Key Learnings from OB-2 course
(Submitted by Rajat Dhingra, Roll No 26, PGPM-PT April 2014 batch)
An organisation consists of individuals and each person has an inherent need to understand it because much of each individual's time is spent working in or around an organisation. Organisation Behaviour plays an important role in the management of business. It is that field of study which finds out the impact that individuals, groups and structure have on behaviour within an organisation and it applies that knowledge to make organisations work more effectively.
Organisations are open social systems and have complex structures. Companies use various structures such as- functional, divisional, matrix to achieve the flexibility that they require in terms of goals being met, faster decision making, adjust rapidly to the changing environment and reducing conflicts. There is no one size fits all approach and the structure is decided by various factors such as the environment, resources available, competitive position etc.
We have also learnt about the role of business environment in influencing strategy of the company. To what extent strategy depends on the environment and how strategy shapes the structure. We have analysed the McKinsey 7s model which is a tool that analyzes firm’s organisational design by looking at 7 key internal elements: strategy, structure, systems, shared values, style, staff and skills, in order to identify if they are effectively aligned and allow organisation to achieve its objectives.
We learnt about approaches to assess organisational effectiveness and the differences between effectiveness and efficiency. Efficient organisations are not necessarily effective. Change and complexity in the external environment have major implications for organisational design and management action. Organisational environment differs in terms of uncertainty and