What is Organizational Behaviour?

What is Organizational Behaviour?

Organizational behavior is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups and structures have on behavior within an organization for the purpose of applying such knowledge towards improving an organization's effectiveness.[1] It is an interdisciplinary field that includes sociology, psychology, communication, and management; and it complements the academic studies of organizational theory (which is focused on organizational and intra-organizational topics) and human resource studies (which is more applied and business-oriented). It may also be referred to as organizational studies or organizational science. source

Importance

It is important for managers to understand organizational behaviors. It is important for them to understand because it allows them to have a better understanding and appreciation of the behavior of those around them.

Goals of organizational behaviour

The field of organizational behaviour has a number of commonly agreed upon goals. Chief among these are effectively predicting, explaining and managing behaviour that occurs in organizations.

Predicting organizational behaviour Predicting the behaviour of others is an essential requirement for everyday life, both inside and outside of organizations. The very regularity of behaviour in organizations permits the prediction of its future occurrence. Through systematic study, the field of organizational behaviour provides a scientific foundation that helps improve predictions of organizational events.

Explaining organizational behaviour: Another goal of organizational behaviour is explanation of events in organizations – why do they occur? Organizational behaviour is especially interested in determining why people are more or less motivated, satisfied, or prone to resign. The ability to understand behaviour is a necessary prerequisite for effectively managing it.

Managing organizational behaviour: Management is defined as the art of getting things accomplished in organizations through others. If behaviour can be predicted and explained, it can often be managed. If prediction and explanation constitute analysis, then management constitutes action.

Contributing Disciplines to Organizational Behavior

Psychology - scientific discipline that studies psychological and biological processes and behaviour in humans and other animals. The discipline of psychology is broadly divisible into two parts: a large profession of practitioners and a smaller but growing science of mind, brain, and social behaviour. The two have distinctive goals, training, and practices, but some psychologists integrate the two.

Sociology - a social science that studies human societies, their interactions, and the processes that preserve and change them. It does this by examining the dynamics of constituent parts of societies such as institutions, communities, populations, and gender, racial, or age groups. Sociology also studies social status or stratification, social movements, and social change, as well as societal disorder in the form of crime, deviance, and revolution.

Social Psychology – the scientific study of the behaviour of individuals in their social and cultural setting. Although the term may be taken to include the social activity of laboratory animals or those in the wild, the emphasis here is on human social behaviour.

Anthropology - “the science of humanity,” which studies human beings in aspects ranging from the biology and evolutionary history of Homo sapiens to the features of society and culture that decisively distinguish humans from other animal species. Because of the diverse subject matter it encompasses, anthropology has become, especially since the middle of the 20th century, a collection of more specialized fields. Physical anthropology is the branch that concentrates on the biology and evolution of humanity. It is discussed in greater detail in the article human evolution. The branches that study the social and cultural constructions of human groups are variously recognized as belonging to cultural anthropology (or ethnology), social anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and psychological anthropology (see below). Archaeology (see below), as the method of investigation of prehistoric cultures, has been an integral part of anthropology since it became a self-conscious discipline in the latter half of the 19th century.

Political Science - the systematic study of governance by the application of empirical and generally scientific methods of analysis. As traditionally defined and studied, political science examines the state and its organs and institutions. The contemporary discipline, however, is considerably broader than this, encompassing studies of all the societal, cultural, and psychological factors that mutually influence the operation of government and the body politic.