The Importance of Understanding Organizational Behavior - Assignment Example

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR As defined by Stephen P. Robbins, "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."1 The importance of understanding organizational behavior can be understood from the fact that it focuses on human behavior and how organizations functions. Organizations comprise of many human beings interacting, socializing and working towards achieving common goals. Thus, it is necessary for managers to understand organizational behavior. Organizational Behavior studies focus on three aspects: the individuals, groups & structure. Some of the day to day operations issues of organizations that organizational behavior studies address are change management, motivation, groups, employment turnover, conflict, work design, work stress, leadership issues, power & interpersonal communication. Managers need to understand organization behavior in order to be successful in their four management functions of planning, organizing, leading & controlling. I The Individual: While assigning duties and responsibilities, managers need to take account of the individual's abilities. Ability is defined as "an individual's capacity to perform the various tasks in a job." Human beings are believed to be equal. However, this is not true when talking in organizational context .People have there own individual abilities. Intellectual ability is defined as "That required to do mental activities". There are various dimensions of intellectual ability including aptitude, verbal comprehension, perceptual speed, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, spatial visualization, & memory. Physical ability is defined "as that required to do tasks demanding stamina, dexterity, strength and similar characteristics". A manager needs to conduct a stock count of skills and abilities preset in his workforce that he can utilize to achieve the ability-job fit. Matching abilities to the job design is necessary to enhance employee performance. Personality is defined as the sum total of ways in which an individual interacts with others. Every individual has a different personality. The determinants of personality are heredity, environment & situation. Personality traits are characteristics of personality in different situations. These traits describe an individual's behavior. Research has been conducted to isolate and identify different personality characteristics. Myers Briggs Type Indicator is one of the most frequently used personality tests. The Myers Briggs type indicator is a personality test that identifies four characteristics and classifies people into 16 personality types. The sixteen primary personality traits are reserved vs outgoing, less intelligent Vs more intelligent, affected by feelings vs emotionally stable, submissive vs dominant, serious vs happy go lucky, expedient vs conscientious, timid vs venturesome, tough minded vs sensitive, trusting vs suspicious, practical vs imaginative, forthright vs shrewd, self assureds apprehensive, conservative vs experimenting, group dependent vs self sufficient, uncontrolled vs controlled and relaxed vs tensed. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator is criticized for lack of supporting evidence. The Five Factor model or the Big Five Model is being used more often because of the high amount of research that supports this model. According to the Big Five model five basic personality dimensions underlie al others. The big five factors are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience. Today's managers also face the challenge of making decisions that are in compliance with the values , ethics and culture of the society that they operate in and the sub culture f their own organization. This problem always existed but has intensified due to globalization and expanding of international business. Values are defined as "basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end state of existence." It is important to study values because they shape any individuals attitude and behavior. The factors that determine values include genetics, environment, national culture, friends, social circles, family, and teachers. Values also influence the ethics. The ethical culture of an organization is shaped by the decisions ad ethics of the higher and middle management and their approach towards ethics. Theorists predicted that the generation x would eventually lead to managerial ranks that depend ore on relationships and thus emphasize more on the ethics of decision making. They were right. Today, towards the end of the first decade of the twenty first century, corporate ethics corporate social responsibility are the cutting edge that any business can have over other businesses to the extent that these are the marketing tag lines for many companies. Attitudes are defined as "evaluative statements or judgments concerning object, people or events". Attitudes are influenced and shaped by values. Organization behavior focuses on three types of attitudes that impact a business the most; job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. Reinforcement Theory: The typical manager's dilemma is how to mould individual s behavior in order to condition it in ways that maximize productivity and creativity. The reinforcement theory provides a solution to this. According to the reinforcement theory, "behavior is a function of its consequences". This theory believes that individual's purposes direct his or her behavior. The reinforcement theory is a level ahead of the learning theory according to which any change in behavior is a result of past experiences. Learning involves change and through reinforcement behavior can be changed. Positive reinforcement encourages similar behavior in future, whereas negative reinforcement discourages the same. Likewise, positive reinforcement can be provided in form of rewards which can be extrinsic or intrinsic. Motivation: Another factor that is highly important for any organization is a motivated work force. Motivation is described as "the willingness to exert high levels of effort toward organizational goals, conditioned by the effort's ability to satisfy some individual need." Due to its widespread application in organizations, there are various motivation theories that can be applied at workplace to motivate employees. The cognitive evaluation theory of motivation stresses on allocation of extrinsic rewards for behavior that had been previously intrinsically rewarded tends to decrease the overall level of motivation. In other words, if measurable monetary rewards are awarded to individuals on better performance the internal satisfaction eventually gets reduced and the ambition to get