Module 1

What is ob ?
What is 'Organizational Behavior - OB'
Organizational behavior (OB) is the study of the way people interact within groups.
Normally this study is applied in an attempt to create more efficient business
organizations. The central idea of the study of organizational behavior is that a
scientific approach can be applied to the management of workers. Organizational
behavior theories are used for human resource purposes to maximize the output
from individual group members.
BREAKING DOWN 'Organizational Behavior - OB'
There are a variety of different models and philosophies of organizational behavior.
Areas of research include improving job performance, increasing job satisfaction,
promoting innovation and encouraging leadership. In order to achieve the desired
results, managers may adopt different tactics, including reorganizing groups,
modifying compensation structures and changing the way performance is evaluated.

Chapter 4 Foundations of Individual Behavior

Understanding individuals in organizations is important for all managers. A basic
framework for facilitating this understanding is the psychological contract - people's
expectations regarding what they will contribute to the organization and what they
will get in return. Organizations strive to achieve an optimal person-job fit, but this
process is complicated by the existence of individual differences.
Personalities are the relatively stable sets of psychological and behavioral attributes
that distinguish one person from another. The "big five" personality traits are
agreeableness, conscientiousness, negative emotionality, extraversion, and
openness. Other important personality traits include locus of control, self-efficacy,
authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, self-esteem, and risk propensity.
Attitudes are based on emotion, knowledge, and intended behavior. Cognitive
dissonance results from contradictory or incongruent attitudes, behaviors, or both.
Job satisfaction or dissatisfaction and organizational commitment are important
work-related attitudes. Employees' moods, assessed in terms of positive or negative
affectivity, also affect attitudes in organizations.

Perception is the set of processes by which a person becomes aware of and

interprets information about the environment. Basic perceptual processes include
selective perception and stereotyping. Perception and attribution are also closely
related.
Creativity is a person's ability to generate new ideas or to conceive of new
perspectives on existing ideas. Background experiences, personal traits, and
cognitive abilities affect an individual's creativity. The creative process usually
involves four steps: preparation, incubation, insight, and verification.
Workplace behavior is a pattern of action by the members of an organization that
directly or indirectly influences organizational effectiveness. Performance behaviors
are the set of work-related behaviors the organization expects the individual to
display to fulfill the psychological contract. Dysfunctional behaviors include
absenteeism and turnover, as well as theft, sabotage, and violence. Organizational
citizenship entails behaviors that make a positive overall contribution to the
organization.

Future of ob :

Organizations need to change their behavior. We are beginning to see a fundamental shift
in organizational behavior. A growing number of individuals and organizations are
learning how to become more patient, committed, connected, engaged, trusted and
emotionally intelligent. There are significant challenges associated with these behavioral
shifts in behavior but the need and the results outweigh the emotional labor required.
Imagine trying to explain the internet to somebody living in the year 1200. The frame of
reference you would use would be so different that it would be almost impossible to
convey how the internet works, let alone what it means to our society. You are standing
on the other side of what would seem impossible to a person from the Middle Ages.
If you look at the current rate of accelerating change and innovation, we are the medieval
ones. Trying to imagine the incredible changes we will face is a paradox, because it is an
attempt to envision something that is by definition unimaginable today. We are in the
midst of a rapid change revolution that will destroy the current status quo and
enable the impossible to become reality. Behavioral change is required. The need for
us to be practicing the emotional labor required to develop our
emotional intelligence has never been greater.

The willingness to do emotional labor is the key to better personal and organizational
results. We were never taught the importance or the difficulty involved in doing this type
of work. This has kept us stuck in our current paradigm, unable to achieve sustainably
better results. The process of implementing behavioral change is like walking through a
war zone. You see misery, trauma, chaos and occasional casualties. Organizations must
learn how to embrace rapid change while creating the trusted advisor relationships that
will enable them to out care the competition.
_______________
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International dimensions of ob :

The world of organizations is no longer defined by national boundaries--and neither

are today's successful business leaders. Stay ahead of the curve with
INTERNATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, the proven
and respected text that breaks down the conceptual, theoretical, and practical
boundaries limiting our ability to understand and work with people in countries and
cultures around the world. Adler's hallmark approach views global complexity as
neither unpredictable nor random; rather, she demonstrates that variations across
cultures and their impacts on organizations follow systematic, predictable patterns.
With a blend of substance and readability, INTERNATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR is both authoritative and richly detailed.
Features

INTERNATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR includes

numerous case studies, applications, and examples, but is still a concise and
manageable 10 chapters.

The text examines a wide range of cultures: Asian, African, Eastern and
Western European, North and South American, and Middle Eastern.

The United States is frequently used as a reference point and as a point of

comparison since most of today''s management literature is U.S.-based.

Adler and Gunderson examine cross-cultural entry and reentry transitions

from the employee''s perspective.

The authors discuss the role of women as international managers and global
leaders.

The authors provide essential insight to the benefits and drawbacks of

pursuing global careers.

Multidisciplinary nature of ob :

Organizational behavior is the study of the behavior of the people in an organization.

It is the study of the interaction between the people at workplace and also the
organization itself. "Organizational behavior could be described as the study of how
individuals and organizations act and how do these organizations and individuals
apply knowledge. Further explaining organization behavior uses system approach
and studies these characteristics by assuming the person/organization as the whole
person or whole organization. The core of organization behavior is to build better
relationships by achieving organization objectives, individual objectives and social
objectives" (Hiriyappa, 2009).
Multidisciplinary Nature of OB:
Organizational behavior is consisting of multidisciplinary nature which is (Robbins,
2010):
Psychology: the study of the individuals working in the organization under the stated
rules and regulation of the organization. It also help to study the individual's learning,
personality, emotions, perception, leadership effectiveness, decision making power,
job satisfaction, attitude measurements and job stress.
Sociology: the study of small group's behaviors in the organization. Like the people
who are working together on a project so that the group behavior can be analyzed. It
also helps to study the behavioral changes, attitude changes, and ways of
communication, group processes and group decision making powers of the
individuals in a group.

