13 Challenges and Opportunities of Organizational

Behavior

Challenges and opportunities for organizational behavior are massive and rapidly

changing for improving productivity and meeting business goals.

Although the problems with organizations and the solutions over the ages have not
changed, the emphasis and surrounding environmental context certainly have
changed.

Although the resulting lean and mean organizations offered some short-run benefits
in terms of lowered costs and improved productivity, if they continued to do
business, as usual, they would not be able to meet current or future challenges.

As a Harvard Business Review article argues, “These are scary times for managers”.
The singular reason given for these frightening times – the increasing danger of
disruptive change.

The nature of work is changing so rapidly that rigid job structures impede the work to
be done now, and that may drastically change the following year, month, or even
week.

13 challenges and opportunities of organizational behavior are;

1. Improving People’s Skills

2. Improving Quality and Productivity
3. Total Quality Management (TQM)
4. Managing Workforce Diversity
5. Responding to Globalization
6. Empowering People
7. Coping with Temporariness
8. Stimulating Innovation and Change
9. The emergence of E-Organisation & E-Commerce
10.Improving Ethical Behavior
11.Improving Customer Service
12.Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts
13.Flattening World
Improving People’s Skills
Technological changes, structural changes, environmental changes are accelerated at
a faster rate in the business field.

Unless employees and executives are equipped to possess the required skills to adapt
to those changes, the targeted goals cannot be achieved in time.

These two different categories of skills – managerial skills and technical skills.

Some of the managerial skills include listening skills, motivating skills, planning and
organizing skills, leading skills, problem-solving skills, decision-making skills.

These skills can be enhanced by organizing a series of training and development

programs, career development programs, induction, and socialization.

Improving Quality and Productivity

Quality is the extent to which the customers or users believe the product or service
surpasses their needs and expectations.

For example, a customer who purchases an automobile has a certain expectation, one
of which is that the automobile engine will start when it is turned on.

If the engine fails to start, the customer’s expectations will not have been met and the
customer will perceive the quality of the car as poor. The key dimensions of quality as
follows.

 Performance: Primary rating characteristics of a product such as signal

coverage, audio quality, display quality, etc.
 Features: Secondary characteristics, added features, such as calculators, and
alarm clock features in handphone
 Conformance: meeting specifications or industry standards, the workmanship
of the degree to which a product’s design or operating characteristics match
pre-established standards
 Reliability: The probability of a product’s falling within a specified period
 Durability: It is a measure of a product’s life having both economic and
technical dimension
 Services: Resolution of problem and complaints, ease of repair
  Response: Human to human interfaces, such as the courtesy of the dealer «
Aesthetics: Sensory characteristics such exterior finish
 Reputations: Past performance and other intangibles, such as being ranked
first.

More and more managers are confronting to meet the challenges to fulfill the specific
requirements of customers.

To improve quality and productivity, they are implementing programs like total
quality management and reengineering programs that require extensive employee
involvement.

Total Quality Management (TQM)

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a philosophy of management that is driven by

the constant attainment of customer satisfaction through the continuous
improvement of all organizational processes.

The components of TQM are;

(a) An intense focus on the customer,

(b) Concern for continual improvement,
(c) Improvement in the quality of everything the organization does,
(d) Accurate measurement and,
(e) Empowerment of employees.

Managing Workforce Diversity

This refers to employing different categories of employees who are heterogeneous in

terms of gender, race, ethnicity, relation, community, physically disadvantaged,
elderly people, etc.

The primary reason to employ the heterogeneous category of employees is to tap the
talents and potentialities, harnessing the innovativeness, obtaining synergetic effect
among the divorce workforce.

In general, employees wanted to retain their individual and cultural identity, values

and lifestyles even though they are working in the same organization with common
rules and regulations.

The major challenge for organizations is to become more accommodating to diverse

groups of people by addressing their different lifestyles, family needs, and work
styles.

Responding to Globalization
Today’s business is mostly market-driven; wherever the demands exist irrespective of
distance, locations, climatic conditions, the business

operations are expanded to gain their market share and to remain in the top rank,
etc. Business operations are no longer restricted to a particular locality or region.

The company’s products or services are spreading across nations using mass

communication, the internet, faster transportation, etc.

More than 95% of Nokia (Now Microsoft) handphones are being sold outside of their
home country Finland.

Japanese cars are being sold in different parts of the globe. Sri Lankan tea is exported
to many cities around the globe.
Garment products of Bangladesh are exporting in the USA and EU countries.
Executives of Multinational corporations are very mobile and move from one
subsidiary to another more frequently.

Empowering People
The main issue is delegating more power and responsibility to the lower level cadre
of employees and assigning more freedom to make choices about their schedules,
operations, procedures and the method of solving their work-related problems.

Encouraging the employees to participate in the work-related decision will sizable

enhance their commitment to work.

Empowerment is defined as putting employees in charge of what they do by eliciting

some sort of ownership in them.

Managers are doing considerably further by allowing employees full control of their
work.

