This document provides an introduction to organization behavior. It defines key terms like behavior, organization, and organization behavior. It discusses the benefits of studying organization behavior such as developing soft skills and enhancing individual and organizational effectiveness. It explains the relationship between behavior, productivity, and profitability - noting that productivity is key to sustaining profits. The document also discusses how behavior can be quantified and measured using metrics like count, rate, duration, response latency, and inter-response time. Finally, it defines personality and discusses the main determinants of personality as heredity and environment, providing examples of each.

1. Organization Behavior - Introduction
ASSIGNMENT 1
Introduction to Organization Behavior
Organization Behavior
Dr. D. Gopala Krishna
TITLE: A Study on Pragmatic Approaches and
Quality Initiatives for Enhancing Teachers’ Caliber
in
Post Graduate Institutes offering MBA Programme
under Bangalore University
Under the Guidance of
Dr. T.V. Raju
Director, RV Institute of Management, Bangalore
CANARA BANK SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES
BANGALORE UNIVERSITY
SUBMITTED BY
Shivananda R Koteshwar
PhD Research Scholar, 2013, REG# 350051
Shivananda
R
Koteshwar,
PhD
Research
Scholar,
Bangalore
University

2. Organization Behavior - Introduction
1. Define Behaviour
Behavior or behaviour is the range of actions and mannerisms made by organisms,
systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with their environment, which
includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical
environment. It is the response of the system or organism to various stimuli or
inputs, whether internal or external, conscious or subconscious, overt or covert,
and voluntary or involuntary.
Human behavior refers to the range of behaviors exhibited by humans and which
are influenced by culture, attitudes, emotions, values, ethics, authority, rapport,
hypnosis, persuasion, coercion and/or genetics.
2. Define Organization
Organization is a consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more
people that function on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or
set of goals.
3. Define Organization Behaviour
A field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups and structure
has on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such knowledge
towards improving an organization’s effectiveness
Organization behavior (OB) is concerned with the study of what people do in an
organization and how their behavior affects the organization’s performance. OB
includes the core topics of motivation, leader behavior and power, interpersonal
communication, group structure and processes, learning, attitude development and
perception, change processes, conflict, work design and work stress.
4. Benefits of studying Organization Behaviour
Organizational behavior relates to the process—rather than the content—of
conducting managerial work. Studying OB enables one to understand the politics/
political science, culture/ anthropology (e.g. what is the corporate culture type of
the organization?), psychology (e.g. How are they motivated? How do they
learn?), social psychology/sociology and teamwork (e.g. How they act in groups?
What make them move in groups/ adopt groupthink? ), Personalities (e.g. what are
they? Introverts. Extroverts, etc...) and thinking/ feeling/ behavior and actions of
people/ individuals within the organizations, to know and understand why they
think, feel and do or act as such.
OB study helps in:
a. Development of soft (interpersonal) skills: Soft skills generally refer to
interpersonal skills such as motivating others, communicating, and
adapting to people of different cultures. Hard skills generally refer to
technical skills.
b. Personal growth via insight into others: Understanding others leads to
personal fulfillment, and can also lead to enhanced self-knowledge and
self-insight. Insight is useful for such purposes as selecting people for jobs
and assignments, communicating, and motivating.
Shivananda
R
Koteshwar,
PhD
Research
Scholar,
Bangalore
University

3. Organization Behavior - Introduction
c. Enhancement of individual and organizational effectiveness: An important
goal of organizational behavior is to improve organizational effectiveness,
the extent to which an organization is productive and satisfies the demands
of its interested parties. People-oriented management practices enable
workers to use their wisdom and to receive appropriate training. If a
person develops knowledge about subject such as improved interpersonal
communication, conflict resolution, and teamwork, he or she will become
more effective.
d. Sharpening and refining common sense (common sense is often wrong):
Organizational behavior sharpens and enlarges the domain for common
sense. Organizational behavior knowledge also refines common sense by
challenging you to reexamine generally accepted ideas that may be only
partially true—such as inactivity reduces stress for everybody
5. Any relationship between behaviour, productivity and
profitability
Yes there is a relationship between Behavior, productivity and Profitability.
An organization is productive if it achieves its goals and does so by transferring
inputs to outputs at the lowest cost. OB’s major concern is productivity. OB helps
us to know the factors that will influence the effectiveness and efficiency of
individuals, of groups and of the overall organization.
•
•
Measures of organizational effectiveness are in its achievement of sales
and market share goal.
Measures of organizational efficiency include return on investment, profit
per dollar of sales and output her hour of labour.
Productivity is the relationship between the quantity of output and the quantity of
input used to generate that output. It is basically a measure of the effectiveness
and efficiency of your organization in generating output with the resources
available.
• Output can be measured in physical quantity or financial value
• The common forms of input are labour and capital. Labour can be
measured either by number of hours worked or number of workers
engaged or cost of labour
Organizations commonly regard profits as a key measure of their success. Trying
to increase profits by reducing costs (Either by reducing salaries or minimizing
capital investment) has a negative impact on the efficiency of operations so will
eventually reduce profits. The only viable way to increasing profits in a
sustainable manner is to increase the value added through higher productivity.
This can be done with better cooperation from employees, higher investment in
capital, and optimal use of capital. So productivity is key to sustaining profits in
the long run.
6. Is it possible to quantify behaviour and measure it? If yes,
how? Give examples
Shivananda
R
Koteshwar,
PhD
Research
Scholar,
Bangalore
University

