Organisational Behaviour: Theories for Employee Productivity Essay

This essay delves into the significance of organisational behaviour (OB) theories in contemporary corporations, examining how leaders leverage these theories to elevate employee productivity and gain a competitive edge. It highlights the increasing importance of OB in addressing workplace challenges and fostering a positive environment. The essay identifies key issues within organizations, such as employee retention and job satisfaction, and explores how leaders can implement OB theories related to motivation, job design, and goal-setting to resolve these issues. It discusses various OB theories like the Critical theory of Communication, Fundamental attribution error, Theory X and Y, and Goal-Setting theory, and provides recommendations for their practical application across different business processes. The conclusion emphasizes the role of OB in establishing a productive and positive working environment, ultimately contributing to sustained business growth and profitability. The essay stresses the importance of aligning human resource practices, such as recruitment and training, with OB principles to optimize employee performance.

Running head: ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
0 | P a g e
Organisational Behaviour

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
Implementing Organisational Behaviour Theories to Increase
Employees’ Productive Performance
This essay will determine the role of organisational behaviour (OB) theories in modern corporations
and analyse how leaders use these theories to increase employees’ productivity. In recent years,
corporations are facing fierce competition, and they have to implement strategic business policies to
gain a competitive advantage over others. The significance of organisational behaviour theories has
grown substantially among modern companies since it provides a competitive advantage to firms
(Umphress, Bingham and Mitchell, 2010). Organisations implement these policies to address various
issues relating to businesses in order to improve the efficiency of their operations. Organisational
behaviour theories play a crucial role in establishing a positive working environment which
encourages employees to improve their productive performance. This essay will identify various
issues in corporations and how leaders can use OB theories to address such problems. Successful
leaders and managers use OB theories while performing various business activities which increase
company’s performance as well as profitability. This essay will discuss how leaders can implement
OB theories while performing business practices such as motivating employees, designing jobs,
setting goals and others. The essay will discuss the significance of OB theories in modern
corporations and provide recommendations for leaders to implement these theories across different
processes in a firm which positively influence employees’ productive performance.
Previously, employees were not given importance in a company and leaders did not focus on their
requirements or demands while developing business strategies. But, in recent years, the demand for
specialised and talented workers has grown substantially, and management focuses on fulfilling their
demands. Employees are considered as key asset in companies since productive employees provide
a competitive advantage to firms. Highly productive employees are crucial to business success, and
leaders implement various strategies to increase their productivity. Organisational behaviour
theories assist leaders in effectively managing workplace environment which results in increasing
employees’ productivity (Colquitt et al., 2011). Leaders have to consider various behavioural factors
while determining OB theories which assist in establishing a positive working environment.
Organisational behaviour studies various activities in a company related to employees and group
performance. It assists leaders in gaining a better understanding of the organisational environment
which is necessary to establish effective strategies. There are various benefits of effective OB
strategy such as establishment of positive culture, workers skill development, understanding
customers’ behaviour and gaining insight, establishing employee motivation policies, faster decision-
making process and others (Walumbwa, Hartnell and Oke, 2010). Leaders have to carefully perform
1 | P a g e

