and burdens.
- Inclusion refers to the organization’s ability to value diversity and create an environment where everyone feels welcome and respected.
Work-Life Integration
Work-life integration involves effectively engaging in work and non-work roles while minimizing role conflict.
Remote Work
The MARS Model of Individual Behavior
- Motivation: The direction, intensity, and persistence of effort towards a goal.
- Ability: Natural aptitudes, learned capabilities, and habits required for task completion.
- Role Perception: Understanding one’s duties, responsibilities, and performance expectations.
- Situational Factors: External factors that can constrain or facilitate behavior and performance.
Types of Individual Behavior in Organizations
Task Performance: Goal-directed behaviors contributing to organizational objectives.
- Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs): Voluntary acts of cooperation and helpfulness that support the organization’s social and psychological context.
- Counterproductive Work Behaviors (CWBs): Actions that harm the organization or its stakeholders.
- Joining and Staying with the Organization: Employee attraction, retention, and the impact of turnover.
- Maintaining Work Attendance: The importance of attendance, absenteeism, and presenteeism.
Personality in the Workplace
The Big Five Personality Factors
- Conscientiousness: Organized, dependable, goal-focused.
- Agreeableness: Trusting, helpful, cooperative.
- Neuroticism: Anxious, insecure, prone to negative emotions.
- Openness to Experience: Imaginative, creative, curious.
- Extraversion: Outgoing, talkative, assertive.
The Dark Triad
The Dark Triad consists of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy, characterized by low humility, dishonesty, and a willingness to exploit others.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
While popular, the MBTI has limitations in terms of validity and reliability. It’s not recommended for hiring or promotion decisions.
Schwartz’s Model of Individual Values
- Openness to Change: Self-direction, stimulation, hedonism.
- Conservation: Conformity, security, tradition.
- Self-Enhancement: Achievement, power, hedonism.
- Self-Transcendence: Benevolence, universalism.
Values and Behavior
Values influence decision-making, perceptions, and behavior. However, situational factors and counter-motivational forces can create a disconnect between values and actions.
Value Congruence
Value congruence refers to the similarity between an individual’s values and those of the organization. High congruence is linked to job satisfaction and loyalty, but some level of incongruence can foster diversity of thought.
Ethical Principles and Behavior
Ethical Principles
- Utilitarianism: Seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
- Individual Rights: Protecting fundamental human rights.
- Distributive Justice: Applying fair rules for distributing benefits and burdens.
- Ethic of Care: Emphasizing empathy, compassion, and helping others.
Factors Influencing Ethical Behavior
- Moral Intensity: The severity and importance of the ethical issue.
- Moral Sensitivity: The ability to recognize and evaluate ethical dilemmas.
- Situational Factors: External pressures and organizational context.
Values Across Cultures
Cultural Diversity in Canada
- Canada embraces multiculturalism.
- Anglophone and Francophone cultures differ in values related to authority, military, and social issues.
- Indigenous communities value collectivism, low power distance, non-interference, and a natural time orientation.
- Canadian and American values differ in areas such as moral permissiveness, individualism vs. collectivism, and the role of religion.