Organisational Behaviour For Dummies

Chapter 1

Introducing Organisational Behaviour

In This Chapter

Introducing organisational behaviour

Using organisational behaviour in the workplace

Seeing how people behave at work

The three of us writing this book (Cary, Sheena, and Lynn) are all work psychologists, which means that we use some of the principles of psychology to study people and behaviour in organisations.

When asked, we tend to describe ourselves as work psychologists rather than organisational behaviourists. Why is that? Well, introducing yourself as a psychologist is bad enough with the questions that follow (for example, can you read my mind?). Imagine calling yourself an organisational behaviourist at a party – not the best opening line! At least people have heard of psychology, and it doesn’t take too much thought to figure out that work psychology is basically psychology applied to the workplace.

You may be wondering, then, why this book isn’t called Work Psychology For Dummies as opposed to Organisational Behaviour For Dummies? Well, organisational behaviour and work psychology look at similar ideas and have similar aims. Both involve looking at the ways in which people behave at work and what this behaviour ...