Organization Behavior Unit II I.T.S Management & IT Institute Mohan Nagar, Ghaziabad
UNIT II (10 Sessions) Unit- II: Contents Perception and Attribution: Concept, Nature, Process, Importance. Management and Behavioral Applications of Perception Attitude: Concept, Process and Importance, Attitude Measurement. Attitudes and Workforce Diversity Personality: Concept, Nature, Types and Theories of Personality Shaping, Personality Attitude and Job Satisfaction. Learning: Concept and Theories of Learning. Prof. S.K. Pandey, I.T.S, Ghaziabad
Perception and Attribution Perception is the set of processes by which an individual becomes aware of and interprets information about the environment. People perceives the things in different ways. Attribution theory suggests that we observe behavior and then attribute causes to it. That is we attempt to explain why people behave as they do. The process of attribution is based on perceptions of reality, and these perceptions may vary widely among individuals.
Contd To start the process, we observe behavior, either our own or someone else s. We then evaluate that behavior in terms of its degree of consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness. Consensus is the extent to which other people in the same situation behave in the same way. Consistency is the degree to which the same person behaves in the same way at different times. Distinctiveness is the extent to which same person behaves in the same way in different situations. We form impression or attributions as to the causes of behavior based on various combinations of consensu, consistency, and distinctiveness. We may believe the behavior is caused internally (by force within the person) or externally (by force in the person s environment)
Concept Perception is the cognitive (mental) process of selecting, organizing and interpreting or attaching meaning to the events happening in the environment. Based on the definition of perception, we may identify its following characteristics: Perception is the intellectual process through which a person selects data from the environment, organizes it, and obtains meaning from it. The physical process of obtaining data from the environment is called Sensation. Perception is the basic cognitive or psychological process i.e. the people s action, emotions, thoughts or feelings are triggered by the perception of their surroundings. Perception, being a psychological process, becomes subjective process and different people may perceive the environmental event differently.
The Attribution Process Antecedents-- factors internal to the perceiver Information Beliefs Motivation Attributions made by the perceiver Perceived external or internal causes of behavior Consequences for the perceiver Behavior Feelings Expectations
Nature The Person skills & abilities personality perception attribution attitudes values ethics The Environment organization work group job personal life Behavior B = f(p,e)
Importance People s behavior is based on their perception of what reality is, not on reality itself. The world as it is perceived is the world that is behaviorally important. if the manager has good perception in any department of the organization, the department team will have safe solution with Risky Ideas. to find innovative solutions for the problem. to leverage creativity and motivate the higher plateau of thinking. with the help of perception, habits and attitudes will get changed. with the help of perception, we can find solutions the most difficult problems.
Process Since perception play a role in variety of workplace behaviors, managers should understand basic perceptual process. Perception actually consists of several distinct processes. Moreover, in perceiving we receive information in many guises, from spoken words to visual images of movements and forms. Through perceptual processes, the receiver assimilates the varied types of incoming information for the purpose of interpreting it. There are two basic perceptual processes that are particularly relevant to managers Selective Perception and Stereotyping.
Basic Elements in the Perceptual Process Environmental Stimuli Observation * Taste * Smell * Hearing * Sight * Touch Perceptual Selection * External factors * Internal factors Perceptual Organization * Perceptual grouping Interpretation * Perceptual errors * Attributions Response * Covert * Overt
Selective Perception Selective perception is the process of screening out information that we are uncomfortable with or that contradicts our beliefs. For example, suppose a manager is exceptionally fond of particular employee. The manager has a very positive attitude about the employee and thinks he is a top-performer. One day manager notices that the employee seems to be goofing off. Selective perception may cause the manager to quickly forget what he observed. Similarly, suppose a manager has formed a very negative image of a particular employee. He thinks that employee is a poor performer who never does a good job. When he happens to observe an example of high performance from the employee, he may quickly forget it. In one sense, selective perception is beneficial because it allows us to disregard minor bits of information. Of course the benefits occurs only if our basic perception is accurate. If selection perception causes us to ignore important information, however, it can become quite detrimental.
