What Is the Relationship between Organizational Behavior and Development?

Organizational behavior and development are two aspects that help drive a company’s internal business operations. Organizational behavior is the individual actions of individuals within an organization and how they interact with others. Organizational development represents team building, employee assessment, career development, and change management that affect a company. Organizational behavior and development link together because individual actions can either help or hurt a company’s development. When employees do not buy into a company’s development process, negative growth may occur in the business.

The owner of a business often sets the personality of the organization. Eventually, the owner’s personality and traits turn into the company’s organizational behavior. For example, if an owner is unethical and focuses solely on profits, the company will also engage in similar organizational behavior and development. A company is not always stuck with its initial personality as set by the owner. Owners may hire executives to run the organization or sell the business, which can lead to a change in personality or alteration in the company’s behavior and development.

Business environments are often flexible and changing places, particularly as consumers often force changes in the marketplace. Organizational behavior and development must work in tandem for a business to match with changes in the current environment. For example, an organization’s behavior of profits first may not settle well with consumers who believe in corporate social responsibility. Therefore, developments are necessary to change a company’s actions from profits first to those that improve the social construct in the surrounding environment. Companies who cull themselves from improper activities can also stay ahead of government regulations.

Employees usually represent the largest expense in a business. The costs for workers may require the company to leverage them into the best assets in the company. This represents another link between organizational behavior and organizational development. Not all employees will have the same mind-set as the owners or executives. Employee assessment, career development, and team building can help a company discover the intricacies of each employee and how to change individual behavior into a single mind-set that helps the business succeed.

Improvements or changes to organizational behavior and development can take months or years to achieve. Companies that are highly disorganized tend to take the longest to correct. Laissez-faire management can be just one reason for a lack of support in these two areas. Hiring the right people to alter a company is often necessary for these two changes to occur and result in success.