10.1 What is organisational behaviour?
Organisational behaviour is the study of attitudes, behaviour, and performance of members of a company. This includes analysing how an employee's work will contribute to the productivity of the company. Organisational behaviour focuses on three main groups: the person, the department, and the company.
Organisational behaviour focuses on two analysis units. These include individual differences or personality traits, motivation, and attitude towards work and leadership, decision making, and group formation. These together are called the organisational theory and focus on the organisational design and structure of the company.
Organisational behaviour gets its support from personality and individual psychology, the interaction of people within the company, influence, cultural difference, incentives, transactions, and so much more. Organisational theory takes concepts from sociology, anthropology, and more, and approaches organisational behaviour through managerial practices and theories.
10.2 Organisational behaviour and management
Do you know how management and organisational behaviour are linked?
Management refers to the organising, planning, controlling, and leading of employees. Managers are people who focus on organisational objectives. They deal with repetitive responsibilities which include the supervision and motivation of team members and then reporting to their superiors on a regular basis.
Managers now conduct their duties while focusing on organisational behaviours of the company, and focus extensively on employee performance over the traditional activities. They provide contemporary views of management roles to include integration, coaching, tracking, and performance, to name a few. Management definitions are not set in stone; they are constantly evolving and need to be kept up to date with the complexity of modern companies throughout the world. Though there is a relationship between managers and organisational behaviour.
Organisational behaviour is the human behaviour within a company, and this relates to problems many managers have to deal with on a daily basis. This may be the motivation of employees, charting a company's strategic direction, or even coaching members on their work and creating a reward system. Managers are held accountable for the company's ability to achieve goals. This means that a manager will need to be able to identify organisational processes and explain this as a problem solving solution to protect, improve, and sustain the company's competitive edge over competitors.
10.3 Organisational problem solving and managers
Managers and supervisors play a vital role in the company's operations. While managers do not produce services or goods, they are responsible for the supervision of employees who do produce the services and goods. Managers are, therefore, responsible for the operational effectiveness of the system. Operational effectiveness identifies how a company performs based on its own standards and then based on its competitors' standards. Managers need to strive to ensure products are made faster with limited interruptions and price increases.
They are responsible for three main components, which include:
1. The technical component which is based on the use of resources in order to achieve goals. This includes using technology to ensure productivity goals are achieved at all times.
2. Development of methods and systems based on the operation of the company. A good example is to provide a sales person with information on their competitors' pricing with up to the minute updates, ensuring that they remain competitive.
3. Employee component, the human side of things regarding well-being. Employee health programmes and helping employees that are troubled are just a few of the ways the employee component plays a role. How much time a manager will dedicate time to this function should be determined on the organisational hierarchy.
Organisational hierarchy often falls into the following when relating to the above three components:
-Supervisory levels will find that they are tied up with technical work throughout the day and their conceptual and human work is limited.
-Middle management levels will find that they are loaded with more conceptual and human work and their technical work will start to be reduced.
-Top manager level will find that they spend all their time involved in human and conceptual work. This means strategic planning and building a work force which will help the company push their way to success.
When it comes to technical problem solving, all companies want their managers and their staff to be effective technical problem solvers. This is seen in the areas of service quality and product improvement. Managers are expected to resolve technical issues without hesitation, which may be to implement new processes to create systems that work. Some companies make the mistake of promoting managers based on their technical experience and not paying attention to the other important components which need to be taken into consideration when making such a big decision as to who is going to be supervisor to all the employees you have taken so long to orientate, introduce, and train.
It is not surprising, as many managers get technical skills because they know that is what employers are looking for. This works for the lower level management positions, but it is not going to be as effective in the upper management levels. Managers who show conceptual and human skills as well as technical abilities are a leading choice and these are the managers who may well become executive managers in the future.
Managers who have poor people skills will leave the employees feeling demotivated and this can have a negative impact on the company's operational effectiveness moving forward. Managers along with the human resource team need to focus on keeping the employees happy and productive, ensuring that they are enthusiastic contributors on a daily basis.
10.4 Organisational productivity and employee needs
Companies are becoming more and more complex. This means that they need employees with new skills and knowledge to ensure that they remain productive. There are two issues that identify and manage organisational success. The first is the needs of the employee and the second is the company's need to succeed and be profitable moving forward.
An example includes employees who are looking for a challenging position which provides them with job satisfaction, good benefits, and a safe working environment. The company is looking for someone who can provide them with operational effectiveness, competitive advantage, and a good return on investment. To be effective in human resources, you need to be able to understand both sides of the coin and you need to understand how the employees
drive the company and help them sustain their competitive edge.
The workforce management philosophy should remain incomplete if you don't have the knowledge on how employees work and what they do to make the company more challenging and meaningful daily. It is important you identify the pivotal role your colleagues and team members have on the company each and every day. Employees need to be shown respect.
