Objectives of
Organizational Behaviour
The main objective of Organizational
Behaviour is to understand the human interactions in an organization, find what
is driving it and influence it for getting better results in attaining business
goals.
The organizations in which people work
affect their thoughts, feelings, and actions. These thoughts, feelings, and
actions, in turn, affect the organization itself.
Organizational
behaviour studies the
mechanisms governing these interactions, seeking to identify and foster behaviours
conducive to the survival and effectiveness of the organization.
Organization behaviour’s objective is to
set up an organizational culture, hiring the best people and creating
meaningful connections among them, resolving the conflicts, developing the
qualities of the employees, and establish a firm and clear leadership chain.
We have identified 8 objectives of
organizational behaviour;
1.
Job Satisfaction
2.
Finding the Right People
3.
Organizational Culture
4.
Leadership and Conflict Resolution
5.
Understanding the Employees Better
6.
Understand how to Develop Good Leaders
7.
Develop a Good Team
8.
Higher Productivity
1. Job
Satisfaction
Understanding organizational behaviour
can shed light on the factors
that can foster or hamper job satisfaction, such as physical settings, organizational rewards and
punishments or work-group characteristics.
Job satisfaction, in turn, can foster
higher productivity and reduced turnover, while providing more leverage for the
recruitment of top talent.
2.
Finding the Right People
Organizational
behaviour can help find the right mix of talents and working styles required for
the achievement of the task at hand.
This can assist in deciding who to
include in a team or task force, as well as in deciding who to promote to a
leadership position or even the ideal profile for new hires.
3.
Organizational Culture
Organizational behaviour is useful for
understanding and designing the communication channels and leadership
structures that can reinforce organizational culture.
As rapidly evolving business
environments force organizations to adapt, entering, for example, into global
markets or utilizing virtual workforce, organizational behaviour can assist in
maintaining a clear identity without losing flexibility and adaptability.
4.
Leadership and Conflict Resolution
Organizational behaviour can assist in
fostering leadership, pro-activity and creative problem-solving.
When creativity is allowed, the
divergence of opinions is unavoidable, but organizational behaviour can provide
the leadership and the arbitrage dynamics required for turning conflicts into
constructive idea exchanges.
5.
Understanding the Employees Better
Organizational behaviour studies help us
understand why employees behave the way they do, and also thereby predict how
they are going to behave m the future.
6.
Understand how to Develop Good Leaders
Organizational behaviour patterns help
in predicting who among the employees have the potential to become leaders.
They also teach us how to meld these
employees so that their leadership potential is utilized to its fullest.
7. Develop
a Good Team
All members of the teamwork in
coordination and must be motivated to work together to achieve the best
results.
The teamwork theories of organizational behaviour
are an essential tool in the hands of any manager.
8.
Higher Productivity
All of this leads us to the most
important goal of achieving the highest productivity in realizing the visions
and goals of any organization.
If implemented well, the organizational behaviour
principles help in motivating all the members to do their best. The levels of
motivation can be the difference between a good and a bad result.
Organizational Behaviour has so many
objectives by which it serves the organizations, individuals, groups and in a
word all the stakeholders.
Conclusion
OB is concerned with people within the
organization, how they are interacting, what is the level of their
satisfaction, the level of motivation, and find ways to improve it in a way the
yields most productivity.
The primary objective of Organization behaviour
is achieving higher productivity and accomplishing the goals of the
organization.
For that OB scientifically tries to
understand the employee behaviour within the organization and tries to control,
improve, develop it.
Challenges
and Opportunities of Organizational Behaviour
Challenges and opportunities for organizational behaviour are massive and rapidly changing for improving
productivity and meeting business goals.
Although the problems with organizations
and the solutions over the ages have not changed, the emphasis and surrounding
environmental context certainly have changed.
Although the resulting lean and mean
organizations offered some short-run benefits in terms of lowered costs and
improved productivity, if they continued to do business, as usual, they would
not be able to meet current or future challenges.
As a Harvard Business Review article
argues, “These are scary times for managers”.
The singular reason given for these
frightening times – the increasing danger of disruptive change.
The nature of work is changing so
rapidly that rigid job structures impede the work to be done now, and that may
drastically change the following year, month, or even week.
Main challenges and opportunities of
organizational behaviour are;
1.
Improving Peoples’ Skills.
2.
Improving Quality and Productivity.
3.
Total Quality Management (TQM).
4.
Managing Workforce Diversity.
5.
Responding to Globalization.
6.
Empowering People.
7.
Coping with Temporariness.
8.
Stimulating Innovation and Change.
