Knowledge of Organisational Behaviour - Essay Example

This understanding enables them to not only make sense of the behaviour they witness in their workforce, but also to predict it before hand and sometimes even influencing it to reflect the desired level. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that organizational behaviour teaches one how to control human behaviour in an organization. However, it may be unreasonable to label this practice as exploitative, since the control is limited to an organizational setting, and the results are aimed to improving organizational performance, rather than exploitative practice of this knowledge.

Organizational behaviour teaches a manager how to analyze and handle several different dimensions of an organization. One of the relatively well-known areas of expertise is the substantial and extensive knowledge of motivation that organizational behaviour has to offer. It offers dozens of theories on motivation, each tailored to specific situations as well as different findings in this area. These range from the classic theories such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory to the more controversial, contemporary theories such as Theory X and Y (Thompson and McHugh, 2002, pp. 10-48). Each of these motivational theories offers a unique insight into an employee’s mind, helping one understand what drives these employees to put effort into their work and then teaching one how to use these teachings to influence employees to exhibit desired behaviour.

On the surface, it may seem like a euphemism for ‘manipulation techniques’ that teach a manager how to exploit a person’s predictability and use it to their organization’s advantage. However, the intentions behind organizational behaviour practices should be kept in sight before drawing such evaluations. Discussion Considering an organization with a de-motivated workforce may help one understand the ethical validation of this discipline. Such an organization would have paid employees who have each been designated specific tasks, each of which contribute to the organization’s performance and success.

This is common amongst organizations that combine technology, creativity, and innovation in their operations. If the employees of such an organization lack motivation, their performance levels will be low, and predictably below the needed levels (Rashid, 2003, pp. 30-55). This would lead to failure of the organization, which could have several detrimental results, which could lead to employees losing their jobs and putting them at as much loss the organization. Thus, teaching a manager to remedy such a problem in a manner, which is beneficial for both the employee and the organization, is not exploitative.

Furthermore, these theories do not try to manipulate an employee psychologically on a subconscious level. They do not aim to take advantage of the employee without realizing it, but rather offer this motivation at a conscious level, the influence of which is visible to the employees themselves. Other than Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning theory, most of the motivational theories operate on a conscious level and depend on the employees consciously reacting to the situation they are presented with (Huczynski and Buchanan, pp. 5-25). For example, bonus schemes are one of the most commonly used motivational techniques in a workplace.

They offer the employee monetary and other similar forms of extra compensation for efficient and