What Is Organizational Behavior

What Is Organizational Behavior? 

Definition of Organizational Behavior:

Organizational Behavior 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.
An organization is a collection of people who work together to achieve a wide variety of goals, both goals of the various individuals in the organization and goals of the organization as a whole. Organizations exist to provide goods and services that people want.
These goods and services are the products of the behaviors of workers. Organizational behavior is the study of the many factors that have an impact on how individuals and groups respond to and act in organizations and how organizations manage their environments. Although many people assume that understanding human behavior in organizations is intuitive, many commonly held beliefs about behavior in organizations, such as the idea that a “happy worker is a productive worker,” are either entirely false or true only in specific situations. The study of organizational behavior provides a set of tools—concepts and theories—that help people understand, analyze, and describe what goes on in organizations and why. How do the characteristics of individuals, groups, work situations, and the organization itself affect how members feel about their organization? The ability to use the tools of organizational behavior to understand behavior in organizations is one reason for studying this subject. A second reason is to learn how to apply these concepts, theories, and techniques to improve behavior in organizations so that individuals, groups, and organizations can achieve their goals. Managers are challenged to find new ways to motivate and coordinate employees to ensure that their goals are aligned with organizational goals.

Why Do We Study OB? 

Following are the reasons to study organizational behavior:
• To learn about yourself and how to deal with others
• You are part of an organization now, and will continue to be a part of various organizations
• Organizations are increasingly expecting individuals to be able to work in teams, at least some of the time
• Some of you may want to be managers or entrepreneurs

The importance of studying organizational behavior (OB).

OB applies the knowledge gained about individuals, groups, and the effect of structure on behavior in order to make organizations work more effectively. It is concerned with the study of what people do in an organization and how that behavior affects the performance of the organization. There is increasing agreement as to the components of OB, but there is still considerable debate as to the relative importance of each: motivation, leader behavior and power, interpersonal communication, group structure and processes, learning, attitude development and perception, change processes, conflict, work design, and work stress.
It is also important because it focus on the following areas.
• OB is a way of thinking.
• OB is multidisciplinary.
• There is a distinctly humanistic orientation with OB.
• The field of OB is performance oriented.
• The external environment is seen as having significant impact on OB.