ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Organizational Behavior



Organizational Behavior

Introduction

Organizational Behavior is an attitude with in an organization about how people, individuals, and groups act in organizations. Theories and concepts of system approach are applied to implement this behavior smoothly. 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. It encompasses a wide range of topics, such as human behavior, change, leadership, teams, etc. The backbone of an organizational behavior lies on the management. The management decides what organizational behavior has to prevail in the organization.

Literature Review

The central problems in organizational behavior are influenced by changes in organizations themselves (Barley & Kunda 1992, Goodman & Whetten 1997). It suggests that though a stable core of topics reappear-focusing on organizational and individual performance, motivation, and worker responses-the correlation of categories over time is moderate, with issues emerging and receding with the field's advances and shifts in the problems organizations face.

A New Era In Organizational Research

This second definition has been operative in organizational research. Now, however, there is evidence that organizational behavior researchers are reconnecting with the more traditional meaning of organization as process, given the increasing attention to group-level--particularly team-level-phenomena, social networks, managerial cognition and information processing, and entrepreneurship (e.g. Arthur & Rousseau 1996, Drazin & Sandelands 1992, Snow et al 1992, Weick 1996). Increasing interest in social construction occurs at a time when firms and work roles themselves have an emergent quality in response to an era of upheaval and transition. In most industrialized societies, institutional forces are manifesting themselves in several related organizational changes: the movement to small-firm employment in the United States (Small Business Association 1992), the United Kingdom (Storey 1994), and elsewhere (Castells 1992); reliance on interfirm networks to substitute for corporate expansion, one product of which is outsourcing work among firms (Bettis et al 1992); new and more differentiated employment relations [e.g. core and peripheral part-time workers and independent contractors, guest workers such as technical-support people employed by a vendor but working inside a client firm (Handy 1989)]; and new forms of interdependence among workers and work groups, which in turn link rising performance standards with the concurrent assertion of the interests of many stakeholders, such as customers, workers, and stockholders (Davis 1987). Inevitably, transition costs occur, for people, firms, and society (Mirvis & Hall 1994, Perrow 1996). The shift from managerial prerogatives to self-management removes a good deal of formal control over work.

Research Themes Regarding Organizing

Shifting to more flexible ways of organizing work and employment introduces new elements to established organizational research topics and, more significantly, gives new meanings to existing concepts.

New Employment Relations

Research on the employment relationship reflects both new employment arrangements and the by-products of transition. Central themes include rewards available from labor force participation and performance, how workers understand new psychological contracts, and the impact of these contracts on equity, worker attachment, and other ...