Organizational behavior is the conduct that is collectively displayed by those people who work in or work with a certain organization. These are collective behaviors which are taught to new employees once they join an organization which enshrine the ideals and objective of such an organization. Organizational behavior influences how the members of an organization conduct themselves in almost every aspect of their lives to create a good image and it affects how employees interact with each other, their clients and also those people who have a stake in the organization. The organizational behavior of an organization can also be defined as the values which contribute to the creation of an acceptable psychological and social environment within which to work (Chen & Yang, 2012). These values are based on the previous and existing knowledge of the organization which form the philosophies that hold the organization together. There may however be many different conflicting behaviors within an organization, especially the large ones, due to the different characteristics displayed by the various management teams that work in the organization. Organizational behavior may have both positive and negative effects on the individuals involved and these among others will be discussed in this paper. While the management of an organization plays a major role in the formulation of an organizational behavior, the employees of such an organization also have a role to play in its formulation.
According to the article, “How to... improve staff communication” by Rebecca Clarke, the organizational behavior involves the social expectations and standards which determine the values and beliefs which hold the people working within an organization together. Furthermore, this behavior is heavily influenced by the signs and symbols which an organization is recognized by and this determines the way the people who work within this organization behave, thus they are the embodiment of the organization’s behavior. A shared language is very important in the development of an organization’s behavior because language is the glue that holds the organization together and without a common means of communication within the organization, then the organization would collapse (Khalid, Jusoff, Othman, Ismail & Rahman, 2010). Organizational behavior is the single most important thing that determines whether and organization will be successful or not.
When one considers the article, one will find that there are four major elements of behavior which determine the success of an organization. These include the values which define the beliefs at the heart of organization’s behavior as well as the individuals within the organization who embody its values. In addition, the routine interactions between members of an organization provide some strong symbolic qualities that make them feel like part of a family. Finally, there is the informal communication system within the organization which has a massive effect on the organizational behavior (Tudorescu, Zaharia, Zaharia & Zaharia, 2010). Although it is a very difficult thing to happen, the behavior of an organization tends to be subject to change. This does not normally come easily and at times, these changes often take place because of diverse reasons which normally succeed in changing the organizational behavior. In order to change an organizational behavior, the management of an organization has to be aware of what exactly it takes to change the existing behavior because to make sudden changes might prove to be counterproductive. Moreover, the ability to change the behavior is in the hands of the top management of the organization and it is they who are responsible for the institution of such change (Luthans, 2002). Finally, organizational structure has a massive influence in the resolution of the dilemma of bureaucracy because although formal procedures are necessary for business integrity, bureaucracy has a tendency of stifling an organization’s independence of action and creativity.
The organizational behavior consists of many group behaviors which interact with one another for the sake of the running of the organization. It can, therefore, be said that the organizational culture of an organization might not be as homogenous as one would expect and may in fact consist of many coexisting behaviors which work hand in hand out of necessity. Each of these behaviors have created their own characteristics and sense of identity and an example of this is within the workplace where employees can easily classify themselves socially according to their areas of specialization, membership in a particular union, and age (Valle-Cabrera, 2006). Although these behaviors may be diverse, each of them is developed for the purpose of furthering the goals of the organization through different means. Through the initial interactions with new members of an organization, the older members tend to gradually transmit their behavioral values to these new members and in time, they become completely absorbed into the dominant behavior.
The organizational behavior may not necessarily be united due to the existence of different behaviors and it is from these behaviors that change to the overall organizational behavior develops. An example of this is when a new management takes over an organization with the aim of improving its image and making it a more popular brand. This new management will more likely target the behavior of the employees of this corporation because it is its core. The best way to do this would be for the new management to create a behavior which is counter to the current one whose aim would be to replace the existing one (Valle-Cabrera, 2006). Most of the people in this organization, after an initial resistance, would be forced to conform to this new behavior that is demanded of them since to do otherwise would be increasing the risk of losing their positions. Changing an organization’s behavior is one of the most difficult challenges that its leadership can face and this is because of an interlocking set of roles, processes, values and attitudes (Bambale, A.J., Shamsudin & Subramaniam, 2011). Changing a behavior is a large undertaking which should be done on a large scale in order to make it successful. All the organizational tools for changing the minds of those who work within the organization should be put in play and if they do not work, the use of coercion and punishments should be put in place as a last resort to ensure compliance with the new changes.
The managers of an organization should be very relaxed, and are most of the time indistinguishable from the other employees, and they can do this through not simply giving order to those under them, but should also accept feedback from them and should be ready to get alternatives to their decisions. This helps to show that although they have managers, the employees within an organization are in their later stages of development and are very comfortable outside their predefined roles, displaying high levels of motivation (Carlson, 2009). The managers should not attempt to put any verbal barriers between themselves and their employees and they, instead, should show genuine concern in the emotional and physical well being of their employees, something that is very rare in this type of environment.