9.
Emergence of E-Organisation & E-Commerce.
10.
Improving Ethical Behaviour.
11.
Improving Customer Service.
12.
Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts.
13.
Flattening World.
1.
Improving People’s Skills
Technological changes, structural changes,
environmental changes are accelerated at a faster rate in the business field.
Unless employees and executives are
equipped to possess the required skills to adapt to those changes, the targeted
goals cannot be achieved in time.
These two different categories of skills
– managerial skills and technical skills.
Some of the managerial skills include listening skills, motivating skills,
planning and organizing skills, leading skills, problem-solving skills,
decision-making skills.
These skills can be enhanced by
organizing a series of training and development programs, career development
programs, induction, and socialization.
2.
Improving Quality and Productivity
Quality is the extent to which the
customers or users believe the product or service surpasses their needs and
expectations.
For example, a customer who purchases an
automobile has a certain expectation, one of which is that the automobile
engine will start when it is turned on.
If the engine fails to start, the
customer’s expectations will not have been met and the customer will perceive
the quality of the car as poor. The key dimensions of quality as follows.
·
Performance: Primary
rating characteristics of a product such as signal coverage, audio quality,
display quality, etc.
·
Features: Secondary
characteristics, added features, such as calculators, and alarm clock features
in handphone
·
Conformance: meeting
specifications or industry standards, the workmanship of the degree to which a
product’s design or operating characteristics match pre-established standards
·
Reliability: The
probability of a product’s falling within a specified period
·
Durability: It
is a measure of a product’s life having both economic and technical dimension
·
Services: Resolution
of problem and complaints, ease of repair
·
Response: Human
to human interfaces, such as the courtesy of the dealer
·
Reputations: Past
performance and other intangibles, such as being ranked first.
More and more managers are confronting to
meet the challenges to fulfil the specific requirements of customers.
To improve quality and productivity,
they are implementing programs like total quality management and reengineering
programs that require extensive employee involvement.
3.
Total Quality Management (TQM)
Total
Quality Management (TQM) is a philosophy of management that is driven by the
constant attainment of customer satisfaction through the
continuous improvement of all organizational processes.
The components of TQM are;
(a) An intense focus on the customer,
(b) Concern for continual improvement,
(c) Improvement in the quality of
everything the organization does,
(d) Accurate measurement and,
(e) Empowerment of employees.
4.
Managing Workforce Diversity
This refers to employing different
categories of employees who are heterogeneous in terms of gender, race,
ethnicity, relation, community, physically disadvantaged, elderly people, etc.
The primary reason to employ the heterogeneous
category of employees is to tap the talents and potentialities, harnessing the
innovativeness, obtaining synergetic effect among the divorce workforce.
In general, employees wanted to retain
their individual and cultural identity, values and lifestyles even though they
are working in the same organization with common rules and regulations.
The major challenge for organizations is
to become more accommodating to diverse groups of people by addressing their
different lifestyles, family needs, and work styles.
5.
Responding to Globalization
Today’s business is mostly
market-driven; wherever the demands exist irrespective of distance, locations,
climatic conditions, the business
operations are expanded to gain their
market share and to remain in the top rank, etc. Business operations are no
longer restricted to a particular locality or region.
The company’s products or services are
spreading across nations using mass communication, the internet, faster
transportation, etc.
More than 95% of Nokia (Now Microsoft)
handphones are being sold outside of their home country Finland.
Japanese cars are being sold in
different parts of the globe. Sri Lankan tea is exported to many cities around
the globe.
Garment products of Bangladesh are
exporting in the USA and EU countries. Executives of Multinational corporations
are very mobile and move from one subsidiary to another more frequently.
6.
Empowering People
The main issue is delegating more power
and responsibility to the lower-level cadre of employees and assigning more
freedom to make choices about their schedules, operations, procedures and the
method of solving their work-related problems.
Encouraging the employees to participate
in the work-related decision will sizably enhance their commitment to work.
Empowerment is defined as putting
employees in charge of what they do by eliciting some sort of ownership in
them.
Managers are doing considerably further
by allowing employees full control of their work.
Movement implies constant change an
increasing number of organizations are using self-managed teams, where workers
operate largely without a boss.
Due to the implementation of empowerment
concepts across all the levels, the relationship between managers and the
employees is reshaped.
Managers will act as coaches, advisors,
sponsors, facilitators and help their subordinates to do their tasks with
minimal guidance.
7.
Coping with Temporariness
In recent times, the product life cycles
are slimming, the methods of operations are improving, and fashions are changing
very fast. In those days, the managers needed to introduce major change
programs once or twice a decade.
