What is Organizational Behavior?
The work that managers have.
Managers are those people who carry out activities through other people within an organization.
An organization is a coordinated entity that seeks to achieve a common goal or goals.
In the activities of a manager 4 stages are distinguished:
- Planning Direction Organization Control.
Management roles
Four types of roles are taken into account (interpersonal, information, decision). Every manager should be able to develop technical skills (apply the knowledge and experience gained), human skills (ability to work with other people) and conceptual skills (ability to cope with complex situations.
Organizational behavior is the subject that seeks to establish how individuals, groups and the environment affect the behavior of people within organizations, always seeking with it the effectiveness of the company's activities.
The study of the behavior that people have within a company is a challenge never before thought by managers and that today constitutes one of the most important tasks; The organization must seek to adapt to people who are different since the human aspect is the determining factor within the possibility of achieving the organization's achievements.
Within the study that will be carried out in this book, it will be to apply the term reengineering, which seeks to reconsider the way in which it works and verify if the structure that the company has at the moment is the most adequate and the most functional.
The help presented in the book is useful for students but also for active managers who today have in their hands the great job of representing the ideals of companies and achieving the achievements that this requires.
Take into account that organizational behavior is a discipline that manages to combine contributions from various disciplines that are based on behavior, such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, political science, among others.
Within the study of organizational behavior we will consider dependent and independent variables.
The dependent variables that some authors consider or that highlight the most are:
- Productivity.- the company is productive if it understands that it is necessary to have efficacy (achievement of goals) and be efficient (that efficiency goes hand in hand with low cost) at the same time. Absenteeism.- Every company must keep absenteeism low within their ranks because this factor greatly modifies costs, there is no doubt that the company will not be able to reach its goals if people do not go to work. Job satisfaction..- that the amount of reward that the worker receives for his effort is balanced and that the same employees feel satisfied and are convinced that this is what they deserve.
The independent variables that affect people's individual behavior are:
- Variables at the individual level.- which are all those that a person has and that have accompanied them since birth, such as their values, attitudes, personality and their own abilities that are possibly modifiable by the company and that would influence their behavior within the company. company.Variables at group level.- the behavior that people have when being in contact with others is very different so it is a study factor,
Foundations of individual behavior
Chapter 1 seeks to respond to variables that have an impact on productivity, absenteeism, turnover and job satisfaction. So it is valuable this time to start looking at the factors that are easily identified in all people, which are the biographical characteristics.
Age.- It is said that older people are less productive and this is not the case since, unlike young people, they have experience and are hardly replaced. It is also said that the older a person becomes, the less they want to lose their job due to the lack of opportunities they have. However, an older person can be part of the absenteeism due to the diseases they can contract.
Gender.- The first thing we must take into account is that between men and women there are few differences in job performance. Regarding work schedules, women prefer one where they can combine their work activities, and according to studies, women have higher rates of absenteeism because they live in a culture where women are linked to home and family situations.:
Marital status.- There is no evidence that this factor influences much, but it is believed that the married man is more responsible, has few absences and is more satisfied in his work because they have a family and need to protect their interests.
Seniority.- This marks the situation that seniority within the job positively marks productivity the longer you have in the company the more you improve your work. Also, you are more satisfied with what you are doing. But with regard to rotation, the outlook is not so good, since sometimes the company's relations with the worker are terminated due to not creating seniority.
Abilities
This term refers to the ability of a person to carry out various activities, where each of the people are not the same, so it seeks to adapt the skills of people and find the appropriate way to use them.
Intellectual skills.- are those that we use to carry out mental activities, this can be measured through tests or tests for organizations, schools, government agencies, there are seven dimensions: numerical ability, verbal comprehension, perceptual speed, inductive reasoning, spatial visualization and memory.
Physical skills.- are necessary requirements to perform tasks that demand strength, vigor, dexterity, where physical capacity is what will be identified by management.
Personality It is spoken of the personality that is the way in which the person acts with the others and acts before his environment. It is formed throughout the life of the person and based on several factors; inheritance, factors that occurred at birth such as height, weight, gender, temperament, physical; the environment, the first learning, the way we grew up, the culture they gave us, the social groups that surrounded us.
There is talk of the search to find all those personality characteristics that allow people to be identified. At the end of several studies, 16 characteristics have been considered, which are the ones that more specifically reflect the behavior of an individual in a specific way. Through the Meyers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI) which is a 100-question personality test, individuals are classified into four personality types: extroverts or introverts, sensitive or intuitive, rational or passionate and perceptive or judicious.
