Subject: Behavioural Science

SUBJECT: BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE

SYLLABUS

1.  INTRODUCTION

2.  SOCIAL SYSTEM

3.  MOTIVATION

4.  JOB SATISFACTION

5.  CLIMATE AND ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

6.  LEADERSHIP AND SUPERVISION

7.  EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION

8.  INTERPERSONAL AND GROUP DYNAMICS

9.  MANAGING CHANGE

10.  QUALITY OF WORK LIFFE

11.  THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE ORGANASITION

12.  WORKING WITH UNION

13.  EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATION

14.  STRESS AND COUNSELLING

15.  INFORMAL ORGANISATIONS

16.  MALADJUSTED WORKER

REFERENCE BOOKS

1. BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE BY –EDWARD DAVID

2. HUMAN RELATIONS AT WORK BY-DAVIS

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CHAPTER-1

INTRODUCTION

Organizations are social systems. If one wishes to work in them or to manage them, it is necessary to understand how they operate. Organization combines science and people, technology and humanity. Technology is difficult enough by itself but when you add people you get a complex that almost defies understanding. However society must understand organizations and use them well because they are necessary to achieve the benefits that technology makes possible. And they are necessary for world peace, successful school systems and other desirable goals that people seek. Modern society depends on organizations for its survival. However, this can be understood in terms of the framework of behavioral science, management and other discipline. There is no idealistic solution to organizational problems. All that can be done is to increase our understanding and skills so that human relationship at work can be upgraded. We can work effectively with people if we are prepared to think about them in human terms.

In the past, most practicing managers either ignored the conceptual and human dimensions of their job or made some orderly simplistic assumptions. Although there were certainly exceptions, most managers thought and may still do that their employees were basically lazy, that they were interested in money and that if you could makes them happy, they would be productive. When such assumptions were accepted the human problem facing management was relatively clear-cut and easy to solve. All management had to do was devise monetary incentive plans, ensure security, and provide good working conditions, morale would then be high and maximum productivity would result.

Organisational behavior is the study and application of knowledge about how people act within organizations. It is a human tool for human benefit. It applies broadly to the behavior of the people in all types of organization such as business, government, school and service organization. Wherever organizations are there is a need to understand organizational behavior

Key elements in organizational behavioral:

(1)People (2) Structure (3) Technology (4)Environment.

(1) PEOPLE:

People make up the internal social system of the organization. They consist of individuals and groups and large group as well as small ones. There are unofficial, informal group and more official formal ones. Groups are dynamic. They change and disband. The human organization today is not the same as it was yesterday, or the day before, people are the living, thinking, feeling being who created the organization. It exists to achieve their objectives. Organization exists to serve people. People do not exist to serve organization.

(2) STRUCTURE:

Structure defines the official relationships of people in organizations. Different jobs are required to be accomplished in organizational activities. There are managers and employees, accountant and assemblers. These people have to be related in some structural way so that their work can be effective. The main structure relates to power and to duties

(3)TECHNOLOGY:

Technology provides the physical and economic resources with which people work. They cannot accomplish much with their bare hands so they build buildings, design machines, create work processes and assemble resources. The technology that results has a significant influence on working relationship. The great benefit of technology is that it allows to more and better work, but it also restricts people in various ways.

(4)ENVIRONMENT:

All organizations operate within an external environment. A single organization does not exist alone. It is a part of a larger system that contains thousands of other elements. All these mutually influence each other in a complex system that becomes the lifestyle of the people. Individual organization, such as a factory or a hospital, cannot escape being influenced by this external environment. It influences the attitudes of the people; affects working condition and provide competition for resources and power. It must be considered in the study of human behavior in organization.

HISTORICAL ORIGINS:

Although human relationship have existent since the beginning of time, the art and science of trying to deal with them in complex organizations is relatively new. In the early days people worked alone or in such small group that their relationships were easily handled. It has been popular to assume that under these conditions people worked in a Utopia of happiness and fulfillment but this assumption is largely reinterpretation of history. Actual conditions were brutal and backbreaking. People worked from dawn until dusk under intolerable conditions of diseases, danger, dust and scarcity of resources. They had to work this way to survive, so they had little time to improve job satisfactions.

In the beginning the condition of people did not improve but at least the seed was planted for potential improvement. Industry created a surplus of goods and knowledge that eventually gave workers increased wages, shorter hours and more work satisfaction. In the year, 1800 Robert Owen emphasized human needs of employees. He refused child employment and taught his workers cleanliness and temperance and also improved the working conditions. In 1835 Andrew Ure incorporated human factors into the philosophy of manufactures. He recognized the mechanical and commercial parts of manufacturing but he also added a third factor, which was the human factor. He provided workers with hot tea, medical treatment and a fan apparatus for ventilation and sickness payment.

EARLY DEVELOPMENT:

In the early 1900’s Fredrick W.Taylor who was called the father of scientific management brought changes to management and paved the way for later development or organization behavior. His work eventually led to improved recognition and productivity for workers. He pointed out that just as there was a best machine for a job, so were the best way for people to do their jobs. To be sure the goal was still technical efficiency but atleast management was awakened to the importance of one of its neglected resources.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s Elton Mayo and F.J.Reothlisherger gave academic stature to the study of human behavior at work. They applied keen insight straight thinking, and sociological backgrounds to industrial experiment at the Western Electric Company (WEC),Hawthorne plant. The result was the concept that an organization is a social system and the workers is indeed the most important in it. Their experiments showed that the worker is not a simple tool but a complex personality interacting in a group situation that often difficult to understand.

According to Mayo, human problems became a broad new field of study and an opportunity for progress. He sought to increase production by humanizing behavior. The Mayo Roethlisberger research has been strongly criticized as being inadequately controlled and interpreted. But its basic ideas such as a social system within the work environment have stood the test of time.

