ORGANISATIONAL

BEHAVIOUR,
ITS NATURE AND SCOPE

Submitted To: Miss. Juthika Konwar

Submitted By:
Maqsud Yamin Mazumder
Sangita Paul
Swatilekha Das
 INTRODUCTION
An organization is a collection of people who work together to achieve individual and
organizational goals.
A consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more people that function on
a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals. Organization
can be defined as ‘two or more people working together for achieving a common goal’.
Organizational behavior is the study and application of knowledge about how people
as individuals and as groups act within organizations. It can be defined as the
understanding, prediction and management of human behavior in the organization.
Organizational Behavior (OB) is a field of study that investigates the impact that
individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the
purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness.
Organizational behavior (OB) is the study of factors that affect how individuals and
groups act in organizations and how organizations manage their environments.
Understanding OB requires studying individuals in the organizations, group and team
processes and organizational processes. These are also the components of OB.

OB focuses on improving productivity, reducing absenteeism and turnover, and

increasing employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment. It uses
systematic study to improve predictions of behavior. OB is an academic field of study
concerned with human behavior in organizations; also called organizational
psychology. It covers the area like motivation, group dynamics, leadership,
organization structure, decision making, careers, conflict resolution, and organizational
development. When this subject is taught in business schools, it is called organizational
behavior; when it is taught in psychology departments, it is called organizational
psychology.
Organizational behavior is an academic discipline concerned with describing,
understanding, predicting, and controlling human behavior in an organizational
environment. OB is related to other disciplines like Organizations Theory, Organization
Development and Personnel/Human Resources Management. OB, being an
interdisciplinary subject, draws heavily from other behavioral sciences such as
Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology.

DEFINITIONS

Different behavioral scientists have defined OB differently. A few important definitions

on OB are as follows-

According to Luthans “OB is directly concerned with the understanding, predicting

and controlling of human behavior in organizations.”

Davis and Newstrom defined OB as “the study and application of knowledge how
people act or behave within organization. It is a human tool for human benefit. It
applies broadly to the behavior of people in all types of organizations such as business,
government, school and service organizations.”
According to Robbins, Ob is the field of study that investigates the impact that
individuals, groups and structure have on behavior within organizations for the purpose
of applying such knowledge towards improving an organization’s effectiveness.”

To sum up, OB is concerned with the study of how and what people act in
organizations and also how their acts affect the performance of the organization. It also
applies the knowledge gained about individuals, groups and the effect of structure on
human behavior in order to make organizations work more effectively.

NEED FOR STUDYING ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

OB is the study of people at work in organizations. And we study organizations
because we spend our lives interacting with them and we influence organizations and
organizations influence us.
The study of OB benefits us in several ways.
• The study of OB helps us understand ourselves and others in a better way. This
helps greatly in improving our inter-personal relations in the organizations.
• The knowledge of OB helps the managers know individual employees better
and motivate employees to work for better results. It helps managers apply
appropriate motivational techniques in accordance to the nature of individual
enployees who exhibit glaring differences in many respects.
• One of the basic characteristics of OB is that it is human in nature. So to say,
OB tackles human problems humanly. It helps understand the cause of the
problem, predicts its future course of action and controls its evil consequences.
• The most popular reason for studying OB is to learn how to predict human
behavior and, then, apply it some useful way to make the organization more
effectively.
• All organizations are run by man. It implies that effective utilization of people
working in the organization guarantees success of the organization. OB helps
managers how to efficiently manage human resourses in the organization. It
enables managers to inspire and motivate employees towards higher
productivity and better results.

NATURE OF OB
Organizational behavior has emerged as a separate field of study. The nature it has
acquired by now is identified as follows:

1. A separate field of study and not a discipline only: OB has a multi-

disciplinary orientation and is, thus, not based on a specific theoretical
background. Therefore, it is better to call OB as a separate field of study rather
than a discipline only.
 2. An inter-disciplinary approach: OB is essentially an interdisciplinary
approach to study human behavior at work. It tries to integrate the relevant
knowledge drawn from related disciplines like psychology, sociology and
anthropology to make them applicable for studying and analyzing
organizational behavior.

3. An applied science: The very nature of OB is applied. What OB basically does

is the application of various researches to solve the organizational problems
related to human behavior. The basic line of difference between pure science
and OB is that while the former concentrates on fundamental researches, the
latter concentrates on applied researches. As OB involves both applied
researches and its application in organizational analysis, hence, OB can be
called both science as well as art.