Stereotyping Stereotyping is categorizing or labeling people on the basis of a single attribute. Certain forms of stereotyping can be useful and efficient. Suppose, for example, tat a manager believes that communication skills are important for a particular job and that speech communication majors tend to have exceptionally good communication skills. As a result whenever, he interviews candidates for jobs he pays especially close attention to speech communication majors. To the extent that communication skills truly predict the job performance and that majoring in speech communication does indeed provide those skills, this form of stereotyping can be beneficial. Common attributes from which people often stereotype are race and sex. Of course stereotype along with these lines may be harmful, For example a HR Manager in an organization forms the stereotype that women can perform only certain tasks and that men are best suited for other tasks. To the extent that this affects the manager s hiring practices, he or she is Costing the organization valuable talent for both sets of jobs. Violating legislative law, Behaving unethically
Common Perceptual Errors the tendency for people to protect themselves against ideas, objects, or situations that are threatening the tendency to assign attributes to someone solely on the basis of the category of people, of which that person is a member Perceptual defense: Stereotyping: Halo effect: the process by which the perceiver evaluates another person solely on the basis of one attribute, either favorable or unfavorable Projection: the tendency for people to see their own traits in others Expectancy effects: extent to which expectations bias how events, objects, and people are actually perceived Self-fulfilling prophecy: expecting certain things to happen will shape the behavior of the perceiver in such a way that the expected is more likely to happen
Management and Behavioral Applications of Perception A manager is primarily concerned with the achievement of organizational objectives through specified behavior of its members. In understanding behavior, the managers must recognize that facts people do not perceive as meaningful usually will not influence their behavior whereas the things they believe to be real, even though factually incorrect or non-existent, will influence it. Though, in an organizational setting perception is an important activity, however there are three major areas which require special attention so far as the perceptual accuracy is concerned. 1. Performance Appraisal The appraisal of a subordinate s performance is highly affected by the accuracy of a manager s perception
2. Interpersonal Working Relationship Contd. Organizations are intended to bring about integrated behavior. Therefore, managers in the organization need to know whether or not members share similar or at least compatible perceptions. If they do not, the problems of the organizations are greater and will require efforts to make perceptions more compatible. Misperceptions usually lead to strained relations and may even result into open conflict among people. 3. Selection of Employees Organizations typically select new employees through a standard selection process. In many instances much of the information is vague. And manager s are subject to many of the perceptual problems when they make the selection decisions. The major areas of problems in this case are that: a. the manager s emotional state may vary from day to day causing unfair perceptions of the same applicants. b. there may be strong tendencies towards logical error and stereotyping specially during initial interviews.
Attitude
Concept Attitudes are complexes of beliefs and feelings that people have about specific ideas, situations, or other people. Attitudes are formed by a variety of forces, including our personal values, our experience, and our personalities. Attitudes are important because they are the mechanism through which most people express their feelings.
According to Even Allport.. Attitude is a mental and neural state of readiness organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon individuals response to all objects and situations with which it is related
Contd.. In Social Psychology attitudes are defined as positive or negative evaluations of objects of thought. Attitudes typically have three components. The cognitive component is made up of the thoughts and beliefs people hold about the object of the attitude. The affective component consists of the emotional feelings stimulated by the object of the attitude. The behavioral component consists of predispositions to act in certain ways toward an attitude object.
How Attitudes are formed? Unlike personality, attitudes are expected to change as a function of experience. Tesser (1993) has argued that hereditary variables may affect attitudes - but believes that they may do so indirectly. For example, consistency theories, which imply that we must be consistent in our beliefs and values. The most famous example of such a theory is Dissonancereduction theory, associated with Leon Festinger, although there are others, such as the balance theory.
Attitude Change Attitudes can be changed through persuasion and we should understand attitude change as a response to communication. Experimental research into the factors that can affect the persuasiveness of a message include: Target Characteristics: These are characteristics that refer to the person who receives and processes a message. One such trait is intelligence - it seems that more intelligent people are less easily persuaded by one-sided messages. Another variable that has been studied in this category is self-esteem. Although it is sometimes thought that those higher in self-esteem are less easily persuaded, there is some evidence that the relationship between self-esteem and persuasibility is actually curvilinear, with people of moderate self-esteem being more easily persuaded than both those of high and low self-esteem levels. The mind frame and mood of the target also plays a role in this process.
Contd. Source Characteristics: The major source characteristics are expertise, trustworthiness and interpersonal attraction or attractiveness. The credibility of a perceived message has been found to be a key variable here; if one reads a report about health and believes it came from a professional medical journal, one may be more easily persuaded than if one believes it is from a popular newspaper. Some psychologists have debated whether this is a long-lasting effect and Hovland and Weiss (1951) found the effect of telling people that a message came from a credible source disappeared after several weeks (the so-called "sleeper effect"). Whether there is a sleeper effect is controversial. Perceived wisdom is that if people are informed of the source of a message before hearing it, there is less likelihood of a sleeper effect than if they are told a message and then told its source. Message Characteristics: The nature of the message plays a role in persuasion. Sometimes presenting both sides of a story is useful to help change attitudes.
Contd Cognitive Routes: A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive evaluation to help change an attitude. In the central route to persuasion the individual is presented with the data and motivated to evaluate the data and arrive at an attitude changing conclusion. In the peripheral route to attitude change, the individual is encouraged to not look at the content but at the source. This is commonly seen in modern advertisements that feature celebrities. In some cases, physician, doctors or experts are used. In other cases film stars are used for their attractiveness.
Process Attitudes may be learned from the experiences we have. These include mostly mundane events such as being praised by our parents for expounding liberal attitudes, but also major life and world events. The basic processes through which we learn attitudes remain the same throughout life, though as we grow older the attitudes we learn may be more complex, and the ones we already hold may become more resistant to change. The processes through which our experiences create attitudes are all related to learning which is a basic human process. As for now just keep in mind that all our attitudes are learned from our experience of the social context around us. The influence of the family, schooling, and peer groups waxes and wanes as we grow into adolescence and adulthood. Thus, the primary sources of our attitudes change as we mature. A final source of attitudes is the culture in which a child grows up. Culturally prevalent prejudices are generally reflected in prejudiced attitudes.
