ORGANISATION BEHAVIOUR

UNIT I: INTRODUCTION TO
ORGANISATION BEHAVIOUR
Defining organizational Behaviour
Organizational Behaviour is concerned with the understanding, prediction and control of
human behaviour in organizations. It focuses on the individuals, the groups and the
organization and also on their interactional relationships. It is the study and application of
knowledge about how people act with organizations.
It is a human tool for human benefit. It applies broadly to the behaviour of people in all
types of organizations. Wherever organizations are, there is a need to understand
organizational behaviour.

Features (Characteristics) of OB

1. OB is a part of general management and not the whole of management. It

represents behavioural approach to management.

2. OB contains a body of theory, research and application associated with a growing

concern for people at the work place. It helps in understanding human behaviour
in work organizations.

3. OB is a human tool for human benefit. It helps in predicting the behaviour of

individuals.

4. OB is inter-disciplinary field of study. It tries to synthesize knowledge drawn from

various behavioural and social sciences such as Psychology, Sociology,
Anthropology, Political-science, Economics, etc. In fact, OB is an applied
behavioural science.

5. OB involves three levels of analysis of behaviour-individual behaviour, group

behaviour and behaviour of the organization itself.

6. OB is an action-oriented and goal-directed discipline. It provides a rational

thinking about people and their behaviour
7. OB is both a science and an art. The systematic knowledge about human
behaviour is a science. The application of behvioural knowledge and skills clearly
leans towards being an art.

8. OB seeks to fulfill both employees’ needs and organizational objectives.

Level of Analysis
Broadly speaking, OB covers three main levels of analysis: micro (individuals), meso
(groups), and macro (the organization).

1. Individual Behaviour
(i) Personality
(ii) Perception
(iii) Values and Attitudes
(iv) Learning
(v) Motivation
(vi) Job Attitudes
(vii) Job satisfaction
(viii) Performance and management
(ix) Emotions
(x) Intelligence
2. Group Behaviour
(i) Work groups and group dynamics
(ii) Dynamics of conflict
(iii) Communication
(iv) Leadership
(v) Morale
(vi) Work team performance
(vii) Team climate
(viii) Group emotional tone
(ix) Politics power
(x) Ethics decision
 3. Organization: Structure, Process and Application
(i) Organizational Climate
(ii) Organizational Culture
(iii) Organizational Change
(iv) Organizational Effectiveness
(v) Organizational Development
(vi) Organizational design
(vii) Organizational performance
(viii) Physical environment

Goals of Organizational Behaviour

Organizational behaviour is an applied science that deals with individual behaviour as
well as group behaviour in an organization. The four goals of organizational behaviour
are to describe, understand, predict and control.

1. To describe: The first objective is to describe how people behave under various
conditions.
For example, as a manager, I have information about a particular junior officer
that he comes office in late and leaves the office early.
2. To understand: The second goal of organizational behaviour is to understand
why people behave as they do. Managers have to understand the reasons behind a
particular action.
For example, as a manager, I must find out the reason why the junior officer is
coming late and going earlier.
3. To predict: Predicting future behaviour of employee is another goal of
organizational behaviour. Usually, managers would have the capacity to predict
why the employees are committed to the organization or not.
For instance, I have to realize why he wants to leave my organization, how I can
hold the officer in my organization, what should be done by me in this situation or
what my role is etc.
4. To control: The final goal of organizational behaviour is to control and develop a
friendly atmosphere for the organization. Since managers are responsible for the
overall performance of an organization, they must develop workers’ teamwork,
skill and commitment. Managers should take necessary action for themselves. In
the above case, I can increase the financial benefits of the officer if it is not
satisfactory for him or I can help him to solve his personal problem, or I can
negotiate him to solve any organizational problem
 Key Elements in OB (Forces)

The key elements in organizational behaviour are people, structure, technology and the
environment in which the organizations operate. When people join together in an
organization to accomplish an objective, some kind of structure is required. People also
use technology to help get the job done, so there is an interaction of people, structure and
the technology as shown in fig.1. In addition, these elements are influenced by the
external environment, and they influence it.

