What Do They Teach in Organizational Behavior?
A course in organizational behavior would include programs of study found in the area of psychology known as industrial psychology. A course in industrial psychology presents 
the thinking of behavioral scientists such as Skinner, who involved into the development of models used to assess possible behaviors, calculations of present behaviors and projections of future behaviors. The study of organizational behavior is the study of people interacting in an industrial setting. Organizational behavior studies also include the social engineering potential of behaviorists such as B.F. Skinner working on forceful behaviors from subjects deliberately programmed to react like Pavlov's dog.
This forms the premise or the psychological basis of a course in organizational behavior. Students may or may not know where the wealth of information into group behavior in an industrial setting originates. For the most part, students taking a class in organizational behavior will be taught how to deal with workers individually, and in a group, Peer considerations, motivational techniques and some assessment strategies to determine their efficacy as leaders in an industrial setting are taught.
In an industrial psychology course, the research studies of behaviorist including Watson will be taught as models for continued research into the world of human behavior that can be shaped or behavioral modeling as it can be applied in industrial settings. Measurement and statistical methods are also taught. In a course in organizational behavior, learning how to read a graph and plotting scores and predicting outcomes will also be taught. Studying predictive models developed by industrial psychologists is a very important part in a course in organizational behavior. Learning to use the data illustrated by researchers into behavioral models makes learning psychology of changing behaviors in an organization possible without needing to spend a great deal of time on learning how to do a research study into determining predictive variables that will produce a desired behavioral effect.
Group meetings, settings, agendas, goals and methods of attaining goals are also taught in a class in organizational behavior. While a background in the behaviorists may be useful to understand the methods that are taught in a class in organizational behavior, knowing how to use and possessing the personality traits required to execute those methods is actually more beneficial to their being successfully applied. A class in organizational behavior will present information on behavior management that might also include anger management and risk assessment. Both of those terms involve many variables and inferences and the class instructor might choose which area of behavioral modification in an organizational setting he wishes to concentrate on.