Anthropology: at the organizational level, it is the study of the cooperate culture of

the organization. It also helps to find out the comparative values, comparative
attitudes, cross- culture analysis and organizational environmental power.
Economics: this study depends upon the rational decision making of the
organization.
Political science: it depends upon the study of coalitions and alliances, power and
conflict of an organization in the surrounded environment.
Organizational Behavior: Major Goals
By going through all these steps an organization achieves the major goals like:
It helps to understand and control the behavior of the workers in an organization.
It helps to study the behavior in the workplace, interaction between the people and
the organization, and the organization itself.
It helps to study the habits of the workers against their given tasks, explains how the
workers do the tasks and how can managers' overview their performances.
It determines the ethics of an organization to accomplish the desired the goals of an
organization.
It helps to study the cooperate culture of the organization.
It basically focuses on the study of beliefs and customs of an organization.
Opportunities of OB:
Because of understanding OB it has become the most important component of the
organizations. Such as (Robbins, 2010):
A large group of people of different races, cultures and ethnic groups work together.
At workplace more women are seen.
The typical type of employee is old fashion now.
Workers who are flexible and capable of work against the global competition are now
seen in an organization.
Globalization and OB

As the world has become the global village so the job of the managers is getting
changed. An outstanding research among the entire scientist taken by Tomlinson
1999, who examined globalization affects on culture and how culture affects on
globalization. "According to him, culture is the way we interpret our experience and
guide our actions, while globalization is a major driving force in modern conditions,
which "enforces" the change", by (Markovi, 2012).
Responding to Globalization:
Organizational Behavior (OB) is responding to the globalization very rapidly because
it's the need of the hour to along the changes in the environment. Because of
globalization the duties of the managers are getting changed so that they can
compete in the market and provide the goods and services on time and according to
the desires of the customers. OB is responding to the globalization in following ways
(Robbins, 2010):
Increase in International assignments
Working with people from different cultures
Overlooking outsourcing labor to countries with cheap labor
Management of a diverse workforce
Changing demographics
Improving the quality and productivity
Improving customers services
Helping the employees to balance the work- life conflicts
Improving ethical Behavior of workers
Improving people skill
Stimulating innovation and change
Globalization and Individual Performance
As learned from the case study, in the new era of globalization, individual
performance is the key issue whose primary objective is to present a strategic
framework for human resource management as a response to the growing
interaction of individual performance and globalization in business. It is that if the
human resource managers want to manage the workers for competitive edge in this

era of globalization than they have to introduce and implement such strategic HRM
policies and practices. To asses an individual's performance in an organization
performance appraisal is the tool used by the managers.
Performance appraisal plays a very important role in continuous development of an
organization. In today's competitive environment benchmarking and developing
continuously to face the fierce competition organizations must indulge in
performance monitoring.
To monitor the performance of employees of an organization the organization must
conduct performance appraisals on continuous basis. The process of performance
appraisal could be understood with the help of following figure-1. In simple words
"Performance Appraisal is the process that involves following:
(1) Creating SOP's standards of operation
(2) Analyzing and assessing the employees performance based on those SOP's
(3) Sharing feedback of the performance analysis with respective employees to
remove problems and enabling the employee for continuous development (Gary
Dessler, 2011).

Scope of ob :

Scope of Organizational Behaviour

The three internal organizational elements viz., people, technology and structure
and the fourth element, i.e., external social systems may be taken as the scope of
O.B.
1. People
The people constitute the internal social system of the organization. They consist of
individuals and groups. Groups may be large or small, formal or informal, official or
unofficial. They are dynamic. They form, change and disband. Human organization
changes everyday. Today, it is not the same as it was yesterday. It may change
further in the coming days. People are living, thinking and feeling being who created

the organization and try to achieve the objectives and goals. Thus, organizations
exist to serve the people and not the people exist to serve the organization.
2. Structure
Structure defines the sole relationship of people in an organization. Different people
in an organization are given different roles and they have certain relationship with
others. It leads to division of labour so that people can perform their duties or work to
accomplish the organizational goal. Thus, everybody cannot be an accountant or a
clerk. Work is complex and different duties are to be performed by different people.
Some may be accountant, others may be managers, clerks, peons or workers. All
are so related to each other to accomplish the goal in a co-ordinated manner. Thus,
structure relates to power and duties. One has the authority and others have a duty
to obey him.
3. Technology
Technology imparts the physical and economic conditions within which people
work. With their bare hands people can do nothing so they are given assistance of
buildings, machines, tools, processes and resources. The nature of technology
depends very much on the nature of the organization and influences the work or
working conditions. Thus, technology brings effectiveness and at the same restricts
people in various ways.
4. Social System
Social system provides external environment which the organization operates. A
single organization cannot exist also. It is a part of the whole. One organization
cannot give everything and therefore, there are many other organizations. All these
organizations influence each other. It influences the attitudes of people, their working
conditions and above all provides competition for resources and power.
O.B. is the study of human behaviour at work in organizations. Accordingly, the
scope of O.B. includes the study of individuals, groups and organization/structure.
Let us briefly reflect on what aspects each of these three cover.
Individuals
Organizations are the associations of individuals. Individuals differ in many
respects. The study of individuals, therefore, includes aspects such as personality,
perception, attitudes, values, job satisfaction, learning and motivation.

Groups of Individuals
Groups include aspects such as group dynamics, group conflicts, communication,
leadership, power and politics and the like.