People
 Individuals
 Groups

Environment Structure
 Government  Jobs Organizations
 Competition  Relationship
 Societal s
pressures

Technology
 Machinery
 Computer hardware and
software
Feg.1 key forces affecting organizational behavior

Each of the four elements of organizational behaviour will be considered briefly.

People: People make up the internal social system of the organization. They consist of
individuals and groups. There are formal and informal groups. Groups are dynamic. They
form, change and disband. Organizations exist to serve people, rather than people
existing to serve organizations.

Structure: Structure defines the formal relationships of people in organizations.

Different jobs are required to accomplish all of an organization’s activities. There are
managers and employees, accountants and assemblers. These people have to be related in
some structural way so that their work can be effectively co-ordinate. These relationships
create complex problems of co-operation, negotiation and decision-making.
Technology: Technology provides the resources with which people work and affects the
tasks that they perform. The technology used has a significant influence in working
relationships. The great benefit of technology is that it allows people to do more and
better work, but it also restricts people in various ways. It has costs as well as benefits.

Environment: All organizations operate within an external environment a single

organization does not exist alone. It is part of a larger system that contains many other
elements such as Govt, the family, and other organizations.
All of these mutually influence each other in a complex system that creates a context for
a group of people. Individual organizations, such as factory or a school, cannot escape
being influenced by this external environment. It influences the attitudes of people,
affects working conditions, and provides competition for resources and power. It must be
considered in the study of human behaviour in organizations.

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS
Organizational behaviour starts with a set of six fundamental concepts revolving around
the nature of people and organizations. They are as follows:

The Nature of people:

 Individual differences
 A whole person
 Motivated behaviour
 Value of the person (human dignity)

The Nature of organizations

 Social systems
 Mutual Interest
 Ethics

1. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES: People have much in common (they become excited,

or they are grieved by the loss of loved one), but each person in the world is also
individually different. Each one is different from all others, probably in millions of ways,
just as each of their fingerprints is different, as a far as we know. And these differences
are usually substantial rather than meaningless. All people are different. This is a fact
supported by science.

The idea of individual differences comes originally from psychology. From the day of
birth, each person is unique, and individual experiences after birth tend to make people
even more different. Individual differences mean that management can get the greatest
motivation among employees by treating manager’s approach to employees should be
individual, not statistical. This belief that each person is different from all others is
typically called the Law of Individual Differences.

2. A WHOLE PERSON: Although some organizations may wish they could employ a
person’s skill or brain, they actually employ a whole person, rather than certain
characteristics. Different human traits may be separately studied, but in the final analysis
they are all part of one system making up a whole person. Skill does not exist apart from
background or knowledge. Human life is not totally separable from work life and
emotional conditions are not separate from physical conditions. People function as total
human beings.

3. MOTIVATED BEHAVIOUR: From psychology we learn that normal behaviour has

certain causes. These may relate to a person’s needs and / or the consequences that result
from acts. In the case of needs, people are motivated not by what we think they ought to
have but by what they themselves want. To an outside observer a person’s needs may be
unrealistic, but they are still controlling. This act leaves management with two basic ways
to motivate people. It can show them how certain actions will increase their need
fulfillment, or it can threaten decreased need fulfillment if they follow an undesirable
course of action. Clearly a path towards increased need fulfillment is the better approach.

4. VALUE OF THE PERSON (HUMAN DIGNITY): This concept is of a different

order from the other three because it is more an ethical philosophy than a scientific
conclusion. It asserts that people are to be treated differently from other factors of
production because they are of a higher order in the universe. It recognizes that because
people are of a higher order they want to be treated with respect and dignity – and should
be treated this way. The concept of human dignity rejects the old idea of using employees
as economic tools.

