Organizational behavior, national and organizational culture.

The concept of organization can be defined as an organized social system composed by groups or individuals that work together to reach some objectives, organization has a system that contains four components which are (task, structure, people and technology).

Organizational behavior “is the study of individual behavior or group dynamics in organizations” which can contribute with some instruments that will let people know how to analyze and understand behavior within organizations, and also allows managers to improved work behavior in order for the organization to reach its goals, this concept has some levels of analysis such as group process, individual process and organizational process. To understand organizational behavior one must consider external and internal perspectives, inside and outside the person.

Management, medicine, engineering, sociology, psychology and anthropology are interdisciplinary influences on organizational behavior, when it comes to kinds of organizations, there is the formal one or legitimate based on goals, polices, financial resources, and the informal organization or unofficial based on beliefs, feelings and perceptions

The six sigma is a system that performs business strategies focusing on quantitative decision making and priorities to save money.

Culture: Hofstede defines it as ‘’the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another’’. Culture is very important and can even have significant effects on people’s productivity and moral commitment to what they do, impacting their performance, some cultural analysis will allow managers to predict the workers behavior which helps to determine what to expect from them.

Organizational culture is basically the personality of the organization or simply beliefs unique to an organization, it has some positive aspects such as providing identity for members and guides decision making of those within the organization, if the culture is strong it can even help the organization to adapt better to the environment, there are also different types of culture, clan culture which can be seen as a family where people share with one another, hierarchy culture where procedures dictate what people do, adhocracy culture which involves people that take risks and market culture that states its major concern as getting the job done.

Why is managing organizational behavior in changing times challenging?

Because as it was stated above, organizational behavior is the study of individual behavior or group dynamics in organizations, having said that,  the context we live in is constantly changing leading to a transformation of the organization and brings challenges such as fearsome competition which you must be prepared for, as times change and challenges appear, the human behavior tents to also change along with those things, making it harder for managers to understand work behavior within the organization, especially for those managers that follow an already existing protocol to make decisions. Stress has also become a very important topic in organizational behavior and this is due to the changes and advances in technology, increased globalization and appearance of more competition, all these factors make managing organizational behavior challenging at times. 

image retrieved from: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://pmtips.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/virtual-team3.jpg&imgrefurl=http://pmtips.net/virtual-teams-key-success-factors-part-3/&usg=__qWc-kbgSazHuAmWEDM-9KC1IbKM=&h=683&w=1024&sz=71&hl=es&start=310&zoom=1&tbnid=M9NeBa1HBejEeM:&tbnh=132&tbnw=197&ei=dOV2TbiZK4O-tgf1qriSBg&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dorganizational%2Bculture%26hl%3Des%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D595%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:11,7766&chk=sbg&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=964&vpy=179&dur=1082&hovh=183&hovw=275&tx=183&ty=101&oei=c-V2TYWhL9C1twfx1IWOBg&page=17&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:11,s:310&biw=1280&bih=595

video retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXxeWqlq2Tw
information retrieved from: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=101283268
information retrieved from: http://interactiva.eafit.edu.co/ei/