Organizational Behaviour

--Ideas and Concepts as the Writer Understands

As we all know and have all experienced, organizational behaviour is the knowledge concerned with the structure, functioning, performance of an organization, and the behaviour of groups and individuals within it. Organizational behaviour is a wide-spread notion and closely related to organization chart, organization culture, organization development, organization dilemma, and organizational socialization, etc. Though it’s an intangible theory of multifacets, organizational behaviour does play an immeasurable role geared to our needs in many fields. However, how does the writer understand organizational behaviour? Behind this question lies sorts of sophisticated tracking-down of this fascinating miracle of organizational behaviour.

Organizational bahaviour is extremely important to our life and work. It has a great influence on them, but it is very hard to understand as well. The writer here wants to develop five points as he has understood. They are group or team roles and leadership, social responsibility, motivation, personality within the organizational behaviour territory.

Team Roles and Leadership

Team roles and leadership are related to each other and linked by collective goals. What do these concepts mean? Let’s go to Huczynski and Buchanan(2001:890, 882) for their definitions respectively:

Team Role: “An individual’s tendency to behave in particular preferred ways which contribute to and interrelate with other members in a team.”

Leadership: “The process of establishing goals and influencing the behaviour of others in the pursuit of effective goal achievement.”

In order to make a clear image, let’s have a look at “ Team Role” first. Actually, a very popular and widely used approach to understanding team roles was developed by Belbin’s team role theory. We can remind ourselves of each of Belbin’s nine team roles, which are plant, resource investigator, co-ordinator, shaper, monitor-evaluator, teamworker, implementer, completer and specialist, by scoring the Belbin’s team role questionnaire. Honestly, the sentences which you think best describe your behaviour when you are doing the questionnaire determine the accurate team role you are playing. When we are in our own team role, we should lay great emphasis on “contribution”. What we believe we can contribute to a team may involve : 1) producing ideas is one of our natural assets; 2) we can work well with a very wide range of people, etc. As long as we are partners or colleagues, our performance may affect each other’s. For instance, we would be ready to work with the person who took the most positive approach if we were suddenly given a harsh task within limited time and with unfamiliar people. Therefore we must get on so well with our partners as to benefit our collective goals.

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While it is quite intangible and abstract to understand “leadership”, the writer wants to take an example with a metaphor describing the relationship between team role and leadership. The conductor (leadership) of the orchestra controls the co-operation of the musicians to play a piece of music, i.e., the timing, tune and pitch (arrangement) of every instrument are very carefully controlled and co-ordinated. In turn, the musicians (team role) also influence the behaviour of the conductor. If one instrument plays too loudly or too slowly, the conductor will demand adjustment and therefore maintain balance of the whole orchestra. In order to facilitate the performance of the orchestra, the conductor should have some knowledge on every musical instrument but he does not need to be keen on or good at all of them. He should strengthen the orchestra through charisma, insight, creativity, trust, stimulation, consideration, etc. If it is necessary, he can empower a head musician to lead one group of musical instruments (team work). In leader behaviour, you would always act as the spokesperson for your group, or you would stress being ahead of competing groups, or you would encourage overtime working. etc. Once you are assessing which preferred leadership style you are, the following elements should be taken into consideration: 1) whether or not you are qualified enough for the work or to be with and guide your employees? 2) whether or not you want to accept other ideas? 3) whether or not people are happy in doing their work and productivity is high? and 4) whether or not people enjoy their work and are productive because of positive reinforcement? Leadership is related to how you think you would like to behave before and with your employees and to how you work out optimized projects for your firms.

Social Responsibility

Social responsibility is an obligation loaded on a person in a social context who, when in charge of a task, function or assignment, takes a certain position in an organization structure.

Take a glance at this definition and we will have an explicit understanding of the concept of social responsibility. First, this obligation is social, i.e., it involves the society, an organization or a social group; secondly, the person, when in charge of a certain task, function or assignment, must fulfill (a) certain obligation(s) which is/are loaded on him/her by the society, an organization or social group; thirdly, the person takes a certain position in the organization structure. The fundamental responsibility of managers, for example, is to develop appropriate behaviour strategies to manage themselves and affect others both below and above. To be further, as a leader, when you succeed in obtaining a desired goal, you have done well in a social arrangement, which means that you have fulfilled your social responsibility. The person may be none other than a manager or leader, i.e., an ordinary member of an organization or social group. While he/she is fulfilling his/her obligation that involves the organization or social group, he/she is also fulfilling his/her social responsibility.

Motivation

In the laboratory, rats get Rice Krispies. In the classroom top students get A's, and in the factory or office best workers get raises. It's an article of faith for most of us that rewards produce better performance. This is the situation in terms of motivation, which is the process when a cognitive decision is being made, goal-directed behaviour is initiated, energized, directed and maintained during the process. Motivation can thus be recognized as a broad concept including preferences for particular purposes, efforts, behaviour patterns, persistence, and outcomes, which are the factors that managers and other seniors are required to understand and value in order to motivate their employees or juniors to behave well. Motivation inspires those uninspired people. “The motivating potential score”, which is known as MPS, is a most popular measurement of motivation. MPS is an approach to measure how motivating a job is likely to be for an individual, while the core job dimensions of skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback are all taken into account(Huczynski & Buchanan, 2001: 258). MPS evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the job you are doing.

In our daily life, we can see clearly that interest, sense of achievement, money, tangible and intangible rewards as honours, etc., drive people more energetic and more productive.

Personality

Generally, how do you describe your own characteristics? What is the difference between you and others? How do you value yourself? Do you know accurately who you are? The concept of personality will figure out all these questions. Personality is related to psychological qualities that determine or influence an individual’s characteristic behaviour patterns in a distinctive and consistent manner in various kinds of situations over time. Currently, many managers think that personality is something that affects job performance and success. They use personality assessment as a useful tool to facilitate their work. For instance, you can do the questionnaire which is designed to position your type of personality. When you have done it, you’ll come to know that people who are Type A are more likely to suffer stress-related disorders and heart diseases; conversely, people who are Type B are less so. Let’s have a look at some typical characteristics of Type A and Type B. People who are Type A are competitive, while people who are Type B are able to take their time to enjoy themselves. Generally, Type A are aggressive, impatient, extremely alert; in contrast, Type B are easy-going, seldom impatient, and relaxed. Their personality determines their mental, and to a certain extent, their physical situation. Therefore personality influences both our mental and physical behaviour and development.

From what we have discussed above, we can see that organizational behaviour does not only involve organizations or social groups but also individuals in a society. It lies in almost every facet of human activities, in which there exist fascinating laws that govern human beings’ social behaviour, because human beings are first and foremost social beings. In a broad or macro sense, by taking advantage of a knowledge and a conscious application of the laws of organizational behaviour, people in this world could be more harmonious; without wars or terrorism, people could build up a more beautiful and more prosperous world. In a practical or micro sense, again with a knowledge and a conscious application of the laws of organizational behaviour, a firm may operate better and gain more profits. In a word, with an understanding of this fascinating miracle of organizational behaviour, the human being could, by following its laws, build a better life, of which every one of us is a part.