Basic approaches to organizational behavior

Answer 1

(i)An Interdisciplinary Approach: It is integrating many disciplines. It integrates

Social Sciences and other disciplines that can contribute to the Organizational

Behavior. It draws from these disciplines any ideas that will improve the

relationships between people and organization. Its interdisciplinary nature is

similar to that of medicine, which applies physical, biological and social science

This watermark does not appear in the registered version - http://www.clicktoconvert.cominto a workable medical practice. Organizations must have people, and people

working toward goals must have organizations, so it is desirable to treat the two

as a working unit.

ii) Scientific Management Approach: The fundamental concern of the scientific

management school was to increase the efficiency of the worker basically through

good job design and appropriate training of the workers. Taylor is the father of the

scientific management movement and he developed many ides to increase

organizational efficiency. Taylor showed that through proper job design, worker

selection, employee training and incentives, productivity can be increased. The

scientific management school advocated that efficiency can be attainted by

finding the right methods to get the job done, through specialization on the job, by

planning and scheduling, by using standard operating mechanisms, establishing

standard times to do the job, by proper selection and training of personnel and

through wage incentives.

iii) A Human Resources (Supportive) Approach: It is developmental approach

concerned with the growth and development of people toward higher levels of

competency creativity and fulfillment, because people are the central resource in

any organizations and any society. It helps people grow in self-control and

responsibility and then it tries to create a climate in which all employees may

contribute to the limits of their improved abilities. It is assumed that expanded

capabilities and opportunities for people will lead directly to improvements in

operating effectiveness. Work satisfaction will be a direct result when employees

make fuller use of their capabilities. Essentially, the human resources approach

means that better people achieve better results.

iv) A Contingency Approach: Traditional management relies on one basic principle

- there is one best way of managing things and these things can be applied across

the board in all the instances. The situational effect will be totally ignored in this

traditional management. Situations are much more complex than first perceived

and the different variables may require different behavior which means that

different environments required different behavior for effectiveness. Each

situation much be analyzed carefully to determine the significant variables that

exist in order to establish the kinds of practices that will be more effective.

Contingency theorist argues that the external environment and several aspects of

the internal environment govern the structure of the organization and the process

of management. Effective management will vary in different situations depending

on the individual and groups in the organization, the nature of jobs, technology,

the type of environment facing the organization and its structure. For example, if

the employees are highly matured and willing to take more responsibility, the

managers can follow delegating style and give full freedom to their employees. If

the employees are not so matured and avoid taking any responsibility, the

managers must follow directing style. Depends upon the situation, that is,

This watermark does not appear in the registered version - http://www.clicktoconvert.comemployees level of maturity, managers will adopt different style of leadership to

ensure more successful results.

v) A Systems Approach: This implies that organization consists of many inter

related and inter dependent elements affecting one another in order to achieve the

overall results. Conceptually a system implies that there are a multitude of

variables in organization and that each of them affects all the others in complex

relationships. An event that appears to affect one individual or one department

actually may have significant influences elsewhere in the organization.

Systems theorists describe the organization as "open to its external environment",

receiving certain inputs from the environment such as human resources, raw

materials etc, and engaging in various operations to transform those raw materials

into a finished products and finally turning out the "outputs" in its final form to be

sent to the environment. The organization, since it is open to the environment,

also receives feedback from the environment and takes corrective action as

necessary. This input-transformation process-output model with the feedback

mechanism can be illustrated through a simple example