CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

TO ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR (OB)

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PREPARED BY: JERALD JAMES G. MONTGOMERY

“Nothing is permanent in this world. Everything is changing, so no matter what problem or issue you are
having in your life at the moment, it would also change sooner or later, but of course you need to take
positive action, too.”
Subodh Gupta, Stress Management a Holistic Approach: 5 Steps Plan

In this fast, changing and interconnected world, it is imperative that individuals and organizations, formal
and informal alike, must keep pace with the demands of the status quo and in its pursuit of advancement
and diversification. In the business community, it is a basic principle that there is neither a mistake nor a
problem but only opportunities. Hence, amidst a lot of challenges today for managers to OB concepts,
finding uses i.e. economic utilities through and within these challenges is critical to an organization’s
achievement of its goals to have a sustained development and success.

The following presents the different challenges and opportunities to Organizational Behaviour, as follows:

1. Globalization to Respond
Organizations are no longer constrained by national borders, world become global village.
 Increased foreign assignment
Transferred to your employer’s operating division in another country, Once there, you’ll
have to manage workforce, aspiration from employees, and attitudes from those you
are used to back home
 Working with different people
Working with bosses, peers and other employees who were born and raised in different
culture, to work effectively with them you’ve to understand how their culture, geographic
and religion have shaped them.
 Coping with Anti-capitalism backlash
“soak the rich” means fine should be charged with respect of income you earn.
Managers at global companies have come to realize that economic values are not
universally transferable, need to modify by managers to reflect economic values in
those countries they’re working.
 Overseeing Movement of jobs to countries with low cost labor
In a global economy, jobs tend to flow to places where lower cost provide business
firms with a comparative advantage
 Managing people During the war on terror (Post 9/11 World)
An understanding of OB topics such as emotions, motivation, communication and
leadership can help managers to deal more effectively with their employees’ fear about
terrorism

Nota Bene:
1. Globalization basically started in modern history with the rise of Nazi Germany as
it purchase goods and materials from the United Kingdom i.e. steel and plane
parts, which is later used by the Deutsche Luftwaffe (German Airforce) in
designing and manufacturing its warplanes attacking the City of Londoni, and
from the United States through adopting the concepts of Fordism in streamlining
their industries.ii In the Asian Perspective, it started with Toyota’s CEO decided to
establish a program initiating the filtering of the best people for the best positions
in their organization, to expatriate those who are good and able to adopt, thus
establishing good business processes and practices in their plants abroad after
their supplier, Nestle, began establishing their own plants and distributing directly
to the final consumers.
2. The International Labour Organization Report on the Enhancing Youth
Employability cited that broad skills like learning to learn and communication
encompasses core work skills that enable individuals to constantly acquire and
apply new knowledge and skills, which are also critical to lifelong learningiii
3. China’s trillion dollar global investment, the Belt-and-Road Initiative, which aims
to modernize and materialize a technologically-inclined and closely connected
Silk Road. It’s goal is to tie up all the countries in Asia, Europe and Africa to a
 single loop of transportation via air, land or sea that will ultimately invigorate the
exchange of technology, manpower and ideas.iv

2. Managing workforce diversity

The people in organization are becoming heterogeneous demographically, Workforce diversity=
whereas globalization focuses on differences between people from different countries, mix of
people in terms of gender, age, race, and sexual orientation.

 Embracing diversity
 Changing US demographics
 Changing management philosophy
 Recognizing and responding to difference
Nota Bene: Diversity, if positively managed, can increase creativity and innovation and also
improve decision making. If not managed properly, then there is a potential for higher turn-
over, difficult communication and interpersonal conflicts.

Diagram 1. Consequences of Differences Between People

Diagram 2. What Makes People Different From Each Other?

3. Improving Quality and productivity

World added capacity in response to increase demand. Excess capacity translate in increase
competition, is forcing managers to reduce costs and, at the same time; improve the organization
quality and productivity.
 Quality Management : the constant attainment of customer satisfaction through the
continuous improvement of organisational processes
 Process re-engineering : reconsidering how work would be done and an organisation
structured if it were starting over.

