CHALLENGES OF O.

B
Introduction:-
 Organizational behavior is a field of study that investigates the
Impact that individuals, groups, and structures have on behavior within
organization for the purpose of applying such knowledge towards improving
an organization’s effectiveness.

Interpretation of Defn :-

• Organization behavior is a field of study. That statement

means that it is a distinct area of expertise with a common
body of knowledge.
• It studies there determinants of behavior in organization;
individuals, groups and structure.
• OB applies the knowledge gained about individuals groups
and the effect of structure on behavior in order to make
organizations more effective.

Challenges:-

Understanding organization behavior has been important for

manager. A quick look at a few of the dramatic changes now taking place
in organization supports this claim. For instance, the typical employee is
getting older more and more women and now whites are in work place;
corporate down sizing and heavy use of temporary workers are severing
the bonds of loyalty that historically tide many employees to the employers,
and global competition is requiring employees to become more flexible
and to learn to cope with rapid change. We review some of the more critical
issues confronting managers for which OB offers solutions- or at least some
meaningful insights towards solutions.
 Responding
to
globalization
Improving
ethical Managing
behavior workforce
diversity

OB
challenges
Stimulating Improving
innovation quality and
and change product

Improving
Empowering people skills
people

1. RESPONDING TO GLOBALISATION:-

If you are a manager and you are increasingly

find yourself transfer to yours employers operating division on subsidiary in
another country. Once there you’ll have to manage a workforce that is likely
to be very different in needs. Aspirations and attitudes from the once you
were used to back home. Second, even in your own country, you’re going
to find yourself working with boss, co-links and other employees who were
born and raised in different cultures. What motivates you, if you may not
motivate them, your style of communication may be straight forward and
open, but they may find this style uncomfortable and threatening work
effectively with these people, you will need to understand their culture, how
it has shaped them and how to adopt your management style to their
difference.

2. MANAGING WORKFORCE DIVERTSITY:-

Workforce diversity means that organization is becoming more

heterogeneous in terms of gender, race and ethnic. But the term encompasses
any one who varies from the so called norm. We used to take a melting-pot
approach to difference in organizations, assuming people who were
different. Would some how automatically want to assimilate? But we now
recognize that employee don’t set aside their cultural values and life style
preference when they come to work. The challenges for organizations
therefore, are to make themselves more accommodating to diverse groups
of people by addressing their different life styles. Family needs to work
styles. The melting pot assumption is being replaced by one that recognizes
and values differences.

Work force diversity has important

implications for management practice. Managers work needs to shift their
philosophy from treating everyone alike to recognizing differences and
responding to those differences in ways that will ensure employee relation
and greater productivity while, at the same time , not discriminating. This
shift includes, for instance for providing diversity training and revamping
benefits programmes to make them more friendly.” Diversity, if positively
managed, can increase creativity and innovation in organizations as well as
improve decision making by providing different prospective on problems.
When diversity is not managed properly there is potential for higher
turnover, more different communication, and more interpersonal conflicts.

3. IMPROVING QUALITY AND PRODUCTIVITY:-

Many managers are confronting the challenges that to

increase productivity and improve quality of the products and services they
offer. Toward the goal of improving quality and productivity, they are
implementing programmes such as total quality management and
reengineering-programmes that require extensive employee involvement.
Total quality management is a philosophy of management that is driven
by the constant attainment of customer satisfaction through the continuous
improvement of all organizational processes TQM has implications for OB
because it requires employees to think what they do and become more
involved in work place decision. In terms of rapid and dramatic change
quality and productivity from the prospective of “How would we do things
around here, if we were starting over from scratch. That, in essence, is the
approach of re-engineering. It asks the manager to reconsider how work
would be done and their organization structured if they were starting over.

Contemporary managers understand that, for any

effort to improve quality and productivity to succeed. It must include their
employees. These employees will not only be a major force in carrying out
changes but increasingly will participate actively in planning them. OB
offers important insights into helping managers work these change.

4. IMPROVING PEOPLE SKILLS:-

OB will help you to explain and predict the behavior of

people at work. In addition, you’ll also gain in sights into specific people
skills that you can use on the job. For instance you’ll learn a variety of ways
to motivate people, how two be a better communicator, and how to create
more effective teams.

5. EMPOWERING PEOPLE:-

Now-a-days there is always occurring of reshaping of the

relationship between manager and those they’re supposedly responsible for
managing. You will find managers being called coaches, advisers, sponsors
on facilitators. It may organizations employee’s are now called associates.
And there is a blurring between roles of manager and workers. Decisions
making is being pushed down to operational level, where workers are being
given the freedom to make choice about schedules and procedures and to
solve work related problems In the 1980’s managers were encouraged to get
there employees to participate in work-related decisions. Now, managers are
going considerably further by allowing employees full control of their work.
An increasing number of organizations are using self-managed teams, where
workers operated largely without bosses. Managers are empowering
employees. They are putting employees in change of what they do. And
in so doing, managers are having to learn how to give up control and
employees are having to learn how to take responsibility for their work
and make appropriate decisions.

In the past, managing could be characterized by long periods

of stability, interrupted occasionally by short periods of change. Managing
today would be more accurately described as long periods of an going
change, interrupted occasionally by short periods of stability! The world
that most managers and employees face today is one of permanent
temporariness. The actual jobs that workers perform are in a permanent state
of flux, so workers need to continually update their knowledge and skills to
perform new job requirement.

In the past, employees were assigned to specific work

group and that assignment that was relatively permanent. There was a
considerable amount of security in working with the same people day in and
day out. That predictability has been replaced by temporary work groups,
teams that include members from different department and whose members
change all time and the increased use of employee relation to fill constantly
changing work assignments. Finally, organizations themselves are in state of
flux. They continually re-organize their various divisions, sell-off poor
performing business, downsize operations, sub contact non critical services
and operation to other organizations and replace permanent employees with
temporaries.

Today’s managers and employees must learn to cope with

temporariness. They have learned to cope with temporariness. They have to
learn to live with flexibility, spontaneity unpredictability. The study of OB
can provide important insights into helping you better understand a work
world of continual change, how to overcome resistance to change and how
best to create an organizational culture that thrives on change.

6. STIMULATING INNOVATION AND CHANGE:-

Today’s successful organization must faster innovation and

master the art of change on they’ll become candidates for extinction. Victory
will go to those organizations that maintain their flexibility, continually
improve their quality, and beat their competition to makes place with a
constant stream of innovative products and services. An organization
employee can be impetus for innovation and change on they can be a major
stumbling block. The challenge for managers is to stimulate employee
creativity and tolerance for change. The field of OB provides a wealth of
ideas and techniques to aid in realization of these goals.

7. IMPROVING ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR:-

Members of organization s are increasingly finding themselves

facing ethical dilemmas, situation and in which they are required to define
write and wrong conduct. Managers and their organizations are responding
to this problem from a number of distinctions. They are writing and
distributing codes of ethics to guide employees through ethical dilemmas.
They are offering seminars, workshops and similar training programs to try
to improve ethical behavior. They are providing in-house advisers who can
be contacted in many cases anonymously, for assistance in dealing with
ethical issues. And they’re creating protection mechanisms for employees
who reveal internal unethical practices.

Today’s manager needs to create an ethically healthy

climate for his her employees. Where they can do their work productively
and confront a minimal degree of ambiguity regarding what constitutes right.