The attributes of the personality of greater influence in the CO.- are considered here to these so-called forecasters that were found within the organizations:
- Locus of control or place of control.- There are people who think that they are responsible for their lifestyle and destiny. Internally, they control what happens to them or externally, through external forces. Machiavellianism.- It takes its name from Machiavelli who wrote about how to win and use power. These types of people believe that the end justifies the means, they like to manipulate more and earn more for what they are not easy to persuade. Self-esteem - is the degree to which one is accepted by oneself, this characteristic often determines the degree of People's success, all those who have a high self-esteem will be able to face challenges outside of their fear or conditioning, in addition to not being so susceptible to situations from outside.- Being able to adapt my behavior to the situations that arise in everyday life is what this point is about. People with high self-monitoring can show different faces of themselves as required although sometimes they are contradictory but they will be considered for promotions within the company or other organizations. Risk taking.- refers to the fact that in managerial positions within a company one must seek to accept responsibilities when making decisions. According to studies, the degree to which risks are adopted sometimes depends on the position that they perform.
Learning
It is the change that occurs at any time that modifies our behavior, and that is linked to the experience acquired over time. You can have knowledge of situations or activities, but learning is based on applying that knowledge. Based on positive reinforcement, it is possible to find a way to increase people's performance, since it is observed that good behavior is rewarded, it is better to reinforce than to apply punishments (they can only cause negative effects)
It is suggested for all managers that the image they show to others is the example to follow, that they do not use company resources, that they are punctual, that they do not seek pretexts for failing to meet their objectives.
Values, attitudes and job satisfaction
We must take into account that the term of job satisfaction will always be a key point that we must deal with since it depends on the employee feeling satisfied and demonstrating how productive he is. However, values are basic forms of modes of conduct that affect employee behavior and we must also take them into account.
All of us have a value system based on the hierarchy of relative importance that we give it.
Values are the object of study because they are the basis for understanding attitudes and motivations and because they influence our perception. All the values of each person have a source from which they come: family, friends, school with teachers, the culture of the country where you live; but the values that we regularly show are those that we acquired in the first years of our life. Thus, the values can be classified and thus be able to determine in a logical way what type of behavior the employee will have based on this typology. I would not want to leave aside that values are part of the personality, which represents that these types of convictions will be present throughout the life of the individual and that they manifest a vision of right and wrong from the subjective point of view of the person.Reflected in knowing whether or not capital punishment is good, whether or not it is good to have power and money, etc.
Attitudes are approvals or disapprovals through statements called evaluation, that is, it is the way of representing how a person feels. Attitudes are not the same as values but they are interrelated. Like values, we adopt attitudes from parents, social groups, teachers. We are born with a certain predisposition and as we grow we take what we see from the people we respect, admire or even say about those we fear. We are shaping our attitudes by observing others. It is also said that attitudes are more unstable since they are moldable to the convenience of people or companies, obtaining desirable behavior from them.
The types of attitudes that are considered in the book are those that are related to work and are the ones that Organizational Behavior focuses on the most, and there are three attitudes:
- Job satisfaction.- which is the attitude that an employee assumes regarding his work. Logically, those people who obtain a high level of satisfaction with their activities establish very positive and beneficial attitudes. Commitment to work.- a term recently taken for their study which establishes that it is the one that measures the degree to which the person is valued himself through sociological identification in his position within the company. Fully identified workers really care about the work they do. Organizational commitment.- It is one that refers to the employee identifying with the company, goals, objectives and being involved in it like any other who works there,In other words, this refers to identifying with the personal service to the organization and the commitment to work to identify with its specific work.
People's attitudes are extremely changing situation that managers have observed and seeking to find a solution, it is referred to that the situations that the employee previously assumed are possible limitations for a development of the person in the present and in the future.
So companies invest in training that allows them to reshape employee attitudes.
Job satisfaction already touched on above involves how to measure this type of satisfaction, what determines it and how it affects employee productivity
The job is not only to perform your specific tasks, there is also friction with other personnel, established rules and procedures, that is, that job satisfaction is based on the sum of all these activities.
There are two methods for measuring this concept:
- Single global scale.- Ask employees «considering everything, how satisfied are you with your work? The responses are adopted on a scale of 1-5 which establishes two extremes as a response "highly satisfied" and "highly dissatisfied." Summation qualification - this identifies key points of people's work and asks about them, adding the results through a scale.
