Organizational behavior is a discipline that centers on behaviors, attitudes and performances of people in an organization. It deals with the influences an organization has on employees and vice versa and how the two affect the work environment. This covers aspects of job satisfaction, work motivation, leadership and decision making in an organization. Globalization on the other hand refers to the process through which people, companies, governments from different countries work together and integrate as a result of international trade and investment.
Globalization affects my organizations in many ways: trade barriers are removed as countries form and join trade alliances; immigration of workers as a result of these alliances has culturally diversified the work force. This will bring in skilled workers; opening up of a country’s boarders to international business has also resulted to establishment of lower-priced foreign competition which are able to offer attractive prices and better services than locally owned businesses such as my organization has been able to offer. This has resulted to stiff competition and therefore reduction in market share and profits. Globalization has also made our organization think of establishing business in other countries where conditions are more favorable.
Issues that arise in doing business globally
As a result of doing business globally, there is increased cultural diversity among workers in an organization that has resulted to challenges of ethical behavior. There is also the challenge brought about by immigration of workers from other parts of the world that bring competition for the available jobs and are seen as a threat to local union workers who bring different challenges for the organization. Organizing the workforce to make teams in such a culturally diverse and widespread workforce is a challenge.
It is also challenging to regulate the ethical behavior of a culturally diverse organization and different government and legal systems in different countries to be in line with the corporate culture. Issues of child labor, corruption and bribery and poor working conditions among others arise. An organization also has to battle with impressions the world communities have regarding their country of origin of both their employees and the organization itself. Example US individuals and organizations are seen as exploitative and self serving.
Trends observed in organizational behavior
Increased outsourcing of labor and services has been observed. Organizations lay down their full-time permanent employees and replace them with contract workers to perform specific types of work. This is also shown by contracting work to workers outside the country and movement of workers from one geographic region to another. Secondly, there is emergence of global managers that are able to run the business in multiple countries.
These are often multilingual with a global attitude and are able to map out a strategy in the global scene. Thirdly, there increased advancement in information technology and electronic communication as virtual workers in an organization work either as individuals or teams in performing various tasks for the business from anywhere in the world. Fourthly, there is increased movement of important skills and investments from one geographic region to another as a result of outsourcing of services and workers.
Globalization affects an organization’s business approach in that the business will have to formulate strategies that address the globe as a market and not just a nation where it is located. This will require the business to produce high quality products at globally viable prices. The business will also be required to target customers across the globe and therefore should orient its marketing towards this. Moreover, there would be stiff competition and therefore businesses should adopt strong risk management processes.