Organizational Behavior, Motivation, and EI in the Workplace
This paper examines organizational behavior within a university financial aid department structured along bureaucratic and autocratic lines. Drawing on personal workplace experience, the paper explores how poor leadership shaped employee attitudes, performance, and morale. It applies Maslow's hierarchy of needs to explain why workers lacked motivation, and uses the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) to contrast the empathetic behavior of a few engaged employees against largely indifferent management. The analysis integrates scholarly perspectives from Schyns and Schilling, Bakker and Schaufeli, and Capek to illustrate how negative organizational stimuli reduce productivity and quality, while positive individual behaviors can partially offset an otherwise dysfunctional workplace culture.
- Introduction: Bureaucratic university department, stressful culture, poor leadership
- Employee Behavior and Organizational Behavior: Autocratic management caused apathy and reduced productivity
- Human Motivation: Needs Theory: Maslow's hierarchy explains unmet worker needs and low motivation
- Teams, Emotional Intelligence, and Productivity: EI absent in management but present among high-performing employees
- Conclusion: Poor leadership, unmet needs, and low EI harmed department outcomes
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds abstract organizational behavior concepts in a concrete, first-person workplace narrative, making theoretical arguments immediately relatable and credible.
- It integrates multiple scholarly sources (Schyns & Schilling, Bakker & Schaufeli, Maslow, Capek) in a way that directly supports and explains observed behaviors rather than simply summarizing theory.
- The contrast between the few high-performing, emotionally intelligent employees and the disengaged majority provides a nuanced view that avoids oversimplifying the workplace dynamic.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective application of theory to practice. Rather than describing theories in isolation, the author consistently maps each concept — Maslow's hierarchy of needs, emotional intelligence, destructive leadership — onto specific, observed workplace behaviors. This technique shows the reader not just what the theories say, but what they look like in action.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a clear five-part structure: an introductory context-setting section establishes the workplace setting and stakes; a section on employee versus organizational behavior applies leadership research to observed dynamics; a dedicated section applies Maslow's motivation theory; a fourth section addresses teams, EI, and their impact on productivity; and a brief conclusion synthesizes the findings. Each section builds logically on the last, moving from macro-level organizational structure down to individual employee psychology.
Introduction
The organizational structure of the university where I worked was based on a bureaucratic style. The hierarchical pyramid command structure placed my department in the mid-level range within the administrative wing of the university. Our department had a department manager and a head manager above him, and fifteen employees beneath them. The department served students with financial aid issues, so it was always a hectic place to work, as students constantly came in with questions about their aid and whether their applications were being processed correctly. Stress levels were sometimes very high within the department, as everyone was working against deadlines at certain points in the year.
Other causes of stress included the fact that the organizational workplace culture was not conducive to maintaining a positive spirit in which respect and job satisfaction were clear goals. Most of the time, it seemed the department head and head manager did not care whether their employees were productive or not — workers were simply expected to complete their work on time and without errors. In terms of offering support, there was very little from leadership, and workers had to try to support one another when things became overwhelming. This paper describes the organizational behavior of this department and shows how factors such as theory, emotional intelligence, and the relationship between employee and organizational behavior — as represented by management — were manifested.
Employee Behavior and Organizational Behavior
As Schyns and Schilling (2013) note, bad leaders and managers are individuals who do not take an interest in their employees or engage with them on civil or sympathetic terms. They lack empathy, integrity, and genuine interest in their work. They bring negative stimuli to the workplace instead of positive ones. The effect of their influence is that workers become discouraged and resentful, and can even go out of their way to undermine organizational productivity. Schyns and Schilling (2013) thus demonstrate that managers and leaders must engage with their employees on a positive level in order to ensure the success of the organization.
In the financial aid department, the general relationship between employee behavior and organizational behavior closely resembled what Schyns and Schilling (2013) describe in their study. The department manager was autocratic even though the university's broader structure was bureaucratic, and the head manager was disinterested in the workers. As a result, there was a distinct lack of empathy from leadership. Employee attitudes suffered accordingly. Workers were often apathetic and uncommunicative. They expressed dissatisfaction with the job and did little to make the workplace more organized or efficient. They performed only when the department manager was present, because he would insist on everyone doing things his way and would become irritated when anyone violated one of his rules. The head manager did not appear to care how the department manager behaved and seemed to exist primarily as a symbol of authority.