5. SOCIAL SYSTEMS: From sociology we learn that organizations are social systems;
consequently activities there-in are governed by social laws as well as psychological
laws. Just as people have psychological needs, they also have social roles and status.
Their behaviour is influenced by their group as well as by their individual drives. In fact,
two types of social systems exist side by side in organizations. One is the formal (official)
social system, and the other is the informal social system.

The existence of a social system implies that the organizational environment is one of
dynamic change rather than a static set of relations. All parts of the system are
interdependent and subject to influence by any other part. Everything is related to
everything else. The idea of a social system provides a frame work for analyzing
organizational behaviour issues. It helps make organizational behaviour problems
understandable and manageable.
6. MUTUAL INTEREST: Mutual interest is represented by the statement
“organizations, need people, and people also need organizations”. Organizations have a
human purpose. They are formed and maintained on the basis of some mutuality of
interest among their participants. People see organizations as a means to help them reach
their goals, while organizations need people to help reach organizational objectives. As
shown in the following figure, mutual interest provides a super ordinate goal that
integrates the efforts of individuals and groups. The result is that they are encouraged to
attack organizational problems rather than each other.

7. Ethics: Companies have established codes of ethics, publicized statements of ethical

values, provided ethics training, rewarded employees for notable ethical behavior,
publicized positive role models, and set up internal procedures to handle misconduct.
They have begun to recognize that since organizational behavior always involves people,
ethical philosophy is involved in one way or another in each action they take.

Ethics
Employee
Employee
goals

Super ordinate Mutual accomplishment of goals

goal of
mutual interest

Organizational
goals
Organization

Fig. 2. Mutual interest provides a super ordinate goal for organization.

8. HOLISTIC ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR: When the six fundamental

concepts of organizational behaviour are considered together, they provide a holistic
concept of the subject. Holistic organizational behaviour interprets people-organization
relationships in terms of the whole person, whole group, whole organization, and whole
social system. It takes an across-the board view of people in organizations in an effort to
understand as many as possible of the factors that influence their behaviour. Issues are
analyzed in terms of the total situation affecting them rather than in terms of an isolated
event or problem.
Nature and importance of Organizational Behaviour

Organizational behaviour is the analysis of an organization’s structure, functions, and the

behavior of its people. The behavioral study encompasses both groups as well as
individuals. It is an interdisciplinary field and has its roots in sociology and psychology.
Organizational behavior is based on sociology, as the word organization itself represents
social collectivity. It is linked to psychology because the subject encompasses the study
of people, individually and in groups at the workplace (essentially, an organization).
Individual and group behaviour is again the function of many factors, which extend to
other interdisciplinary fields such as economics, political science, social anthropology,
engineering, and human resource management. The scope of organizational behavior is
therefore extensive. An organization needs to manage all these aspects so that it can
sustain itself in a competitive market.
Some importance of OB:

The following basic importance is below;

• It builds a better relationship by achieving people, organizational, and social
objectives.
• It covers a wide array of human resources like behavior, training and development,
change management, leadership, teams, etc.
• They bring coordination which is the essence of management.
• It improves the goodwill of the organization.
• It helps to achieve objectives quickly.
• They make optimum utilization of resources.
• It facilitates motivation.
• It leads to higher efficiency.
• They improve relations in the organization.
• It is multidisciplinary, in the sense that it applies different techniques, methods, and
theories to evaluate the performances.

