Organizational behavior theories and their contribution to the success of an organization
Question:
Discuss about the Definition Of Organization Behavior.
Organizational behavior is a discipline that studies and investigates the impacts of an individual, group, and the structure on the organization, with a major purpose of improving the effectiveness of the organization (Kim et al. 2013 p.322). The definition of organization behavior comprises of three components: individuals, group and structure, and relates how these factors affect the entire organization to bring positive impacts. Employees are the fundamentals of every company; they have different attitudes, personality, cultures that result into diverse behaviors in an organization that lead to development of relationships within an organization. These relationships, either related or based on emotional feelings tend to rise on cultural and ethical stereotypes that determine the length and success of the relationships. Therefore, this paper explores the impacts of relying on the stereotype while getting into a relationship with someone from another culture over having to know what they believe in. The paper examines the organization’s behavior theories and how the same applies in a real setting and how the managerial skills can be used to intervene and solve the cultural, ethical and the social concerns. The paper further analyses and criticizes the findings on current developments of the organizational behavior.
Stereotyping refers to the oversimplified evaluation of opinions and perceptions on a particular group of people applied to individual behavior, motives, and attitudes. Stereotyping has both negative and positive consequences when entering into a relationship in work. Thus proper behavior management is critical (Schnyder et al. 2013 p. 10). Organization behavior management has numerous theories that are applicable to address relationships based on both cultural stereotypes and on personal believes and perspectives (Mishra 2013, p.231). Therefore, it is upon the manager of any organization to have the ability to predict the behaviors of each of the staffs and manage them accordingly to achieve the organization’s objectives and at the same time fulfilling the needs of the staff (Moonjoo 2017, p.1263). In a setting of numerous different backgrounds of employees, stereotyping is a common habit among the staffs and the management.
Organizational behavior theories are designed to addresses, manage, and control all the resources that contribute to the success and the cultural diversity of an organization. The development of organizational behavior theories received a lot of contributions from varied disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, and political science (Hattangadi 2015, p.20). Different models and theories in the corporate behavior field identify human behavior, modify the attitudes, and promote skills to conform to the organizational culture that leads to the realization of the objectives. Several theories have been developed and regrouped into significant categories such as the classical, the neoclassical, the contingency, and the system organizational theories.
The classical organizational theory represents the merger of the scientific management, bureaucratic and administrative theories (Marnamara 2018, p.18) . The scientific management theory, developed by Fredrick Taylor had entailed on finding the best way of performing a particular task, matching the task and the worker under close supervision. The theory suggests that either rewards or punishment as the motivators to improve production. However, with time, the legacy of output declined as people get dissatisfied with work thus led to the development of administrative management theory that developed management principles. The neoclassical organization theory focused more on the human relations after the Hawthrone experiment that states that human factors are significant to the success of an organization (Lanik & Mitchell 2011, p.230). The system theory that was proposed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy a Hungarian biologist suggest that all the components of an organization are interrelated and the impact on one element results into either positive or negative effect on the counterparts.
Different models and theories in corporate behavior field
It is upon the manager or the human resource manager to select the best employee that will foster the organization’s objectives. During the selection and recruitment process, the recruiters rely on various factors such as the experience, skills, educational background, personality, cultural background, and many others (Esmeray 2016, p.211). The selected individuals are always getting into a working relationship with the organization, and furthermore, employees too get into the relationship among themselves in spite of the cultural background (Mowla et al. 2013, p.1411). It is evidential that many individuals get into a relationship or hire individuals that fit their culture based on the facts that the selected have the capability of clearly understanding and adapting to the set goals and the organizational culture.
Individuals of various cultural and ethnical backgrounds have different attitudes and values that determine the organizational behavior and eventually the success of the organization. These cultural differences calls for different managerial skills, for examples employees from high context countries such as Japan, South Korea, China and many others prefer long messages and rely more heavily on the nonverbal codes. On the other hand employees from the low context countries such as Germany and Great Britain that prefer direct communication and construct more information in messages (Moonjo 2017, p.1264). Since communication style and modes are important in relaying information in an organization, it is critical for the human resource manager and any other individual entering into a relationship to take into account the available communication methods and the methods used by the partner or the staff to be employed (Matthews, Mahta & Sherres 2018, p.132).
The differences in the communications methods impacts of the productivity of the individual and the whole organization. Another cultural stereotype is that of Asians whereby Asians employees prefer group motivation rather than individual motivation. According to Maslow’s hierarchical Needs Theory, X Theory, and y theory, employee’s needs are paramount to the organization and the productivity increases when employee’s needs are met. The psychological needs like the feeling of being appreciated and valued make one more enthusiastic about the performance, however, this should be done according to the both employee’s cultural belief and organizational culture.
Getting to understand on what personal belief intends to erode the stereotypes and foster positive attitudes. Attitudes have three components: ideas, emotions, and behavior that function and depend on one another (Rubin, Milanov & Paolini 2016, p.226). Among the three components, leaders or a partner is capable of observing behavior that infer to the beliefs, and sense feelings that can be attributed to the motives. Thus stereotyping of the cultures helps in identifying the attitudes that are the main influencing factors of behaviors.
However, relying on the stereotypes in entering into a working relationship tends to result in numerous problems. For example, this might be the main reason too many organizations in failing to get qualified employees from different cultures and countries (Moonjo 2017, p.1266). In an organization whereby stereotype is common, people tend to misjudge based on the notions, hence reduces the trust between the leaders and employees and even among the employees. Such discord is dangerous to the success of organizations as may result in numerous fights and unnecessary conflicts solving meetings. The low trust created based on the stereotype tends to lower the morale of the effect thus reducing the commitment that will eventually reduce productivity as explained by the system Theory.
The impact of cultural stereotypes on organizational behavior and management
Numerous potential organizations problems arise from relying on the stereotypes other than what individual believe while entering into a working relationship, and these include: bad working relationship, proper tension, low morale and many others. Therefore, it is upon the manager to formulate proactive interventions to address the issues through the following ways:
Implement workplace policies that discourage stereotyping among employees to make everyone embrace the cultural diversity: these policies should also address the cultural stereotyping during the recruitment process, as many of the cultural behaviors are changeable through training and adoption of the organizational culture (Li et al .2016, p 779). The management can also offer diversity training to the individuals to address the ethical, cultural, and social differences and foster on personal beliefs as the core of each relationship. The manager should also establish workplace affinity groups to improve the networking among the employees from different populations that will eventually increase the awareness through the open membership of the employees. The work groups will increase the interaction among the diversified population hence coming to the full realization that relationships are not merely based on the stereotypes but rather than what an individual believes in.
Conclusion
In conclusion, cultural diversity results in behavioral diversity among people and organizations. The predetermined notions tend to help some human resource managers to predetermine the behaviors of an individual even before entering into a relationship since the neglects of such stereotypes might result in behavior discourse. The behavioral discourse eventually results into a premature breakup or frequent unnecessary conflicts between the two parties. However, it is not better to rely on the stereotypes when entering into a relationship, since character and attitudes are aspects that are attained with experiences, therefore, getting what a person believes on should be the core determinant of the relationship. The cultural stereotyping can be reduced by improving the interaction among people to provide an opportunity to experience and get the version of each person’s belief that would eventually form the basis of the relationship.
References
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