Organizational behavior is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness. It is also an applied behavioral science built on contributions from a number of behavioral disciplines. The disciplines that shed light on Organizational Behavior are psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and political science. Firstly, psychology’s contributions have been mainly at the individual or micro level of analysis.
Psychology is the science that seeks to measure, explain and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals. The people who have contributed and continue to add to the knowledge of organizational behavior are learning theorists, personality theorists, counseling psychologists and most important, industrial and organizational psychologists. In the other hand, their contributions have expanded to include learning, motivation, emotions, personality, training, perception, leadership effectiveness, job satisfaction, individual decision making, performance appraisal, attitude measurement, employee selection, work design and work stress.
Moreover, psychology is classified in individual analysis. Secondly, sociology is the study of people in relation to their social environment or culture which different with psychology that focuses on the individual. Sociology contributes their study of group behavior in organizations, particularly formal and complex organizations. However, their contributions have studied communication, power, conflict, intergroup behavior, norms, roles and status which have been classified for group analysis.
While in contributes formal organization theory which organizational technology, organizational change and organizational culture have been classified for organization system analysis. Next, social psychology is generally considered an area of psychology, blends concepts from both psychology and sociology to focus on peoples’ influence on one another. It’s such a combination of psychology and sociology. The social psychologists also contribute to measuring, understanding and changing attitudes. Furthermore, they indentify communication patterns, uilding trust and group decision making. After that, they have made significant contributions to study of group behavior, power and conflict. This discipline is classified in group analysis. Fourthly, anthropology is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities. Anthropologists’ work on cultures and environments helped to understand differences in fundamentals values, attitudes and behavior between people in different countries and within different organizations. Their contributions divide to two parts which are comparative values and organizational culture.
For the comparative values, it is include comparative for norms and attitudes and those are classified in group analysis. Moreover, the organizational culture is including the organizational for environment. This contribution classified in organization system analysis. Lastly, political science frequently overlooked as a contributing discipline. It is the study of the behavior of individuals and groups within a political environment. This discipline contributes conflict, intraorganizational politics and power. Political science has been classified in organizational system analysis.