Psychology, cultural anthropology, and sociology are ways to learn more about individual values, actions, perceptions, and learning capabilities. You need to be able to work with groups and individuals and act for the entire company while analysing any external effects on the company and the human resource objectives, strategies, and missions. Organisational behaviour relates to the way employees think, identifying analysis levels and focusing on principals and theories to achieve success.
10.5 Behavioural science
Social psychology, cultural anthropology, and sociology are all organisational behaviour contributors. Behavioural sciences focus on the understanding of these three units. The fundamental concepts become the strong foundation for organisational behaviour which revolves around people and companies.
The nature of people is broken into various concepts which are relevant to people's natures on a daily basis:
Each person is different in terms of need, personality, past experiences, and demographic factors. This diversity should be viewed, recognised, and seen as a company asset. Perception on how each person sees and interprets differences. Everyone reacts to things differently and judges based on their own values and beliefs, maybe even their expectations.
This can result in selective perception and, in turn, result in misinterpretation of events, bringing down a barrier between employees. It is imperative that you identify these differences and manage them to reduce the risk of employees not working effectively together moving forward. People are whole persons and function accordingly. This means that each staff member is a mental, physical, spiritual, and social being, and they are employed as a whole and not due to particular characteristics only.
You must expect home and work life to spill over into each other at times. This is completely natural and, therefore, human resources needs to work on developing the employee in terms of fulfilment and growth. Motivated behaviour deals with individual behaviours that are directed based on consequence and needs resulting from their actions.
People tend to be motivated by what they want and not how others see them. This means that this is one of the biggest challenges for a human resource department to identify what motivates each employee and then use this as part of the organisational behaviour to achieve success moving forward.
Need to be involved. So many employees look for work opportunities where they will be seen as a valuable team member, a chance to be involved in decision making and contribute based on their ideas and talents, which, in turn, will evolve into success for the company. It is important that as part of the organisational behaviour, the company creates an opportunity for employees to be involved. Personal value is focusing on the fact that employees want to be treated with respect, dignity, and care, and, as such, they want to be chosen based on their abilities and their skills.
10.6 Nature of the company
The nature of the company is broken into three areas: social systems, mutual interest, and ethics.
Social systems
Social systems will provide a company with the psychological needs employees have along with their status and roles within a business. This will help you identify how their behaviour is influenced by their colleagues and what their personal drives are that they are working to achieve. There are two types of social systems that you need to be aware of. These work alongside each other in a company. There is the formal social system and then there is the informal social system, both of which influence each other.
Mutual interest
There is a genuine mutual interest between a company and its staff members. Organisational behaviour relies on employees to help the company achieve its goals and objectives. At the same time, employees need their company to help them achieve their own individual goals and objectives. Mutual interest provides both parties with a win-win situation that they can rely on and trust.
Ethics
Ethics relates to moral principles and values that affect the behaviour of companies and employees with regards to the choices that they make and identifying what is right and wrong. Companies establish statements, codes of conducts, and codes of ethics which identify the high standards of ethical performance the company expects from their managers and employees now and moving forward.
Organisational behaviour focuses on ethical philosophy and people and plays a role in every action taken within the company. When the goals and actions of a company are ethical, then the objectives are likely to be met at all times.
10.7 Approaches to organisational behaviour
There are four approaches to organisational behaviour that you need to be aware of:
Human resources
The human resources approach focuses on employee development and growth focusing extensively on improved levels of creativity and competency to reach success. This means encouraging and supporting team members and treating them as valued members of the team, as they are the centre of the company.
Contingency approach
Each department will have their own working environments and this means that you need to hire different managers with different behaviours in order to be effective.
Results orientated
This relates to the outcomes based on the organisational behaviour programmes and how effective they are now and moving forward.
Systems approach
This approach is where parts of the company all interact in a relationship to achieve success. This can be taken across the board and analysed based on the situation along with other factors which contribute to an employee's behaviour. The study of organisational behaviour will include a number of factors such as the organisation's environmental force and how this is presented outside the company based on the demands of clients, political constraints, economical changes, and society as a whole. It will also relate to the performance based on the organisation.
There are a number of influences here that you need to be aware of:
-Individual characteristics including attitude, personality, values, and perception.
-Individual motivation including their ability to work with individual performance factors.
-Rewards and punishment using behaviour modification techniques to ensure performance andmanage misbehaviour moving forward.
-Group behaviour focusing on the formal groups and informational groups that impact the company on a daily basis.
-Behaviour and conflict focusing on how groups work with each other and compete against each other within the company. The conflict could be a result of competition and, as a result, needs to be dealt with swiftly.
-Politics focuses on the power and dynamics and how this affects the politics within the company.
10.8 Organisational processes
The organisational processes relate to the design and structure of the company, the pattern of activities, and how various departments within the company work together. This includes a number of factors, from the structure to the job design and the organisational processes and more. There are four behavioural processes that you need to know which will affect the overall organisational performance.
These include:
-Leadership, which is important to ensure the highest level of performance from the employee, the department, or the company as a whole. The leadership is determined by certain behaviours and traits and the combination of these to achieve success.
