Contributing Disciplines To Organizational Behavior (OB)
Organizational behavior (OB) is characterized by being a multidisciplinary discipline in nature as so OB is contributed by various disciplines.
These disciplines have developed and made organizational behavior a strong separate field of study with its own applications to use. As the complexities are increasing, OB has faced many complexities and assumed to use ideas of some disciplines that led it to bring success in the organizational functions.
The major contributing disciplines to the field of organizational behavior are:
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Social Psychology
- Anthropology
- Political Science
- Economics
- Medicine
Here, we will discuss all these disciplines and how they have contributed to organizational behavior to be a better discipline.
Psychology
Psychology is the behavioral science that studies human behavior (+animals) and mental processes. It is the science of humans. It is the best tool to understand why people think, what they think, and how they think.
Psychology helps to know why people think and behave the way they do. Its major seven perspectives – cognitive, behavioral, psychodynamic, humanistic, biological, socio-cultural, and evolutionary are what let us understand human behavior in a better way.
Psychology has contributed many important concepts to OB, such as:
- Motivation
- Learning
- Perception
- Personality
- Emotion
- Training
- Employee Selection
- Attitude
- Work Design
- Job Stress, etc.
Since organizational behavior is also a behavioral approach the above contributions of psychology have made better use in organizational settings. Such as motivation, is the influencer of employees when motivation is seen in employees the organizational performance seems to be positively boosted, and learning on the job further enhances the skills of employees, and so forth.
Sociology
Sociology is the study of human behavior in a social setting consisting of human interaction, social ties, growth of society, structure, and regulations. Sociology believes humans are social beings, they are in groups.
Sociologists study humans in group behavior. After psychology, sociology is one of the most important contributing disciplines to the field of organizational behavior.
The major contributions areas of sociology are group dynamics, status, culture, status, power, communication, socialization, organizational change, and technology. Sociologists view an organization as a system consisting of a variety of people having different roles, statuses, power, and authorities.
A manager should use the concept of sociology to understand a group’s behavior at both group and organizational levels and take appropriate managerial actions.
Social Psychology
Social psychology is the combination of both psychology and sociology. It studies the social behavior and thought of people plus how people think, feel, process, and act. It explains the interaction, interdependence, and influence of people among one another.
It studies the behavior of people at the group level. One of the main contributions of social psychology to the OB is how to predict, manage, and change the behavior of humans in organizational settings.
Social psychologists study various areas combining both sociology and psychology but the most important for organizational behavior are the concept of behavioral change, attitude change, communication, group process, and group decision making.
Anthropology
Anthropology is the science of humans. It studies the evolution or development stages of human beings consisting of human nature, different societies, and how different cultures are developed.
It also studies how humans interacted with their environment, how they are now, and how in the future and how humans are civilized.
It helps to understand the society of humans and their activities. Its major contributions include comparative values, attitude, analysis, and norms and it helps to understand cultural factors in organizational settings such as organizational culture, environment, power, and so on.
Political Science
Political science deals with politics and its practices in different scenarios. It mainly concerns the allocation of power, conflict resolution, group coalition, and how to manipulate power for individual self-interest.
Its concerns in OB mainly deal with the allocation of power to the employees, manipulation, and controlling of conflicts in the organization.
Today, organizations are also regarded as a political system. Thus, a manager should understand the structure of politics and how it works.
The study of politics helps managers to understand the dynamics of power and politics and help apply them in the organizational settings in a proper way.
Medicine
Medicine is the branch of health science that deals with the identification and treatment of diseases to improve the health of people. It treats both physical and psychological diseases of people.
While treating people it observes their behavior of people and tries to find out the causes. Some causes are related to the body and some are mental.
In organizational settings, employees also suffer from psychological diseases, and applications of medical science help managers organize different wellness programs so that employees’ health will be improved and they are ready again to work.
Economics
The science of economics is related to the cost. It is the study of how to minimize cost, how to best use scarce resources, and achieve more from less.
To run the daily operations of the organization there is a need for money. The study of economics helps managers to best use the organization’s limited resources. And, economic factors such as labor market dynamics, wages, demand-supply, cost of production, etc. also influence organizational behavior.