Organizational Behavior Terminology and Concepts

Organizational Behavior Terminology and Concepts

Korin O'Brien

University of Phoenix

Organizational Behavior

Organizational behavior is a very specific field of study that looks closely at, and examines, the individual or group within an organization by using other disciplines of study such as economics, anthropology, sociology, political science, and psychology. By doing this, organizational behavior is considered a multidisciplinary field of study. It is dedicated to understanding not only the individual or group within an organization, but their behavior, their interpersonal processes and their organizational dynamics. Also, organizational behavior is an effort to control, predict and explain the why's and how's of both individual and group dynamics within an organization.

Organizational Culture

Organizational culture is an organizations personality. It embraces all of the varied beliefs, values, assumptions, and norms of the members of an organization as well as their individual behaviors. It is like a snapshot of the organization; telling the person who is looking what the atmosphere of the organization is like, what the people that comprise it are like, how the organization is run and what its purpose is. Organizational culture directly affects organizational behaviors, as well as the products and services organizations provide.

Diversity

Diversity as a term, according to Merriam- Webster, means "the condition of being diverse" which in turn means "differing from one another". When considering an organization, that difference refers to race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, political orientation, age, cultural backgrounds, ethical and moral orientations, physical differences, academic differences, and sometimes even mental capacities. Creating a culturally diverse organization is important because it improves creativity and performance, is ethically and morally right, and positively affects minority groups within those organizations. It is necessary because of laws like the Civil Rights Act, Equal Pay Act, Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Age Discrimination Act, and Americans with Disabilities Act.

Communication

Communication is how we get a message between two points. That message can be anything from transference of knowledge, to conveyance of meaning. Typically it is a set of symbols, encoded by the sender and decoded by the receiver which in turn is, hopefully, fed back to the receiver to ensure the proper meaning was, in fact, received. It is a complex process, complicated by factors that can compromise the meaning of the initial message being conveyed, factors that include but are not limited to: the knowledge base of both the sender and the receiver, as well as the level of expertise of each and their relationship to one another.

Organizational Effectiveness

Organizational effectiveness is the concept of how successful an organization is at achieving its goals. Such a concept is considered theoretical and difficult to measure, however there are approaches to determining an organizations effectiveness, approaches like the internal processes approach, the systems resource, goal, and strategic contingencies approaches. These methods are used to analyze an organizations performance.

Organizational Efficiency

As defined in the MSN Encarta online Dictionary, efficiency means both "1. Competence: the ability to do something well or achieve a desired result without wasted energy or effort" and "2. Productive use of resources: the degree to which something is done well or without wasted energy". In relation to organizations, this means that organizational efficiency is the ability of an organization to achieve its desired goals with either no, or at least a minimum of, wasted resources and/or energy. Its level of efficiency can be measured by its levels of wasted resources; the less waste the more efficient the organization is perceived to be. Effectiveness and efficiency go hand in hand, to have an effective, or successful, organization; it must utilize its resources (its people, its sources for materials, its funding, etc.) as efficiently as possible.

Organizational Learning

According to the text, organizational learning is "the process of acquiring knowledge and using information to adapt successfully to changing circumstances." According to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia it is "an area of knowledge within organizational theory that studies models and theories about the way an organization learns and adapts." Though these definitions differ slightly,