5. Organizational Behavior (OB) & Human Resource Management (HRM)

Are people in organizations to be treated as individual human beings or as resources to be controlled?

What is Organizational Behavior?

A turning point in OB came with the Hawthorne (“the observer effect”) studies (1929–32) conducted by Elton Mayo and colleagues. Originally an attempt to apply scientific management principles to identify the most productive physical environment for workers, the researchers concluded that social relationships and informal group dynamics had a much greater impact on productivity than changes to lighting levels and so on (Mayo, 2003). This covered the way for many theorists to begin to examine motivation at work, with the focus being on the inter-and intra-individual aspects of work behaviour. Rather than recommending a ‘one best way’, OB began to develop as an academic discipline addressing the multi-level complexity of human behaviour at work. The Weighing the Evidence box examines the organizational behaviour (OB) is the study of individual and group dynamics within an organization setting whereas human behaviour, call it individual behaviour is a sub-set of organizational behaviour commonly the held assumption that more satisfied workers are more productive.

What is Human Resource Management (HRM)?

HRM is simply a case of identifying all the activities (such as selection, pay, and benefits) and roles (from administrative assistance through to director) associated with human resources in work organizations. This is the source of the great diversity in HRM: the goals of HRM vary depending on the strategic choices made in individual organizations and the wider environment or industry context in which they are embedded. HRM, as we recognize it today, emerged in the 1980s, when influential academics put forward a model of HRM that distinguished it from traditional personnel management or industrial relations. The Harvard model of HRM (Beer et al., 1984) was one of the first of these and it emphasized employees as an asset to the organization rather than a cost, and HRM as having a key role in strategic and business decisions rather than being a side-lined administrative department. Instead of seeing employees and managers as engaged in a constant struggle, HRM was portrayed as a way of bringing about unity in the organization, proactively engaging all employees to work towards organizationally important outcomes.

Boxall et al. (2007a) define HRM at its simplest as ‘the management of work and people towards desired ends’ and make the point that HRM is fundamental to every work organization. The work and the people need to be managed; thus, activities we currently identify as HRM will always exist. There may be arguments about what kind of umbrella term to give to these activities or even who should carry them outline managers or HR professionals – but the practices themselves are necessary to any organization’s survival. In a similar vein, Watson (2010) suggests treating HRM as a general term for employment or labour management rather than as a specific model or paradigm of how employees should be managed. Perhaps one of the best ways of conceptualizing what HRM is all about is to think of it as centred on managing the employment relationships in an organization.

HRM now can play a leading role in ensuring that organizational goals are met in an ethical manner and that ethical considerations are central to the management of the employment relationship. Ironically, the very term ‘human resource’ management has led some critics to suggest that HRM has played a role in reducing employees from ‘people’ to ‘things’ that can be exploited for the firm’s gain.

Organizational behaviour is a term used to explain the concept of the behaviour of individuals who constitute the human elements of an organization. This relates to human resources, which is a concept that is used to describe the management of the employees in any organization. From the description of the two terms, it is easy to see how organizational behaviour (OB) and human resource management (HRM) are related. Organizational behaviour looks at the individual behaviour, and then moves to group behaviour, progressively to the organizational behaviour, which we can also call the organization culture. It requires skills to understand how the organization and its members affect each other. Its areas include frameworks for diagnosing and resolving problems in organizational settings. Thereby we can say that organizational behaviour (OB) is the study of individual and group dynamics within an organization setting, whereas human behaviour, call its individual behaviour is a sub-set of organizational behaviour.

Conclusion.

Human behaviour is inherent in each individual which means his characteristics, his way of behaving and thinking is his own features while organizational behaviour is a group or company culture unique of each own felt and done. The relationship between organizational behaviour and human resource management stems from the fact that human resource management can be used as a tool for shaping organizational behaviour.

References:

1. Beer, M., Spector, B., Lawrence, P. R. and Mills, D. Q. (1984) Managing Human Assets: The Groundbreaking Harvard Business School Program. New York: Free Press.       
2. Boxall, P. (2007) ‘The goals of HRM’, in The Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Mayo, E. (2003) ‘The Hawthorne Experiment Western Electrical Company’, in K. Thompson (ed.) The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization. New York: Macmillan.
4. Miner, J. B. (2003) ‘The rated importance, scientific validity, and practical usefulness of organizational behavior theories: a quantitative review’, Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2(3).