Organizational Behavior
Operating Definition Organizational Behavior is a study of three determinants of behavior in organizations: individual, groups, and structure in order to make organizations work more effectively. The people within the organization and their behaviors effect the performance of the organization. There are a number of behavioral disciplines that contribute to organizational behavior: psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and political science. CORPORATE PAKISTAN Twenty-eight years to the day (Dec 16, 1971) when we broke apart the finest experiment of nationhood in the expanse of time, the Chief Executive (CE), Gen Pervez Musharraf addressed the nation on Dec 15, 1999, mainly to outline the much-awaited 'Economic Revival Plan' (ERP) at another critical crossroad in our history, far more economic than political this time. The brainchild of the Finance Minister, Shaukat Aziz, assisted by an Economic Advisory Board, the theme was credibility with creativity, poverty alleviation with corporatisation and a distinct bent towards supply-sided economics while meeting crucial obligations that a nation has towards its downtrodden masses. Stripped of rhetoric, the CE's speech addressed quite a number of substantive issues positively. Earth-shaking the initiatives were not, yet they broke some solid new ground and gave hope that with sincerity in implementation, there may be light at the end of the tunnel after all. The simultaneous reading of the CE's speech in both Urdu and English on different PTV channels was a plus point in reaching out to all the people. Make no mistake, we enter the New Millennium as a Corporate Pakistan rather than as a Social Pakistan, fittingly the Head of Government is called the 'Chief Executive'. The reduction of mark-up by 2% may not have been enough but still a good first step in trying to energise the business sector. The 'Grameen Bank' concept is being introduced as a micro-credit bank belatedly but thankfully. After all, we must broaden the business-base by getting in more budding entrepreneurs at the lower end of the spectrum, particularly females, to eventually increase the tax yield potential as well as creating self-employment. This may not be as successful in Pakistan as in Bangladesh because we have a dominant feudal society and they do not have feudals. Nevertheless the idea to create conditions to reduce the gender gap is welcome, we must bring females positively into the economic cycle for mass economic emancipation. The idea of having a separate corporate entity to deal with sick industries is essentially sound. The proposals with respect to taxation were also sound, including taxing of agriculture income, however we missed this opportunity of simplifying the whole individual and corporate taxation process on a drastic manner that could have excluded endemic corruption among the taxmen. The General Sales Tax (GST) still needs to be sold to the broad mass of businessmen who hate documentation. That it will be passed on as inflation to consumers is very much a possibility. The CE's emphasis on increasing our agriculture yield by substantive measures and for enhanced activity in oil and gas exploration was also very positive. The voluntary cut in Defence expenditures by about Rs.7 billion without compromising on security is a welcome and symbolic act by the CE if only because the masses have been asked to make sacrifices across the board.