What is organizational behaviour? Explain the critical behavioural issues confronting the managers.
Concept of OB
Organizational behaviour is directly concerned with the understanding, prediction and control of human behaviour in an organization. In other words, organizational behaviour is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups and structures have on behaviour within an organization with the purpose of applying such knowledge for improvement of organization's effectiveness. It is a human tool for human benefit and seeks to know the behaviour of people in all types of organizations.
To sum up, OB is concerned with the study of how and what people act in organizations and also how their behaviour affects the performance of the organization. Likewise, it applies knowledge gained about an individuals and groups in order to make organizations work more effectively.
Critical Behavioural issues Confronting the Managers
Human beings are a complex phenomenon. Two people act differently in same situation. As behaviour of an individual and group are different, complexities occur. Regulating an organization smoothly hence has become a challenge. In this regard, the critical behavioural issues confronting the managers are explained briefly:
- Responding to globalization: Globalization has turned the world into one small village. Managers of today are required to work with people from different cultures - Globalization requires managers to modify their management practices to suit differences among people from different cultures and countries.
- Work force diversity: Work force diversity refers to different types of work force in organization in terms of gender, race and ethnicity. Due to work force diversity, there is a great challenge for the manager to manage and coordinate them towards the goal of the organization.
- Skill deficiency: Skill deficiency is another critical behavioural issue for the manager. Due to the development of IT sector, companies are installing advance technologies to cope with competition. Company at one hand install the advanced technology, on the other hand they lack the required skill to operate. The existing human resources do not possess the required skill and can't be replaced. Providing training to the existing staff to eliminate the deficiencies in skill is another critical issue.
- Managing change: Change is an on-going activity for most of the organizations. Change is essential for both employee and managers. Employee needs change to continually update their knowledge and skill to meet new job requirements. Managers need change to sustain and succeed in complex work environment. In this regard, it is important to manage change in organization which is a critical issue to confront.
- Improvising ethical behaviour: Managers of today face a lot of ethical dilemmas. Managers need to create an ethically healthy climate for employee. They should establish codes of conduct, and offer training and seminars to improve to ethical behaviour.
