CHALLENGES AND OPPOTUNITIES FOR OB:

INTRODUCTION:

Organizational behaviour has never been important to mangers but as the global
competition is requiring employees to become more flexible and to learn to cope
with rapid changes, organizational behaviour has gained its importance.

There are numerous challenges and opportunities that manages face in today’s
corporate world that are related to organizational behaviour, some are as
discussed in the following.

RESPONDING TO GLOBALIZATION:

Most of the businesses now are globalized and cater to different countries and
cultures, it is very important for managers to understand his workforce and their
needs, globalization affects manager’s people skills in at least two ways. First if a
manager is assigned a project in a different country, there he will have to
manage a workforce that is likely to be very different in needs, aspirations and
attitudes from those you were used to back home. Second, even in his own
country the manager is going to find himself working with bosses, peers and
other employees who were born and raised in different cultures. To work
effectively with these people, a manager needs to understand their culture, how
it has shaped them, and how to adopt your management style to their
differences. In this way OB addresses how culture difference might require
managers to modify their practices.

MANAGING WORKFORCE DIVERSITY:

Workforce diversity is as the term indicates different people of gender, race, and
ethnicity and cultures under one roof. A manger needs to treat every individual
under him regardless of their gender, race, ethnicity and culture equally is an
assumption. There use to be a melting point approach to differences in
organizations, assuming people who were different would somehow
automatically want to assimilate. But we now recognize that employees don’t set
aside their cultural values and lifestyle preferences when they come to work.
The challenges for organizations, therefore is to make themselves more
accommodating to diverse groups of people by addressing their different
lifestyle, family needs and work styles. The melting pot assumption is being
replaced by one that recognizes and value differences. Managers have to shift
their philosophy from treating everyone alike to recognizing differences and
responding to those differences in ways that ensure employee retention and
greater productivity. When diversity is not managed properly, there is a potential
for higher turnover, thus OB plays a vital role in managing workforce diversity.

IMPROVING QUALITY AND PRODUCTIVITY:

Any business would need customers and customer satisfaction is the key for any
services oriented or product manufacturing is the key for any service oriented or
product manufacturing business to run successfully. The key factor for a
successful business is quality management and process reengineering. Quality
management is driven by constant attainment of customer’s satisfaction through
the continuous improvement of all organization processes. Process reengineering
is reconsidering how work would be done and an organization structured if it
were starting over. Some business might have to be revamped to produce goods
as per customer needs to customize as per customer requirement and maintain
quality. In simple words its about retention of old customers and targeting new
customers.

RESPONDING TO LABOUR SHORTAGE:

Talent acquisition has always been a challenge for the HR department in most of
the corporate organization in today’s world. OB can help managers who don’t
understand human behaviour and fail to treat their employees properly, risk
having no one to manage. The labour shortage problems in compounded by the
fact that the latter part of the 20th century at times of labour shortage, good
wages and benefits aren’t going to be enough to get and keep skilled employees.
Mangers will need sophisticated recruitment and retention strategies.

IMPROVING CUSTOMERS SERVICES:

For most of the business in service industry, customer’s services is the highest
priority. In a service industry which always involves direct interaction with the
customers, the customer is recjened as god improving the quality of customer
centric will always help retaining customers and target new customers. OB can
contribute to improving an organizations performance by showing managers how
employee attitude and behaviour are associated with customer satisfaction, and
thus helps improving customer’s satisfaction services.

IMPROVING PEOPLE SKILLS:

People make the organization what it is and their skills are what runs the show
for a business we learn ways to design motivating jobs, techniques for improving
your listening skills, and how to create more effective terms, thus OB helps
improving people skills.

EMPOWERING PEOPLE:

Empowering employees with what to boosts their morale and confidence that is
in turn improving the quality and productivity of work. Managers should elect
employees but turn and hold the responsible for others or empowering them with
something they are capable of will boost the employee contributes with more
eagerness and urge which in turn helps improve business, thus OB plays a vital
role in empowering employees.

COPING WITH “TEMPORARINESS”

In the past employees were assigned to a specific work group, and that
assignment was relatively permanent. There was a considerable amount of
security in working with same people day in and day out. Today managers and
employees must learn to cope with temporariness. They have to learn to live
with flexibility, spontaneity and unpredictability. The study of OB can provide
important insights into helping you better under
SIMULATING INNOVATION AND CHANGES:

In today’s competitive world it is very important to be innovative and adaptive to

changes. To quote there are many examples, but being innovative is the best
way to attract more customers, thus are organizations employees can be the
impetus for innovation and changes or they can be a major stumbling block, the
challenges for managers is to stimulate their employees creativity and tolerance
for change. The field of OB provides a wealth of ideas and techniques to aid in
realizing these goals.

IMPROVING ETHNIC BEHAVIOUR:

Employees sometimes tend to take advantage of the facilities provided to them,

organizations need to employ watchdogs or system that watch over the
employee activities so as to ensure discipline at work. For example, proxy
servers that monitor the employees by tracking the websites that they visit. Also
by conducting physcometry tests on employees to improve ethnic behaviours.
Today’s managers needs to create an ethically healthy climate for his or her
employees, where they can do their work productively and confront a minimal
degree of ambiguity regarding what constitutes right and wrong behaviour.

CONCLUSION:

Thus, by analyzing all the above factors, we can conclude that OB plays a vital
role in improving the quality and productivity of an organization.