1.4 Why Study Organizational Behavior?
In our competitive, complex, and constantly changing world, organizations must be effective in order to survive. But organizations cannot be resourceful without a competent and cooperative body of employees. Thus, it's important to understand how to build and maintain such a workforce.
Think about the organizations you've dealt with either as a customer or an employee. It's likely that your experiences have not always been pleasant and trouble-free. Perhaps you've been kept waiting for service, spent frustrating hours trying to get relatively straightforward information, or worked for a boss who gave you no direction and then criticized your work. On the other hand, you have probably also been exposed to organizations that maintain standards of excellence with respect to customer service or management. Why some organizations are more effective than others and why some supervisors are better to work for than others are typical topics in OB.
By studying OB, both employees and managers come to understand what makes people behave the way they do in their jobs. Employees can use this knowledge to increase their job satisfaction and improve their work performance. Managers can use their understanding of OB to accomplish organizational goals and help employees achieve optimal performance. Most important, learning about OB will help you to understand your own behaviors, attitudes, ethical views, and performance, as well as those of the people with whom you'll be working. This type of knowledge will assist you in working effectively with managers, colleagues, and subordinates.
Although organizations have existed in one form or another since the earliest human societies, OB is a fairly new field in the social sciences. In the following sections, we review the conditions that served as an impetus for the emergence of OB and consider major developments that occurred in this field into the 21st century.