Question

Identify an organization related to health care in which you are interested. What is organizational behavior? What makes up an organization's culture? What is the significance of the Hawthorne Studies to the study of organizational behavior? Compare and contrast the findings of the Hawthorne Studies with at least two other organizational behavior studies, one of which must be from a source other than the textbook.

Answer 1

I am more intrested into Hemodialysis under Nephrology department. Our organisation is specific to treat all kinds of kidney diseases trough peritoneal dialysis, hemodialysis, kidney transplantaion etc. I am the representative to maintain quality of the treatment. Our organisation plays a very crucial role in reducing nosocomial infections, to maintain quality of the dialysis. Moreover we generally address patient as a "guest" instead of calling him/her as a "patient". This is because to give them a positive attitude towards their disease. This is our utmost organisation culture. We also have core values and objectives

Generally, Organizational behavior (OB) or organisational behaviour is "the study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself".

1. We aim to provide highest quality dialysis in a hygienic setting that prevents cross-infection, offers unmatched convenience and importantly, to make the patient smile.

2. To enable dialysis patients in India lead a perfectly healthy life

3. We call patients as guests.

4. We maintain good interpersonal relation between staff and patients.

The Hawthorne studies, which were conducted by Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger in the 1920s with the workers at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company, were part of an emphasis on socio-psychological aspects of human behavior in organizations.

Significance: The need for recognition, security and sense of belonging is more important in determining workers' morale and productivity than the physical conditions under which he works. The major finding of the study was that almost regardless of the experimental manipulation, worker production seemed to continually improve.

The Hawthorne Studies led to the development of the Human Relations Movement in business management. The experiment was about measuring the impact of different working conditions by the company itself (such as levels of lighting, payment systems, and hours of work) on the output of the employees.

The researchers concluded that variations in output were not caused by changing physical conditions or material rewards only but partly by the experiments themselves.

The special treatment required by experimental participation convinced workers that management had a particular interest in them. This raised morale and led to increased productivity. The term 'Hawthorne effect' is now widely used to refer to the behaviour-modifying effects of being the subject of social investigation.

The researchers concluded that the supervisory style greatly affected worker productivity. These results were, of course, a major blow to the position of scientific management, which held that employees were motivated by individual economic interest.

The Hawthorne studies drew attention to the social needs as an additional source of motivation. Economic incentives were now viewed as one factor, but not the sole factor to which employees responded.

The Hawthorne studies have been described as the most important social science experiment ever conducted in an industrial setting, yet the studies were not without their critics. It started on a good basis by trying to define the influence of the social, physical and psychological environment on the industrial workers.

This breakthrough would have been of a great importance if the investigators have been more careful about the weak points they did.

They should have tried to work on a single measurement as the total output of the workers in order to be more specific in their claims and they should not have limited their studies to a small group on the contrary they would have enlarge the groups and diversify them in order to be able to generalize their conclusions and achieve a great scientific value.

If these critics were taken into consideration in the first place, Hawthorne studies would have been applicable at all times and taken as a reference concerning the relationships between the social, physical, psychological environment and workers' productivity.