Organizational Behavior: Basic Methods and Models

Organizational Behavior (OP) is a relatively new area of knowledge, which contains ideas about the behavior of a person in an organization. It is of great practical importance for managers who need to direct labor resources in the right direction to achieve good results in their work.

Organizational behavior: concept, essence, methods

To better understand the OP, you need to know the psychology of people, as well as the basics of management and sociology. Using the data of these sciences, basic theories of OP are constructed. To begin with, we give a definition of this concept.

Organizational behavior is a system of knowledge and its regular replenishment with new facts using research that is devoted to the behavior of people in the organization: their interaction with colleagues, top management, and also the study of the attitude of workers towards the subject of their activity.

The essence of organizational behavior is the regular analysis of the elements of the organization (individuals and groups) whose purpose is to forecast and improve their functioning. At present, this is an indispensable measure for the organization of successful work, since complex production structures need competent management of large groups of people: the development of special motivational systems and the proper distribution of labor forces.

As the main methods in the OP are those that were originally applied in sociology and psychology:

• Observation. It allows you to study the working environment and the appearance of employees, how they meet the requirements, and to identify shortcomings for their elimination.
• Interview. This includes questioning, interviewing and testing. These methods allow to find out, how much the employees are satisfied with their work and understand the general atmosphere of mutual relations in the team: friendly, competitive or enemy.
• Collection of documentary information. This includes the study of regulations, ethical professional codes, job descriptions, contracts, the organization's charter, and so on.
• Experiment. This method can be organized according to the laboratory type (with preliminary preparation and immersion of people in certain conditions) or carried out in natural conditions.

Models of organizational behavior

There are 4 basic models of behavior. They represent a set of representations of a person, values, and, based on them, his reaction to others in the process of work.

• Original organizational behavior. With such behavior, a person seeks to realize the goals of the organization, while avoiding following its traditions and accepted norms of behavior. With this option, conflict situations are not uncommon , when the "conservative" composition of the group meets with the conflicting view of the original.
• Buntic organizational behavior. This is the brightest person in the group, because he denies the rules and rules. He becomes the instigator of conflicts that accompany his personality at work almost all the time. Such an employee violates the work process and complicates all relationships, which leads to poor productivity.
• Employees are opportunists. Despite the fact that this employee does not accept the values of the organization, nevertheless, he behaves in accordance with them. It follows all norms, statutes and regulations, however, poses a certain threat to the organization because of its unreliability: at any moment it can leave it and this disrupts the work process.
• A disciplined and dedicated employee. This type of behavior is the best for both the organization and the employee, because He strives to comply with all the rules of conduct, and the values of the organization do not enter into a contradiction with his value system. It fully fulfills its role and gives good results, which depend on abilities.

Thus, OP is very important for team management, because it allows you to predict the effectiveness of their work in a team based on people's behavior.