4. Responding to the coming labor shortage

 In times of labour shortage, managers will need sophisticated recruitment and retention
strategies.
 Changing work-force demographics
 Fewer skilled laborers
 Early retirements and older workers
Nota Bene: Advances in technology is being applied in combatting this challenge. The
Industrial Revolution 4.0vvi, which encompasses nanotechnology, robotics, artificial
intelligencevii and automation.

5. Improving Customer service

OB can contribute to improving an organization’ performance by showing that how employees’
attitude and behavior are associated with customer satisfaction.
 Increased expectation of service quality
 Customer-responsive culture (include e-commerce domain)

6. Improving people skills

Designing motivating jobs, how creating effective teams, techniques for improving interpersonal
skills Ability to explain and predict the behaviour of people at work is important for managerial
effectiveness.

7. Empowering People
Putting employees in charge of what they do.

8. Stimulating innovation and change

Victory will go the organization the 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. An
organisation’s employees can be the impetus for innovation and change or they can be a major
stumbling block. The challenge for managers is to stimulate their employees creativity and
tolerance for change.

9. 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 employees with new technology,
better understanding of change, overcome resistance to change, create organizational culture.
Workers need to update their knowledge and skills continually to perform new job requirements.
Managers must learn to live with flexibility, spontaneity and unpredictability.

10. 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.
The manager’s job is different in a net-worked organisation, especially when it comes to
managing people.

11. Helping employees Balance work-life conflicts

Recent studies suggest that employees want jobs that give them flexibility in their work schedules
so they can better manage work / life conflicts.
 Flexible Working hours
 reporting time
 creating opportunities for employees
 Job security
 Design workplace and jobs

12. Creating positive Work Environment

A positive work environment, where employees feel valued and enjoy coming to work every day,
will have a huge impact on morale and employee performance.
 Human strength
 Vitality
 Right person appointed at right place
  Effort on what good for organization.

Veronique James, a member and former president of Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO)'s Arizona
chapter and CEO of The James Agency, an integrated agency specializing in consumer
advertising, public relations and digital marketing, suggests 7 tips in establishing a positive
workplace.
 Begin with gratitude. I strongly believe that it is a privilege, not a right, to work together.
 Create a safe environment. There is nothing more damaging than toxicity in a professional
environment. It stifles new ideas and inhibits collaboration.
 Don't leave your dirty dishes in the sink. This metaphor essentially means, "Don't leave a
mess for someone else to clean.“ but the emotional definition is, "Respect everyone's time."
 There are only opportunities in business, not problems.
 Consistency is key. Although change can be healthy, disrupting a good thing can be detrimental
and affect the cultural balance of your organization.
 Encourage positive thinking. Life is short. Why waste time on negative behaviors that don't
align with your business' moral compass?
 Don't sacrifice the important for the urgent. Without regular connection to your people, the
mission, vision and energy of the business can quickly dilute and degrade your cultural fiber.

13. Improving Ethical Behavior

Situations in which individuals are required to define right and wrong conduct.
 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
i
Enclyclopedia Brittanican article on the September 7, 1940 Nazi attack on UK, The Blitz.
https://www.britannica.com/event/the-Blitz
ii
Henry Ford being awarded with the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle on his 75th birthday.
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/henry-ford-grand-cross-1938/
iii
Download and read the report here: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_emp/---
ifp_skills/documents/publication/wcms_213452.pdf
iv
Read more in this article: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative
v
Article showing the inventions and impacts of the Industrial Revolution 4.0.
https://interestingengineering.com/inventions-of-the-industrial-revolution-40
vi
Article from World Economic Forum showing its critique on Industrial Revolution 4.0
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/
vii
Read this article to know about the pros and cons of Artificial Intelligence: https://towardsdatascience.com/advantages-
and-disadvantages-of-artificial-intelligence-182a5ef6588c