Organizational Behavior OAD 30063

There are lot of challenges and opportunities today for organizations to use Organizational

Behavior (OB) concepts. One of the most important and broad-based challenges facing

organizations today is adapting to diverse work environments. Organizations are

becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity. Understanding the

concepts of OB allow management to facilitate the needs of a diverse workforce as well as

help them understand what people think, feel and do in organizational settings. It is

essential for all of us as this knowledge helps predict, understand and control

organizational events. The people within the organization and their behaviors affect the

performance of the organization.

By studying the OB, we become more aware of our business ethics and are able

to positively find ways to transfer our employee's attitudes and behaviors into more

positive experiences personally and for the company. We should realize that being ethical

is good business practice and pays in the long run. To be ethical, it requires treating

others -- customers and employees -- properly and fairly to ensure the establishment

relationships with customers and employees that based on trust. Improvement of the

employer-employee relationship is important to both parties for several reasons. First,

employee productivity increases when employers treat their employees with more

respect. Second, employees may find that increased ethical behavior on their part actually

results in higher compensation. For example, many companies are involved in

relationship marketing, which is the process of creating and maintaining long-term

relationships with customers. Relationship marketing, which can help a company increase

its profits, requires the cooperation of employees. Employees that perform their jobs

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conscientiously and diligently are frequently rewarded with higher wages. Third, even if

there is no material gain, ethically appropriate behavior provides a sense of self-

satisfaction. Therefore, it is advantageous for every organization to maintain high ethical

standards and thereby foster trust between a company and its employees.

However, since the access and acquisition of new knowledge continue to expand,

that is critical thinking skills come in to help us examine, evaluate, and apply new

knowledge in a fair-minded manner. By utilizing real-life situation that always

emphasized in Critical Thinking Model, we may then appreciate the values of these skills

in the analysis of OB facts. This combination forms intricate network connections that

produce a deeper understanding of content while offering a thinking platform from which

to analyze additional situation.

In my personal perspectives, I find that OB not only allows me to understand

what people think, feel and do in organizational settings, but also making me more

understanding myself and what I want and pursue in my personal and professional life.

For example, OB affiliated subjects, Human Behavior, provide us with a guideline

understand what people and even ourselves think, feel and do in every settings. Through

my personal experience, not many people really understand themselves. Some people

spend their days in a frenzy of activity such as wandering and gadding with no actual

direction; while others might keep on looking down themselves with endless complaints

throughout their life. Shameful to say, that I was their group member before. Anyway,

with the understanding of human being and myself, I started to look seriously at my life

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and decided what needed to be done. To be succeed, I have to first know who I am

before I can know what I want and where I want to go. As such, a deep and honest self-

assessment was needed to appraise my position in life, talent, values, potential and

ambition before I can set a realistic and meaningful goal.

Since then, I made up my mind to look at my life seriously and wanted to improve

myself. I realized that the importance of having a higher education especially we are

living in an era of radical change and even competitive. As such, I decided to take up any

course with a simple purpose that to upgrade myself. I mapped out the strategies needed

to achieve my dream. First, I started to read a lot of motivational materials and English

language books in order to set up the right thoughts and attitude in my mind that it could

succeed. Second, to sharpen my assertive skill, I should learn how to verbally and

nonverbally communicate my positive and negative feelings, thoughts, and emotions

without experiencing undue amount of anxiety or guilt and without violating the dignity

of others as well as requesting that another person change an offensive behavior and not

uncomfortable refusing unreasonable request from someone else. For example, I would

try to enhance my eye contact when communicating with others to express my sincerity

and self-confidence; use selective inattention to ignore any comments from others that

contain abusive remarks; do not answer abusive questions, refute charges and so on. At

the same time, I understood that health is the key of lives, so I went gym and took care of

my diet to maintain a healthy physical. All these self-examination and preparations took

me about one year before I took up the ADBIT (Advanced Diploma in Business and

Information Technology) course provided by Informatics College in 2001. Before I could

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manage to complete the course, I encountered many obstacles and distractions on my

road to success; they included my fear, disappointments, negative attitude and lack of

proper management of time. Nevertheless, my early preparations brought its effects here;

the embedded faith, persistence, and patience created a burning desire motivating me to

continue and tried again. Obstacles can stimulate the best out of any person if we react

with great determination. In my opinion, I have also found it to be true.

Besides, the concepts of OB help me to understand and aware what I want and

pursue in my professional life. For example, Herzberg’s two-factor model arouse a sense

of awareness in me for what factor that is most motivating me in my work. From there, I

understand that people would strive to achieve hygiene needs because they are unhappy

without them, but once satisfied the effect soon wear off and the satisfaction is temporary.

In contrast, the motivator factors are based on an individual's need for personal growth.

When they exist, motivator factors actively create job satisfaction. If they are effective,

then they can motivate an individual to achieve above-average performance and effort.

