The greatest takeaways from the course are all related to the importance of tailoring any organizational behavior interventions to the specific organization. An example from the latest reading, formalization, guides employees, an excessive level of formalization can unnecessarily complicate the decision-making process or prevent employees from resolving customers’ issues (Bauer & Erdogan, 2017).
This overarching principle applies to nearly every aspect of organizational behavior. Involving large groups in the decision-making process, similarly, allows for better decisions, but is more difficult to organize and takes more time than individual decision-making (Bauer & Erdogan, 2017). By the same token, ensuring an appropriate fit between the employees and the work, which includes personality types and preferences, will require a unique approach in each organization (Bauer & Erdogan, 2017). To summarize, the most important takeaway is that a single “correct” solution to organizational behavior does not exist.
Better communication practices can be immediately applied to almost any organization, including government agencies such as the one where I work. Any business project will have issues that can be resolved by collaboration between employees, management, and customers. Often, these issues can be caused or deteriorate due to miscommunication; for instance, a common customer complaint can be addressed through a minor policy change. However, this requires efficient communication between customers and management, with employees who directly contact customers serving as intermediaries. Thus, establishing pathways for this communication, as well as empowering employees to propose potential solutions, can improve the organization’s outcomes.
The single most important factor in organizational behavior, in my opinion, is communication. From the cases in the textbook, many successes and failures can be attributed to some extent or another to communication, be it internal or external. The case of Valve, for instance, shows exceptional company outcomes due to the organization encouraging communication and collaboration between projects (Bauer & Erdogan, 2017). Toyota, on the other hand, shows how limiting communication, particularly between its international branches, can severely impact an organization’s performance (Bauer & Erdogan, 2017).
References
Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2017). Organizational behavior (2nd ed.). Soomo Learning.