THEORY-X & THEORY –Y:

A powerful influence for maturity in organizational behavior Douglas Mc. Georges Theory-x &Theory-Y, first published in 1957.These two theories (Theory)from more behaviorally based assumptions about people(Theory-Y).The usefulness of the Mc.Gregor theories as his convincing argument that most management action flow directly from whatever theory of human behavior managers hold. Mc.Gregor pointed out that Theory-X was the set of assumptions held by most managers at time. Even though they did not explicitly state their assumptions they implicitly held them because the kinds of actions they took came from Theory-X. Theory-X implies autocratic approaches to managing. People, whereas Theory-Y implies a humanistic and supportive approaches to managing people.

THEORY-X:

(1) Management is responsible for organizing the elements of productive enterprise.

(2) With respect to people this is a process of directing their efforts motivating them, controlling their actions, modifying their behavior to the needs of organization.

(3)Without the active intervention by management, people would be passive-even resistant to organizational needs

(4) He lacks ambition, dislikes responsibility prefers to be led.

(5) He is by nature resistant to change.

THEORY-Y:

(1)The expenditure of physical and mental efforts in work is natural on play or rest. The average human beings do not inherently dislike work.

(2)External control and the threat of punishment are not the only means for bringing about efforts towards organizational objectives.

(3)The average human beings learn under proper conditions not only to accept but also to seek responsibility.

(4)Under the conditions of modern industrial life the intellectual potentialities of the average human beings are only partially utilized.

Mc.Gregor’s argument was that the management had been ignoring the facts about people. It had been following an out molded set of assumption about people because it adhered to Theory-X when the facts are that most people are closer to the Theory-Y set of assumption. There are important differences among people. So a few may come close to Theory-X but nearly all employees have some Theory-Y potential for growth. Mc. Gregor’s ideas helped clarity direction for new fields and move it towards the maturity that it needed. But the 1960’s the faddism of the 1950’s had substantially vanished and Behavior Science finally established as an effective discipline.

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE:

Organisational behavior deals with a set of fundamental concepts revolving around the following:

(1) Nature of people (2) Nature of organization

(1)NATURE OF PEOPLE:

With regard to people, there are four basic assumptions:

(a)Individual differences

(b)A whole person

(c)Caused behavior (Motivation)

(d)Value of the person (Human dignity)

(a)INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES:

People have many in commons but each person in the world is also individually different. Each one is different from all others probably on millions of ways, just as each of their fingerprints is different as far as we know. These differences usually come originally from psychology. From the day of birth, each person is unique and individual experiences after birth make people even more different Individual differences means that management can get the greatest motivation among employees by treating them indifferently. If it were not for individual differences, some standard, across the board way of dealing with the employees could be adopted and minimum judgment would be required thereafter. Because of individual differences organizational behavior philosophy like democratic political philosophy begins with the individual. Only a person can take responsibility and make decision a group definition cannot to do. A group is not powerful until individuals act therein.

(b)A WHOLE PERSON:

Although some organizations may wish they could employ only a person’s skill or brain all that they can employ is a whole person rather than certain separate characteristics. Different human traits may be separately studied, but in the final analysis they are all part of one system making up a whole person. When management is trying to develop a better employee but also it wants develop a better person in terms of growth and fulfillment, research suggest that jobs do shape people somewhat as they perform them, so management needs to be concerned about its effects on the whole person.

(c)CAUSED BEHAVIOUR (MOTIVATION):

From psychology we learn that normal behavior has certain causes. There may relate to a person’s needs and or the consequences that results from acts. In case of needs, people are motivated not by what we think they ought to have but by what they themselves want. To an outside observer a person’s needs may illusions and unrealistic but they are still controlling. This fact leaves management with two basic ways to motivate people. It can show them how certain actions will increase their need fulfillment or it can threaten decreased need fulfillment unless they follow a required course of action. Motivation is essential to the operation of organizations. No matter how much machinery and equipment an organization has these things cannot be put to use until they are released and guided by people who have been motivated.

(d)VALUE OF THE PERSON (HUMAN DIGNITY):

This concept is of a different order from the other three because it is more an ethical philosophy than a scientific conclusion. It confirms that people are to be treated differently from other factors of production because they are of a higher order in the universe. It recognizes that people are of a higher order, they want to be treated with respect and dignity. The concept of human dignity respects the old ideas of using employees as economic tools. Ethical philosophy is reflected in conscience of human kind confined by the experience of people in all ages. It has to do with the consequence of our acts to us and to others. Ethical philosophy is also involved in one way or another in each action.

(2)NATURE OF ORGANISATIONS:

The following are the key assumptions:

(a)Social systems (b) Mutual interest

(a)SOCIAL SYSTEMS:

From sociology, we learn that organizations are social systems. Consequently social laws as well as psychological laws therein govern activities. Just as people have psychological needs they also have social roles and status? Their behavior is influenced by their group as well as by their individual drives. In fact, two types of social system exist side by side in organizations (i.e) formal social system and informal social systems. The existence of a social system implies that the organizational environment is one of dynamic change, rather than a static set of relations. All part of the systems are interdependent and subject to influence by any other part. The idea of a social system provides a framework for analyzing issues. It helps make problems understandable and manageable.

(b) MUTUAL INTEREST:

The statement “Organizations need people and people also need Organization” represent mutual interest. Organizations have a human purpose. They are formed and maintained on the basis of some mutuality of interest among their participants. People see organizations as a means to help them reach their goals while at the same time organizations needs people to help reach organizational objectives. Mutual interest provides a subordinate goal those units the varieties of needs that people bring to organization. The result is that people are encouraged to attack organizational problems rather than each other.