Organizational Behavior | Goals of Organizational Behavior

Organizational Behavior

The actions of people at work are related to organizational behavior. So the managers are required to develop the interpersonal skills or human skills. So that they can effectively handle the behavior of the subordinates and employees. The organizational behavior is the area of study that deals with the behavior of individuals, groups that are influenced by each other and by the structure of the organization. Moreover the knowledge acquired through this study is utilized for the smooth functioning of the organization as a whole. The main focus of organizational behavior is to reduce absenteeism, enhance productivity and turnover. Also to enhance the citizenship of employees and their job satisfaction.

Almost all of us have ideas about the behavior of other people and some of them are valid also. However all of them are not true because people differ in their behaviors and motivational factors significantly. On the other hand, organizational behavior provides a systematic framework of knowledge that can be quite helpful in prediction of human behavior. In this way management of the organization can motivate people towards higher productivity, innovation and change acceptance. Certain programs are started for the betterment of the employees that can promote the healthy working environment.

Focus of Organizational Behavior

Organizational behavior focuses the following elements of individual and group behaviors.

• Personality
• Perception
• Learning
• Motivation
• Roles of norms
• Team building
• Conflicts and negotiation.

Goals of Organizational Behavior

The goals of the organizational behavior are as follow:

• The employee absenteeism, productivity and turnover are emphasized.
• Also the employee performance is determined by the organizational citizenship concept.
• Attitudes consist of evaluative statements that are favorable or unfavorable and concerned with people, objects or events.
• Moreover the attitude is formed from three basic elements that are cognition, effect and behavior.
• The beliefs, knowledge, opinions and information possessed by a person constitute the cognitive element of that person.
• Hence the feelings or emotions constitute the effective element of the attitude.
• The intention to act in a specific way represents the behavioral element of the attitude of a person.
• So there are three major job related attitudes which are job involvement, job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Contribution of Organizational Behavior

The main function of organizational behavior is to explain and predict behavior of people at work. Both individual as well as group behavior are studied are covered by the organizational behavior. Moreover the formal and informal aspects of behavior are also focused by the OB. The managers are concerned with the three specific kinds of behaviors which are as follows:

• Employee productivity
• Absenteeism of employee 
• Employee turnover

Besides the above, the organizational citizenship is also becoming popular for the managers.

Managers should also consider the attitudes of employees because these serve as important parameters in observing and  predicting behaviors. In some cases an individual feels inconvenience between attitude and behavior or two or more attitudes. It is not a clear cut fact that the happy employees are definitely productive employees. Therefore the managers should pay attention in understanding what are the forces that make employees productive rather than only happy.

Within organizational environments, there are five different traits that can explain the behavior of employees. These five traits are as follows:

• Locus of control
• Machiavellian
• Self esteem
• Self monitoring
• Risk Propensity

By understanding the above mentioned traits, the working behavior of employees can easily predict.

Employees’ Learning

In some cases a group of people observe the same situation or event, but they interpret it differently. In such a case the difference is due to the difference in the perception. The perception can be defined as the organization and interpretation of sensory impressions so that meaning can be given to the environment. Therefore the managers should keep in mind that the employees (or people) react according to their perception, not on the basis of reality. The managers should also consider how employees perceive their duties of job and practices of management.

Experiences help people in learning new things. The rewards and punishments given on the basis of executed behaviors are also an important factor for learning new things. The operative conditioning is applied to routine behavior of people which shows that people behave in a certain way. In order to obtain specific things or to avoid specific things. Social learning theory is the advanced branch of operant conditioning in which people learn through direct experience and observation. The managers facilitate the employee’s learning process by setting any specific example in front of him or giving him some reward for standard performance.

Behavior of Employees

The group behavior of employees (persons) is not equal to the sum of the total of all the behaviors of individual employees (person). People act differently when they join any group as compared to the behavior which shows they are lonely. Therefore the managers must also understand the importance of group behavior within the organizations.

In short the Managers need powerful tools that help them to understand and predict behavior of employees individually as well as in groups. For example if we take an example of a movie director who is also considered to be a manager of the project. The director must go into the mindset of the characters of the written script. In this way he can understand the perceptions and motivational factors of each character of the script. Later then he can guide actors to perform in an effective and efficient manner. In the same manner the managers within the normal organizations coach and guide the employees to perform the tasks in an efficient and effective way.