Job satisfaction can be determined by the type of activities that are performed (that is, that the job has the opportunity to show your skills and that they offer a certain degree of challenge for interest to exist). That the employees are well rewarded through their salaries and wages obviously according to the expectations of each one. That the working conditions are adequate, not dangerous or uncomfortable, which makes their performance better. In addition, employees look at work that their immediate boss is friendly and understandable and that they listen to them when necessary.
Dissatisfaction at work is reflected in the imminent departure of employees or those who express situations that help to improve worker-company relations, also in a fair way to expect conditions to improve.
Basic concepts of motivation
In this chapter we will deal with the aspect of motivation as the author manages that we should not classify people through certain attitudes they adopt, but we must take into account the situation that makes the person act in this way. Motivation can be defined as the willingness of individuals to make efforts towards the goals that organizations have while satisfying individual needs.
Motivated people are eager to achieve their goals and it is unlikely that they will find negative results that alter this person state. Motivated people are said to be in constant tension and release this feeling through effort. Individual needs should also be compatible with those of the company so that they can get together and obtain the best mutual benefit.
During the study of which motivation has been the object, several theories have been developed about it, which in its context have been very attacked and questioned today, most of them carried out during the 1950s and which are about to be touched and which we must to know since they are the basis of current theories and that are still used by managers to explain the concepts of motivation.
Hierarchy of Needs Theory (Abraham Maslow)
The best known that stipulates that man has 5 hierarchical needs:
- Physiological.- physical needs hunger, thirst, sex. Security.- protection from physical and emotional damage. Social.- acceptance, friends, affection. Esteem.- internal, autonomous, achievements and the environment that surrounds the person. Self-realization. Becoming what you are capable of becoming by your own effort, the satisfaction that you cause, the effective way of doing things.
Maslow separated these needs into low-order (physiological and security needs) and high-order (social, esteem and self-actualization), they differ in the sense that high-level are met internally and low-level needs external way).
Theory X and theory Y
Created by Douglas McGregor who proposed two extremely opposite positions of the human being one the theory x (negative) and another (positive) theory Y. Gregor established according to theory X, four premises that all managers adopted.
- Employees dislike working so they will try to avoid it. Since they do not like to work they must be controlled, repressed and threatened. Employees will seek to avoid responsibility and seek formal direction whenever possible. Most of those who work they consider safety first and do not show good motivation
And theory Y:
- Employees see work as a way to rest. If employees commit to their goals, they will seek to direct themselves through management support. Most people seek to meet responsibility. The fact that you are not Some of the managerial positions do not exclude you from making innovative decisions that benefit the company.
The theory of motivation-hygiene.- (Frederick Herzberg)
He concluded that when people feel good, they respond in one way and, conversely, when they feel bad, they do it differently. This theory is a bit complex personally, I think it refers to the fact that sometimes people are not satisfied with their work and there are situations that make the individual feel that way, managers in their desire to fix the situation modify those mistakes but not necessarily cause motivation to employees.
Contemporary theories
They are so called because they are the foundation of study that is taken into account today, not because they have been discovered recently.
ERG Theory.- (Clayton Alderfer).- three types of needs; existence (the same as Maslow, physiological and safety), relationship (the desire to relate to people in society) and growth (personal development). there are low-level needs that satisfy high-level needs similar to the hierarchy of needs.
David McClelland's theory of needs.- There are three needs that explain the motivation.-
- Of achievement.- that of people who seek success through their efforts.To power.- to make other people behave as one wants through control.Affiliation.- people seek to relate to others in a way friendly and cordial.
Theory of cognitive evaluation.- talks about that the rewards that are extrinsically as salary can cause the level of motivation to decrease because the level of intrinsic satisfaction that the job itself provides to the employee is not taken into account.
Goal setting theory. He maintains that one as a person when establishing difficult and specific goals provoke in the individual a greater degree of satisfaction and therefore a good motivation to continue believing in oneself.
Reinforcement theory.- the internal situation of the individual is not taken into account but is what happens to the individual regarding the actions they take within the company
Theory of equity.- This is based on the fact that an employee observes the remuneration given and compares it with that of other people, seeking to obtain the greatest number of prizes or bonuses, making a judgment of what they contribute to the organization.
