Most of us think we have a basic, intuitive, common -sense understanding of human behavior in organizations because we all are human and have been expose to different work experiences. Often, however, our intuition and common sense are wrong. We do not really understand why people act and react the way they do. For example, many people assume that happy employees are productive employees that is, that high job satisfaction cause high job performance or that punishing someone who performs consistently at a low level is a good way to increase performance, or that it is best to keep pay levels secret . all these beliefs are either false or are true only under very specific conditions. Applying these principles indiscriminately can, therefore, have negative consequences for employees and organizations.
The study of organization behaviour provides a framework for understanding and appreciating the many forces that affect behavior in organizations. It allows employees at all levels in an organization to make correct decisions about how to behave and work with other people to achieve organizational goals. OB replaces intuition and gut feeling with a well - researched body of theories and systematic guidelines for managing behaviour in organizations.
The study of OB provides a set of tools - concepts and theories - that help people to understand, analyze, and described what goes on in organizations and why , OB helps people understand, for example, why they and others are motivated to join an organization, why they feel good or bad about their jobs or about being part of the organization, why some people stay with the same organization for 30 years and others seem to be constantly dissatisfied and change jobs every two years. In essence, OB concepts and theories allow people to correctly understand, described, and analyze how the characteristics of individual, groups, work situations, and the organization itself affect how members feel about and act within their organization
