Factors affecting Organizational Behaviour

People

You spend a lot of your waking hours at work, so it’s beneficial if they’re enjoyable hours, but that’s not always the case. The people within an organization are one of the primary influences over the overall organizational behavior within a company. The interactions between individual employees is, in fact, one of the main areas of study within the field of organizational behavior. Various personal characteristics that may influence organizational behavior include the education level of employees, their backgrounds, abilities and beliefs.

Personal factors:

The personal factors that can influence the behavior of an individual is further categorized into 2 parts that includes Biographic and learned characteristics.

Biographic Characteristics:

Every human being have certain type of characteristics which are inherited and genetic in nature. These characteristics cannot get changed. In an organization, if the manger will come to know about the limitations and qualities each personal possess, then they can easily make use of their behavior techniques of an organization in an effective manner. These characteristics include:

(i) Physical Characteristics: It mainly consists of skin, vision, height, complexion and many more. It creates impact on the performance of the individuals. Also, certain features include tall, fat or slim. A person with good personality is always expected to dress and behave well in an organization, even if there is any correlation between the behavior and body structure or not.

1. Age: It is the inherited characteristic of an individual. In increasing performance, it is considered as an issue. Young people are expected to behave more energetic, adventurous, innovative, risk taking and ambitious. With the advancement in age, performance of a person is more likely to decline.
2. Gender: It is a genetical feature. This concept has initiated lots of discussion, debates and opinions. It is a traditional view that women are more emotional. A small difference between men and women can affect their job performance. Without any male-female differences, some of the people have competitive drive, leadership, motivation, learning ability, analytical skills or problem solving ability. A study have been conducted which says that the female employees generate more turnover rates. This is because there are more chances of females to quit their job for their personal reasons.
3. Religion: In determining some of the aspects of individual behavior, religion and its related cultures plays a significant role especially that have the basic concern with ethics, morals and code of conduct. It also helps in identifying the attitude of an individual towards their work and financial management incentives. But nobody can deny from the fact that people who are highly religious have more moral values than others.
4. Marital Status: A recent research says that the responsibilities of the person inclined with their marital status and it has become difficult to s6table in a particular job for the longer period of time. Employees that are married have fewer absences, more job satisfaction and fewer turnovers.
5. Experience: The tenure or the experience of an employee plays a significant role within the organization. It creates lot of speculations and misconceptions due to the seniority factor. Also, work experience is considered as a good indicator that helps in increasing productivity with greater efficiency and effectiveness. There is a positive relationship between the job performance and the seniority. The turnover of an employee is also considered as negative in relation to the seniority.
6. Learned Characteristics:

Learning is defined as a permanent change in the behavior of an employee that results in the interactions with the environment. The biographical features of a person are impossible to modify. Therefore, the managers of the organization paid a great interest in learning, studying and predicting the learned characteristics that include:

(1) Personality: Personality does not only lie with the physical appearance of the person. A person with a good personality comprised of smart person, smiling face and charming personality. This concept is considered as dynamic that describes the growth and development of the psychological system of the person. It is also refereed as personal traits or characteristics that include persistence, dominance, aggressiveness and other qualities that is reflected through the behavior of the person within the organization.

(2) Perception: It is the viewpoint that helps in the interpretation of some situation. Also, it is considered as the process which allows the information to enter in the minds and allowed to obtain sensible meaning for the whole world.

(3) Values: Values are considered as the global belief that instructs different judgments and actions across various situations. It consists of an individual’s idea based on the right, good and desirable opinions. It is closely embedded in the people who could be reflected through their behavior. Also, most of time values are directly influenced from the teachers, parents, friends and various other external factors that completely changed the ideas, opinions and thoughts of the person. For an organizational behavior, values are very significant. It helps in understanding the motivation and the attitude of an individual along with the influences of their perceptions or view point.

Company Structure

The structure of a company refers to the organization of individuals in various roles and the relationships, both formal and informal, between those roles. For example, some companies have rigid hierarchies that define the relationship between managers and employees, while others have more collaborative, egalitarian systems in place. The number of levels in an organization also influences the company’s organizational behavior. For example, in a company with many levels between entry-level employees and top management, entry-level employees may feel they have less of a stake in their organization or that their opinions are valued less than in a company in which there are relatively few levels between top and bottom.

Technology

The use of technology is an often-overlooked component of organizational behavior. For example, employees within a company may exhibit the organizational behavior of communicating primarily via email, while employees in another company may make it a habit to walk down the hall to others’ offices to speak face-to-face. Technology also affects organizational behavior in that it allows companies to increasingly allow employees to work from home, resulting in less bonding among employees. At the same time, the use of technology can bring together people separated geographically through the use of teleconferencing, for example.

Environment

The environmental influences on organizational behavior can come from both internal and external sources. A company engaged in a highly regulated business may have a strict and structured culture due to the need to conform to certain laws and regulations from the company’s external environment. The internal environment of a company also affects organizational behavior. For example, a struggling company will often have a different organizational behavior than a successful and growing business. When a company’s higher ups set an example in order to improve organizational behavior, the effects trickle down to lighten the mood from one level to the next which is as good for morale as it is for business.

Economic Factors:

In an economic environment, the behavior of an individual is largely affected due to certain factors including:

(a) Employment Level: The employment opportunities available to an individual directly influence the behavior of an individual. Even after the lack of job satisfaction, the individual has to stick to the same job as there are less job opportunities for him/her. In such cases, it is important that they may be loyal to the company in providing better productivity; they are only remaining in the same organization due to the monetary benefits offered to them.

(b) Wage Rates: Every employee is majorly concern with the wages offered to them by the company or the organization. The decision of a worker or an employee is directly affected by the monetary terms from the side of the company.

(c) General Economic Environment: There are various employees that does not have any effect of economic cycle whether in a public sector undertakings or government offices. Regardless of their economic position within the organization, they will receive their salaries. Employees in the private sectors are greatly affected by the stable income and job security but the former employees can be motivated from other factors.

Similarly, there are various other environmental factors in an organization that could affect the behavior of the employees, including social factors, political factors or legal environment.

Organizational Factors: With wide variety of resources and organizational systems, individual behavior is influenced that includes:

Physical Facilities:

At a workplace, the physical environment is considered as an arrangement of people and things positive that could also create influence on other people. There are certain factors that influence the behavior of an individual including cleanliness, light, ventilation, noise level, nature of job, number of people working, etc.

(a) Structure and Design: The way in which every department of the organization is set-up has direct concern with the structure and design. The performance and the behavior of an individual is directly influenced by the position at which person could perfectly fits in the whole organizational hierarchy.

(b) Leadership: The management of the organization establish the system of leadership so that the proper assistance, advice, guidance, direction and coaching could be given to the individuals. The behavior of each employee is influenced to the large extent to the behavior of the leaders or the superiors of the same organization. The behavior of the leaders is more important than the qualities of the leaders.

(c) Reward System: The performance and the behavior of individuals are directly influenced by the reward system that is established by the organization so that the employees could be able to compensate.