Organizational Behavior

Chapter – 1
What is Organizational Behavior?
Ans: Organizational behavior is the study of what people do in an organization and how their
behaviors affect the organization’s performance.
❖ In short organizational behavior is the study of how people, group and structures
affect the organization.
State the difference between Intrapersonal skills and Interpersonal skills.
Ans: The biggest difference that you need to know about between interpersonal vs
intrapersonal communication is that interpersonal is between two or more people, and
intrapersonal is between you and yourself.
In other words:
As the term, ‘intra’ means ‘within’, so the communication that takes place within a person
is called intrapersonal communication. On the other hand, the term ‘inter’ means
‘between’, so when the communication occurs between two or more persons, it is said to
be interpersonal communication.
[Interpersonal skills are also known as social skills]
What are the areas of interpersonal skills, give a short explanation?
Ans: there are 7 (seven) main areas/ stages of interpersonal skills they are:
➢ Verbal Communication
➢ Non-Verbal communication
➢ Listening skills
➢ Negotiation
➢ Problem solving
➢ Decision making
➢ Assertiveness
Verbal Communication:
Verbal communication refers to how and what words to use to communicate with individuals.
Non-Verbal communication:
This type of communication consists of facial expressions body language and hand gesture.
Listening skills:
This skill refers to the ability to hear attentively and process information correctly.

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Negotiation:
Having the ability to discuss and reach an agreement in a professional manner.
Problem Solving:
The ability to resolve a problem after giving it thought, and taking into consideration all
possible solutions and thinking on the best one for everyone.
Decision Making:
Decision making refers to having good analytical ability and developing a professional within
a working environment.
Assertiveness:
This refers to being positive towards office colleagues making them confident and self-
assured in their actions.
Write the importance of having Interpersonal skills.
People skills play an essential role in the workplace. Nevertheless, the importance of
interpersonal skills relates to having strong social skills. Aside from this, there are diverse
positive reasons to acquire strong interpersonal skills.

We are surrounded by people in almost every part of our lives. Thus, to connect and bond,
being socially competent is vital.

Social competence is one of the critical factors for employees to build a positive attitude for
life. Building a social relationship with colleagues and people is a general factor of happiness.

Hence, interpersonal skills matter in every aspect of life, no matter how big or small.

As humans, we all want to become a part of the big picture and crave a sense of unity. Being
a part of a popular group or community feels essential for us. Being close to friends makes us
happy. Life is a performance, and every one of us tries to play a social role in society.

In simple words, everyone needs support from other people to be happy and content in both
professional and private life.

Therefore, employees must understand the importance of interacting with clients and peers.
This builds a positive relationship among employees and creates a robust work culture.

This is why acquiring good interpersonal skills is a must-have for any employee.

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What are the challenges and opportunities for organizational behavior?

Ans: Challenges and opportunities for organizational behavior are massive and rapidly
changing for improving productivity and meeting business goals.

Although the problems with organizations and the solutions over the ages have not changed,
the emphasis and surrounding environmental context certainly have changed.

Although the resulting lean and mean organizations offered some short-run benefits in terms
of lowered costs and improved productivity, if they continued to do business, as usual, they
would not be able to meet current or future challenges.

As a Harvard Business Review article argues, “These are scary times for managers”.

The singular reason given for these frightening times – the increasing danger of disruptive
change.

The nature of work is changing so rapidly that rigid job structures impede the work to be done
now, and that may drastically change the following year, month, or even week.

Main challenges and opportunities of organizational behavior are:

• Responding to Economic Pressures

• Responding to Globalization
• Managing Workforce Diversity
• Improving Customer Service
• Improving People Skills
• Stimulating Innovation and Change
• Coping with “Temporariness”
• Working in Networked Organizations
• Helping Employees Balance Work–Life Conflicts
• Creating a Positive Work Environment
• Improving Ethical Behavior

Responding to Economic Pressures:

Managing employees in all the situations whether the time is bad or good is hard. OB suggests
to reward, satisfy and retain employees in good times. In bad times, companies should focus
on employee’ issues like stress, coping and decision making.
During difficult economic times, like in recession, the difference between good and bad
management can be difference between profit and loss, even survival and failure.

