Organizational Behavior

Organizational Behavior

Organization behavior studies the effects of persons, groups, and structure on the actions of people within organizations. An organization is a purposeful system that consists of several subunits where activities and people are organized to attain particular predetermined goals through labor division and coordination of activities. Management is the functional process of achieving the organizational goals with the help of others. The main components of organizational behavior are the individuals, technology, structure, and the external components in which the organization exists. People that come together in an organization to achieve a common goal require some structure and technologies to assist them get the tasks done. The external elements will also influence their behaviors and actions.

People are the thinking, feeling and living beings that established the organization and existed as individuals and groups (Juralewicz, 2004). Organizations are there to serve people and meet their objectives. Managers have to manage human resources by dealing with individual workers expected to conduct certain tasks and dyadic relationships. The manager should also lead groups that share a joint responsibility for attaining a particular goal, as well as managing people outside the organization system. As a nurse in a hospital, the people include patients and workers. The manager has to motivate people and encourage better services for patients. He manages groups of nurses, radiotherapists, pharmacists, laboratory technicians and other groups. The organization has to ensure that it meets needs of individual people and group. For instance, the hospital ensures that patients get proper medication and medical professional get the right motivations to achieve their goals.

The structure describes the formal relationships of persons in organizations (Klein, 2009). It relates people at various levels and departments that are doing different activities in order to achieve a common goal. Various organizations have structures ranging on a continuum of high flexibility to high rigidity. An organization with a mechanistic structure is highly complex, formalized and centralized. On the other hand, systems with organic structures have decentralized decision-making and flexible authority. A large part of our hospital activities is centered on an organic structure. It allows specialists who are handling a case to make their decisions based on their experience and skills. There are very few hierarchical levels with flexible authority and reporting patterns. The structure enables patients to get the service quickly because of the urgency of their matters.

Technology assists organizations to convert inputs to outputs. They include activities, physical objects, knowledge, and processes brought together to transform labor, raw materials, and capital inputs into valuable outputs. Kelly asserts that the primary technology is that assemblage of productive elements most directly linked with the conversion process. For instance, it can be the assembly or production line in a manufacturing firm (Kelly, 2000). Different organizations embrace different classes of technologies: long-linked, mediating, and intensive. The resulting technology has significant influence on relationships in a workplace. Due to the complexity of problems we handle in our hospital, intensive technology becomes suitable. The technology brings people from diverse fields of specialization such as doctors, nurses, and radiotherapists to treat patients. The people engaged in dealing with a case have to behave in such a way that there is mutual adjustment among them in order to coordinate the different activities. Consequently, the hospital embraces for an organic structure in order to do so.

All organizations can exist in continuous interaction with the external environment. A single organization is part of an extended system of many other elements. All the elements have mutual impacts on one another, resulting in a typical lifestyle of people within the system (Klein, 2009). The interactions shape people’s attitudes, working conditions and offer competitions. Our hospital organization interacts with the external environment to get raw materials, hire workers, secure capital, access knowledge, and acquire premises. For instance, it receives medical and healthcare professionals from medical institutions. It relies on pharmaceutical and health care companies for medical drugs, equipments, and devices. The government has to support its existence through things such as licensing and various incentives.

The knowledge of organizational behavior will help me as a manager to understand the actions of persons in an organization. I will be able to know the complexities of interpersonal relationships and dynamics of relationships within formal and informal groups/teams. Furthermore, I will be able to manage intergroup relations and the organization as a whole. I will be in a position to make wise decisions on the suitable technology and organizational structure in order to foster appropriate organizational behavior. I will be able to place my organization in a way that it maintains a healthy and beneficial interaction with the external environment.