With practical illustration, discuss how managers can leverage on organizational behaviour components to maximize business success.

Within every organisation that is made up of humans, people are usually placed in groups and units. Because these units collectively make up the organisation, it is important to understand how people behave when they are placed in them. The study of the above is referred to as Organisational Behaviour.  

When discussing Organisational Behavior, one has to look at the following:  

1. People: Every organisation needs the right people to survive. It needs strong leadership and competent people who are culture fit with the ability to key into the vision, mission and objectives of the organisation and run with it with minimal supervision.  

Practically speaking, let's assume Tendon LLC is a start-up, the culture of the organisation will most likely reflect the values, habits and tendencies of the CEO. If the CEO values partnerships, integrity, quality, he'd lookout for those qualities in the heads of departments who he'd hire to manage units within the organisation. Those, in turn, will do the same. The extent to which such values are implemented will determine the success of the organisation, to a large extent.  

Leadership: Companies that can develop leaders the fastest will eventually win in the market place. For the sake of this explanation, let's say Leadership is the ability to influence others towards the attainment of organisational goals which are ethical and profitable and to make them love doing it.  

Strong and quality leadership prevents high attrition rates and ensure cohesion within teams. If Tendon LLC, for instance, enters the market with a stronger team that Reflex LLC who has been in the business for 15 years, the probability that Tendon will kick Reflex out of the market is high. One of the attributes of leaders are they groom other leaders quickly, they share information rather than hoard them, as they share what they know, they learn more and have more to share thus there is a free and increasing flow of knowledge.  

Other attributes of good leadership are accountability and ownership mentality. Leaders don't own the business but they show up every day like they own it and put in the work like they would if they own it. Contrast the above with Reflex who has staff that only show up to work because they have to and do only the bit they are required to.  

2. Structure: This simply refers to the various formal relationships that have been created within the organisation for the effective working of the same. For example, there is the Accounting Unit, Human Resources Unit, Marketing Unit, Customer Care Unit, Board of Directors, Executive Management etc.  

The relationship between each of these units/ roles servers to clarify reporting structures thus removing any ambiguity with the contractual, political and power relationships between the organisation.  

3. Technology: Technology in some industries has replaced a lot of jobs. The purpose of technology is to make life and work simpler, easier. However, in certain industries, for instance, robots have taken over the jobs of millions of people. This simply means that the future of organisations cannot exist without technology. Looking at it from the entrepreneur’s perspective, it is cheaper in the long run to have robots. Robots don't take sick and maternity leaves, come late to work or feel bad. They simply get the job done. This means more profit in the long run.

4. Social System:  

Where ever there is a group of people, organised towards a common goal, a social system is most likely to emerge. The values, attributes, personality and thinking of the leaders in any organisation will always influence its social system/ culture. Just like it is important to form healthy habits as an individual, an organisation must form social systems that are healthy and critical to the attainment of its organisational objectives.  

Automattic Inc --an American company-- for instance, has successfully codified its social system such that as employees are coming on board, this is communicated to them and they sign off on it. Thus, it becomes like a social contract which will guide their behavior during their stay there.  

5. Environment  

Every organisation must take into cognisance its internal and external environments. If the external environment is conducive for business, then there is one less factor to worry about. If however, just like in recent times, workers cannot come physically to work due to a pandemic, the behaviour of the organisation is altered. If they do not quickly adjust their operations to accommodate this new behaviour, it will translate to the loss of man-hours, loss of value to customers, loss of customers and ultimately an erosion of the bottom line of the business.  So is the internal environment. The internal environment must be conducive for employees to work. The environment must be such that encourages and elicits creativity, problem-solving, teamwork and cohesion.  

Cheers!  

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