Employees behave differently at work than they do when at home or other in social settings, often due to the structured organisational environment of business. Organisational Psychologists are required to understand the role of behavioural factors in organisational effectiveness and employee satisfaction, productivity, safety and wellbeing.

A variety of factors influence this organisational behaviour, including the company's structure, policies and procedures, management effectiveness and interactions between colleagues. Each of these elements can inspire employees to work harder, alternatively, contribute to disengagement. One way to look at this is to say that Organisational Psychologists are trained in understanding how to set conditions in order to ‘get the best’ out of employees, improving productivity and competitiveness.

The Influence of Organisational Culture

When new employees join a company, the way they behave is heavily influenced by organisational culture. As social beings, people try hard to fit in the environment around them. If a company’s culture encourages employees to speak up without fear of reprisal, new employees will gain confidence in expressing their ideas, whereas if the culture is to "shoot the messenger," new employees tend to keep their opinions to themselves.

For example, an article examining a range of research on the topic (that is, a meta-analysis) was published in 2021, which found that a ‘knowledge-friendly organisational culture’ is positively related to a firm’s overall performance—both financial and non-financial. A knowledge friendly organisational culture is one where knowledge sharing and information flow are consistent, (that is, well-maintained). In such a culture employees share information freely with one other and there is transparency in systems; allowing for greater teamwork, more powerful independent decision-making, lower stress, and, as noted above, greater overall performance.

Reference

Liu, G., Tsui, E., & Kianto, A. (2021). Knowledge-friendly organisational culture and performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Business Research, 134, 738-753.