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
various strategies to get a better understanding of employees’ attitude and behaviour. By
understating employees’ behaviour, managers can get the best out of employees and increase their
productive performance.
Establishing positive working environment is one of the primary requirements in modern
corporations because they face the issue of high employee retention. Many industries such as
technology, software, manufacturing and retailing find it difficult to retain employees for a longer
period of time. Due to the high rate of retention, organisation faces various challenges such as high
recruitment cost, lack of experienced employees, and negative working environment (Chiang and
Hsieh, 2012). Leaders focus on establishing positive working environment throughout the different
process to increase employee retention rate and increasing job satisfaction rate. Leaders establish
OB theories for communication to improve the working condition of a workplace and implement it
throughout different division. Stanley Deetz provided ‘Critical theory of Communication’ which focus
on balancing human and corporate interest. He considered the company as an economic and
political institution in which communication plays a crucial part (Deetz, 2012). Communication in this
theory focus on resolving conflicts between employees, prevent problems in groups, provide
guidance and encourage employees to work towards a single goal. Effective communication can be
used to diagnose distorted decision-making process which results in increasing employees’
productivity and company’s performance. Leaders can implement it upon processes across the
company by establishing various communication channels which assist employees in sharing their
quarries and feedback with top-level management (Myers and Sadaghiani, 2010).
Designing organisational jobs based on employees’ skills and company’ requirement can improve
employees’ productivity along with corporation’s profitability. Job design referred to the process of
hiring qualified employees for right jobs and providing them a responsibility which challenges them
and engages them in their work which results in increasing their job satisfaction. During job design
process, managers use job enlargement, rotation, enrichment and simplification techniques to
assign right candidate at right post (Shantz et al., 2013). It is difficult for managers to design jobs
based on employees’ qualification and company’s requirement which increase job dissatisfaction
among employees and result in decreasing company’s performance. Leaders can use ‘Fundamental
attribution error’ theory while designing organisational jobs. The theory focuses on focus on
employees’ personality and analyse their actions while overlooking different external factors such as
contextual influences and social aspects (Dieser, 2011). There are several issues which negatively
affects employees’ performance such as learning problems, not coping with work, motivation issues,
lack of communication, and personality problems. Leaders can implement this theory in recruitment
2 | P a g e

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
and selection process to ensure that qualified candidates are selected whose behaviour is suitable
for the company. Managers can implement this strategy across different process by designing jobs
based on task requirements and assigning them to qualified employees.
In recent years, corporations focus on increasing their employees’ productivity by motivating them
to increase their performance. Leaders focus on analysing and learning about employees’ behaviour
since it results in implementing OB theories that encourage employees’ productive performance. OB
theories allow managers to analyse their employees’ requirement which assists in motivating them
(Pinder, 2014). Traditional theories of employee motivations included carrot and stick approach,
reward theory, and fear and punishment theory. Modern motivation theories include Herzberg
hygiene theory, McGregor Theory X, and Y, Maslow Hierarchy of needs theory and many others.
Modern organisations face issue relating to employees such as high retention, worker absenteeism,
job dissatisfaction and others. OB theories assist them in addressing these issues by motivating
employees to perform better. ‘Douglas McGregor developed ‘Theory X and Theory Y’ in the 1960s,
and it provides two completely different views on employee motivation (Kopelman, Prottas and Falk,
2010).
Theory X provides that employees are lazy and avoid work, and managers require to closely
monitoring and supervising them. In this theory, employees are not ambitious about incentive
program and avoid organisational responsibilities wherever they can. This theory provides that
managers should adopt a natural leadership approach which effectively controls employee
performance by threatening and punishing them. Theory Y, on the other hand, provides that
employees are self-motivated and ambitious towards their job, and they accept greater
organisational responsibilities (Sahin, 2012). Management believes that employees like their job,
and they have a desire to be creative in the workplace and given the right conditions, workers will
prefer to increase their productive performance. This theory provides that job satisfaction itself is
motivation which increases employees’ productive performance. The co-founder and former CEO of
Apple Incorporation, Steve Jobs, used Theory X and Y approach to motivate employees in order to
create innovative products (Kannan-Narasimhan, 2015). To implement this theory across different
processes, leaders have to analyse employees’ behaviour in order to ensure that they belong to
‘Theory Y’ category and implement positive working conditions to increase their job satisfaction
which results in increasing their productive performance.
According to the study conducted by Turkay (2014), setting small goals can assist people in
increasing their performance and achieve desired targets. Therefore, most of the modern
corporations implement small goals for their employees to increase their productive performance.
3 | P a g e

