Over the past two decades, business faculties have come to realize the importance that the understanding of human behavior plays in determining a manager's effectiveness.
In today's increasingly competitive and demanding workplaces, managers cannot succeed on their technical skills alone but to have good people skills. Each individual brings to an organization a unique set of personal characteristics, experiences from other organization, the environment surrounding the organization and they also possess a personal background.
In considering the people working in an organization, organizational behavior must look at the unique perspective that each individual brings to the work setting.
Organizational Behavior is concerned with people's thought, feelings, emotions and actions in setting up a work. Understanding an individual behavior is in itself a challenge, but understanding group behavior in an organizational environment is a monumental managerial tasks.
There are many definitions of human behavior by various authors. Among them are: Davies and Newstrom (1995) have defined Organizational Behaviour as "the study and application of knowledge of how people act or behave within organization. It is a human tool for human benefit. It applies broadly to the behavior of people in all types of organizations such as business, government, schools and service organizations"
Luthans (1995) "OB is directly concerned with the understanding, prediction and control of human behavior in organizations"