Organizational_Behavior_Terminology_and_Concepts

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR TERMINOLOGY AND CONCEPTS Organizational Behavior Terminology and Concepts Paper Organizational Behavior and Group Dynamics Dr. Fathiah Inserto 25 October 2010 According to Schermerhorn, Hunt, and Osborn (2008) Organizational behavior is the study of human behavior understanding individual and group behavior, interpersonal processes, and organizational dynamics with the goal of improving the performance of organizations and the people in them. It is also an academic discipline studied by scientists and used by companies to study the behavior of individuals within the organization. The study of organizational behaviors helps us to better understand the thought process and how they behave and interact with each other. The goal of studying behavior is like anything else it is used to help improve the overall performance of the company, as well as the employees. Many factors influence the behavior and culture of organizations such as organizational culture, organizational behavior, diversity, and communication. This paper will discuss how the components of organizational behavior influence an organization in today’s environment. All organizations work on creating their own culture, they try to build this culture from within the company, and the goal is to have a culture that is well supported and communicated and supports the vision. Organizational culture is the collection of shared beliefs. Organizations with a constructive culture like AT&T is a highly motivated company that is performance based. The employees work together constantly to achieve its goals. In this type of culture people tend to feel better about them as well as have more job satisfaction. I have also been with organizations that could be considered an aggressive/defensive culture such as Toyota. As a salesperson you were taught to be very aggressive with the customers and let them know that you were in charge. Now this culture changed the higher up the organization you went as the company provided a very dynamic culture to live by and ensured that everyone was able to help make the company successful. The internal environments of organizations with strong and positive cultures often include a high-performance orientation, emphasis on teamwork, encouragement of risk taking, and emphasis on innovation (Schermerhorn, Hunt, and Osborn 2008). According to Business Dictionairy.com (2010) workforce diversity is defined as similarities and differences among employees in terms of age, cultural background, physical abilities and disabilities, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation. Workforce diversity is a hot topic within all organizations today. Organizations are working harder then ever to promote diversity in the workplace. Companies spend a large amount of their money annually to provide the proper training needed to have a successful diversity program, Companies like AT&T understand the importance of diversity and have made it a top priority of the company. Some steps they have taken is providing a website for customers who speak various languages as well as giving the customer the option to receive their bill in their desired language, as well as converting over 700 stores into bilingual concept stores to provide service to their millions of customers worldwide. African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians in the labor force are increasing. By the year 2060, people of color will constitute the majority of the U.S. population, and close to 30 percent of the population will be Hispanic (Schermerhorn, Hunt, and Osborn 2008). According to Robbins and Judge (2009) Communication serves four major functions within a group or organization: control, motivation, emotional expression, and information. Communication is used to help control such as when giving orders for how a job needs to be completed and communication is also listening to the person giving the order. Communication in today’s organization as taken many forms such as training sessions and is the key to a company’s success. There is many forms of communication such as downward communication an example of this type of communication could be when a CEO gives information to his employees. In this type of communication it is very important to ensure that your audience knows why certain decisions were made and how they will affect them. Upward communication is the opposite of downward this is when the employee may give information to their manager. Lateral communication takes place between peers of the same group and is the prominent communication in most workplaces as they spend the majority of their day together. In this paper we have discussed the different types of organizational behaviors and how they play a vital role in today’s workforce. Company’s who incorporate the core beliefs and values and communicate effectively with their organization will be a successful one in today’s ever changing organizations. Reference http://www.att.com/gen/corporate-citizenship'pid=7738 http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/workforce-diversity.html#ixzz13Q2eu3IB Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2009). Organizational behavior (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall. Schermerhorn, J. R., Hunt, J. G., & Osborn, R. N. (2008). Organizational behavior (10th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.