An organization has to have a culture that is generally inviting to new employees and these are motivated to work in the organization. Organizations have to develop a laid-back environment within them and this is to ensure that the jobs are not very stressful to the employees. Another reason why employees are motivated to continue working for an organization should be the different shift schedules, which the management formulates so that they can accommodate every employee. Since most of the jobs found in many organizations in the modern world are low skilled, the management should ensure that any other employee can take over the other’s shift if they are not able to make it to work due to a need to attend to other more pressing obligations (Woodside, 2003). Numerous growth opportunities should be available within the organization, and this should be done through the training given to the employees at various levels as an additional motivator. The longer one works for an organization, the more the likelihood that he or she will ascend the ranks to the level of assistant manager or manager in just a few years.
The organizational behavior of a company should not only be able to influence the way through which it presents the products that it has to offer, but also for the great service. The employees of this organization, due to the high levels of motivation that they have as a result of its policies towards them, often end up the best kind of service to its customers, and this encourages these customers to keep coming. This is one of the reasons why, the profit margins of companies with good organizational behavior often keep on increasing over time and it serves to show just how very important it is to keep the employees motivated in their work because they will give their best as a result (Woodside, 2003). The key to an organization’s success in any market is that people everywhere often know what to expect when they opt for their services and this does not often mean that the organization has to resist change in behavior and refused to adapt when local customs require flexibility. It has become the trend for organizations to establish internal social networks to give employees the opportunity to connect with the management and to support each other (Wright, 2003). An example of such an initiative would be that of the McDonald’s Corporation, which established Station M, a social network strictly for its employees. Such internal social networks often provide a space for the organization’s employees to share ideas, best practices, as well as customer stories and there is often a forum section that allows dialogue between the organization’s corporate members and its employees as well as discussions between employees from the different departments within the said organization. Such internal social networks have proved successful in getting the employees more involved with both the management as well as their fellow employees.
Changes can be made to the organizational behavior through the strict management of all the new behaviors that are introduced within the organization. The implementation of change to the behaviour of employees within an organization is the process through which changes are made in an organization with the intention of achieving a certain result in the future (Pei-Lee & Sun, 2012). In addition, it can be said to be a process which comes to affect the daily activities of an organization, such as how it is managed and how teams and individuals work together in order to achieve the goals which have been set. It is a fact that there has been some dispute concerning whether change to the behavior of an organization can be changed, it is a fact that change is necessary for the continued thriving of an organization (Sani, 2013). This is the reason why, despite the resistance which may be encountered from those individuals within the organizations who have become too comfortable in the practice of a certain behavior, changes have to be implemented. This is the reason why there has to be a procedure which is followed in getting changes in an organization to be introduced with the aim of achieving approval from all those involved (Ionescu, 2008). The implementation of changes to the organizational behavior has come to be recognized as one of the most important aspects of the running of organization and this is the reason why a lot of literature concerning it has been written, as the different ways of conducting such changes have been suggested and analyzed.
The critical study of organisational behavior is extremely important for managers of organizations because of the fact that they get to learn how to better manage the changes that are affecting their organizations. It is well known facts that in most organizations, very few changes are effectively implemented by the managers who attempt to do so, with the success rate being so low that one would say that they are negligible (Latif, Abideen & Nazar, 2011). The reason for these low rates of success is that there is often resistance from the employees because of the fact that the management does not know how to address these changes before attempting to implement them. The management of many organizations often ignore the feelings of their employees when implementing changes and when they meet resistance, they often take an antagonistic stance towards such changes. This is because many managers in the current generation have not had an opportunity to make a critical study of organisational behaviour within their organisations and attempted to learn from these lessons how to manage their employees. In most cases, the management of an organisation tends to view resistance to some of their policies by their employees as being a way to sabotage the activities of the said organization, and often takes an adversarial approach towards it (Singh & Schick, 2007). In such cases, the management is often ignorant of the behaviour within the organisation, because if they had been aware of it, then they would have realized from the mistakes of their predecessors that an adversarial stance against employees does not often work. It is, therefore, very important for the management to make a study of the organisational behavior in order to be able to better manage changes within their organizations (Euwema, Evert Van & Bakker, 2003).
In conclusion, organizational behavior has great influence within the organization and it affects almost everything that happens in it. It functions as a unifying factor between the different members of an organization and it helps in the development of the organization’s image as a community of interests. It can be considered to be the core of an organization, determining its values, and objectives, which is a very important element in a modern organization. There has been speculation about whether or not an organization’s behavior can be managed and while some believe that it can be managed, others do not. It is my belief that the management of behavior within an organization is possible if it has a strong management at its head.