Human Behavior and Organizations

I recently read A Manager’s Guide to Human Behavior, a book that’s draws attention to several areas in which the psychology of individual employees (perception, cognition, and motivation) is critical to the effectiveness of a commercial organization, but which stops short of offering much in the way of useful information about the topic of behavioral psychology itself.  I found this highly annoying, yet likely necessary given the scope of the topic.

In essence, a commercial organization, or any other form of organization, is a system of people who collaborate toward a common goal.   The buildings, equipment, materials, and all other resources that are listed as “assets” on a balance sheet are largely inconsequential to the value that the firm creates – even the extreme instance of a fully-automated production facility where all labor is performed by machines depends on people to design the machines, keep them running, monitor their operations, provide their inputs, and sell their outputs.

But in order to collaborate toward the common goal that is proposed by the firm, there must be motivation on the part of each employee to achieve it.   The simplistic view that people work only for compensation, and are indifferent to the nature of the duties placed upon them for that sake, is an entirely nineteenth-century concept that presumes that both people and jobs are commodities – that anyone would be equally happy with any activity, any job can be satisfactorily completed by any able-bodied worker, and the only difference between one job or one worker and the next is the amount of compensation provided.

There likely remain many instances in which that is true, on the lowest levels of present-day society: there are people who don’t much care what they do for a living so long as they make the income they require, and jobs that are so facile that anyone is capable of doing them with a few hours’ instruction.   But such instances are rare: even the most menial minimum-wage job requires some level of knowledge and skill, and even the lowest orders of human society require some level of engagement and motivation in their work that stems from non-economic needs.

As to the identity of those non-economic needs the book could only provide a vague notion along with a small handful of well-trodden theories of motivation – and that’s likely where it falls short.   A “guide to human behavior” should likely go into greater depth on that topic, and as such this is more of an argument as to why human behavior should be considered important – but likely that’s not as marketable a title.