Organisational Behaviour

Understanding Organisational Behaviour

There are many approaches and strategies and models for understanding and helping change an organisation.

As we change processes, products and services we are perhaps changing 'things' but people are making these changes, seeing the results of those changes and perform in groups and teams to enact the changes. So change nearly always has the human element.

People, their needs, development and performance are a critical element of the success of an organisation. Understanding how people behave in the way they do and why across an organisation is key to helping people perform and reach their own goals.

Organisational Behaviour looks at the individual as well as people in groups and teams inside the workplace and how they interact and perform.

Each day we act as work either as an 'individual' or as part of a team or work group.  Organisational Behaviour seeks to help a leader understand what is driving human behaviour, the interactions of people in teams and the key behavioural aspects of the organisation that influence performance.

Understanding Organisational Behaviour can be a fundamental way of increasing the success of other change strategies.

Organisational Behavioural approaches to change are built upon Organisational Behaviour's basic building blocks of:

• Understanding individual human behaviour
• Understand groups and teams and how they behave
• Understanding organisation structures and how they perform
• All this with the focus on improving organisational performance and organisation efficiency and effectiveness.

The influences and patterns of human and organisational behaviour are very complex.  An organisation is a set up of a myriad of teams and groups as well as all the individuals that belong or interact with the organisation as individuals. 

These separate entities do not all follow some simple cohesive and predictable pattern but interact in a complex manner.  The organisation itself is a collection of these complex influences.  The study of this set of human behaviours in the workplace and the influence on organisational performance is the study of Organisational Behaviour (OB).

This OB approach is by definition based around people and their individual and collective impact.  However the people do not act alone.  They interact with the systems and processes of the organisation and the structures that guide them.  Organisational Behaviour does not look at the people behaviours and relationships in isolation.  It studies them in the context of the organisation's processes and performance.

As Organisational Behaviour studies individuals and teams, it covers off both the psychological influences on behaviour whilst examining the social interactions between people and groups.

Another important aspect of an Organisational Behaviour based approach to assisting organisational change is that of understanding organisational culture and its relationship to the wider environment.

Join and learn more about organisational behaviour and its impact in your organisation.