Organiztional Behavior

Essay by gradeAUniversity, Bachelor's April 2003

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Organizational Behavior

There are several topic areas that come to mind when reviewing the week 1 material. These areas raise questions that should have further review.

Organizational Behavior

Today, it is widely believed that employees are our single greatest resource. With this statement organization managers want to provide a work environment that will be productive. Organizational behavior helps us understand why employees behave as they do and how to focus that behavior into goal-directed behavior, which is designed to achieve organizational and personal goals. With this in mind it would be far to say that most organizations have a vested interest in the study of organizational behavior.

Classical School of OB

The Classical School of organizational behaviour was based on the idea of the economic man. The belief was that workers were motivated by money only. The classical theories were developed around the turn of the 20th century, when many workers were illiterate.

Taylorism focused on efficiency and on keeping work instructions simple and repetitive. That made sense at the time because of the nature of the workforce and the relative simplicity of the technology. Man was viewed as an extension of the machine, and Classical Theories focused on time and motion studies and other efforts at making the physical body of the worker more efficient. Foyal introduced the administrative theory and gave us the five functions of managers. Managers plan, organize, command, coordinate, and control. Studying these five activities is the way to study management. It is difficult with today's employees to invoke the scientific managers efficiency models because the employees have changed and are no longer uneducated, money motivated, task-oriented employees.

Human Resources and Behavioral Research

Human resource and behavioural research indicate that the employee is a valuable commodity. The employee has value and input rather then the...