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
The ‘Goal-Setting theory’ is significantly popular among managers that provided policies for setting
effective goals. The goals have to be clear and challenging at the same time; the commitment of
employees along with managers is needed. The managers have to collect feedback from employees
continuously, and they should analyse task complexity to ensure it is not too difficult for workers
(Munson and Consolvo, 2012). Managers can implement this theory throughout different process to
increase job satisfaction and enhancing employees’ productive performance.
In conclusion, managers use organisational behaviour theories while performing various business
functions such as goal setting, motivation, job designing and others in order to increase employees’
productive performance. Productive employees provided a competitive advantage to companies
which assist in increasing their profitability. Various organisational behaviour theories assist
managers in establishing a positive working environment which increases job satisfaction and
motivates employees to perform better such as Goal-setting theory, Theory X and Y, Critical theory
of communication, Fundamental attribution error and many others. These OB theories assist
managers in analysing employees’ behaviour and attitude to establish a working environment which
is suitable for their requirements that result in increasing their productive performance. Following
are various recommendations that assist managers in effectively implementing OB theories across
different process. The managers should implement OB theories while performing human resource
functions such as recruitment, selection, training, and others to ensure that qualified employees are
selected who are suitable for company’s working environment. Managers should also implement
theories in different processes since different incentive schemes motivate different employees. For
example, low-level employees prefer monitory incentives whereas top-level employees motivate by
non-monetary rewards. Effective OB theory can increase employees’ productive performance which
sustains future growth of companies.
4 | P a g e

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
References
Chiang, C.F. and Hsieh, T.S. (2012) The impacts of perceived organizational support and
psychological empowerment on job performance: The mediating effects of organizational citizenship
behavior. International journal of hospitality management, 31(1), pp.180-190.
Colquitt, J., Lepine, J.A., Wesson, M.J. and Gellatly, I.R. (2011) Organizational behavior: Improving
performance and commitment in the workplace. Pennsylvania, US: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Deetz, S.A. (2012) Communication Yearbook 17 (No. 17). Abingdon: Routledge.
Dieser, R.B. (2011) A follow-up investigation of the fundamental attribution error in leisure
education research. Therapeutic Recreation Journal, 45(3), p.190.
Kannan-Narasimhan, P. (2015) Creating a culture for innovation: Theory X or Theory Y?. [Online]
LinkedIn. Available at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/creating-culture-innovation-theory-x-y-priya-
kannan-narasimhan [Accessed 19th January 2018].
Kopelman, R.E., Prottas, D.J. and Falk, D.W. (2010) Construct validation of a Theory X/Y behavior
scale. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 31(2), pp.120-135.
Munson, S.A. and Consolvo, S. (2012) Exploring goal-setting, rewards, self-monitoring, and sharing to
motivate physical activity. In Pervasive computing technologies for healthcare (PervasiveHealth),
2012 6th international conference on (pp. 25-32). IEEE.
Myers, K.K. and Sadaghiani, K. (2010) Millennials in the workplace: A communication perspective on
millennials’ organizational relationships and performance. Journal of Business and Psychology, 25(2),
pp.225-238.
Pinder, C.C. (2014) Work motivation in organizational behavior. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
Şahin, F. (2012) The mediating effect of leader–member exchange on the relationship between
Theory X and Y management styles and affective commitment: A multilevel analysis. Journal of
Management & Organization, 18(2), pp.159-174.
Shantz, A., Alfes, K., Truss, C. and Soane, E. (2013) The role of employee engagement in the
relationship between job design and task performance, citizenship and deviant behaviours. The
International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(13), pp.2608-2627.
5 | P a g e

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
Turkay, S. (2014) Setting Goals: Who, Why, How?. [Online] Harvard University. Available at
https://hilt.harvard.edu/files/hilt/files/settinggoals.pdf [Accessed 19th January 2018].
Umphress, E.E., Bingham, J.B. and Mitchell, M.S. (2010) Unethical behavior in the name of the
company: the moderating effect of organizational identification and positive reciprocity beliefs on
unethical pro-organizational behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(4), p.769.
Walumbwa, F.O., Hartnell, C.A. and Oke, A. (2010) Servant leadership, procedural justice climate,
service climate, employee attitudes, and organizational citizenship behavior: a cross-level
investigation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(3), p.517.
6 | P a g e