Organisational Behaviour and Management

This article discusses the importance of organisational behaviour and management in improving productivity and sustainability of businesses. It explores the different disciplines contributing to the field of organisational behaviour and their impact on managers. The article also provides insights into real-life examples of organisational behaviour in action.

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Introduction
An organization is a coordinated social unit, comprising of two or more individuals who
functions on a relatively continuous basis in order to achieve a common objective or a set of
targeted goals.
Organizational behavior is a systematic and analytical field of study of the attitudes and
actions of the people and the impact of the behavior of those particular individuals working in
teams in an organization which is important as a scientific approach applied to the management
of employees by using such knowledge in order to improve organizational effectiveness.
Management can be described as the processing of planning, organizing, controlling,
leading, directing and coordinating functions and resources in an organization in order to achieve
the desired results or targeted goals.
Disciplines contributing to the field of organizational behavior
Psychology being a study of behavior includes intrapersonal aspects such as personality,
motivation, perception attitude learning, emotions, work stress, work design, individual decision
making, training and development, and also conflict management. Managers can use different
psychological tests in embracing leadership effectiveness, during the selection of employees,
attitude measurement, performance appraisal, job satisfaction and also in measuring employees’
personality attributes and ability.
Sociology which involves the study of group behavior is another aspect which has been
of help in enriching organizational behavior in fields of group dynamics, leadership, work teams,
intergroup behavior, group processes, formal and informal organizations, organization change,
organization culture, communication and decision making.
Anthropology is another factor which involves the study of human race and its cultures
like comparative values, organizational culture, cross-culture analysis, comparative attitude, and
organizational environment. The culture of an organization influences human behavior, for
instance, employee’s perception of things and functioning. Due to globalization, acquisitions,
mergers, and diversification of the workforce, nowadays anthropology has become more relevant
to organizational behavior.
Social psychology which is a blend of psychology and sociology concepts such as
behavioral change, attitude change, group processes, communication, group decision making,
etc, focuses on the influence of people to each other hence trying to attain better human behavior
in the organization especially helps manager in areas of managing and implementing change and
also reduce resistance to the change.
Additionally, organizations being political entities elements of political science which
compose of power, conflict and intra organizational politics, assists in the understanding of
individuals behaviors within a political environment. For example, government rules and
regulations play decisive roles in organizational growth.

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Importance of organizational behavior to managers
Since managers in an organization have important roles to play, that is planning,
organizing, coordinating, controlling, leading and directing they are the primary key to change in
any organization. Being the change agents through the decision they make and also acting as the
role models in behavior they help in shaping the changing culture in organizations while
executing their managerial role and duties.
According to Henry Mintzberg division of managerial roles classified them in three major
categories. These are:-
1. Interpersonal roles
These are roles which explain how managers interact with others within and outside firms, for
example, their peers, colleagues, customers, etc. hence which forms the basic requirement of
understanding personal behavior. In this managers perform different roles of leadership,
figurehead, and liaison. In their leadership role, it involves hiring, training, motivating and even
disciplining their subordinates and colleagues in a business unit or organization. For the
figurehead role, managers need to perform their social responsibilities which includes ceremonial
and symbolic duties and also complete their legal obligations. As in liaison, they need to contact
people for information within and outside the organization in order to create awareness of the
competitive external environment and the market in general.
2. Informational Roles
They are roles in which managers provide information on various issues within an organization.
Through monitoring, they collect information from the internal and external environment. As
information disseminator, they transmit information relating to policies and procedures within
the organization. As a spokesperson, managers represent the units and departments and share
relevant information with other departments within the organization or to outsiders.
3. Decision making roles
Managers are the key people who are always in the frontline in decision making and also in
tackling organizational problems. In this capacity, managers play the role of entrepreneur by
looking for innovative ideas and initiating new projects for the improvement of performance and
productivity in their departments or units and also for the whole organization in general. They
also act as disturbance handler by correcting and solving problems within the organization. As
resource allocators, managers always make sure relevant human, physical and monetary
resources are allocated to projects depending on priority. Managers as negotiators, they assist in
negotiating and bargaining deals for advantages of the organizational goals.
Apart from Henry Mintzberg division of managerial roles, there are other vital aspects of
organizational behavior which are important to managers. For instance, an employee’s

