ORGANISATIONAL

BEHAVIOUR

&

ITS

MODEL
Models of Organizational Behavior
Keith Davis recognizes four different models of OB. These models show
evolution of the thinking and behaviour on the part of management and
managers alike. The four major models or frameworks that organizations
operate out of:

Autocratic - The basis of this model is power with a managerial orientation

of authority. The
employees in turn are oriented towards obedience and dependence on the
boss. The employee need that is met is subsistence. The performance
result is minimal.

Custodial - The basis of this model is economic resources with a

managerial orientation of
money. The employees in turn are oriented towards security and benefits
and dependence on the organization. The employee need that is met is
security. The performance result is passive cooperation.

Supportive - The basis of this model is leadership with a managerial

orientation of support. The
employees in turn are oriented towards job performance and participation.
The employee need
that is met is status and recognition. The performance result is awakened
drives.

Collegial - The basis of this model is partnership with a managerial

orientation of teamwork. The employees in turn are oriented towards
responsible behavior and self-discipline. The employee need that is met is
self-actualization. The performance result is moderate enthusiasm.
Although there are four separate models, almost no organization operates
exclusively in one. There will usually be a predominate one, with one or
more areas over-lapping in the other models.
Organizational behavior is a misnomer. It is not the study of how
organizations behave, but rather the study of individual behavior in an
organizational setting. This includes the study of how individuals behave
alone, as well as how individuals behave in groups.
The purpose of organizational behavior is to gain a greater understanding
of those factors that influence individual and group dynamics in an
organizational setting so that individuals and the groups and organizations
to which they belong may become more efficient and effective. The field
also includes the analysis of organizational factors that may have an
influence upon individual and group behavior. Much of organizational
behavior research is ultimately aimed at providing human resource
management professionals with the information and tools they need to
select, train, and retain employees in a fashion that yields maximum benefit
for the individual employee as well as for the organization.
Organizational behavior is a relatively new, interdisciplinary field of study.
Although it draws most heavily from the psychological and sociological
sciences, it also looks to other scientific fields of study for insights. One of
the main reasons for this interdisciplinary approach is because the field of
organizational behavior involves multiple levels of analysis, which are
necessary to understand behavior within organizations because people do
not act in isolation. That is, workers influence their environment and are
also influenced by their environment.

INDIVIDUAL LEVEL OF ANALYSIS

At the individual level of analysis, organizational behavior involves the

study of learning, perception, creativity, motivation, personality, turnover,
task performance, cooperative behavior, deviant behavior, ethics, and
cognition. At this level of analysis, organizational behavior draws heavily
upon psychology, engineering, and medicine.

GROUP LEVEL OF ANALYSIS

At the group level of analysis, organizational behavior involves the study of

group dynamics, intra- and intergroup conflict and cohesion, leadership,
power, norms, interpersonal communication, networks, and roles. At this
level of analysis, organizational behavior draws upon the sociological and
socio-psychological sciences.

Individual behavior in organization

Human behavior is complex and every individual is different from another,
the challenge of an effective organization is in successfully matching the
task, the manager and the subordinate. Under ideal situation, a manager
would first analyze the task, then determine the required skills and
assemble a team that complement each other skills; thereby creating an
enriching & conflict free team. In reality, a manager has to use the existing
resources for a given task, and must have the ability to understand the
differences in individual behaviors and use them appropriately to increase
the synergy.

In order to understand individual behavior and personalities, it is important

to understand the basics of human cognition.

Integrated human behavior model

I have formulated an abstract model of human behavior which explains the
process that produces the individual differences. Cognition is the
thought process in humans that describes how the information we
constantly acquire is transformed, stored and used as knowledge in
future decision making. It includes a wide range of mental processes like
visual imagery, language, problem solving, decision making etc. The brain
receives the stimuli from the external environment through the sense,
which is immediately registered in our sensory memory, which is large but
keeps the information for few seconds only. The observation process tries
to match the information in the sensory memory with the previous
knowledge and creates a perception of the stimuli, thereby abstracting
useful information from the sensory memory. This abstracted information
then passes to the short-term memory or the working memory, which also
caches the related knowledge from the long-term memory. The short-term
memory has slightly longer latency than the sensory memory, it is needed
only till the reaction of the stimuli. The long term memory has enormous
capacity and is the primary knowledge base.

