The concept and significance of organisational behaviour

Definetion: According to Stephen P. Robbins, "Organisational behaviour (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."
According to Aldag and Brief, " OB is a branch of social sciences that seeks to build theories
that can be applied to predicting , understanding and controlling behaviour in a work
organisation."
Organisational behaviour is the multidisciplinary approach which is an integration of
different field of studies like psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and
political science.
OB studies human behaviour at individual level, group level and organisational level.
Basically, organisations are made up of peoples, therefore managers in the organisation
must know how they behave in an organisation to make organisation productive.
Determinants of behaviour in an organisation are:
1. Individuals
2. Groups and
3. Structure
Elements of Organisational Behaviour
1. People: People make up the internal social system of the organisation. They consists of
individuals and groups. Groups may be formal or informal.
2. Structure: Structures define the formal relationship between people in an organisation.
3. Technology: Technology consist of physical objects, activities and process, knowledge,
etc through which people accomplish their tasks to achieve organisational objectives.
4. Environment: All organizations operate within an external environment. It is part of a
larger system that contains thousand of other elements.This includes the suppliers,
customers, competitors, governments agencies, employees, unions, political parties, and
economic, political, cultural, technological and social factors in which the organization
embedded.

Significance of Organisational Behaviour

OB is concerned with understanding, applying and controlling of behavioural and structural
knowledge of an organisation for organisation's effectiveness. Management function
includes Planning, organising, leading and controlling where people are involved in

different roles (interpersonal roles, informational roles, and decisional roles) and different
capacities. Therefore, for an organisation to succeed it is very important for it to understand
its organisation's culture, people by way of understanding their perception, attitudes,
motivation, personality, key personality characteristics relevant to workplace, learning, job
satisfaction, etc through theories of motivation, learning, and reinforcement. And mould
their dissatifaction to satisfaction, motivate them to achieve desired results, provide them
appropriate work culture, growth opportunities, punish their inappropriate behaviour, and
infusing learning environment and leadership.