Organizational Behavior & Leadership

1. Fundamentals
In this challenging era of work and organizations, the body of knowledge we call “organizational behavior” offers many insights of great value. Called OB for short, organizational behavior is the study of human behavior in organizations. It is an academic discipline devoted to understanding individual and group behavior, interpersonal processes, and organizational dynamics with the goal of improving the performance of organizations and the people in them. Learning about OB can help you develop a better work-related understanding of yourself and others; it is a knowledge platform that can expand your potential for career success in the dynamic, shifting, and complex new workplaces of today—and tomorrow.
2. Learning & Conditioning
When it comes to learning, the concept of “reinforcement” is very important in OB. It has a very specific meaning that has its origin in some classic studies in psychology. Reinforcement is the administration of a consequence because of a behavior. Managing reinforcement properly can change the direction, level, and persistence of an individual’s behavior.
3. Personality
The term personality encompasses the overall combination of characteristics that capture the unique nature of a person as that person reacts to and interacts with others. Personality combines a set of physical and mental characteristics that reflect how a person looks, thinks, acts, and feels. Sometimes attempts are made to measure personality with questionnaires or special tests.
4. Attitudes & Behavior
An attitude is a predisposition to respond in a positive or negative way to someone or something in one’s environment. It’s important to remember that an attitude, like a value, is a hypothetical construct; that is, one never sees, touches, or isolates an attitude. Rather, attitudes are inferred from the things people say or through their behavior. They are influenced by values and are acquired from the same sources—friends, teachers, parents, role models, and culture. But attitudes focus on specific people or objects.
5. Motivation
motivation refers to the individual forces that account for the direction, level, and persistence of a person’s effort expended at work. There are many available theories of motivation, and they can be divided into two broad categories: content theories and process theories. Theories of both types contribute to our understanding of motivation to work, but none offers a complete explanation. In studying a variety of theories, our goal is to gather useful insights that can be integrated into motivational approaches that are appropriate for different situations.
6. Groups
The class or group is a collection of individuals. The class may regarded largely as an assemblage of individuals, each of whom be taught. It is also a social group, having a structure and an organization of forces which give it a measure of unity and coherence. A team is a group of people holding themselves collectively accountable for using complimentary skills to achieve a common purpose.
7. Leadership
Leadership is the process of influencing others and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared. For our purposes, we treat leadership as the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives. Leadership appears in two forms: (1) formal leadership, which is exerted by persons appointed or elected to positions of formal authority in organizations, and (2) informal leadership, which is exerted by persons who become influential be- cause they have special skills that meet the needs of others. Although both types are important in organizations, this chapter will emphasize formal leadership
8. Conflict
The daily work of organizations revolves around people and the interpersonal dynamics involved in getting them engaged in goal accomplishment. Conflict occurs whenever disagreements exist in a social situation over issues of substance, or whenever emotional antagonisms create frictions between individuals or groups. Team leaders and members can spend considerable time dealing with conflicts; sometimes they are directly involved, and other times they act as mediators or neutral third parties to help resolve conflicts between other people. Managers have to be comfortable with conflict dynamics in the workplace and know how to best deal with them. This includes being able to recognize situations that have the potential for conflict and address them in ways that will best serve the needs of both the organization and the people involved.
9. Culture
Culture refers to values, beliefs, and customs that exist in a society. Companies are realizing that doing international business provides access to raw materials, resources, and a wider customer base. For many companies, international business is where most of the profits lie. International companies are also becoming major players. As a result of these trends, understanding the role of national culture for organizational behavior may provide you with a competitive advantage in one’s career.