Organizational Behavior and Human Resources

Organizational Behavior (OB) is one of the important branches of people management in an organization. There have been many developments in the field of OB over the last several decades. Considering other branches of people management, OB distinguishes itself from other branches as it is concerned with the application of psychological theories for managing people at work. Organizational behavior is the study and application of knowledge about how the people or the individual behave in the organization.

It deals with a system approach that the organizational behavior includes a wide range of topics like human behavior, leadership changes and the management style. However, the social value structure has a complex set of human relationships which interacts in many ways. In an organization the group or the social system includes the entire individual in the organization and their relationship with each other.

This paper discusses four important aspects of organizational behavior theory such as Groups and team development; Motivation; Individual differences and perception; and Learning at work. The essay takes a descriptive approach where all the four topics are discussed in detail in the context of people management in an organization. Group and team development Group is considered as the most important element in an organization. It means the collection of people who interact daily with one another to achieve predetermined objectives.

It act as a tool in achieving the objectives of an organization, that is it helps in improving the performance of the members involved in such groups, creating a better environment for working, improving the creativity of the members, facilitating to take better decisions, and through ensuring proper control over the members of the group of organizations. Altogether these will directly contribute to the success of an organization. On other hand a team is a small group of people having different capabilities and who work together to produce something so as to achieve the objectives of the organization.

The group and team development processes helps the group or team to perform the work in a systematic way so as to create a better work force, quality work and productivity. So the group development research has developed various models to examine how the new groups form and work together. But they fall under two categories, namely; five stages model developed by Tuckman model and Heresy and Blanchard’s situational leadership model (Halverson, 2008). The Tuck man model explains about the team development and maturity ability relationship establishment and leader change the leadership style.

He begins it with a directing style and it moves through coaching, then participating, finishing delegation and ultimate detached. Under situational model it explains the ideal development of a team from immaturity through a maturity under which the management style develops from a relatively detached task. Motivation Motivation is an important function which is to be performed by every manager in an organization. It is the duty of manager to get the work done in a well manner for this he should motivate the employees.

To motivate the employees he should first of all understand their needs, so that they can accomplish it by providing necessary motivation. Motivation can be in the form of monetary terms or non monetary terms. Whatever be the form it aims at fulfillment of the objectives of the organization. Thus motivation means the process of inspiring the employees by satisfying their needs so as to get the work done in a well manner so as to accomplish the desired objectives. To explain the human behavior in terms of human needs many theories where evolved, together they were called as Content Theories.

To say Maslow and Hertzberg’s models explained that human beings are engaged in certain activities to satisfy their needs. They also provided answers to the questions like what motivates a person. Apart from Content theories, process theories were evolved like Uroom’s theory that explained variables those results to motivation and also the relationship between these variables. But Maslow’ Need Hierarchy Model is considered as an important theory that explained the basic needs required by the people.

So it is understood that the management can perform job effectively through motivating the people to work for the accomplishment of organizational objectives (Miner, 2005). Individual differences and perception The individual differences and perceptions are the important model of Organizational Behavior. An individual difference explains how people working in the same organization are similar and differ with one another in terms of behavior, feeling and thinking. For example the workers in a same organization may be different from one another in terms of intelligence or personality or any other characteristics.

It is a fact that the some characteristics can be seen similar among the two individuals where as some characteristics can be different among those individuals. To say sex, culture, age is same among some groups of people, but it is also matter of questioning the individual differences (Hentschel, 1986). So through analyzing the individual differences it is able to understand in what ways the people are same and different. On other hand individual perception means an intellectual process whereby how the individuals organize and understand the meaning of the information derived from the environment.

Like individual differences the individual perceptions also differ from one individual to another. Classical Test Theory of the individual differences disregard individual reply model and estimation a person’s whole expressions size by gauging the performance on small example of words. language are seen as casual replicates of each other and thus human being differences in total expressions size are predictable from experiential differences on these smaller model. The test theory developed to description for sampling dissimilarity inside domains can be widespread to account for differences between provinces (Mullins, 1999).

Totally the individual difference address that developing an sufficient descriptive classification of how the group is diverge and applying dissimilarity in the dissimilar situation to forecast differences and ultimately for testing the imaginary explanation of the organization and dynamics of individual difference. Learning at work The learning in work is defined as a comparatively enduring a change in performance potential occurring because of the consequences of past understandings.

It is a conclusion from actions and they must be distinguished from it, for instruction can happen without behavior being exaggerated. It is better to say that a person can learn that a confident garage is open twenty four hours a day without this influencing his visible behavior until and unless he wants petrol at night. Hence the learning is a modification in behavior prospective rather than in behavior itself. This type of revolutionize cans take place for many reasons. There are number of different theories that explain how the group learns at the work.

However it presents a meticulous way of learning of an individual and to distinguish everybody doesn’t learn the way that other does. To say Burns theory explained that the learning as a comparatively permanent change in behavior, including both apparent activity and the domestic process. He measured as the learning might not apparent itself in visible performance until sometime after the working progression in an organization. The other one named Sensory Stimulation theory stated that basic principle for a successful learning occurs when the senses are encouraged.

By stimulating the senses, particularly the visual wisdom, the learning can be improved. However the theory deals, if multi senses are encouraged, superior learning takes place. The inspiration through the sense is achieved through a superior variety of colors, quantity levels, strong declaration, fact accessible rituality, use of a multiplicity of techniques and media. Finally the theory of Holistic Learning theory stated that basic foundation of an individual personality consist of many essentials like intellect, sentiment and all require commencement if learning is to be more successful.

Ultimately the cognitive – Gestalt approach by Burn states that individuals have dissimilar needs and they have affairs at different places at dissimilar time and they will be a prejudiced elucidation in various circumstances. Conclusion Organizational behavioral theories have immensely grown over the last few decades because of the research and studies in the field of human resource management. The theories discussed above are not exhaustive. However, they all are interconnected and for the organization development and human resources improvement, these theories are of much helpful.

References

• Coffield, Frank, 1998, Learning at work, The Policy Press Halverson,
• B. Claire and S. Aqeel Tirmizi, 2008, Effective Multicultural Teams: Theory and Practice, Springer Hentschel, Uwe,
• Gudmund J. W. Smith, and Juris G. Draguns, 1986, The Roots of perception: individual differences in information processing within and beyond awareness, Elsevier Miner,
• B. John, 2005, Organizational Behavior 1: Essential Theories of Motivation and Leadership,
• M. E. Sharpe Mullins, J Laurie, 1999, Management and Organizational Behavior, 7th Edition, Financial Times Pitman