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An Operating Definition of Organizational Behavior
Kenneth Buckner
ORG 50, Organizational Behavior
Mr. Wynne
November , 00
An Operating Definition of Organizational Behavior
While we are not supposed to quote the Funk and Wagnalls definition of “organizational behavior,” being new to the subject, I had to at least look it up to see what it was supposed to mean. To my surprise, I could not find an official definition, neither online nor in any of the dictionaries in my office. Being an expert on the internet, I logged in to the Google search engine, which produced 41,000 websites with the phrase “organizational behavior.” Most were organizations, or books, or papers from doctors this and scientists that and websites extolling the many insights and ramifications of their versions of “OB.” Take note at the use of the word “versions” of OB. There’s more than one, and if this starts to sound a bit rambling, even confusing, join the club. Website after website listed their answers to numerous specialized problems. Everyone had a unique insight into something, but it became very apparent that there are no hard and fast rules in the study of Organizational Behaviors. At most, it appears to be an inaccurate science based on understanding, controlling and manipulating situations involving human beings, using their needs and wants within a company, to achieve the goals assigned by management. Officially, the text states that
Organizational behavior (often abbreviated as OB) is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness. (p.17)
The textbook also offered a generalized explanation of the subject, but it too listed various points of view. The reader is asked to accept the premise that an organization has a personality, and a “pattern of behavior,” influenced by both management and employees, with various stimuli affecting the results. Sometimes they work together and sometimes the employees are going in one direction while the management is heading for the Cayman Islands (see Enron). This divergence seemed to add credence to a quote from Harold R. McAlindon, which states that “the quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up.”
The book stresses that the managers’ responsibility is to achieve a certain goal but in most companies they are not the ones doing the work, and using various methods, they inspire the employees to achieve these goals. After reading the first section from our textbook, I finally started to get a sense of the focus of the course, if not a concrete definition of organizational behavior. Appendix A went over the historical growth of OB, with its various theories, different eras and contributing luminaries. Appendix B was a list of the syntax and terminology of OB. In the main part of the chapter I read descriptions of managers and their responsibilities, with lists for “Effective vs. Successful” activities, charts and several different approaches to explaining why “systematic study” replaces “intuition.” The chapter repeated, however, that while organizational behaviors may be somewhat predictable, they are not absolute.
There are few, if any, simple and universal principles that explain organizational behavior. There are laws in the physical sciences�chemistry, astronomy, physics�that are consistent and apply in a wide range of situations. They allow scientists to generalize about the pull of gravity or to confidently send astronauts into space to repair satellites. But as one noted behavioral researcher aptly concluded, “God gave all the easy problems to the physicists.” Human beings are complex. Because they are not alike, our ability to make simple, accurate, and sweeping generalizations is limited. Two people often act very differently in the same situation, and the same person’s behavior changes in different situations. For instance, not everyone is motivated by money, and you behave differently at church on Sunday than you did at the beer party the night before. That doesn’t mean, of course, that we can’t offer reasonably accurate explanations of human behavior or make valid predictions. It does mean, however, that OB concepts must reflect situational, or contingency, conditions. We can say that x leads to y, but only under conditions specified in z (the contingency variables). (p.14)
This one paragraph put the whole thing in a nutshell. It proved my earlier hypothesis that OB is only a guide, not a science; something to be used for reasonably good guesses as to what any individual, group, team or company would do in a situation given certain conditions. I couldn’t have said it better.
“Organizational Behavior” is something X that leads to something Y when certain conditions Z exist. Remember, you heard it here.
References
McAlindon. H. R., Cole’s Quotables, downloaded from http//www.quotationspage.com
Robbins, S. (001). Organizational Behavior, Ninth Edition, New Jersey Prentice-Hall
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