Dairy Life

Organizational Behavior – Securing Competitive Advantage

By John A. Wagner and John R. Hollenbeck

Chapter One – Organizational Behavior and Competitive Advantage

Organizational Behavior (OB) is a field of study aimed at predicting, explaining, understanding, and changing human behavior as it occurs in organizations. Understanding this definition of organizational behavior are three important considerations:

1. Organizational behavior focuses on observable behaviors. However, it also deals with internal actions, such as thinking, perceiving, and deciding, that accompany visible actions.

2. Organizational behavior studies the behavior of people both as individuals and as members of larger social units.

3. Organizational behavior also analyzes the “behavior” of these larger social units – groups and organizations – per se.

Micro organizational behavior is concerned mainly with the behaviors of individuals working alone. Three sub-fields of psychology were the principal contributors to the beginnings of micro organizational behavior. Experimental psychology provided theories of learning, motiviation, perception and stress. Clinical psychology furnished models of personality and human development. Industrial psychology offered theories of employee selection, workplace attitudes, and performance assessment.

Meso organizational behavior is a middle ground, bridging the other two sub fields of organizational behavior. It focuses primarily on understanding the behaviors of people working together in teams and groups. It grew out of research in the fields of communication, social psychology, and interactionist sociology, which provided theories on such topics as socialization, leadership, and group dynamics.

Macro organizational behavior focuses on understanding the behaviors of entire organizations. The origins can be traced to four principal disciplines. Sociology provided theories of structure, social status, and institutional relations....