As soon as the department manager left, employees would begin slacking and failing to complete their responsibilities. The office was perpetually behind schedule, and it was only thanks to a few hardworking and dedicated employees that paperwork was ever filed on time. When those good employees were absent, crises did occur — financial aid would fail to go through for students, which upset the department manager further (the head manager rarely commented). The fact that the department manager had no genuine relationship with the workers frustrated the entire process and made the workplace deeply stressful. As McQuerrey (2014) points out, attitude, performance, interpersonal skills, and organizational representation are all affected by the actions of those in positions of authority. When one person's poor behavior — especially in a leadership role — is evident, it reflects poorly on the organization as a whole and can diminish its culture and productivity.
As Bakker and Schaufeli (2008) show, "positive organizational phenomena can make a unique contribution to explaining variance in organizational outcomes over and above negative ones" (p. 149). This means that when positive elements exist within a workplace, that workplace is more likely to produce positive outcomes, whereas environments dominated by negative stimuli tend toward negative results.
Capek (2007) argues that employee experiences drive organizational behavior in numerous ways, and this was true in our department: the more negatively workers experienced their bosses, the more likely they were to disengage from their responsibilities. Capek (2007) also notes that "the nature of employee experiences has a profound impact on the organizational agility required to make improvements to the customer experience," which was equally evident in our department. Students frequently complained about the slowness of the office — a slowness caused directly by workers failing to perform jobs they did not feel motivated to do. Employees felt unappreciated by management, and their sense of isolation caused them to react negatively toward their work, ultimately affecting the students who depended on them.
Some workers, however, consistently performed well. This can be explained by the fact that they adhered to personal ideals and principles that, while never affirmed by management, were deeply embedded in their own character and thus motivated them to succeed. As Capek (2007) notes, "the context for an individual's experience starts with what they are trying to accomplish; what's important to them." These high-performing workers rarely complained and never displayed a poor attitude, even while others did. Instead, they seemed to accept that no organization is perfect, that managers and leaders also experience stress and may not always communicate effectively. They did not hold grudges against management for perceived slights or resent leaders for failing to show appreciation. They accepted that they had a job to do and were determined to do it. Consequently, their workplace experience was not a negative one, because they did not allow negative stimuli to shape their decision-making.
For workers who did allow negative stimuli to affect them, outcomes were consistently poor. They failed to meet performance expectations, shirked responsibilities, communicated poorly, and treated students applying for aid with little respect. Some of these workers were also burdened by external factors — personal debt, insufficient income, family difficulties, and educational challenges — and their external stress combined with the tension generated by the department manager to further destabilize the environment. Capek (2007) demonstrates that external factors can be just as impactful within an organization as internal ones, and our department illustrated this clearly.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the financial aid department at the university where I worked suffered from a lack of positive organizational behavior, which compounded the stress employees already carried from external factors. The quality of workers' output declined as their needs went unmet in the workplace. A small number of employees had achieved a high level of self-actualization independently and demonstrated strong EI skills that helped to partially offset the negative environment. However, management's consistent lack of EI produced a poor workplace culture that diminished morale, engagement, and performance across the department as a whole.
References
Bakker, A. B., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2008). Positive organizational behavior: Engaged employees in flourishing organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 147–154.
Capek, F. (2007). How employee experiences drive organizational behavior. Retrieved from http://customerinnovations.wordpress.com/2007/12/05/how-employee-experiences-drive-organizational-behavior/
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370.
McQuerrey, L. (2014). Importance of employee behavior in an organization. Retrieved from http://work.chron.com/importance-employee-behavior-organization-11019.html
Schyns, B., & Schilling, J. (2013). How bad are the effects of bad leaders? A meta-analysis of destructive leadership and its outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 24, 138–158.
Shanks, N. H., & Buchbinder, S. B. (2012). Introduction to health care management. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
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