Evolution of Organization Behavior
Organization
Organization is made up of two or more people who work together to achieve a common goal. They do this in a planned, structured way. Groups are very important to our lives. The truth is that we probably can’t remember a time in our lives when we didn’t depend on organisations in some way. Organizations include the public transportation you use to get to school, the school itself, and the class you are in right now.
Just what is behaviour?
That is how the people who work for a company act to reach their primary goals. People in an organisation have a range of attitudes, cultures, beliefs, values, and social norms.
Now that we know what organisational behaviour means, let’s look at it. We study what people think, feel, and do in and around organisations. This is called “organisational behaviour.” Being able to explain, understand, predict, maintain, and change employee behaviour in an organisational setting is made easier by studying organisational behaviour. The good thing about organisational behaviour is that it helps you focus on the
manager’s job and gives a specific view on the people side of management:
The people as groups
Making use of people
People being people
That is, it involves figuring out, predicting, and controlling how people will act and the things that affect their work and how they interact with each other in the organisation. You shouldn’t be surprised that organisational behaviour focuses on behaviour related to things like jobs, work, absences, employee turnover, productivity, human performance, and management. This is because organisational behaviour is all about employment-related situations.
How organisational behaviour has changed over time
Thoughts on Management and Classical Administration
Even though management has been around since ancient times, like when people were building big buildings like pyramids in Egypt, temples in India, or churches, management as we know it today didn’t become a formal field of study until the late 1800s.
- The science of management
- Traditionally run businesses
- The approach to human relations
- The approach to systems
- The approach of “what-if”
- Frederick Taylor and Scientific Management (1865-1915)
Frederick Taylor (1865–1915) was one of the first people to say that good management shouldn’t be based on vague ideas, but on this principle: well-matched
Very clearly defined
Stick to the rules
He was one of the first people to support the idea of “scientific management,” which said that systematic analysis could show “correct” ways, standards, and times for each activity in an organisation. Management’s job was to hire people, train them, and help them do their jobs right. The workers’ only job was to accept the new ways of doing things and do their jobs accordingly. In real life, this method meant breaking each job down into its smallest and most basic parts, which were called “motions” or pans. In a way, each motion turned into its own specialised job that had to be given to a different worker. Workers were chosen and taught how to do these jobs in the most efficient way possible, with no wasted motions or extra physical movement. This is how Taylor might have summed up scientific management in his own words.
(a) A man who is qualified to work in a certain trade can’t understand the science behind that trade without the help and cooperation of men who have had not the same kind of education.
According to the principles of scientific management, men should be asked to do things the right way, learn something new, and change their ways to fit with science. In exchange, they should get a pay raise of 30% to 100%.
A Look at Scientific Management Today
Today, changes are made to pnor wnrV mpthndn and inpffirinnl mimPnts to boost productivity and make work easier on workers’ bodies. However, it is now known that workers are very unhappy when they only do one “motion” in a job; operations need to be re-integrated into whole jobs. People have also realised that they can and should take more responsibility for planning and making decisions at work.
“By the end of the scientific management period, the worker had been reduced to the role of an impersonal cog in the machine of production,” Hicks writes about scientific management as a method. He became more and more specialised in his work, and he stopped caring about how much he contributed to the whole. Even though big steps forward were made in technology, the big problem with the scientific approach to management was that it made employees less human. They were seen as things that could be controlled scientifically, like machines.
The Five Principles of Management by Frederic Taylor
Create a science for every part of a person’s work.
Choose workers scientifically, train them, and help them grow.
sincerely work with the workers
Give managers and workers equal amounts of work and responsibility.
Work studies, tools, and economic incentives can help make production more efficient.
The classical theory of administration and management
Henri Fayol was a French businessman who lived from 1941 to 1925 and popularised the idea of “universality of management principles.” This means that he believed that all organisations could be set up and run by following certain logical rules. It wasn’t easy for Fayol to put these ideas into practise: “Seldom do we have to apply the same principles twice in identical conditions; Contribution must be made for different changing circumstances.” However, the following ideas were important parts of his principles of rational organisation. *.
Work division means breaking the work up into small, manageable pieces and giving each piece to a different worker. It motivates workers to keep improving their skills.
The process of making methods better over time.
Authority means being able to tell people what to do and make them follow through.
Discipline: Don’t skip work or break the rules.
Unity of command means that every worker has only one boss.
United direction: Everyone works together to make one plan, which is made up of many parts.
Individual interests should be put second; when at work, only work-related things should be thought about or done.
Pay: Workers are paid fairly for their work, not just what the company can get away with.
Centralization means putting together management tasks into one place. It is from the lop that decisions are made.
Scalar chain: A formal line of command that goes from the top of an organisation to the bottom, like in the military.
Order: Everything and everyone has a designated spot where they must stay.
Fairness: Being treated the same (but not necessarily identical treatment)
Personnel tenure: Not many people leave the company. Good workers can have jobs for life.
Initiative means you make a plan and do what it takes to carry it out.
Esprit de corps means harmony and unity among employees.
Specializing, having one boss, a scalar chain, and managers working together are the most important of these (an amalgamation of authority and unity of direction).
A look at the art of classical administration
Classical theory’s rationales were still used to run a lot of organisations. But these kinds of organisations have some problems. A “bureaucracy” is a type of organisation that is set up in a traditional way. Its formality, rationality, and lack of personality make it very stable and effective in some ways, but it has failed in others. Bureaucracies are stable in part because they strictly follow their rules, procedures, and the chain of command. But because they are so strict, they also:
Very slow to meet the needs of customers or consumers
The company is very slow to adapt to changes in its competitors, technology, and new market trends.