Today, change is an ongoing activity for
most managers.
The concept of continuous improvement
implies constant change.
In yesteryears, there used to be a long
period of stability and occasionally interrupted by a short period of change,
but at present, the change process is an ongoing activity due to
competitiveness in developing new products and services with better features.
Everyone in the organization faces today
is one of permanent temporariness. The actual jobs that workers perform are in
a permanent state of flux.
So, workers need to continually update
their knowledge and skills to perform new job requirements.
8.
Stimulating Innovation and Change
Today’s successful organizations must
foster innovation and be proficient in the art of change; otherwise, they will
become candidates for extinction in due course of time and vanished from their
field of business.
Victory will go to those organizations
that maintain flexibility, continually improve their quality, and beat the
competition to the market place with a constant stream of innovative products
and services.
For example, Compaq succeeded by
creating more powerful personal computers for the same or less money than EBNM
or Apple, and by putting their products to market quicker than the bigger
competitors.
9. The
emergence of E-Organisation & E-Commerce
It refers to the business operations
involving the electronic mode of transactions. It encompasses presenting
products on websites and filling the order.
The vast majority of articles and media
attention given to using the Internet in business are directed at online
shopping.
In this process, the marketing and
selling of goods and services are being carried out over the Internet.
In e-commerce, the following activities
are being taken place quite often – the tremendous numbers of people who are
shopping on the Internet, business houses are setting up websites where they
can sell goods, conducting the following transactions such as getting paid and
fulfilling orders.
It is a dramatic change in the way a
company relates to its customers. At present e-commerce is exploding. Globally,
e-commerce spending was increasing at a tremendous rate.
10.
Improving Ethical Behaviour
The complexity in business operations is
forcing the workforce to face ethical dilemmas, where they are required to
define right and wrong conduct to complete their assigned activities.
For example,
·
Should the employees of a chemical company blow
the whistle if they uncover the discharging its untreated effluents into the
river are polluting its water resources?
·
Do managers give an inflated performance
evaluation to an employee they like, knowing that such an evaluation could save
that employee’s job?
The ground rules governing the
constituents of good ethical behaviour has not been clearly defined, differentiating
right things from wrong behaviour has become more blurred.
Following unethical practices have become
a common practice such as successful executives who use insider information for
personal financial gain, employees in competitor businesses participating in
massive cover-ups of defective products, etc.
11.
Improving Customer Service
OB can contribute to improving
organizational performance by showing drat how employees’ attitudes and behaviour
are associated with customer satisfaction.
In that case, service should be the
first production-oriented by using technological opportunities like a computer,
the internet, etc.
To improve customer service, we need to
provide sales service and also the after-sales service.
12.
Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts
The typical employee in the 1960s or
1970s showed up at the workplace Monday through Friday and did his or her job 8
or 9-hour chunk of time.
The workplace and hours were specified.
That’s no longer true for a large segment of today’s workforce.
Employees are increasingly complaining
that the line between work and non-work time has become blurred, creating
personal conflict and stress.
Many forces have contributed to blurring
the lines between employees’ work life and personal life.
First, the creation of global
organizations means their world never sleeps. At any time and on any day, for
instance, thousands of General Electric employees are working somewhere.
Second, communication technology allows
employees to do their work at home, in their cars, or on the beach in Cox’s
Bazar.
This lets many people in technical and
professional jobs do their work anytime and from any place.
Third, organizations are asking employees
to put in longer hours.
Finally, fewer families have only a single
breadwinner. Today’s married employee is typically part of a dual-career
couple. This makes it increasingly difficult for married employees to find the
time to fulfil commitments to home, spouse, children, parents, and friends.
Today’s married employee is typically
part of a dual-career couple.
This makes it increasingly difficult for
married employees to find the time to fulfil commitments to home, spouse,
children, parents, and friends.
Employees are increasingly recognizing
that work is squeezing out personal lives and they’re not happy about it.
For example, recent studies suggest that
employees want jobs that give them flexibility in their work schedules so they
can better manage work/life conflicts.
Also, the next generation of employees
is likely to show similar concerns.
A majority of college and university
students say that attaining a balance between personal life and work is a
primary career goal. They want a life as well as a job.
13.
Flattening World
Thomas
Friedman’s book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
makes the point that the Internet has “flattened” the world and created an
environment in which there is a more level playing field in terms of access to
information.
This
access to information has led to an increase in innovation, as knowledge can be
shared instantly across time zones and cultures.
It has
also created intense competition, as the speed of business is growing faster
and faster all the time.
