What is organizational behavior?

FOPER IIForest enterprise managementFaculty of forestry, Belgrade

Stojanovska MakedonkaFaculty of Forestry, Skopje

9.05-14.05.2011

ROADMAP

• Defining organizational behavior• Today`s challenges in the workplace• OB: Making sense of behavior in the

organizations• Levels of organizational behavior

Questions for consideration

• What is organizational behavior?• What challenges do managers and employees

face in the workplace of the 21st century?• How will knowledge of organizational

behavior make a difference for you?

Defining OB

• OB – filed of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups and structure have on behavior within organization

• Behavior refers on:• -what people do in the organization• -what are their attitudes• -how they perform cast

OB is usually applied to

absenteeism productivity

human performance

working in groups

employment turnover

job satisfaction

What is organization?• Organization – process-related: an entity is being (re-)organized

(organization as task or action). • Organization – functional: organization as a function of how entities

like businesses or state authorities are used (organization as a permanent structure).

• Organization – institutional: an entity is an organization (organization as an actual purposeful structure within a social context)

• “Coordinated social unit composed of a group people that function on a continuous basis to achieve a common goal or a set of goals”

• Examples: schools, police department, local/national government agencies – are they organizations?

OB is for everyone

• It is natural to think that the study of OB is for managers/leaders

• Why?• They often set the agenda for everyone• Informal leadership• Does managers ask the employees to be

proactive• Do they listen their ideas, even share decision-

making processes

OB is for everyone

• Entrepreneurs/individuals may nor act as managers but they interact with other individuals or organizations

• OB in the street• OB examines individuals, groups, entire

organization because each category contributes to the challenges of the workplace

Workplace today

• Differences between today`s workplace and two decades ago???

Challenges facing workplace

-productivity-developing effective employees-global competition-managing in the global village

Organizational level

-working with others-workforce diversity

-job satisfaction-empowerment-behaving ethically

Individual level

Group level workplace

Individual level-job satisfaction

• -satisfied employee is more productive• -managers should make employees happy and

satisfied• -”managing people has changed even over

past 10 years. Expectations for job satisfaction has grown. The main challenge is to ensure an environment to help meet expectations” Robert Gemmel

Individual level-empowerment• Are the managers asked to share the

responsibilities also???• Empowerment means managers are putting

employees in charge what they do• Nowadays managers are referred to as coaches,

advisers, sponsors or facilitators rather then bosses

• Managers-control level and employees – responsibility for their work and make appropriate decisions

• Decision-making – operational level

Individual level-behaving ethically

• Ethics is the study of moral values or principles that guide our behavior and inform us weather actions are wrong or right. Ethical principles help us “to do the right thing”

• Starts at individual level and it concerns both: individual and organizational dilemmas

Group level – working with others

• Success in job involves developing good interpersonal or “people” skills

• Interpersonal skills are: communication, thinking, learning and working with others, positive attitudes and behaviors and ability to take responsibility for one`s action

• Interpersonal skills do not come easy to all people

• Failure of managers usually is connected to lack of interpersonal skills

Group level – workforce diversity

• Workforce diversity addresses on differences among people within the same country, while globalization is focused on differences among people from different countries

• Organizations are becoming more heterogeneous; variety of different people

• Challenge for organization is to accommodate diverse groups of people by addressing their different lifestyles, family needs and work styles

Organizational level-productivity

• When organization/group is productive?

• Effective + efficient = productive

Employee labor

Matherials

finished goods or services

Organizational level-developing effective employees

• Absenteeism• Turnover• Organizational citizenship

Organizational level-competition from the global environment

• New technologies requires new skills, knowledge

Organizational level-managing and working in a global village

• World is global village. Why?

• People need to learn working with people from different cultures

• Managing people well and understanding the interpersonal dynamics of the work place are not the issues within one country

Thank you for your attention!