Organizational Behavior: A Brief Overview and Safety Orientation

Organizational Behavior (OB) is a discipline of social science that seeks explanations for human behavior in organizations. OB draws on core disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, communication, and law to create and investigate multilevel explanations of why people engage in particular behaviors, and which behaviors under which circumstances lead to better outcomes in organizations. Created using an applied or pragmatic lens and tested with a wide range of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, most OB theories and research have direct implications for managers and for other organizational participants. Not surprisingly, one focal area of OB research concerns safety in organizations, and a growing body of safety-oriented literature in OB is based on data collected during simulation training across a variety of organizations such as hospitals, airlines, nuclear power plants, and other high reliability organizations.