Organizational Behavior

by

Ricky W. Griffin, Nicole Fuller

• LAST REVIEWED: 22 February 2018
• LAST MODIFIED: 22 February 2018
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846740-0001

Introduction

Organizational behavior (OB) is the study of human behavior in organizational settings, of the interface between human behavior and the organization, and of the organization itself. OB is multidisciplinary in nature, synthesizing several other fields of study, and this is reflected in the literature. Perhaps the greatest contribution is from psychology, especially industrial and organizational psychology. Sociology has also had a major impact on the field of organizational behavior. Other contributing disciplines include anthropology, political science, economics, and industrial engineering.

Textbooks

Organizational behavior textbooks generally follow the same dominant framework that is used to organize the field itself and to partition it into subfields. More precisely, textbooks tend to devote coverage to the history and environment of the field, especially as it relates to the broader domain of management, individual behaviors and processes, interpersonal processes, and organizational processes and characteristics. Because of the rapid advancements in the field and the necessity that examples, statistics, and cases be as current as possible, most textbooks today are revised and published as new editions every two or three years. While there are minor variations across books, they tend to be more similar than dissimilar. Two widely used representative textbooks are Robbins and Judge 2017, now in its 17th edition, and Colquitt, et al. 2017, now in its 5th edition. Hitt, et al. 2015 is also a popular textbook bridging organizational behavior and strategic management.

• Colquitt, Jason A., Jeffery A. LePine, and Michael Wesson. Organizational Behavior: Improving Performance and Commitment in the Workplace. 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2017.

  This textbook introduces organizational behavior and discusses its interaction with individual characteristics and individual, group, and organizational mechanisms.

• Hitt, Michael A., C. Chet Miller, and Adrienne Colella. Organizational Behavior. 4th ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2015.

  This textbook highlights traditional organizational behavior topics such as motivation, personality, and diversity, and specifies the ways in which they contribute to the firm’s overall strategy.

• Robbins, Stephen P., and Timothy Judge. Organizational Behavior. 17th ed. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education, 2017.

  One of the most widely used organizational behavior textbooks in the world. Robbins and Judge cover introductory topics, individual behavior, group and social behavior, and macro- organizational behavior.