A Behavioral Science and Research Perspective

What Behavioral sciences do you think are involved to Organizational

Behavior?

Psychology: The science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals.

Psychology is involved on an individual unit of analysis via:

Learning Motivation Personality Emotions Perception Training Leadership

effectiveness Job Satisfaction

Individual Decision Making

Performance Appraisal

Attitude Measurement

Employee Selection Work Design Work Stress

Social Psychology: An area within psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology and that focuses on the influence of people on one another.

Social psychology is involved on a group unit of analysis via:

Behavioral change

Attitude change Communication Group Processes Group Decision

Making

Power Conflict Intergroup

Behavior

Sociology: The study of people in relation to their fellow human beings.

Sociology is involved on a group unit and an organization system unit of analysis via:

Communication Power Conflict Intergroup

Behavior

Formal Organization Theory

Organizational Technology

Organizational Change

Organizational Culture

Difference between Sociology and Social Psychology?

Anthropology: The study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.

Anthropology is involved on a group unit and an organization system unit of analysis via:

Comparative Values Comparative

Attitudes Cross-Cultural

Analysis

Organizational Culture

Organizational Environment Power

Research is concerned with the systematic gathering of information. Its purpose is to help us in our search for the truth.

Research methodology is a way to systematically solve the research problem. It may be understood as a science of studying how research is done scientifically. In it we study the various steps that are generally adopted by a researcher in studying his research problem along with the logic behind them.

The three designs most often used in organizational behavior research today are (Ricky W. Griffin, Gregory Moorhead):

Case Studies: In depth analysis of a single setting. Useful for thorough explanation of unknown phenomena.

Field Surveys: Typically relies on a questionnaire distributed to a sample of people selected from a large population.

Qualitative Quantitative

Qualitative: Refers to the meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics.

Quantitative: Refers to counts and measures of things.

Is it reliable? Reliability refers to consistency of measurement.

Is it valid? Is the study actually measuring what it claims to be measuring? Validity refers to the agreement between the value of a measurement and its true value.

Which one of the research designs, would you use, in order to check employees’ job satisfaction?