In his
book Wikinomics, Don Tapscott notes that mass collaboration has changed the way
work gets done, how products are created, and the ability of people to work together
without ever meeting.
3 Limitations
of Organizational Behaviour
The topics which include here are from a
specialized point of view that emphasizes primarily the human side of
organizations and the kinds of benefits that attention to that side can bring.
It describes the research results
identifying payoffs in the areas of stress levels, employee turnover,
absenteeism, and a decrease in employee performance.
Nevertheless, we also recognize the
limitations of organizational behaviour. It will not abolish conflict and
frustration; it can only reduce them.
It is a way to improve, not an absolute
answer to problems.
Improved organizational behaviour will
not solve unemployment. It will not make up for our deficiencies. It cannot
substitute for poor planning, inept organizing, or inadequate controls.
It is only one of the many systems
operating within a larger social system.
3 major limitations of OB
are;
1.
Behavioural Bias.
2.
The Law of Diminishing Returns.
3.
Unethical Manipulation of People.
1. Behavioural
Bias
Behavioural Bias is a condition that is
a reflection of tunnel vision, in which people have narrow viewpoints as if
they were looking through a tunnel.
They see only the tiny view at the other
end of the tunnel while missing the broader landscape.
Following the behavioural bias, people
who lack system understanding may develop a behavioural bias, which leads them
to develop a narrow viewpoint that emphasizes employee satisfaction while
overlooking the broader system of the organization about all its stakeholders.
It should be clear that the concern for
employees can be so greatly overdone that the original purpose of bringing
people together, which is “productivity organizational outputs for society”
could be lost.
An effective organizational behaviour
should help accomplish organizational purposes. It should not replace them.
The person who does not consider the
needs of people as consumers of organizational output while fighting for
employee needs is not applying the ideas of organizational behaviour correctly.
It is a mistake to assume that the
objective of organizational behaviour is as simple as to create a satisfied
employee-base, as that goal will not automatically turn into new products and
stellar customer service.
It is also a fact that the person who
pushes production outputs without regard for employee needs is also not
applying organizational behaviour in the right fashion.
The most effective OB dwells,
acknowledges and appreciates a social system that consists of many types of human
needs that are served in many ways.
Behavioural bias can be so misapplied in
a way that it can be harmful to employees as well as the organization as a
whole.
Some individuals, despite having good
intentions, so overwhelm others with the care that the recipients of such care
become dependent and unproductive.
They find excuses for failure rather
than take responsibility for progress. They do not possess a high degree of
self-respect and self-discipline.
2. The
Law of Diminishing Returns
Overemphasis on organizational behaviour,
the practice may produce negative results, as indicated by the law of
diminishing returns.
It places an overemphasis on an OB
practice that may produce negative results. It is a limiting factor in
organizational behaviour in the same way that it is in economics.
In economics, the law of diminishing
return refers to a declining number of extra outputs when more of a desirable
input is added to an economic situation.
After a certain point, the output from
each unit of added input tends to become smaller. The added output eventually
may reach zero and even continue to decline when more units of input are added.
The law of diminishing returns in
organizational behaviour works similarly.
According to the law of diminishing
returns, at some point, increases of a desirable practice produce declining
returns, finally resulting in zero returns, and then follows negative returns
as more increases are added.
More of a good thing is not necessarily
good. The concept means that for any situation there is an optimum level of a
desirable practice, such as recognition or participation.
When that point is exceeded, there is a
decline in returns realized. To put it differently, the fact that a practice is
desirable does not necessarily imply that more of the same practice is more
desirable.
3.
Unethical Manipulation of People
A significant concern about organizational
behaviour is that its knowledge and techniques can be used to manipulate people
unethically as well as to help them develop their potential.
People who lack respect for the basic
dignity of the human being could learn organizational behaviour ideas and use
them for selfish ends.
They could use what they know about
motivation or communication in the manipulation of people without regard for
human welfare. People who lack ethical values could use people in unethical
ways.
Conclusion
The philosophy of organizational behaviour
is supportive and oriented toward human resources. It takes to improve the
human environment and help people grow toward their potential.
However, the knowledge and technique of
this subject may be used for negative as well as positive consequences. This
possibility is true of knowledge in almost any field, so it is no special
limitation of organizational behaviour.
Nevertheless, we must be cautious so
that what is known about people is not used to manipulate them.
The possibility of manipulation means
that people in power in organizations must maintain high ethical and moral
integrity and not misuse their power.
Without
ethical leadership, the new knowledge that is learned about people becomes a
dangerous instrument for possible misuse.
