Organisation behaviour: So what is organisation behaviour?

This series of articles has developed a number of views on organisation behaviour and how current knowledge on the subject can be used to improve training and development in industrial organisations. The series has been an attempt to focus the reader's attention towards the critical need for us as trainers to understand why organisations are as they are and what causes them to behave as they do. Organisation behaviour as a subject is therefore about understanding, or attempting to understand, the complexity of the relationships that exist in the collectivity of people and things that we call ‘organisation’. To achieve full understanding is, I am afraid, as hopeless as expecting to understand why our fellow men (or women) behave as they do, for organisations like all living things change as we examine them. What the theories and hypotheses on organisation behaviour can do for us is give us some idea of organisational change and the links between these causes and their manifestations in terms of behaviour. This knowledge gives us a map, however fragmented, on which we can plot bearings to indicate the course our actions should follow if they are to influence and change the reality of the organisational situation.