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Organizational Behavior Trends

Organizational Behavior Trends
February 18, 2006

This paper covers how organizational behavior can be affected by any number of trends and in particular, discusses how ethical decision-making and the impact of technology on work related stress effect organizational behavior.
Organization behavior is an interdisciplinary field of study and practice, investigating the impact of individuals, groups, structure and environment on behavior within organizations. The primary concern of organization behavior is with people, what they do and how their behavior affects individual, group and organizational performance.

Ethics in decision-making

Life is full of decisions. Each day, people are faced with different problems requiring answers and solutions. Decision making is the process of defining problems and choosing a course of action from among alternatives. Decision making at best is a challenge for employees in general and managers in particular. For example, many decisions management faces turn out to be ethical decisions or have ethical implications or consequences. Once we leave the realm of relatively ethical-free decisions (such as which production method to use for a particular product), decisions quickly become complex, and many carry with them an ethical dimension.
Decision making in itself is not a simple process and is even more complicated when one thinks about the character and nature of decision-making that includes ethical dimensions. It would be nice if decision making was indeed a simple process and that a set of ethical principles was readily available for employees to "plug in" and walk away from, with a decision to be forthcoming. However, in reality that is not, nor will it ever be, the case when it comes to ethics and decision making. It is safe to say that decision making is one of the most important - if not the most important - of all individual and group efforts within an organization.
Ethics are the rules, principles,...