Engineers and the Study of Organizational Behavior

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Organizational behavior is a field of study that deals with comprehending, relating, forecasting and controlling human conduct in an organizational situation (Nahavandi and Ali, 1998). This discipline principally deals with; how persons relate to and take part in groups, how institutions work, how management is applied and how transformation is achieved in organizational situations.

Justification of why Engineers have to Study Organizational Behavior

It is essential that engineers broaden their understanding and skills in the area of organizational behavior, part of their management training, for the following reasons:

Having accomplished their technical degree, learning organizational behavior enables engineers to understand the psychology of workers and other members in the organization. For instance, they get to understand the impact of motivation on rates of production, the significance of planning employees’ tasks early enough and the impact of timely and fair payments of wages on levels of production (Nahavandi and Ali, 1998). This results to efficiency in completion of tasks and promotes a good relationship between engineers and employees in the organization. Consequently, engineers acquire a chance to swiftly advance in their career, typically through hasty track endorsement into extremely senior management positions.
The role of the engineer is rapidly shifting in industrial organizations (Robbins, 1998). In these organizations, the engineer is expected to be the director who has to execute new technology and new practices. Therefore the engineer frequently becomes the chief manager of transformation within the organization. Since implementing change involves interaction with different entities in the organization, it is important for an engineer to be equipped with the right knowledge and skills regarding organizational processes, group behavior and organizational structure (Robbins, 1998).
Studying organizational behavior gives engineers a broad foundation of organization dynamics that lacks in their technical degrees (Robbins, 1998). Those graduate engineers who study organizational behavior in their management course while still working in industries get to share their work experiences, that relate to human behavior and organizational processes, during tutorial classes.
Studying organizational behavior as part of management course gives graduate engineers a chance to understand the functioning of organizations in larger depth, in parts that are never taught or learnt in their engineering tasks. Typically, relating theory to the field of work is a prerequisite to taking organizational behavior coursework. Graduate engineers analyze personal behavior, group behavior, organizational structures and organizational processes in their respective companies and relate them to organizational behavior theory.
Studying organizational behavior makes engineer graduates to be well acquainted with organizational knowledge, skills and techniques, in addition to technical engineering knowledge. This learning gives them buoyancy to apply organizational behavior skills, enabling them to build up strategies for development in their working companies. Thus, they become very productive and crucial members of the company. In prospect, they turn out to be amid those who set rules and have discussions on what is supposed to and not supposed to be done in the manner that an organization is structured and managed (Nahavandi and Ali, 1998).

A Discussion on the statement “an organization’s success depends on the people who populate it”

Since organizations are usually run by people, the attitudes, knowledge, expertise and personality of individuals greatly impact the success of organizations.

A study by Kotter (1996) identifies the main organizational behaviors among managers and employees that present a continuous supply of chances for development to be: “incremental continuous improvement and innovation; change management ; unification of the culture; managing critical variables; individual development, employee empowerment, and socialization; and forming, developing, and optimizing teams” (p.43). The following is a discussion on how each one of the identified organizational behaviors impacts an organization.

First, innovation has been thought of as a solution to maintaining an organization’s competitiveness in many countries, including the United States, for a long time. Major upgrading of existing procedures, such as the acquirement of new tools, is known to provide organizations with profits that cannot be overlooked (Swenson, 2001). For the Japanese, they believe that innovation alone cannot lead to success in an organization. Instead, they recommend harmonizing innovation with continuous improvement. In their standpoint, continuous improvement can provide a steady source of development, with or with no innovation. A study by Kotter (1996) reveals that “continuous improvement tasks vary from quality control circles and short-term, focused activities to incentive suggestion programs and the regular use of statistical process control charts” (p. 45). All of these ought to be integrated into an organization’s culture, for success to be realized.
Second, effective change management is fundamental to any institution. Normally, enormous amounts of funds are used to fine-tune employees to a different manner of attaining an organization’s mission. Frustration can thrive in a situation whereby a manager is not ready to cope with the expected resistance to change. Managers are supposed to identify suitable models that can be employed in facilitating change, with an aim of giving a company the chance to go speedily from idea invention to implementation.
Third, managers in an organization should consider unifying the culture. If you desire to foretell what an organization can yield, whether as a potential customer or a concerned individual, you should examine the organization’s culture for insight. Lining up the organization’s culture with the objectives of the business model should be done so as to achieve cultural changes with highly profitable outcomes.
Fourth, administration of critical variables and performance metrics is another main organizational behavior that impacts an organization’s competitiveness (Kotter, 1996). For instance, when an engineer wants to be certain that the products to be shipped will be of the best quality, he should examine the products as they are being processed instead of examining a sample of goods just before shipping. This will give him critical variables, which will enable him to realize faults sooner, lessening the production of faulty goods. At the same time, this will provide the engineer with an added opportunity of resolving matters before the production of faulty products.
Fifth, workers empowerment, personal development and socialization are vital topics linked to organizational behavior and the rate at which an organization can make use of its personnel for utmost success. Training and augmented tasks are not a load on the worker. Instead, these items give an improved sense esteem, pride and possession to persons who often feel too lowly ranked in the organization’s ladder to be of any significance to their organization’s success. Efforts to position employees in places of power such as incentive proposal programs or quality control spheres empower them and frequently make them to contribute more than what was anticipated at the point of employment (Swenson, 2001). Socialization, how fast and effectively workers adapt to the culture, is supposed to be a central area for organizations. The duration between the employment date and the date when a worker is completely assimilated makes up a substantial amount of loss to many organizations. Apart from the training and transfer expenses, most organizations fail to recuperate their hiring expense or deem workers as assets pending a year or two subsequent to the employment date. Reducing the impact of socialization has a concrete advantage to the bottom line in addition to the value of the individual worker.
Finally, maximizing the team’s performance is vital to gaining complete involvement by all members and creating the most excellent use of the human resources in the group atmosphere. Techniques to carry out this include dynamically asking queries, reflection and reviewing mistakes. In addition, it’s usually a great advantage if team elements share the idea that lucid team goals should be convincing and explicit communication ought not to be discarded. Another common element that affects teams is conflict resolution. Since teams are usually composed of different personalities, different teams tend to conflict in several ways. Dealing efficiently with conflict is where a number of managers waver while others turn out to be successful.

In conclusion, learning organizational behavior as part of the management course is vital for all engineers, if at all, they want to emerge successful in their roles. Learning organizational behavior enables engineers to understand the psychology of the workers as well as the organizational processes and structure.

Again, since organizations are usually run by people, the attitudes, knowledge, expertise and personality of individuals greatly impact the success of organizations. Some of the organizational behaviors that greatly impact an organization include: innovation, administration of critical variables, change management, workers empowerment, socialization, personal development, culture unification and team’s performance.

References

Kotter, J. (1996) Leading change. Harvard, Harvard Business School Press.

Nahavandi, A. and Ali, R. M. (1998) Organizational behavior: the person-organization fit. New York, Simon & Schuster.

Robbins, S. P. (1998) Organizational behavior: concepts, controversies, and applications. Upper Saddle River NJ, Prentice Hall.

Swenson, C. (2001) Tools for teams: building effective teams in the workplace. New York, Pearson Custom Publishing.

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Engineers and the Study of Organizational Behavior

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