Hence, working as an executive personnel in Casino de Genting operation for the past 7

years, I find that the work itself that most motivating me. As my daily job function in the

casino is only supervising my staffs and handling those disputes related to gambling and I

find that it is a quite dull routine job and I don’t find myself get improved. Therefore, my

experience suggests that motivation comes from the motivator factors, i.e. job content

and it is absolutely true that “ if you want people to do a good job for you, then you

must give them a good job to do”.

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Therefore, I understand myself will practically respond to a job high in motivating

factors. However, What's a good job actually look like? Or in other words, what are the

characteristics of motivating jobs. In my opinion, there are five key characteristics could

be used to describe the motivating potential of a job. These characteristics are skill

variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. The characteristics of

skill variety, task identity, and task significance all serve to account for a sense of

"meaningfulness" and a job with autonomy serves to give the jobholder a sense of

responsibility, while feedback satisfies the need for knowledge. Jobs scoring high in

terms of a combination of these five characteristics resulted in higher job satisfaction and

productivity than jobs scoring low. For a job to be intrinsically motivating, all five

characteristics must be simultaneously present, to some extent. On the other hand, a

“good job” also embraces other motivator factors such as achievement, recognition,

responsibility and advancement so that the employees regardless of their position in the

organizational hierarchy would perform at a high level, are satisfied with their jobs, and

are committed to their organization.

In work, one’s productivity is greatly enhanced by the ability to communicate

well. In fact, it is difficult to think of a single job in which communication is

unimportant. Low-level communication leads to loneliness and distance from friends,

lovers, spouse, and children--- as well as ineffectiveness at work. The OB concepts and

application provide a fundamental base on me that one thing certain about our method

and style of communication: they are primarily learned responses. Thus, in realizing

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these, I can change to sharpen my listening skill, assertive skill and conflict management

skill.

In fact, we spend more time listening than anything else we do in our waking

hours and our ability to listen directly influences our friendships, our family relationship

and our effectiveness at work. Therefore, undoubtedly, I should seek the best alternative

to enhance my listening skills. When somebody is talking, I must show attending by

demonstrating a posture of involvement, eye contact, and appropriate body movement so

that I could respond reflectively to what the speaker is saying as well as detecting the

unnecessary conflicts.

Also, I used to be conflict avoided or stressing myself to avoid the conflicts.

Anyhow, with right concepts of OB, I am able to correct myself that as long as

organizations continue to use work teams, conflict cannot be avoided since it is an

inevitable aspect of work teams. Conflict is not always negative. In fact, it can be healthy

when effectively managed. Healthy conflict can lead to growth, innovation, new ways of

thinking, and prevent stagnation. To my knowledge, the collaborative conflict-solving

method usually has favorable consequences. Its approaches include:

• Define the conflict in terms of needs, not solutions.

• Brainstorm possible solutions

• Select the solution that will best meet both parties’ needs (after having checked out

possible consequences).

• Plan who will do what, where, and by when.

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• Implement the solutions.

• Evaluate and monitor the conflict-solving process and how well the solutions turned

out.

All these improve my knowledge of conflict resolution method that help me learn

from the fight and also learn how to fight more productively the next time. Besides, it

make me enjoy placing high value on logic, ideas, and systematic inquiry, and I find

satisfaction in identifying a problem, developing a variety of possible solutions, weighing

them carefully, and testing them to see to it that the most logical systematic approach is

followed.

Understanding different types of people and possible ways to deal with them

allows us to select the leadership style and methods most appropriate to their situation.

The leadership style in today business environments that illustrated in OB syllabus have

opened a new page in me in evaluation my own and my company management

leadership. From there, I understand leadership is different to management, in that leaders

always make changes and inspire the followers to transform potential into reality.

Managers run organization, and they tend to institutionalize the so-called “status quo”.

Effective leadership is imperative for molding a group of people into a team, shaping

them into a force that serves as a competitive business advantage. Leader know how to

make people function in a collaborative fashion, and how to motivate them to excel their

performance as well as how to balance the individual team member's quest with the goal

of producing synergy - an outcome that exceeds the sum of individual inputs.

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To be an effective leader, I can conclude that he or she must possess the following

characteristics: -

• Gives direction, sets an example, and shares risks or hardship on an equal footing.

• Wins respect without courting popularity.

• Leads by example; practices what he or she preaches.

• Listen with understanding; willing to discuss and solve problem, open to ideas;

gives time to listen.

• Supports and helps; backs you up; is on your side; remembers your problem.

• Uses team approach; helps group reach better decisions; facilitates cooperation.

• Avoids close supervision; does not overboss; does not dictate or rule by the book.

• Delegates authority; trusts group; relies on their judgment; permits group

decision; has faith in the creativity of others.

• Communicates openly and honestly; tells you what he thinks; you can trust what

he says.

• Brings out best in his men; has common touch with the workers.

In conclusion, all the above mention issues must receive careful consideration and

maintaining consistency with broad organizational objectives, is necessary for long-term

success as well as leading to an ultimate goal of improved productivity; have people

perform at full potential, and reward workers for performance. Also, environmental

factors are increasing the need for effective leadership in today's workplace, in order to

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better motivate, guide, and direct employee teams, we require specific skills and expertise

in behavioral studies to change our environment.