4. Organization Behavior - Introduction
Yes, one can quantify human behavior. Once it’s quantified, it can be measured.
Example: When measuring behavior, there are both dimensions of behavior and
quantifiable measures of behavior. In applied behavior analysis, the quantifiable
measures are a derivative of the dimensions. These dimensions are
a. Repeatability: Response classes occur repeatedly throughout time—i.e.,
how many times the behavior occurs. Here the measurement is count
(number of occurrences in behavior), Rate/Frequency (number of
instances of behavior per unit of time) and celeration (how the rate
changes over time)
b. Temporal extent: This dimension indicates that each instance of behavior
occupies some amount of time—i.e., how long the behavior occurs. Here
the measurement is Duration
a. Temporal locus: Each instance of behavior occurs at a specific point in
time—i.e., when the behavior occurs. Here the measurement metric is
Response Latency (measure of elapsed time between the onset of a
stimulus and the initiation of the response) and Inter-response time (The
amount of time that occurs between two consecutive instances of a
response class)
7. Define personality
Personality is the particular combination of emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral
response patterns of an individual. It is the sum total of ways in which an
individual reacts to and interacts with others.
Gordon Allport- It is the dynamic organization within the individual of those
psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment
8. What are the determinants of personality? Discuss with
examples
Personality is a result of both hereditary and environmental factors. The main
determinants are:
a. Heredity: It refers to those factors that were determined at conception.
Physical stature, facial attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle
composition and reflexes, energy level and biological rhythms are
characteristics that are generally considered to be either completely or
substantially influenced that who your parents are, that is, by their
biological, physiological and inherent psychological makeup. The heredity
approach argues that the ultimate explanation of an individual’s
personality is the molecular structure of the genes, located in the
chromosomes. Heredity includes Physical factors and Brain factors. For
example: Importance of heredity can be found in studies of individual job
satisfaction. Job satisfaction is found to be relatively stable over time. This
result is consistent with what you would expect if satisfaction is
determined by something inherent in the person rather than by external
environmental factors.
Shivananda
R
Koteshwar,
PhD
Research
Scholar,
Bangalore
University

5. Organization Behavior - Introduction
b. Environment: Among the factors that exert pressures on our personality
formation are the culture in which we were raised; the norms among our
family, friends and social groups and other influences that we experience.
Environment includes Social factors, Cultural factors and Religious
factors. For example: Culture establishes the norms, attitudes and values
that are passed along from one generation to the next and create
consistencies over time. An ideology that is intensely fostered in one
culture may have only moderate influence in another. For instance, North
Indians have experienced invasions and wars for centuries. This has made
them aggressive, industrious, competitive, ambitious and enterprising
whereas South Indians in contrast have been able to preserve and devote
themselves to classical art, music and literature.
Also the different demands of different situations call forth different
aspects of one’s personality. Therefore we should not look at personality
patters in isolation. For example: Temple or employment interview
constrain many behaviors and others like picnic in a public part constrain
relatively few.
c. Traits: The early work in the structure of personality revolved around
attempts to identify and label enduring characteristics that describe
individual behavior. Popular characteristics are shy, aggressive,
submissive, lazy, ambitious, loyal and timid. Those characteristics when
they are exhibited in large number of situations are called Personality
Traits.
The Sixteen Personality Factor or 16F
Shivananda
R
Koteshwar,
PhD
Research
Scholar,
Bangalore
University

6. Organization Behavior - Introduction
The five global factors in the 16PF® consist of the following primary factors
Two popular approaches of measurement of personality traits are
1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
2. Big Five Model
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Shivananda
R
Koteshwar,
PhD
Research
Scholar,
Bangalore
University

7. Organization Behavior - Introduction
Big Five Model
Shivananda
R
Koteshwar,
PhD
Research
Scholar,
Bangalore
University