Introduction to Organization Behavior as a Discipline
Motivation is one the various branches of a much wider applied science, that is, Organization Behavior. Therefore, before any further progress is made towards understanding Motivation and its application, a brief introduction to Organizational Behavior would be in place.
Organizational Behavior is the study and application of knowledge about how people, individuals, and groups act in organizations. It does this by taking a system approach.
That is, it interprets people-organization relationships in terms of the whole person, whole group, whole organization, and whole social system. Its purpose is to build better relationships by achieving human objectives, organizational objectives, and social objectives. Organizational behavior encompasses a wide range of topics, such as human behavior, change, leadership, teams, motivation etc.
Organizational Behavior seeks to:
1. To explain behavior in organizations
2. To predict behavior in organizations
3. To manage behavior in organizations
Organizational behaviour is an applied behavioural science that is built on contributions from a number of behavioural disciplines. Some of these disciplines are:
Psychology. Psychology is the study of human behavior which tries to identify the characteristics of individuals and provides an understanding why an individual behaves in a particular way. This thus provides us with useful insight into areas such as human motivation, perceptual processes or personality characteristics.
• Sociology. Sociology is the study of social behavior, relationships among social groups and societies, and the maintenance of social order. The main focus of attention is on the social system. This helps us to appreciate the functioning of individuals within the organization which is essentially a socio-technical entity.
• Social psychology. Social psychology is the