What exactly is organizational behavior? Give me 99 seconds and I'll tell ya. I'm Dan Green, the I.O. Shinobi. Let go!
At the individual level, organizational behavior studies personality types, perception, attitudes, motivation, stress, emotions, judgment, and commitment. At the group level, it studies structure, leadership circles, power systems, group dynamics, politics, and spheres of influence. At the collective level, it studies processes, reward systems, motivation structures and performance, job satisfaction, work-life balance, and culture. Okay, so what?
Why should we analyze organizational behavior? Organizational behavior uses theory and real-world application to discover what factors drive decision-making in individual behavior, to uncover what personality types exist within the organization, investigate how employees control and manage stress, and determine our motivation sources. All of these individual characteristics combine with organizational processes to form the collective personality, a corporate psychology.
However, this perfect storm of behavioral characteristics create cultural dimensions that need to be understood, or they can be toxic to organizational health. We have qualitative and quantitative methods to capture business intelligence around the current state of behavior, which can be used to design processes, programs, and governance that help us achieve desired future state behaviors. and avoid negative contributors to the corporate psychosis. Analyzing organizational behavior gives us insight into each individual aspect of the organization and how we can ensure that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Understanding organizational behavior gives us a roadmap to the future and helps steer individuals and organizations towards success. Well, there you have it. Organizational behavior in 99 seconds.
If you want to learn more about how organizational behavior consulting can help your business succeed, check us out on the web.