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personality and behavior affect the way business runs, i.e., the way they interact among
themselves and more importantly with customers is crucial in enhancing business sustainability
and productivity. So for a good personality traits helps a manager to tell if a particular employee
is capable of handling a specific job and do the maximum to improve the performance of the
organization. Being able to identify the individual personality traits, helps the managers to
develop human resource management techniques hence being able to hire the best people and
allocate them into relevant units and sections of a business. It also helps the managers in
identifying and selecting relevant training needs for individuals since each employee has
different needs and also learning strategies hence choosing them according to their
characteristics and the organizational needs. (Aswathappa, 2015)
A team role is also another important aspect of organizational behavior which is important to
managers as a tool for efficient and effective team building. According to Belbin, “a team role is
a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a specific way.” It is important in
diagnosing and influencing behaviors of teams. The team roles depict individual’s behavior in
context with others portraying a pattern which vital for the team to progress. For Belbin team
roles theory is important to managers, for example in the balancing of a team in a project,
highlighting and managing personal differences or developing an individual to a team player.
The managers can identify and access the strengths and weakness of an individual or team
through observation and comparison in order to analyze them hence looking for ways of
improving them.
Due to effects of globalization, manager’s job changing, for instance, in functions of hiring,
training and so forth, they must be considered from a global perspective. Therefore,
organizational behavior assists the management in becoming more flexible and proactive hence
enabling it to execute its mandate in the organization on a global scale.
Managing diversification of the workforce has become a global thing and concern due to
heterogeneity in the organization in terms of age, race, gender, etc. Therefore, managers have to
exercise control and channel behavior in the targeted direction since they are dealing with
individuals and groups which belong to different ethnic cultures. The managers with the help of
organizational behavior are able to deal with workforce diversity effectively by promoting its
awareness, increased diversity skills and also encouraging gender and culture diversity.
(Frederick, 2014)
With the help of organizational behavior, managers are able to empower their employees since
they are the key forces of implementing a change like through programs like total quality
management and business process re-engineering in order to improve quality and productivity
due to an increased level of competition. Since jobs in the service sector involve continuous
interaction with the customers of the organizations, organizational behavior assists the managers
in improving customer service through customer satisfaction which is affected by an employee’s
attitude and behavior. In return, this helps in improving organizational performance.
Organizational behavior facilitates the process of managing a business in a better way by
improving the skills of employees by offering insights into skills they can use while performing

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their jobs like creating effective teams and job designing.Employees being an instrument of
change, organizational behavior helps to stimulate and promote innovation and change by
fostering ideas and techniques hence improving the creativity of employees. Organizational
behavior helps management to design flexible jobs hence helping employees to be able to
achieve and deal with balancing work/life issues, in which it enables the organization in retaining
their most talented workers. (Kumar, 2016)
It is organizational behavior which plays a vital role by helping managers to create a healthy
work environment through the promotion of ethical behavior hence increasing work productivity
and job satisfaction. (Robbins, et al., 2009)Due to increased levels of competition today,
organizational facilitates and helps to create a positive work environment through developing
resilience and human strength hence fostering vitality. Moreover, managers can adopt and apply
different tactics from an organizational behavior perspective comprising of modification of
compensation structures, reorganizing groups and even the process of performance evaluation.
Real Life Examples
a) Brexit-
During Brexit, it was important for the country’s leadership and management of change to
involve the others in the change process for the purpose of a healthy democracy. It was crucial
for the leadership to encourage informed decision and discussion between those who wanted to
leave and also those who wanted to remain. Particularly, for the leaders of change should always
know that rationality does not matter, neglecting is expensive and negativity works. (Ford &
Randall, 2017)
b) Ryanair-
From organizational culture change, Ryanair low-cost fares made it become most profitable as
one of Europe’s low-cost airlines and also revolutionized air travel, this due to the change
brought by the new top management. To the Ryanair stakeholders, there is no appreciation or
gratitude acknowledged in its corporate policy or culture. For instance, Employees are seen as
tool ensuring and maintaining high productivity hence stimulating company’s growth. Since the
company was small, it was flexible hence easier to manage and drive change. (Smart, 2014)
c) GDPR-
The main goal of General Data Protection Regulation was to empower and protect the privacy of
all EU citizens by ensuring that organizations across Europe harmonize and approach data
privacy and security laws in the same manner. (Eustice, 2017)
Conclusion
Therefore, organizational behavior is one aspect which plays a crucial role in business
management. As the field of study, that deals with finding out the impacts that individuals,
groups and the organizational structure have on behavior within a business organization hence

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embracing application of that knowledge in order to make and ensure organizations are working
more efficiently and effective with improved productivity hence ensuring business sustainability.
For human resource purpose, organizational behavior theories can be applied aimed at
maximizing individual group members output and also running a cohesive business. (Hosie,
2009)

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References
Aswathappa, K., 2015. Organizational Behaviour. Himalaya Publishing House, 5(2), pp. 57-68.
Eustice, J. C., 2017. 8 ways the GDPR could impact most organizations. General Data
Protection Regulation, 4(8), pp. 3-7.
Ford, J. & Randall, J., 2017. Changing Times. What Organizations can learn from Brexit and the
2016 US Presidential Election, 2(4), pp. 1-8.
Frederick, P. R. H., 2014. Organizational Behaviour and its Role in Management of Business.
Global Journal of Finance and Management, 6(6), pp. 563-568.
Hosie, S. P. J., 2009. A Future for Organizational Behaviour. Emerald European Business
Review, 21(3), pp. 65-81.
Kumar, P. P., 2016. Challenges and Opportunities for Organizational Behavior. Management
and Organizational Behaviour, 15(2), pp. 32-36.
Robbins, P. S., Judge, T. A. & Sanghi, S., 2009. Organizational Behaviour. Pearson Prentice
Hall, 4(7), pp. 34-51.
Smart, E., 2014. A discussion of Organizational Culture and the Corporate Culture at Ryanair.
International Journal of Transport Management, 3(5), pp. 45-67.