UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE

Understanding People

Understanding People

Introduction

The paper discusses the concept of organizational behavior. It determines the scope, nature and implications of organizational behaviour to the management practices. The ability to understand people based on the organizational behaviour theories is also mentioned.

The Concept of Organizational Behavior

An acceptable definition of organizational behavior is “Organizational behavior is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups and organizational structure have on behavior within the organization, for the purpose of applying such knowledge towards improving organizational effectiveness.” The given explanation of organizational has three core components; the first component is that organizational behavior is the fact-finding examination of individuals and groups within an organizational setting. The second component is that there is a huge influence of structure of the organization on the behavior of individuals in the organization, and the third component is regarding the appliance of knowledge to attain effectiveness at the organizational level (Hatch, 30).

Scope and Nature of Organizational Behavior

Organizational behavior is built on the contribution from several behavioral disciplines such a social psychology, sociology, psychology, economics, and anthropology.

Psychology: it is the study of human behavior which identifies the characteristics of individuals and gives an understanding of why people behave in certain ways. This provides with meaningful and helpful insight into human motivation, personality characterizes, and perceptual processes which are significant in understanding organizational behavior (Gibson, 92).

Sociology: it is the study of social behavior among society. The main focus of attention is on the social system which helps to identify the functioning of the individual within the organization (Gibson, 92).

Social psychology: it is the study of human behavioral context of the social environment and situations. It addresses the problems of understanding the behavioral patterns expected from individuals when they participate in groups.

Anthropology: it is the study of mankind and the human behavior consecutively. The main focus is on the cultural beliefs, system, idea, and customs within an environment. In the organizational behavior context, it is important to appreciate the differences among the cultural beliefs of people to sustain a mutual understanding (Gibson, 100).

Economics: the organization to survive requires the understanding of the viability of its efforts. This viability will determine what behavior brings profitable and negative outcomes. It applies to the non-profit organization as well.

Political science: The contribution of political science is significant in understanding the organizational behavior. Ti studies the groups and individuals within particular conditions concerning power dynamics. The important integration between the two concepts is the structuring of conflicts, power allocation, individual self interest, and people manipulation skills (Robbins, 16).

Implications for Management Practice

The first thing that is affected by the organizational behavior is productivity. Organizational behavior can have a direct impact on the employee productivity. Good productivity in an organization is an outcome of motivation, and motivation flourishes in an effective climate. The concepts of productivity and organizational culture are inter-linked and tightly related to each other. Organizational culture is an integral part of the organizational behavior, and there are a few elements of organizational behavior (Robbins, ...