Organization Behavior, Its History and Theories

The concepts and characteristics of organizational behavior that the case illustrates

Accordingly, OB has various aspects that tend to explain how individual employees conduct themselves in an organization. As in the case, the characteristics of an organization that can cause the employees to behave the way they do include the organization culture, leadership styles, employees’ personality, and the broader organization strategy (Mullins, 2005, p.251). Indeed, what Tony experienced in O’Grady as well as in Reese depends entirely on the factors mentioned.

Leadership

Leadership is defined as the capacity to persuade groups into the accomplishment of set goals or visions. From the organizational context, leadership is the aptitude to influence the organization employees to attain a particular goal or vision. For instance, it can be the realization of a particular level of sales within the corporation. In fact, management leadership is about coping with changes accruing within the organization.

However, leadership establishes the pursued direction in line with the organization’s vision. It aligns resources and gives inspiration to the employees towards attaining the set vision. Conversely, management deals with the complexity to bring about standardization and uniformity, draw up plans, come up with structures, and scrutinize the results (Mullins, 2005, p.976). As mentioned by Tony about their boss, a leader should be supportive as well as have interpersonal characters that will allow employees to achieve the company goals.

Personality

From an individual viewpoint, personality appertains to the dynamic theory that explains the growth and development of an individual psychosomatic system. Personality determines a person’s unique modification and response to a particular situation. An individual personality is defined by heredity, environment, and situation. Heredity factors are acquired at conception and include traits such as physical stature, temperament, gender, and musculature (Mullins, 2005, p.233). These traits evolve through life and take on various levels of influence.

The environment relates to cultural norms in which individuals are raised. The environment affects an individual personality based on how it is experienced. Situations normally affect how an individual reacts to certain aspects of life. Different situations command different aspects of individual personalities. In most cases, individual personality materializes to be generally stable, consistent, and more effective in some situations than in the others.

Personalities are normally applicable in organizations through recruitment, selection, team working, and personal development alongside social expectations. More of what was in the interplay at O’Grady was employees’ personality. Employees at O’Grady had individual characteristics that were more inclined towards the organization and personal growth. Unlike in Reece where employees look at each other with suspicion at O’Grady, employees were friendly and ready for personal growth.

Corporate strategy and structure

Corporate strategy is described as the blueprint of the most important objectives, principles, aims, and crucial guidelines for realizing set goals. Corporate strategy defines the kind of business an organization does or will be in, and the type of corporation it is or will be. The major purpose of any corporate strategy is alignment. For an organization to select the right opportunity, it must focus on maximizing any presentable prospect instead of minimizing the risks. Any major prospects are collectively examined depending on their characteristics instead of single scrutiny and isolation. The corporate strategy also looks at the company goals and how those goals will be achieved.

Reese is lacking a clear strategy hence employees are pursuing the achievement of the goal but please their bosses so as to be maintained on the job seek for promotion. The structure of the organization as part of the corporate strategy plays a greater role in determining the behavior of a firm. Reese adopted a strict centralized structural system where decisions are made at the top. There is also a strict line of authority. The disadvantage with such kind of a structure is that there is a lack of meritocracy as seen in Reece. On the other hand, a decentralized structure such as the one adopted by O’Grady allows employees to make decisions at the branches thus allows faster growth for both the firm and the individual employee.

Organization culture

The organization culture is the compilation of comparatively homogeneous and continuing values, customs, beliefs, traditions and practices that are common to the organization and seem to be shar