extrinsic rewards supersedes the intrinsic satisfaction. Motivation in day to day business operations can be raised by using the right mix of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. The foremost theory that is applied at all levels is the management by objectives and goal setting theory. The setting of goals takes into account the difficulties of the goals, participation by other team members and feedback on performance. Based on these, employee recognition programs can be designed to reinforce the positive behavior. This includes having employee involvement programs like participative management, representative participation, quality circles, and employee stock ownership programs. Other forms of employee involvement programs include variable pay programs, profit sharing and gain sharing programs, skill based pay plans and flexible benefits plans. II THE GROUPS: The second focus area of organizational behavior is the groups. Organizations are comprised of groups of individuals and it is crucial to understand group behavior in order to enhance the work potential of individuals as groups. The group theories are based on the human need to socialize and belong to a circle. A group is defined as "two or more individuals interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives". A team is defined as "a group whose individual efforts result in a performance that is greater than the sum of those individual inputs". Groups are formed in five stages. The fives stages of group formation are forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. The first stage is characterized by uncertainty, the second stage by intra group conflict, the third stage by close relationships and cohesiveness, the fourth stage y performance and full functionality and the fifth stage by concern with wrapping up activities. Groups often face the threat of conflict due to diversity. All conflicts are not necessarily bad. Conflicts are described as, "a process that begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively affected, or is about to negatively affect, something that the first party cares about." Five conflict handling approaches have been identified, competing, collaborating, avoiding, accommodating, and compromising. Compromising is when each party in a conflict is willing to give up something to resolve the conflict. Communication is another area in a group which needs constant attention. It is necessary to keep the flow of communication. It is necessary that the barriers to communication like filtering, selective perception, defensiveness and language should be overcome. Also, there exists a glass wall while the opposite genders try to communicate with each other. It is necessary to break these walls to communicate effectively. Likewise, communication across different cultures requires an understanding of their culture and nature of communication for example the Asians tend to be faster in their communication process as compared to Latin Americans. However, on the flipside, Asians tend to go back on their words and contracts more often as compared to Latin Americans. Groups are often criticized for not coming out with results. However there are four techniques to make effective group decisions. The four techniques are interacting group, brainstorming, the nominal group technique, and the electronic meetings. Organizations, in a narrow perspective, are groups of individuals. Another issue that organizations face is power politics which arises from interdependency of group members on each others. Power, is defined as the capacity A has to influence the behavior of B so that B acts in accordance with A's wishes. Power is a derivative of dependency. There are five sources of power that can be used in a organization. These are coercive power, reward power, legitimate power, expert power and referent power. III The Organizational System: the third aspect of the organization that managers have to keep in mind is the organization system. The organizational culture is defined as, "a common perception held by the organization's members, a system of shared meaning". The managers need to be aware of the organizations culture while they make their decisions. They also have to realize that the organizations culture is derived from the national culture, the religious ad social beliefs, the value system and the ethics. Culture also is the greatest barrier to change and barrier to diversity. The reason for this is that it is difficult for people to grasp new concepts that are not in accordance with their prevailing organizational culture. Likewise, the organizational culture tends to filter out people who fit with the existing culture and those who diversity are pruned out. This might include talented people who find it difficult to adjust. However, change is the only constant. Considering this, managers are faced with forces of change. The forces of change include nature of workforce, technology, economic shocks, competition, social trends, and world politics. Given these forces for change, the organizations have to adapt and change in accordance with changing times. For this planned change has to be initiated in the organizations. A Planned change refers to "activities that are intentional and goal oriented". Organizational development is defined as," a collection of planned change interventions, built on humanistic values, that seeks to improve organizational effectiveness and employee well being." The organizational structure whether it is a flat structure, or horizontal structure or whether it is a matrix organization also affects the change and development process. It is usually difficult to expedite a change process in a highly formalized horizontal organizational structure as compared to a flat structure or matrix structure. PART II: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE & DEVELOPMENT Organizational development is defined as "a collection of planned change interventions, built on humanistic democratic values, that seeks to improve organizational effectiveness and employee well being" I Leading Planned Change: Even though planned change is desired by most organizations, it is difficult to achieve the objectives of change. The greatest hurdle in change management is the individual or organizational resistance on the whole. To expedite a managed change process it is necessary to identify the change agents that can be used. The question that needs to be asked is what elements of the organization can be changed by change agents The elements that can be changed are: Changing Structure Changing technology Changing the Physical setting Changing people The second step in planned change management process is to identify where the resistance to change is coming from