Understanding Human Behavior

It is very essential to understand human behaviour in today's world as the existence of the organisation depends upon the individuals who are working there. Without understanding human behaviour it is very difficult to work in an organizational setup because it is interdependent (between organization and personnel) and identifies the perception of human being that has transformation from time to time.

All organizations are composed of individuals, with different personality, attitudes, values, perception, motives, aspirations and abilities. The main reason to understand behaviour is that individuals are different. As Darwin stated that “No two individuals are identical”. In the early studies, theories of organization and management treated

Self- assessment/self-reporting remains a powerful and useful tool for understanding the how and the why of human behavior, but has some major limitations.

People aren’t always entirely honest when describing how something makes them feel – not necessarily because they’re trying to be duplicitous or crafty, but because they may feel pressured by the formal self-critical exercise to give what they think is the “right” answer (or the least embarrassing one). Furthermore, it’s often exceedingly difficult to explain in coherent sentences our response to a piece of information, or our mood at a given moment. We may not know exactly why we favor one product over another, or why we’re feeling generally joyful or generally depressed. Dan's analyses the nature of people in terms of four assumptions.

1. Individual Differences

Behaviour is the result of interaction between individual characteristics and the characteristics of the environment in which the behaviour occurs.

Each person has a unique combination of characteristics. Some of these characteristics are present from birth; others develop over time. These can

Learning occurs with this kind of model. Pavlov and Watson with their research felt that behaviour can be best understood by stimulus and response.

Behaviourist model is represented as: S - R (Stimulus-Response)

Cognitive Model: S-OR- R. This model emphasises the positive and free-will factors of human beings and uses concepts such as expectancy, demand and incentive. Tolman with his experiments found that the basis of learning as of `expectancy' which is understood as one particular event leading to a particular consequence

i.e., goal. Human behaviour is based on these goals.

From these different approaches it can be said that:

Behaviour is caused by instincts, genetic background and personality traits that are formed at an early age. Change is very difficult for the individual and that one's capacity is severely limited.

Implications for the Organization

Behviour of individuals is caused and follows a pattern, because it is unpredictable.

It is doubtful whether the person can perform his tasks satisfactorily without developing a fair degree of understanding of the people around him or