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Responding to Globalization:
The world has become a global village now and manager’ job is changed.
For example, Nokia, a Finland based mobile phone company recruit employees from India,
China or from other developing countries, the situation is now that non-Finns have
outnumbered the Finns at Nokia’ renowned research Center in Helsinki (capital of Finland).
And automobile companies like Ford (American based company) manufacturing in Brazil,
Volkswagen (German firm) in Mexico, Mercedes (German Firm) and BMW (German Firm) in
South Africa.

Managing workforce diversity:

Workforce diversity comprises of women and men, individuals with a variety of physical or
psychological abilities, many ethnic and racial groups, and people who differ in age and sexual
orientation.
OB will help to know how managers can use differences within groups as competitive
advantage. what are legal requirements in each country, or does diversity even matters? Etc.

Improving Customer Service:

In today’ world, majority of people in the country work in service sector. i.e., 80% people in
US, 73% in Australia, 69% in UK, 68% in Germany and 65% in Japan.
Service jobs include technical support representatives, sales officers, credit representatives,
flight attendants, financial planners, waiters, etc. common characteristic of this job is
interaction with customers. Train these employees enough so that they can answer all the
questions asked by customers and provide them best solution for their problems.
Many companies fail because they could not provide better customer services, and as a result
they lose customers and so had to wind-up.

Improving People Skills:

It includes, managers should be capable enough to understand the people at work.
OB will tell how to design motivating jobs, how to create effective team, techniques for
improving your listening skills.

Stimulating Innovation and change:

Organizations should be open enough to accept change and bring innovation.
Organizations who don’t adopt change and innovate their services, products or procedures
of doing business becomes extinctions.

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So, companies should adopt change and bring innovation to attract customers and remain in
the competition.

Coping with Temporariness:

Companies need to go fast and flexible to compete and survive in today’ world. So, they have
to adopt strategies like globalization, expansion or technological changes.
Temporariness refers towards strategy for current season, for specific customer, for running
project, in the current market scenario, little technological changes, even varying working
hours, temporary employees etc.
Managers should be skilled and trained enough to cope with this temporariness, flexibility.
Spontaneity and unpredictability.

Working in Networked Organizations:

Networked organizations enable employees to communicate and participate from around the
world.
In this type of organization manager’ job is so challenging, as it is difficult to motivate and
lead people or employees sitting in other cities or countries than managing employees
physically present in the organization. OB will guide manager, what skill they should develop
to manage the work in this situation.

Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts:

Nine to five jobs are now the talk of gone days. Time has changed now. Priorities of both
employees and companies are changing.
Employees are now complaining that the line between work time and non-work time is
getting blurred. Researchers have found four reasons behind this conflict, are,
Firstly, the creation of Global organizations means, World never sleeps.
Second, communication technology allows many professionals and technical employees to
work from any part of the world.
Third, organizations are asking employees to spare more time for job.
Finally, the rise of dual-career couple makes it difficult for marriage employees to fulfil
commitments to home.
OB suggests managers how to design the job that may help employees to deal with work-life
conflicts.

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Creating a positive Work Environment:
Organizations are now taking positive work environment as competitive advantage.
OB researchers are focusing on positive work scholarship (Positive work environment), which
studies, how organizations are developing human strength, vitality, resilience and unlocking
potential.
OB also focusses on what’s wrong with organizations and its employees, what’s good about
them. Researchers have found positive variables are engagement, optimism, hope and
resilience.
Positive organizational scholars have studied a concept “reflected best-self”, means best thing
or expertise of employee, ignoring the deficiencies and limitations. Focus on “what employees
are good at, and exploit their strengths.

Improving Ethical Behavior:

In today’ world full of tough competition, stress and expectation of increasing productivity,
employees often opt to break rules, adopt unethical practices and engage in questionable
practices.
Employees often face in daily routine ethical dilemmas, in which they have to make choices
between right and wrong.
In global economy, where culture vary from country to country, it is difficult to determine,
what is ethically right and wrong.
Managers in different organizations are spreading awareness in different ways i.e., writing
and distributing codes of conducts, offering seminars, workshops and training programs to
improve ethical behavior. Most importantly, managers are creating protection mechanisms
to protect the employee who reveal the internal unethical practice.

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