Organizational behaviour is the study of individuals and their behaviour within a workplace setting.

It encompasses how people act within an organization both as individuals and as a group.

Personality Traits Theory Personality is the psychological qualities that influence an individuals characteristic behaviour patterns, in a stable and distinctive manner. (Buchanan and Huczynski 2010, p.168). This explains that every individual has a distinct character or behaviour which distinguishes him from others and this influences how such an individual relates to the group. In our team, (using the belbin team role theory as a reference), we have a combination of team workers, coordinators, resource investigators and planters. We thereby lack the roles of the shapers, the complete finishers and the monitor evaluators. So also, we have some students who are not from an English speaking country and for most of us, this task was our first experience of mixing with individuals from different countries, with different perspectives. However, irrespective of this, we have managed so far, to work together as a group, combining and balancing these team roles, working extra hard to make up for the roles we lack, in order to achieve the best perceived end result.

Motivation Motivation is the cognitive decision-making process through which goal-directed behaviour is initiated, energized, directed and maintained. (Buchanan and Huczynski 2010, p.267). Motivation is a kind of drive that makes us respond in a positive manner in order to achieve certain goals. Things that motivate us could be recognition, success, growth, responsibility, e.t.c As set out by Nohria et. al. in their book: Employee Motivation: a powerful new model. The emotional needs theory claims that we are driven by four basic and innate drives: the drive to acquire, bond, comprehend and defend. As a group as we believe the major source of our motivation is to excel and succeed in our degree, we have paid a price for a degree which we believe will make us better people. The reward here being the marks that will be awarded and the degree that will b conferred if we do a work well appreciated, so also, the desire to excel at the task at hand, in comparison with other groups, drives us to work hard and this remains our source of motivation, we have been able to, with the resources available to us, form connections with ourselves, working together to master the work at hand, satisfying our curiosities and ultimately working as one to defend our work and promote ourselves.

Decision Making This is focused on how choices are made from several alternatives in order to achieve a desired end. It is widely believed that when a number of people come together, combining views, knowledge, ideas and thoughts, they make better choices and come to better conclusions as opposed to individual thinking. This however relies majorly on the structure and composition of the group. As a group, making a decision could be very challenging, this boils down to the fact that every individual in the group has his own idea which he/her has assumed to be the best, each individual wants to be heard and understood and this most times results in conflict, waste of time and resources. It is of high essence that everybody pools ideas and views and make the best decision or choice out of it irrespective of whatever. We used win/win conflict strategy to solve the problems. For example, if we could not make the decision of which idea is more helpful, we gave our reason in opposite side. If everyone in the group agreed with the reason, we accepted it and went on. As a group, we were able to make our decisions by sharing ourselves into smaller groups and then assigning tasks to ourselves in order to save a lot of time and at the same time, enable everybody to contribute. It was a good solution to the problems causing the conflict and all group members accepted the solution. It worked effectively because it enhanced relationship of group members in the cooperation and everyone felt like a winner.

References Belbin Associates. 2007. Belbin Team Role Theory [Online]. Available at: http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=18. [Accessed: 7th November, 2010]. Buchanan D. and Huczynski A. 2010. Organizational Behaviour. 7th ed. England: Pearson Education Ltd. pp. 168, 267. Nohria, N. et al. 2008. Employee motivation: a powerful new model, Harvard Business Review, 86(7), p. 79