Big-B versus Big-O: What is organizational about organizational behavior?

This paper is an empirically grounded essay about the current state of orga nizational behavior (OB) research and productive future directions. We repo rt the results of a survey of OB scholars about the current importance of v arious research topics and their importance in an ideal world. We compare t he survey responses with an archival analysis of papers published in leadin g OB journals over a 10-year period. We suggest that many of the topics tha t our respondents perceive to be 'under researched' can be summarized with one particular definition of OB that emphasizes organizing behavior. Consid ering all three definitions together, we highlight the limitations of the t raditional (Big-B and Contextualized-B) definitions and discuss the benefit s of a more organizational (Big-O) approach. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.