Organisational Behaviour and Management

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR AND MANAGEMENT 1
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ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR AND MANAGEMENT 2
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.

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR AND MANAGEMENT 3
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