The stimuli demands some action (even the decision to ignore

the stimuli is an action), the perceived stimuli combined with a set of related
and abstracted experiences forms the initial input to the mind’s analytical
process. This input is also influenced by the emotional and rational factors
which in turn depend upon individual’s values and beliefs. The other two
important parameters are the desired outcome and the required response
time to the stimuli. At the center of the analytical mind is a myriad of
cognitive processes that operate sequentially or in parallel, in complex
permutations in order to satisfy these primary constraints. The
consequence of this entire cognitive activity is a response to the
environmental stimuli, which is the observed as the behavior of the
individual. Person’s thought process is an internal activity while the
behavior can be observed. Finally, the resulting behavior is feed backed
into the memory; it modifies the existing perceptual knowledge, seeds a
new one or the stimuli and its response is simply ignored

Individual behavior in organization

Human behavior is complex and every individual is different from another,
the challenge of an effective organization is in successfully matching the
task, the manager and the subordinate. Under ideal situation, a manager
would first analyze the task, then determine the required skills and
assemble a team that complement each other skills; thereby creating an
enriching & conflict free team. In reality, a manager has to use the existing
resources for a given task, and must have the ability to understand the
differences in individual behaviors and use them appropriately to increase
the synergy.

In order to understand individual behavior and personalities, it is important

to understand the basics of human cognition.

Integrated human behavior model

I have formulated an abstract model of human behavior which explains the
process that produces the individual differences. Cognition is the
thought process in humans that describes how the information we
constantly acquire is transformed, stored and used as knowledge in
future decision making. It includes a wide range of mental processes like
visual imagery, language, problem solving, decision making etc. The brain
receives the stimuli from the external environment through the sense,
which is immediately registered in our sensory memory, which is large but
keeps the information for few seconds only. The observation process tries
to match the information in the sensory memory with the previous
knowledge and creates a perception of the stimuli, thereby abstracting
useful information from the sensory memory. This abstracted information
then passes to the short-term memory or the working memory, which also
caches the related knowledge from the long-term memory. The short-term
memory has slightly longer latency than the sensory memory, it is needed
only till the reaction of the stimuli. The long term memory has enormous
capacity and is the primary knowledge base.
 The stimuli demands some action (even the decision to ignore
the stimuli is an action), the perceived stimuli combined with a set of related
and abstracted experiences forms the initial input to the mind’s analytical
process. This input is also influenced by the emotional and rational factors
which in turn depend upon individual’s values and beliefs. The other two
important parameters are the desired outcome and the required response
time to the stimuli. At the center of the analytical mind is a myriad of
cognitive processes that operate sequentially or in parallel, in complex
permutations in order to satisfy these primary constraints. The
consequence of this entire cognitive activity is a response to the
environmental stimuli, which is the observed as the behavior of the
individual. Person’s thought process is an internal activity while the
behavior can be observed. Finally, the resulting behavior is feed backed
into the memory; it modifies the existing perceptual knowledge, seeds a
new one or the stimuli and its response is simply ignored

Group behaviour

In sociology refers to the situations where people interact in large or small

groups. The field of group dynamics deals with small groups that may
reach consensus and act in a coordinated way. Groups of a large number
of people in a given area may act simultaneously to achieve a goal that
differs from what individuals would do acting alone (herd behaviour). A
large group (a crowd or mob) is likely to show examples of group behaviour
when people gathered in a given place and time act in a similar way—for
example, joining a protest or march, participating in a fight or acting
patriotically.

Special forms of large group behaviour are:

● crowd "hysteria"
 ● spectators - when a group of people gathered together on purpose to
participate in an event like theatre play, cinema movie, football match,
a concert, etc.
● public - exception to the rule that the group must occupy the same
physical place. People watching same channel on television may
react in the same way, as they are occupying the same type of place
- in front of television - although they may physically be doing this all
over the world.
Group behaviour differs from mass actions which refers to people behaving
similarly on a more global scale (for example, shoppers in different shops),
while group behaviour refers usually to people in one place. If the group
behaviour is coordinated, then it is called group action.

Swarm intelligence is a special case of group behaviour, referring to the

interaction between a group of agents in order to fulfil a given task. This
type of group dynamics has received much attention by the soft computing
community in the form of the particle swarm optimization family of
algorithms.