Organisational Behaviour
Summary
Organisational behaviour (OB) is the interdisciplinary study of how people act as individuals, in groups and within organisational systems. Drawing on psychology, sociology and management theory, it explores motivation, decision-making, communication, leadership, power and culture. At the individual level it examines personality, perception and work-related attitudes; at the group level it investigates team dynamics, conflict, roles and norms; at the organisational level it addresses structure, culture, strategy and change. Practical applications range from improving employee engagement and performance to guiding redesign of work systems, supporting ethical leadership and fostering innovation. In a volatile global environment, OB offers tools for navigating remote collaboration, technological disruption and workforce diversity, ensuring that organisations remain adaptive, resilient and human-centred.
Research from Nature Portfolio
A recent study of US‐listed firms has quantified how corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives diffuse across peers. Firms whose industry counterparts raise their own CSR performance by one standard deviation on average enhance their own CSR score by around 10 per cent of a standard deviation. This peer influence is strongest when the benchmark firms are larger, closer in market position or included in major indices, and it weakens for industry leaders with greater earnings capacity. While mimicking peers’ CSR strategies can boost firm value, it may coincide with lost product-market share, emphasising the need for selective adaptation rather than uncritical copying of peer practices.
Organisational Behaviour publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in organisational behaviour across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Organisational behaviour: The applied science of understanding individual, group and systemic dynamics within organisations to improve effectiveness and well-being.
Peer effect: The influence that the actions or performance of similar organisations have on a focal firm’s strategies and outcomes.
Performance management system: A coordinated set of practices—goal setting, feedback, appraisal and rewards—designed to align individual contributions with organisational objectives.
Work engagement: A positive, fulfilling work-related state characterised by vigour, dedication and absorption in tasks.
Organisational dehumanisation: The subjective sense of being treated by one’s employer as a tool or commodity rather than a valued human with agency.
Visibility affordance: A feature of digital collaboration tools that makes messages and interactions transparent and easily discoverable by others, facilitating knowledge exchange.
References
- Keeping up with the CSR Joneses: The impact of industry peers on focal firms’ CSR performance. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2023).
- Unbiased employee performance evaluation using machine learning. Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity (2024).
- The relationship between organizational dehumanization and work engagement: the mediating effect of nurses’ work stress. BMC Nursing (2024).
- Investigating visibility affordance, knowledge transfer and employee agility performance. A study of enterprise social media. Technovation (2023).
About these summaries
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