Very slow to figure out what went wrong Human Relations Movement
The Human Relations Movement is where we will learn about the human relations school of management, which grew out of the scientific management school. In the late 20th century, business changed very quickly, making it hard for traditional companies to compete. Diversity started to question “universal” or “one-size-fits-all” management principles. Multi-skilled project teams were thought to be better at meeting customer needs than specialised, one-man-one-boss structures. The scalar chain of command was destroyed by “delayering” in response to the economic downturn and other factors.
Classical thinking did, however, give managers a chance to step back and think about their experience in order to come up with rules and methods for making things run more smoothly and efficiently. It was because of the famous Hawthorne Studies, which Mayo and his coworkers did for the Western Electric Company in the USA, that this focus came about.
A group of girls were being used as “guinea pigs” by the company to see how lighting affected work. They were shocked to find that no matter what they did to the lighting, work got done a lot faster. After talking to the girls who worked there, clearly explaining the experiments and why they were being done, and sometimes going along with what the girls said, they came to the conclusion that “management unknowingly achieved two of the most important human goals: the girls became a self-governing team and a learn that worked together with management wholeheartedly.”
The behaviourist school of management and the human relations movement
The human relations movements got their start with a set of experiments done by George Elton Mayo, who was a professor of industrial research at Harvard Graduate School of Business, and his coworkers at the Western Electric Company plant in Hawthorne. This business made parts for the Bell telephone system, and at the time of the tests, there was a big problem with unhappy workers at the plant. Furthermore, it was clear that the workers were not doing as well as they could have been. Even though it was one of the most forward-thinking companies with sickness benefit plans, pension plans, and many other benefits for its workers, this happened. The earlier work of the efficiency experts didn’t lead to any clear conclusions. In order to solve the problem, the business asked the group of college professors for help. The research went on for a long time and went through several stages, which are briefly explained here.
- Phase I: Experiments with Lighting
- Phase II: Test Room for Relay Assembly
- Phase III: Program for interviews
- Phase IV: Test Room for Bank Wiring
Phase I: Experiments with light
People usually think that better lighting will make people more productive, so two groups of employees were chosen to test this idea. One group, called the “control group,” had the lighting stay the same during the experiment, while the lighting was turned up in the other group. The output went up in the second group, which was called the experimental group, as expected. What confused the experimenters, though, was that the output also went up in the control group. Since there were no changes to the lighting in the formal group, the result was naturally strange and hard to explain. The light was then turned down for the test group by the investigators. It does shoot up again in this case, though. So, the researchers had to come to the conclusion that lighting didn’t really have an effect on production and that there had to be some other reason for this.
Phase II: Test Room for Relay Assembly
During this phase, besides light, other things that might have an effect include the length of the workday, breaks for rest, and how long they last. There were checks on frequency and other physical conditions. The researcher who stayed with the group the whole time to watch how they worked was like a friend and guide to them. Surprisingly, the researchers also found that the working conditions had nothing to do with the work that the group did. The group’s results reached an all-time high, even after all the improvements to the working conditions were taken away. No one in the group could think of a reason for this. The researchers then came up with the following explanations for this event:
Feeling of importance among the group members because they were picked to take part in the experiment.
Good getting along with each other;
Very strong group cohesion.
Phase III: Program for interviews
From the Relay Assembly Test Room, the researchers learned for the first time about informal groups and how important social context is in the real world of work. They talked to more than 20,000 employees to learn more about this topic and figure out what makes people act the way they do. Later, the direct questioning was changed to an interview style that wasn’t directed. The study found that the social relationships between workers within the companies have a big effect on how they act and think. It was also discovered that just giving someone a chance to talk and air their grievances can boost their morale.
Phase IV: Test Room for Bank Wiring
Studies have shown that social groups in an organisation have a big effect on how each member does their job. People who were watching noticed that workers in some departments were limiting output, even though the company was offering their financial incentives. Mayo chose to look into one of these departments. It was called the “bank wiring room,” and it had fourteen men working on an assembly line.
Because of this, the Hawthorne study showed the following:
The business organisation is mainly a sociotechnical system, and the way its members interact with each other is also very important.
High production does not always go hand in hand with good working conditions.
Economic reasons aren’t the only ones that drive people to work. People’s social needs can also have a big effect on how they act. Task-oriented leaders aren’t always better at their jobs than leaders who focus on their employees.
A look at systems
The Systems Approach to OB sees the business as a whole system with connected parts that work together to achieve a goal.
Managers can use this method to see the company as a whole, as well as the person, the group, and society as a whole.
So, the systems approach tells us that what any part of an organisation does affects every other part of the organisation in different ways. Every person in a company should care about taking a systems view.
A clerk at a service counter, a machinist, and a manager are all people who work with people and have an impact on how they act and what they bring to the organisation.
However, managers usually have more responsibility because they are the ones who care about people the most.
So, managers’ job is to use organisational behaviour to help create a work culture where people’s skills are used and developed, teams are motivated, organisations reach their goals, and society benefits.
Theory of contingencies
The idea that there isn’t “one best way” to set up organisations, motivate staff, and other things led to the development of the contingency approach to organisation. To put it simply, what is the main idea behind contingency theory?
What kind of management approach is best depends on the circumstances an organisation is in.
Newer research showed that different types of organisational structures could work just as well. It also showed that there wasn’t a direct link between traditional organisational structures and effectiveness, and that there were many factors to think about when designing an organisation and how it is run.
Basically, “it all depends” on the organization’s overall strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and threats that exist in its environment. Managers have to find the “best fit” between the needs of:
(a) The jobs
- b) The folks
- c) The surroundings
That is, the manager should think about the situation. As we go through this module, we will talk about how to handle different types of situations in management.
A look at the contingency approach