-Communication is what brings everything within the company together.
-Decision making is the techniques and dynamics used by the company and the employees to achieve success.
-Change and development is planned changes to improve an employee, department, or the company in terms of performance.
10.9 Organisational behavioural model
There are three theoretical frameworks that you need to know that form the organisational behaviour model. These include the behaviour, the social learning, and the cognitive approach. The cognitive approach focuses on demand, expectancy, and incentive concepts, while the behaviouristic framework is more focused on observing behaviours. Human behaviour is the connection based between the stimuli and the response to those stimuli. At the same time, the social learning approach uses principles and concepts that focus on cognitive and behavioural frameworks. This way behaviour is seen as a continuous interaction between the environment, the cognitive, and the behavioural.
The company that has a behaviour model which focuses on the three frameworks is one that is on the road to success. The behaviour model will focus on situation, organism, behaviour, and consequence, also known as SOBC. Some of the dependent variables relate to each individual employee, and they are ones we try to understand, such as turnover, productivity, absenteeism, and job satisfaction. On the other hand, independent variables can relate to a company, department, or particular employee. In a working environment, the independent variables will be interacting at different levels which lead to complex outcomes.
10.10 Organisational behaviour goals
There are a number of goals associated with organisational behaviour. Understanding these goals can help you identify how certain employees act under certain conditions. You will learn why people do as they do and how you can predict a new employee's behaviour in the future.
-Helps identify behaviour within employees in a company.
-Helps understand complexities of interpersonal relationships.
-Examines the relationship dynamics within smaller groups
-It identifies intergroup relations that emerge when two or more groups work together.
-A company can be managed and reviewed based on their organisational relationships.
10.11 Organisational behaviour types
Organisational behaviour in the work place is how employees act as people within the company and how they work within teams to ensure that they all work towards the same common goals. Employees come from different backgrounds and beliefs and how they conduct themselves is imperative to the success of the company moving forward. It is important as a HR manager that you can identify different organisational behaviours in the work place and monitor them accordingly.
Managerial organisation
Managerial control is all about focusing on the staff and how they act within the working environment. This can be interactive, but in time, this will determine how the company runs. This control is chosen on how it will affect the maintenance policy moving forward.
Ethics
A company with a strong ethical policy will focus on organisational behaviour in the work place and enforce the code of ethics at all times. This will determine how employees interact with employers, co-workers, suppliers, and customers now and moving forward. A high turnover will jeopardise your efforts, as new employees are not aware of the company culture and need to get orientation training to get them up to date.
Accountability
Organisational behaviour can also relate to accountability in that a company knows which employees are responsible for what functions within the company. Certain employees will be working on certain projects and, therefore, they are accountable for the success of these projects. Without accountability, there will be no success or failure, but by rewarding productivity and praising employees that perform well, you are making the employee accountable now and moving forward.
Harassment
Harassment is one of the more serious problems you are going to have to deal with in the HR department and is one of the behaviours you don't want to have festering in the company. Harassment must be addressed through training, policies, and diligence, and swift action must be taken in the case that an employee advises of such a situation. There are so many different forms of harassment from mental to physical, sexual, age discrimination, and more. In some instances, employees may not even realise that they are victims.
FACT
39% of employees feel underappreciated at work, with 77% reporting that they would work harder if they felt better recognised
Source: bhengagement.com
10.12 Address fairness
Employers can deal with organisational behaviour in a number of ways. In order to ensure fairness within the work place, you can make use of the following:
-Mentoring schemes can be used to help employees grow in their position and within the company as a whole. It can be a useful and affordable way to provide the employee with the training they need to succeed.
-Promotional procedures should remain transparent at all times. Have a clear process which enables employees to understand the promotional process used and eliminate the risk of discriminating against certain employees moving forward.
-Equality and diversity should be focused on in everything the company does and this should be stressed to employees by upper management.
-Focus extensively on diversity, making it a goal that the entire company needs to work towards. This means hiring people of all ages, from all cultures, and both men and women without them becoming unwelcome targets of discrimination and bullying moving forward.
10.13 Define behaviour
Organisational behaviour should be clearly defined and provided to employees in a way that they understand. Look at how employees are behaving in the work place and what this means for the company. Organisational behaviour is a very broad term which covers a host of issues from both the employer and employees side.
Organisational behaviour includes, but is not limited to:
-Knowing how people act in the work place
-Appreciating how certain people will affect others when at work
-Identifying how certain groups and individuals act when they are at work
-Knowing how some of the employees are affected by what they do each day
-Improving the productivity and effectiveness of the company by focusing on the company's behavioural principles moving forward.
Module summary
In this module, you learned about organisational behaviours, what it is, and how it is carried out within a company. You learned the organisational behaviour approaches and goals, along with organisational behaviour models. You looked at how this can be included into what you do each day and the benefits of having a good organisational behaviour strategy in place at all times.
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