Which of the following is a reason that the study of organizational Behaviour is useful?

Defining Organizational Behavior

Organizational behavior (OB) is the study of individual and group behavior in organizational settings. OB looks at organizations as entities, the forces that shape them, and their impact on organizational members. The study of OB involves three levels of study: (1) The Individual; (2) The Group (or Team); and (3) The Organization.

OB examines attitudes, social climate, and performance within an organization by examining both individual and group behavior on a regional, national, or global level. Researchers examine why people (individually or in groups) behave the way they do and how to manage these behaviors so that the organization can achieve optimal performance.

Researchers in organizational behavior study age-old questions such as: What are the characteristics of a good leader? And, how can a manager motivate workers? Increasingly, questions that have social and moral relevance, such as what makes an organization "ethical" in both action and reputation, are also being addressed.

The Importance of Studying Organizational Behavior

In our competitive, complex, and constantly changing world, organizations must be both efficient and effective in what they do. To do this, organizations must have competent employees that know how to work together to reach organizational goals. As a result, it is important to understand how to build and maintain a competent and cooperative work force.

For example, think about the organizations that you've dealt with either as a customer or as an employee. It's likely that your experiences have not always been pleasant and trouble-free. Perhaps you've been kept waiting for service, spent hours trying to get relatively straightforward information, or worked for a boss who gave you no direction and then criticized your work. On the other hand, you have also most likely been exposed to organizations that consistently maintained high standards of excellence. Organizational behavior addresses the differences in these organizations, such as why some organizations are more effective than others, and why some supervisors make excellent managers.

By studying organizational behavior, both employees and managers come to understand what makes people behave the way they do. Employees can use this knowledge to increase their own job satisfaction and improve work performance. Managers can use organizational behavior to accomplish goals and help employees achieve optimal performance. More importantly, learning about organizational behavior will help you to understand your own behaviors, attitudes, ethical views, and performance, as well as those of the people with whom you'll be working. This type of knowledge will assist you in working effectively with managers, colleagues, and subordinates.

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What Is Organizational Behavior (OB)?

Organizational behavior is the academic study of how people interact within groups. The principles of the study of organizational behavior are applied primarily in attempts to make businesses operate more effectively.

Key Takeaways

• Organizational behavior is the academic study of how people interact within groups and its principles are applied primarily in attempts to make businesses operate more effectively.
• The study of organizational behavior includes areas of research dedicated to improving job performance, increasing job satisfaction, promoting innovation, and encouraging leadership and is a foundation of corporate human resources.
• The Hawthorne Effect, which describes the way test subjects' behavior may change when they know they are being observed, is the best-known study of organizational behavior.

Organizational Behavior

Understanding Organizational Behavior (OB)

The study of organizational behavior includes areas of research dedicated to improving job performance, increasing job satisfaction, promoting innovation, and encouraging leadership. Each has its own recommended actions, such as reorganizing groups, modifying compensation structures, or changing methods of performance evaluation.

Organizational Behavior Origins

The study of organizational behavior has its roots in the late 1920s, when the Western Electric Company launched a now-famous series of studies of the behavior of workers at its Hawthorne Works plant in Cicero, Ill.

Researchers there set out to determine whether workers could be made to be more productive if their environment was upgraded with better lighting and other design improvements. To their surprise, the researchers found that the environment was less important than social factors. It was more important, for example, that people got along with their co-workers and felt their bosses appreciated them.

Those initial findings inspired a series of wide-ranging studies between 1924 and 1933. They included the effects on productivity of work breaks, isolation, and lighting, among many other factors.

The Hawthorne Effect—which describes the way test subjects' behavior may change when they know they are being observed—is the best-known study of organizational behavior. Researchers are taught to consider whether or not (and to what degree) the Hawthorne Effect may skew their findings on human behavior.

Organizational behavior was not fully recognized by the American Psychological Association as a field of academic study until the 1970s. However, the Hawthorne research is credited for validating organizational behavior as a legitimate field of study, and it's the foundation of the human resources (HR) profession as we now know it.

Special Considerations

The leaders of the Hawthorne study had a couple of radical notions. They thought they could use the techniques of scientific observation to increase an employee's amount and quality of work, and they did not look at workers as interchangeable resources. Workers, they thought, were unique in terms of their psychology and potential fit within a company.

Over the following years, the concept of organizational behavior widened. Beginning with World War II, researchers began focusing on logistics and management science. Studies by the Carnegie School in the 1950s and 1960s solidified these rationalist approaches to decision-making.

Today, those and other studies have evolved into modern theories of business structure and decision-making. The new frontiers of organizational behavior are the cultural components of organizations, such as how race, class, and gender roles affect group building and productivity. These studies take into account how identity and background inform decision-making.

Academic programs focusing on organizational behavior are found in business schools, as well as at schools of social work and psychology. These programs draw from the fields of anthropology, ethnography, and leadership studies, and use quantitative, qualitative, and computer models as methods to explore and test ideas.

Depending on the program, one can study specific topics within organizational behavior or broader fields within it. Specific topics covered include cognition, decision-making, learning, motivation, negotiation, impressions, group process, stereotyping, and power and influence. The broader study areas include social systems, the dynamics of change, markets, relationships between organizations and their environments, how social movements influence markets, and the power of social networks.

Examples of Organizational Behavior

Findings from organizational behavior research are used by executives and human relations professionals to better understand a business’s culture, how that culture helps or hinders productivity and employee retention, and how to evaluate candidates' skills and personality during the hiring process.

Organizational behavior theories inform the real-world evaluation and management of groups of people. There are several components:

• Personality plays a large role in the way a person interacts with groups and produces work. Understanding a candidate's personality, either through tests or through conversation, helps determine whether they are a good fit for an organization.
• Leadership—what it looks like and where it comes from—is a rich topic of debate and study within the field of organizational behavior. Leadership can be broad, focused, centralized or de-centralized, decision-oriented, intrinsic in a person’s personality, or simply a result of a position of authority.
• Power, authority, and politics all operate inter-dependently in a workplace. Understanding the appropriate ways these elements are exhibited and used, as agreed upon by workplace rules and ethical guidelines, are key components to running a cohesive business.

Why Is Organizational Behavior Important?

Organizational behavior describes how people interact with one another inside of an organization, such as a business. These interactions subsequently influence how the organization itself behaves and how well it performs. For businesses, organizational behavior is used to streamline efficiency, improve productivity, and spark innovation to give firms a competitive edge.

What Are the 4 Elements of Organizational Behavior?

The four elements of organizational behavior are people, structure, technology, and the external environment. By understanding how these elements interact with one another, improvements can be made. While some factors are more easily controlled by the organization—such as its structure or people hired—it still must be able to respond to external factors and changes in the economic environment.

What Are the 3 Levels of Organizational Behavior?

The first is the individual level, which involves organizational psychology and understanding human behavior and incentives. The second level is groups, which involves social psychology and sociological insights into human interaction and group dynamics. The top-level is the organizational level, where organization theory and sociology come into play to undertake systems-level analyses and the study of how firms engage with one another in the marketplace.

What Are Some Common Problems that Organizational Behavior Tries to Solve?

Organizational behavior can be used by managers and consultants to improve the performance of an organization and to address certain key issues that commonly arise. These may include a lack of direction or strategic vision for a company, difficulty getting employees on board with that vision, pacifying workplace conflict or creating a more amenable work environment, issues with training employees, poor communication or feedback, and so on.

What is the reason that the study of organizational behavior is useful?

Which of the following is a reason that the study of OB is important for students?

Which of the following has contributed to the study of organizational behavior?

How the study of organizational behaviour can be useful for managers?