Movement implies constant change an increasing number of organizations are using

self-managed teams, where workers operate largely without a boss.

Due to the implementation of empowerment concepts across all the levels, the
relationship between managers and the employees is reshaped.

Managers will act as coaches, advisors, sponsors, facilitators and help their
subordinates to do their tasks with minimal guidance.

Coping with Temporariness

In recent times, the product life cycles are slimming, the methods of operations are
improving, and fashions are changing very fast. In those days, the managers needed
to introduce major change programs once or twice a decade.

Today, change is an ongoing activity for most managers.

The concept of continuous improvement implies constant change.

In yesteryears, there used to be a long period of stability and occasionally interrupted

by a short period of change, but at present, the change process is an ongoing activity
due to competitiveness in developing new products and services with better features.
Everyone in the organization faces today is one of permanent temporariness. The
actual jobs that workers perform are in a permanent state of flux.

So, workers need to continually update their knowledge and skills to perform new job
requirements.

Stimulating Innovation and Change

Today’s successful organizations must foster innovation and be proficient in the art of
change; otherwise, they will become candidates for extinction in due course of time
and vanished from their field of business.

Victory will go to those organizations that maintain flexibility, continually improve

their quality, and beat the competition to the market place with a constant stream of
innovative products and services.

For example, Compaq succeeded by creating more powerful personal computers for
the same or less money than EBNM or Apple, and by putting their products to market
quicker than the bigger competitors.

The emergence of E-Organisation & E-Commerce

It refers to the business operations involving the electronic mode of transactions. It
encompasses presenting products on websites and filling the order.

The vast majority of articles and media attention given to using the Internet in
business are directed at online shopping.

In this process, the marketing and selling of goods and services are being carried out
over the Internet.

In e-commerce, the following activities are being taken place quite often – the
tremendous numbers of people who are shopping on the Internet, business houses
are setting up websites where they can sell goods, conducting the following
transactions such as getting paid and fulfilling orders.

It is a dramatic change in the way a company relates to its customers. At present e-

commerce is exploding. Globally, e-commerce spending was increasing at a
tremendous rate.
Improving Ethical Behavior
The complexity in business operations is forcing the workforce to face ethical
dilemmas, where they are required to define right and wrong conduct to complete
their assigned activities.

For example,

 Should the employees of a chemical company blow the whistle if they uncover
the discharging its untreated effluents into the river are polluting its water
resources?
 Do managers give an inflated performance evaluation to an employee they like,
knowing that such an evaluation could save that employee’s job?

The ground rules governing the constituents of good ethical behavior has not been
clearly defined, Differentiating right things from wrong behavior has become more
blurred.

Following unethical practices have become a common practice such as successful

executives who use insider information for personal financial gain, employees in
competitor businesses participating in massive cover-ups of defective products, etc.

Improving Customer Service

OB can contribute to improving organizational performance by showing drat how
employees’ attitudes and behavior are associated with customer satisfaction.

In that case, service should be the first production-oriented by using technological

opportunities like a computer, the internet, etc.

To improve customer service we need to provide sales service and also the after-sales
service.

Helping Employees Balance Work-Life Conflicts

The typical employee in the 1960s or 1970s showed up at the workplace Monday
through Friday and did his or her job 8 or 9-hour chunk of time.

The workplace and hours were specified. That’s no longer true for a large segment of
today’s workforce.
Employees are increasingly complaining that the line between work and non-work
time has become blurred, creating personal conflict and stress.

Many forces have contributed to blurring the lines between employees’ work life and
personal life.

First, the creation of global organizations means their world never sleeps. At any time
and on any day, for instance, thousands of General Electric employees are working
somewhere.

Second, communication technology allows employees to do their work at home, in

their cars, or on the beach in Cox’s Bazar.

This lets many people in technical and professional jobs do their work anytime and
from any place.
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Third, organizations are asking employees to put in longer hours.

Finally, fewer families have only a single breadwinner. Today’s married employee is

typically part of a dual-career couple. This makes it increasingly difficult for married
employees to find the time to fulfill commitments to home, spouse, children, parents,
and friends.

Today’s married employee is typically part of a dual-career couple.

This makes it increasingly difficult for married employees to find the time to fulfill
commitments to home, spouse, children, parents, and friends.

Employees are increasingly recognizing that work is squeezing out personal lives and
they’re not happy about it.

For example, recent studies suggest that employees want jobs that give them
flexibility in their work schedules so they can better manage work/life conflicts.

Also, the next generation of employees is likely to show similar concerns.

A majority of college and university students say that attaining a balance between
personal life and work is a primary career goal. They want a life as well as a job.

Flattening World
Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First
Century makes the point that the Internet has “flattened” the world and created an
environment in which there is a more level playing field in terms of access to
information.

This access to information has led to an increase in innovation, as knowledge can be

shared instantly across time zones and cultures.

It has also created intense competition, as the speed of business is growing

faster and faster all the time.

In his book Wikinomics, Don Tapscott notes that mass collaboration has changed the
way work gets done, how products are created, and the ability of people to work
together without ever meeting.