Organizational Behavior
Systems Model of Organizations Perspective
Analyzing an organization as a system can help understand how the organization is interconnected along a variety of different factors. These factors can include everything from the technology infrastructure to the organizational culture and the behaviors of individual employees. For example, an organization that has a learning culture can overcome any obstacles or organizational changes more quickly than more rigid structures. This analysis will briefly outline some of the implications for using a systems approach by discussing three factors that are present in an organization and how they may affect other parts of the organizational "system."
Organizational Culture
Organizational culture can be a difficult concept to define because it can be highly subjective in nature. Each organization develops a culture in which employees and stakeholders create a set of shared values and norms. The organizational culture can be guided by the organization's leadership or the leadership can accept the existing organizational culture. These two factors can create something of a dynamic relationship that feeds off each other. However, once an organizational culture is established, it can be extremely difficult to change.
The organizational culture impacts nearly every aspect of an organization. For example, if a culture is resistant to change then employees will have a tough time adapting to a new environment or different processes. If the culture is highly hierarchical or relatively flat, then this will influence how information is processed and decisions are made. If the culture is innovative, then you might expect the employees to continuously scan for potential...
Basically, the corporate culture really affects the entire organization through the development of shared norms that guide each individual member's behaviors and responses to internal and external factors.
Leadership
Leadership is another factor that is interesting to examine from a systems lens. In some cases leaders can work to shape the organizations outcomes while in other cases leaders have far less influence on organizational behaviors. This can be illustrated in the transformational leadership and transactional leadership models. Transformational leaders are commonly believed to be more visionary, inspiring, and often humble while transactional leaders are frequently assumed to be more administrative and organized. A transformational leader can be defined by their capacity to create inspirational visions among their team members which affects them in such a way that they aspire to meet their full potential. Such a leader can provide the vision and inspiration that can raise their employees' level of performance. The transactional leader by contrast will focus on monitoring, controlling, and motivating employees through economic incentives and other exchange incentives. The form leadership that is present in any organization will have significant implications for the way that the entire organizational system functions and the outcomes that it produces.
Training
Another factor that can be examined through a systems approach is the organizations ability to perform effective training and development opportunities for employees. Modern organizations are often in a perpetual state of training because the business environment and technological development have progressed increasingly…