CONTRIBUTING DISCIPLINES TO THE OB FIELD

Behavioural Science Contribution

Learning
Motivation
Personality
Psychology Emotions
Perception
Training
Leadership effectiveness
Job satisfaction
Individual decision making
Performance appraisal
Attitude measurement
Employee selection
Work design
Work Stress
 Group dynamics
Work teams
Communication
Power
Sociology
Sociology Conflict
Intergroup behaviour

Fig.3 Contributing Discipline to the OB field

Formal Organization theory
Organizational technology
Organizational change
Organizational culture

Behavioural change
Social Psychology Attitude change
Psychology Communication
Group processes
Group decision making

Comparative Values
Comparative Attitudes
Cross-cultural analysis
Anthropology
Sociology

Anthropology Organizational culture

Organizational Development

Conflict
Political Science Intra organizational
Politics
Power

MODELS OF ORGANISATIONAIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

Since the dawn of industrial revolution, four models of organizational behaviour have
been followed by managers of different organizations at different times. These are
autocratic(unlimited), custodial, supportive and collegial as shown in table 1.
Anthropology
Table 1: Models of Organizational Behaviour

Model Autocratic Custodial Supportive Collegial System

Basis of Power Economic Leadership Partnership Trust,

Model resources Community
Meaning
Managerial Authority Money Support Teamwork Caring com-
orientation Passion

Employee Obedience Security and Job Responsible Psychological

orientation benefits performance behaviour Ownership

Employee Dependence Dependence Participation Self – Self-

psychological on boss on discipline motivation
result organization

Employee Subsistence Security Status and Self – Wide range

needs met recognition actualization

Performance Minimum Passive co- Awakened Moderate Passion &

result operation drives enthusiasm commitment

opportunities and challenges in organizational behavior

Organizational behavior is the culture of the organization, which includes

how employees interact with each other. This also includes how employees
feel about the company. The challenges and opportunities of organizational
behavior in most companies include overcoming cultural and ethnic
differences, improving productivity, hiring employees suited to the
organizational culture or who can improve it, delegating tasks to employees,
and finding an appropriate level of life balance. Challenges and opportunities
for organizational behavior are massive and rapidly changing for improving
productivity and meeting business goals.
1. Improving people skills
Designing motivating jobs, how creating effective teams, techniques for
improving interpersonal skills
2. Improving Quality and productivity
World added capacity in response to increase demand. Excess capacity
translates in increase competition, is forcing managers to reduce costs and,
at the same time; improve the organization quality and productivity.
3. Improving Customer service
OB can contribute to improving an organization’ performance by showing
that how employees’ attitude and behavior are associated with customer
satisfaction.
 Highlight
 Add Note
 Share Quote
4. Improving Ethical Behavior
Manager shouldn’t place an order on which subordinate don’t agree Define
clearly the right and wrong conduct Fair policy and appropriate system
Increase confidence and trust over organization Have some logic against
order you place to employees
5. Helping employees Balance work-life conflicts
Flexible Working hours, reporting time, creating opportunities for employees,
job security, design workplace and jobs
6. Stimulating innovation and change
Victory will go the organization they maintain their flexibility, continually
improve their quality and beat their competition in market place. An
organization’s employees can be major block in change, the challenge to the
manager to stimulate their creativity and tolerance for change.
7. Coping with Temporariness
Survival for the organization, is need to move fast and flexible and innovative
in their products, jobs are redesigned, task are done by flexibility, trained old
employeeswith new technology, better understanding of change, overcome r
esistance tochange, create organizational culture
8. Working in network organization
Global working through one link i.e. INTERNET, technology changes the
people to work together and communicate at thousand miles, people can
work from their home and non office locations.
10. Creating positive Work Environment
Human strength, vitality, right person appointed at right place, effort on what
good for organization.
11. Managing workforce diversity
The people in organization are becoming heterogeneous demographically,
Workforcediversity= whereas globalization focuses on differences between p
eople fromdifferent countries, mix of people in terms of gender, age, race, an
d
Sexual orientation. Embracing diversity Changing US demographics Changing
management philosophy Recognizing and responding to difference
12Total Quality Management (TQM): –
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a philosophy of management driven by continuous
achievement of customer satisfaction through continuous improvement of all
organizational processes. The components of TQM are: –
o an intense focus on the customer,
o concern for continuous improvement,
o improving the quality of what the organization does,
o accurate measurement and,
o Empowerment of employees.