4. A Normative Science: OB is a normative science also. While the positive

science discusses only cause-effect relationship, OB prescribes how the findings
of applied researches can be applied to socially accepted organizational goals.
Thus, OB deals with what is accepted by individuals and society engaged in an
organization. In fact, OB is normative as well that is well underscored by the
proliferation of management theories.

5. A humanistic and Optimistic Approach: OB applies humanistic approach

towards people working in the organisaton. It trears people as thinking, feeling
human beings. OB is based on the belief that people have an innate desire to be
independent, creative and productive.

6. A total System Approach: The system approach is one that integrates all the
variables affecting organizational functioning. The system approach has been
developed by the behavioral scientists to analyse human behavior in view of
his/her socio-psychological framework.

CONTRIBUTING DISCIPLINES TO OB
OB is an applied behavioral science. It has drawn heavily from a number of other
applied interdisciplinary behavioral disciplines of psychology, sociology and
anthropology.
PSYCHOLOGY: The discipline that has the greatest influence on the field of OB is
psychology. Psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes
change the behavior of humans and other animals. It is a science that focuses directly
on understanding and predicting individual behavior. Topics such as personality,
perception, attitude, opinion, lerning and motivation describe interpersonal aspects of
OB.

SOCIOLOGY: Sociology is the study of people in relation to their fellow human

beings. Whereas psychologists focus on individuals sociologists study groups of
individuals. The field of sociology has made valuable contributions to our
understandings of group dynamics within organizations. The topics derived from
sociology include group dynamics, formation of groups, communication, formal and
informal organizations.

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: social psychology blends concepts from both psychology

and sociology, though it is generally considered a branch of psychology. It focuses on
peoples’ influences on one another. In addition, we find social psychologists making
significant contributions in the areas of measuring, understanding and changing
attitudes; communication patterns; and building trust.

ANTHROPOLOGY: Anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human

beings and their activities. Anthropology helps us understand differences in
fundamental values, attitudes and behavior between people in different regions and
organizations. In sum and substance, anthropology studies culture. Culture dictates
what people learn and how they behave. Organizations create a unique culture that
influences the way organizational members think about the organization and how they
should behave.
 RELATIONSHIP OF OB WITH OTHER SUBJECTS:

Behavioural Contribution Unit of Output

science analysis
Learning
Motivation
Perception
Training
Leadership effectiveness
Job satisfaction
Psychology Individual decision making
Performance appraisal
Attitude measurement
Employee selection
Work design
Work stress
Individual

Group dynamics
Work teams
Communication
Power
Conflict
Intergroup behaviour
Sociology

Formal organization theory Study of

Organizational technology Organizational
Group
Organizational change Behaviour
Organizational culture

Behavioural change
Attitude change
Social psychology Communication
Group processes
Group decision making
Organization
system
Comparative values
Comparative attitudes
Cross-cultural analysis
Anthropology

Organizational culture
Organizational environment

Conflict
Political science Intraorganizational politics
Power
 SCOPE OF OB
OB is the study of human behavior at work in organizations. Accordingly the scope of
OB includes the study of individuals, groups and organization/structure. The aspects of
these three are –
1. Individuals: Organizations are the associations of individuals. Individuals
differ in many respects. The study of individuals, therefore, includes aspects as
personality, perception, attitudes, values, job satisfaction, learning and
motivation.
2. Groups of individuals: Groups include aspects such as group dynamics, group
conflicts, communication, leadership, power and politics and the like.
3. Organization structure: The study of organization/structure includes aspects
such as formation of organizational structure, culture and change and
development.

SUMMARY
OB is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and
structure have on behavior within an organization. It focuses on improving
productivity, reducing absenteeism and turnover, and increasing employee job
satisfaction and organizational commitment. It uses systematic study to improve
predictions of behavior. OB managers need to understand better and more about human
behavior than before to make organizations run effectively and efficiently.
For managing people, every organization follows an organizational behavior
system or framework, commonly called ‘model of OB’. Four models of OB are the
autocratic, custodial, supportive, and collegial are very popular. Under autocratic
model, managers use their power and authority, whereas employees become dependent
on organizations in case of custodial model. Supportive model supports employees and
collegial model inculcates teamwork feeling among employees in the organization.