Different Management Theory to Explain Organizational Behavior

To improve the general performance and effectiveness on an organization, Organizational Behavior(OB) is an academic discipline to use lots of theories and different approaches to help understanding and explain human behavior to achieve certain goals within an organization. It is particularly useful to study OB because through studying OB can understand how an organization works and how its method which currently used can be improved. According to Mullins’ Framework of Analysis, there are lots of variable factors or certain constraints to affect the performance and effectiveness which are environment, process of management and organizational context. Understanding the interrelationships with all variables that combine the overall mean of organization is valuable. Also, teamwork is of importance in organization nowadays, learning how to work with other is necessary as well.

A multidisciplinary behavioral science ranging from psychology(study of human behavior), sociology(study the relationship among social groups and societies), anthropology(concern with the science of humankind), economics(study the total input and output and evaluate the economics in micro and macro way) and political science(analysis different parties and their opinions) can provide important contribution and further analysis to OB. Their sub-divisions such as economics and political science are sometimes overlap. For example, psychological approach and cultural system are related to economics, and social system and cultures across the globe may contribute to the studies on political issues.(Thomas. M 2010) However, all these multidisciplinary approaches are useful to study OB is the reason of behavioral science attempts to manage and structure organizations to secure the optimum working performance that can broaden our sight on other areas likes maximum productivity, human resource, management and public administration which may impact on OB as well.

Different theoretical approaches ranging from classical approach, human relations approach, systems approach, and contingency approach will be demonstrated and examples of individual approaches will be given to show the contribution of different approaches to study Organizational Behavior.

Classical approach put emphasis on purpose and formal structure, stress on the combination of work-planning and technical requirement of the organization based on the principles of management and the assumption of rational and logical behavior so as to find out the most effective organizational structure to improve the working methods that is currently adopted. The subgroups of classical approach are scientific management and classical bureaucracy. Scientific management, associated with F.W. Taylor, came from factory in 20th century to increase industrial productivity and determine wages in a fair way based on the efforts workers and managers made. Taylor believed by using the most efficient