PAPER: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Systematic Study of Organizational Behavior

Systematic Study of Organizational Behavior

Introduction

Organizational behavior has been defined as the systematic study of the action and attitudes that people exhibit within organizations or companies. These attitudes and actions need to be shared with everyone within the organization in order for the organization to succeed. From top to bottom, everyone needs to be involved and exhibit the right actions and attitudes for an organization to excel. Some of the challenges and opportunities for organizational behavior include: improving quality and productivity, managing workforce diversity, improving ethical behavior, responding to globalization, declining employee loyalty, empowering people, and stimulating, innovation, and change. The role of today's human resources manager is vastly different than that of yesterday's human resource manager. Today's private and public sector has seen dramatic changes in the way we as a nation do business and these changes have effected the role the human resources manager plays. This paper will discuss the role of the human resources manager and how trends focusing on globalization, technology, e-business, diversity, and ethics have changed this role.

Role of Human Resource Manager

Today's human resources manager has a greater role than just being the "compliance, benefits and compensation" manager (Grantham & Hook, 2004). Firms today involve the human resources manager an integral part of the companies' strategic planning team in an effort to meet the firm's strategic objectives. The human resources manager has become an integral part in shaping and directing the firm towards where the firm wants to go, needs to go, and determines the needed skills to get there. A key component of such direction for firms is the potential for globalization.

Globalization is taking a firm's business model and applying it geographically with changes along the way in an effort to maximize profits for the firm (Ghemawat, 2003). Today's human resources manager has to focus not only on how to strategically position the firm globally to succeed in meeting the local customers wants and needs but how to do so without infracting on government regulations. The ability to do so successfully can mean the difference between financial ruin and success for firms. To do so successfully research shows global business managers, which include human resource managers from both cultures, need to be present from the start. These key individuals would maintain the focus for the firm both locally and globally with respects to the firm's "financial, human and informational assets" (Churchwell, 2003). Trends shown in research just as briefly as five years ago show the key global countries to be the United States, European and Japanese countries. However, today many smaller countries are moving into the market. What differs between these smaller countries and the larger ones are the countries ability to support themselves in the changing trends. The largest trend to change the market for these countries is the information technology market.

A key ingredient to a successful recipe for a firm is thinking and acting globally along with intelligent use of information technology; however firms can not overlook using ...