HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN ORGANIZATION

MODULE 1

Introduction to Organizational Behavior

Organizational Behavior (OB) – is the study of human behavior in organizational settings,

of the interface between human behavior and the organization, and of the organization
itself.

An understanding of organizational behavior is a perspective that provides a set of

insights and tools that all managers can use to carry out their jobs more effectively.

Typical managerial activities include motivating employees to work harder, ensuring the
employees’ jobs are properly designed, resolving conflicts, evaluating performance, and
helping workers set goals to achieve rewards.

Organizational Behavior and the Management Process

Four functions of management (PODCON): planning, organizing, directing/leading, and
controlling.

Planning is the process of determining the organization’s desired future position and
deciding how best to get there.

Organizing is the process of designing jobs, grouping jobs into manageable units, and
establishing patterns of authority among jobs and group of jobs.

Leading/Directing is the process of motivating members of the organization to work

together toward the organization’s goals.

Controlling is the process of monitoring and correcting the actions of the organization
and its people to keep them headed towards their goals, examples performance
evaluation, reward systems, and motivation.

Organizations use many different resources in the pursuit of their goals and objectives
together with the managerial functions: human, financial, physical, and information
resources. Managerial functions using these resources resulting to an effective and
efficient attainment of organizational goals.

Organizational Behavior and the Manager’s Job

Important Managerial Roles
Category Role Example
Interpersonal Figurehead Attend employee retirement ceremony
Leader Encourage workers to increase productivity
Liaison Coordinate activities of 2 committees
Informational Monitor Scan Business Week for information about
Competition
Disseminator Send out memos outlining new policies
Spokesperson Held press conference to announce new plant

Decision-Making Entrepreneur Develop idea for new product & convince others of
its merits
Disturbance Resolve dispute
Handler
Resource Allocate budget requests
Allocator
Negotiator Settle new labor contract
Interpersonal Roles are social in nature, they are roles in which the manager’s main task
is to relate to other people in certain ways.

Informational Roles involves some aspect of information processing.

Decision-Making Roles are indicators of the leader’s critical appreciation of facts and
situations confronted and faced by him in the organization.

Critical Managerial Skills

Technical Skills are skills necessary to accomplish specific tasks within the organization.

Interpersonal Skills used by managers to communicate with, understand, and motivate

individuals and groups.

Conceptual Skills are the manager’s ability to think in the abstract.

Diagnostic Skills allow managers to better understand cause-and-effect relationships and

to recognize the optimal solutions to problems.

Conceptual and diagnostic skills are usually more important for top managers in
organization, whereas technical and interpersonal skills may be more important for first-
line managers. Middle managers uses all of these skills.

Characteristics of the Field

Interdisciplinary focus – organizational behavior synthesizes several other fields of study
like organizational psychology (dealing with the behavior of people in organizational
settings), sociology (social systems like families), anthropology (interactions between
people and their environment), political science (study of political systems like
government), economics (production, distribution and consumption of goods and
services), engineering (work measurement, productivity measurement, workflow
analysis, job design), and medicine (in the area of stress).

Descriptive Nature – to describe relationships between two or more behavioral

variables. Organizational behavior is descriptive for several reasons: the immaturity of
the field, the complexities inherent in studying human behavior, and the lack of valid,
reliable, and accepted definitions and measures.

Basic Concepts of the Field

The central concepts of organizational behavior can be grouped into three basic
categories: individual processes, interpersonal processes, and organizational processes
and characteristics.

Individual Interpersonal Organizational

Foundations Groups & Teams Organizational Change
Motivation Communication Organization Structure
Stress Leadership & Modern Organizational Design
Decision-Making Perspectives Organizational Culture
Conflict & Negotiation

Individual-Level Group-Level Organization-Level

Outcomes Outcomes Outcomes
Productivity Productivity Productivity
Performance Performance Performance
Absenteeism Norms Turnover
Attitudes Cohesion Survival
Turnover Group Satisfaction Stakeholder Satisfaction
Stress
The result of this is Organizational Effectiveness. Managers work to optimize a variety of
individual-level, group-level, and organizational-level outcomes. It is sometimes
necessary to make tradeoffs among the different types and levels of outcomes, but each
is an important determinant of organizational effectiveness.

The system perspective or the theory of systems was first developed in the physical
sciences, but it has been extended to other areas, such as management.

A system is an interrelated set of elements that function as a whole. Organization is a

system.

Feedback

Inputs Transformation Outputs

Material Technology (including Products/Services
Human manufacturing, operations Profits/Losses
Financial & service processes) Employee Behaviors
Information New Information

Environment

The system approach to organizations provides a useful framework for understanding

how the elements of an organization interact among themselves & with their
environment. Various inputs are transformed into different outputs, with important
feedback from the environment.

The situational perpective in here researchers discovered that in organizations, most

situations and outcomes are contingent; that is, the precise relationship between two
variables is likely to be situational – dependent on other variables.

Interactionalism attempts to explain how people select, interpret, and change various
situations. When people enter an organization, their own behaviors and actions shape
that organization in various ways. Similarly, the organization itself shapes the behaviors
and actions of each individual who becomes part of it. This interactionist perspective
can be useful in explaining organizational behavior.

*End*

Reference: Human Behavior in Organization (Philippine Edition)

By: Ricky W. Griffin / Gregory Moorehead