Theory of expectations.- a person has expectations and seeks to meet them, the fact of meeting them and the degree of reward they obtain will be attractive to them
Fundamentals of group behavior
Man by nature is an imminently social being and who tends to relate to other people by establishing groups at school, in his area where he lives and of course in his work groups are spaces where two or more people who set particular goals interact. Formal groups are those that are formed within a job that have specific jobs to do and informal groups are the group of friends, for example, with each one preferring to get together here at school, which only links us with having similar things.
Group behavior is a problem that managers have sought to study. A series of steps has been established where group development is explained.
So we first have the training, the storm (conflict situation due to the restrictions of each group), the regulations (when the ways of acting within this group are correctly established), the performance (it is when you already start to perform the objective of having gotten together with that person), and in some cases there is the movement (which means that you have to be aware that the group can break up since the main objective has been solved and it is not very striking for others).
Aspects such as the organization's strategy for achieving the desired goals are involved in the formation of a working group; the way that the leaders who would control a group as they were informed about the approach in achieving the objectives by which the group was formed; the types of procedures, norms, rules and policies that the company creates so that the behavior of the employees is the most homogeneous, also has much to do with the resources that the company has to facilitate or complicate the achievement of results;but not everything is in the group but also in the company so that it chooses the best human resources that meet the needs that the challenge of achieving objectives implies and how we can forget the organizational culture that the organization has since the creation of a group it is the formation of a subsystem within an established system.
We have to see that the groups in question of size are also affected, it is not the same a group of 3 people among whom perhaps there is greater communication and rapprochement between the individuals that make it up, but their limitations and the real strength they have is not so On the other hand, a group of 15 people can achieve a good performance if they manage to establish a series of divisions that allow them to obtain results more efficiently, although it may happen that only some of these people have a leadership role and others see themselves as part of a group where they don't work.
The fact that an individual works only to be established in a group where he socializes, shares with others, confronts his differences and sometimes neglects his own interests looking for a common one is a change that has occurred and that results from interest to all people.
Managers' work does not end when a group is able to interact well and be mature with the responsibilities they have. Because if they leave they can become complacent, they must continue advising, guiding from time to time, seeking to develop more and seeking the fulfillment of higher objectives, of course, this has to be paid in another way so that the group continues to respond.
Communication
In this chapter we analyze the subject of the term communication that reflects the interest in transmitting information, ideas, feelings, thoughts, concepts in order to be understood and have the possibility of being applied to something of common or particular interest.
The communication process occurs through a source (information), encoding, message, channel, decoding, receiver, and feedback.
The libo mentions us examples where poor communication can cause tragic situations such as it is in an airport, some situations that can prevent good communication are noise a bad channel, the sender uses a type of coding and the receiver decodes it another way in this particular case for culture, customs etc.
There are addresses in the communication:
It can be carried out in a descending way that goes from managerial positions to the lowest levels, for example, notifying production operators that due to their effort the company achieved great profits and that they will take a bond to the stock market this news will be made to them. come across a memorandum; the communication is also carried out in an ascending manner, contrary to the previous one, such as the fact that people from a lower position send their complaints or suggestions to their immediate boss to the general management if the case requires it.
Another way of communicating is in a lateral way that is one that occurs between the members of the group.
There are communication channels that are presented within an organization, formal networks that are those that are related to the activities of the company and is carried out in a descending way. And the informal network that is commonly called gossip.
We must also manage that humans have the possibility of communicating non-verbally, we take advantage of our body to represent situations, feelings or ideas that we have. Where our body in most cases complements oral communication giving emphasis or intonations to what is said. A simple gesture, a movement of our body says more than the words themselves.
Let us avoid that the information we want to give is manipulated within our communication, that what is transmitted is offensive to people who may fall into a defensive attitude believing that it constitutes a threat to their position.
Let's take care of our language something that happens in a common way is that some concepts that we handle regularly are completely unknown to others or it can be misinterpreted since age, culture, education are variables that influence people on their way of speaking and understanding words.
One point that I find interesting is that with the arrival of new electronic means (telephone, computers, e-mail, servers), they facilitate communication and therefore the barriers have been minimized. This has revolutionized the obtaining of information in an agile and fast way the location of people (beeper and cell phones) at any time and online communications (digital screen telephones or videoconferences) both within our country and abroad.
This allows you to close contracts, make investments and have timely and truthful information about what is required and is essential for the company or organization.
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