The individual resistance to change can stem from the following factors: Habit Security Economic factors Fear of the unknown Selective information processing Organizational resistance can be due to the following factors: Structural inertia Limited forces of change Group inertia Threat to expertise Threat to established power relationships Threat to established resource allocations After the factors acting behind resistance to change have been identified, it is time to determine ways to overcome the resistance to change. Six tactics have been recommended for use by change agents for dealing with resistance to change. Education & Communication Participation Facilitation & support Negotiations Negotiation & cooptation. II Human Process Interventions: HPI is a "systematic result based approach to analyzing, improving & measuring human performance at work".2 There are three approaches that can be sued to implement HPI in an organization. The three approaches are suited for three different situations like situations requiring slight change, situations requiring radical transformation and situations requiring complete transformation of training into HPI. The First approach to HPI requires the following steps: Training of performance consultants Creating a separate department in HR Performance consultants to build business partnerships Performance consultants conduct analysis and identify needs Performance consultants tap HR expertise as needed HR is supportive of HPI The Second Approach to HPI suited for radical changes, requires the following steps to be taken: Organizational readiness to be created by changing mindset Abolishing of traditional OD/training functions Reorganization into Human Performance Department having the following: (1) Analysts (2) Intervention specialists (3) Change managers (4) Evaluators Request for services based on organizational goals Another way to achieve change management is by developing a step by step management by Objectives (MBO) strategy. This strategy is required to set goals within given time lines to be achieved. It is one of the most commonly used approaches and is highly motivating for employees. III High Performing and High Involvement Work Systems & Learning Organizations: A Learning Organization, as defined by Stephen P. Robbins, is "an organization that has developed the continuous capacity to adapt and change". The Characteristics of a learning organization are3: i. There is a shared vision and everyone knows and agrees on it ii. People discard their old way of thinking and ding things and opt for the new one iii. members think of all the organizational processes , activities, functions, and interactions with the environment as a part of a system of interrelationships iv. people openly communicate with each other v. people sublimate their personal self interest and fragmented departmental interests to work together and achieve the organizations mission. Learning organizations can be formed in the following way: i. Establish a strategy: The management needs to show their dedication towards change ii. Redesign the organizations structure: The organizations structure should be changed in order to facilitate the culture change that is desired iii. Reshape the organizations Culture: The learning organizations are characterized by risk taking, openness & growth. These attributes should reflect in the organization for it to be a learning organization. IV. Organizations Transformations & Strategic Interventions: Organizational Transformation is necessary with changing times. Due to external pressures including competition, and adverse external conditions, it is necessary for organizations to change. The change process in organizations is driven by objectives. These objectives may include higher productivity, cost cutting, or maximizing revenues in some other way like maximizing the HR potential. The first step in managing a change is to read the existing culture of the organization and then to initiate a change accordingly, with the desired end results in mind. Many theorists have defined different ways of changing the organizational culture successfully. Harrison Trice and Janison Beyer4 have pointed out eight considerations to keep in mind while managing organization culture change: 1. Capitalize on propitious moments: when announcing the desired change, emphasize on the events & facts that are actually necessitating this move. 2. Combine caution with optimism: stress on the positive influences that the change process will bring about. 3. Understand resistance to culture change: understanding that fear of change can stem from individual and group level. At the individual level it may mean fear of unknown, self interest, selective attention & retention, habit, dependence & need for security. At the group level; it may arise from threat of power and influence, lack of trust, different perceptions & goals, social disruption, inter-organizational conflicts. 4. Change many elements but maintain continuity: This refers to the values that the organization would want to retain in future. 5. Recognize the importance of implementation: The management needs to let the change process seep in and be taken seriously even after the initial enthusiasm has worn off. 6. Select, modify and create appropriate culture forms: this refers to employing and encouraging ceremonies, rituals and other small things that make memories 7. Modify socialization tactics: Manage how employees socialize with each other so that they can learn the new culture 8. Find and Cultivate innovative leadership: dynamic leadership is required to steer people through the uncertainty of change. Susan M Heathfield5 identifies the following ways to change organizational Culture. The two elements that are absolutely necessary when initiating change are: 1. Executive Support: The executives in the organization should be the role models of the values desired in the new culture. They should provide psychological and behavioral support to other employees. 2. Training: It is necessary for employees to be trained in the new work values. Susan M Heathfield identifies additional ways of changing organizational culture as: Practice Effective Communication Review organizational structure Redesign your approach to rewards & recognition Review all work systems REFERENCES Robbins, S. R. (2003), Organizational Behvior, 8th Edition, publisher Prentice Hall Publications. Blake, R. B. & Mouton, J. M. (2004-2008). The Leadership Grid. Retrieved December 5, 2008 from http://www.gridinternational.com/gridtheory.html Rensis Likerts Systems 1-4 . Retrieved December 5, 2008 from http://www.change.freeuk.com/learning/business/systems1to4.html Ford, D. F. . 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