Studying organizational behavior (OB) is extremely important to master the art of motivating employees, ensuring the singleness of purpose, and maintaining positive employer-employee relationships. As the first chapter of the course text demonstrates, research efforts focused on OB support the retrieval of practice-oriented information on the determinants of the sense of purpose in collective entities. Aside from providing insights into human psychology in workplace contexts, OB enables individuals in diverse professional fields to use the knowledge of collective dynamics to gain a better understanding of positive and negative workplace events. By studying OB, employers can comprehend the role of ethnic and cultural diversity in organizational processes and team dynamics, thus drafting optimal staff communication strategies and policies. Thus, OB knowledge facilitates the promotion of a healthier team climate.
Apart from the establishment of more positive workplace conditions, studying OB can support the use of evidence-based strategic management. From the assigned chapter, it is clear that OB-related knowledge is conducive to more accurate predictions regarding firms’ financial performance, profitability, and service quality. Concepts and theories peculiar to OB can also inform better investment decisions by predicting employees’ reactions to planned strategic changes. Among other things, the field involves studying the role of new technology, including telecommuting, in OB processes and organizations’ real estate expenses. Therefore, becoming more knowledgeable in terms of OB can improve managerial effectiveness by preventing strategic missteps.
Finally, one area of OB I wish to explore is the mechanism of workplace conflicts at the meso-organizational level. Specifically, I would like to get a clearer picture of the contributors to inter-group conflicts, including interdependence between smaller teams, perception-related dissimilarities, and competition. Interestingly, behaviors at the meso level of analysis can stem from personal animosity between group leaders, so individual disagreements as a predictor of misunderstanding between several groups can also be explored. Studying this area would enable me to reconsider personal experiences with inter-group confrontation in the workplace and gain insights into conflict prevention.