Importance Attitudes serve as one way to organize our relationship with our world. They make our interactions more predictable affording us a degree of control. Attitudes also enable us to reduce the vast amount of information that we possess into manageable units. All the beliefs we have about our company could be summarized as I like my company, and thus our attitude represents the combination of many bits of information for us. We can use others attitudes to make judgments about them. It has been found consistently that the more similar our attitudes are to those of others, the more we like them. Finally, people s attitudes can sometimes be useful in predicting behavior, such as how they will vote in an election or which brand of car they will buy.
Attitude Measurement Attitudes are subjective attributes of people. They can be regarded as the constructs in the sense that they are conceptualization of human qualities that are formed on the basis of either rational consideration or statistical evidence. Attitude measurement, developed largely by social psychologists, is concerned with efforts to tap these attitudes as they are characteristics of individual. There are many methods for measuring attitude.
Contd. In pulling numerous methods dealing with attitude measurement, Summers has used the following organization which, in effect, is classification of methods of attitude measurement: Self Report : usually elicited with questionnaires dealing with beliefs, feelings and behaviors. Indirect Tests: such as Projective techniques and disguised approaches. Direct Observation Techniques: Psychological Reaction Techniques However, attitude measurement of employees in organizations is most commonly carried out by Self-Report. Measurement of attitude based o questionnaires uses several scaling methods. These are basically of three types Thurstone Type of Scale, Likert Scale and Semantic Scale.
Workforce Diversity Workforce Diversity is the extent of differences and similarities in such characteristics as age, gender, ethnic groups, physical abilities/ disabilities. Workforce diversity has strong implications for management practices. Managers have to shift their philosophy from treating everyone alike to recognizing differences and responding those differences in ways that ensure employees greater productivity while, at the same time not discriminating. This shift may include giving special attention to certain category of employees in training and development, career planning, etc. It may be noted that while managing workforce diversity effectively may be a challenge but, if managed properly, it results into increased creativity in organization because of diversity of ideas due to workforce diversity. the term Workforce Diversity refers to policies and practices that seek to include people within a workforce who are considered to be, in some way, different from those in the prevailing constituency. In this context, here is a quick overview of seven predominant factors that motivate companies, large and small, to diversify their workforces:
Personality
Concept of Personality Personality can be defined as a dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, motivations, and behaviors in various situations. The word "personality" originates from the Latin persona, which means mask. Significantly, in the theatre of the ancient Latin-speaking world, the mask was not used as a plot device to disguise the identity of a character, but rather was a convention employed to represent ortypify that character.
Contd. In other words, personality is a set of characteristics and tendencies that determine those commonalities and differences in the behavior (thoughts, feelings, actions) of people that have continuity in time and that my not be easily understood as the sole result of the social and biological pressures of the moment. Thus we take personality as the traits and characteristics of an individual because of which he shows consistent pattern of response to environmental stimuli.
Nature of Personality Consistency across situations i.e. stability in person s behavior over time and across situations. Distinctiveness i.e. the behavioral differences among people reacting to the same situation A personality refers to an individual s unique constellation of consistent behavioral traits. A Personality trait is a durable disposition to behave in a particular way in variety of situation. Adjectives such as honest, dependable, moody, impulsive, suspicious, anxious, excitable, domineering and friendly describes dispositions that represent personality traits.
Big-5 Factor Model of Personality The Big Five factors and their constituent traits can be summarized as follows: Openness (inventive / curious vs. consistent / cautious). Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity, and variety of experience. Conscientiousness (efficient / organized vs. easy-going / careless). A tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behavior. Extraversion (outgoing / energetic vs. shy / reserved). Energy, positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others. Agreeableness (friendly / compassionate vs. competitive / outspoken). A tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others. Neuroticism (sensitive / nervous vs. secure / confident). A tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability.
Psychoanalytic Theory Personality Theories It is based on the notion that man is motivated by unseen forces than he controlled by conscious and rational thoughts. This framework contains three aspects, though inter-related but often conflicting. These are Id, The Ego and The Super Ego. Socio-psychological Theory This theory is recognizes the interdependence of the individual and society. The individuals strive to meet the needs of the society, while society helps the individual to attain his goal.
Contd.. Trait Theory This theory presents a quantitative approach to the study of personality. This theory postulates that an individual s personality is composed of definite predispositional attributes called traits. A Trait may be defined as any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual differs from another. This traits can be considered as individual variables. There are basically three assumptions of this theory: Traits are common to many individuals and vary in absolute amounts between individuals. Traits are relatively stable and exert fairly universal effects on behavior regardless of the environmental situation. Traits can be inferred from the measurement of behavioral indicators.
Contd.. Self Theory This theory is also called Organismic Theory or Field Theory and it emphasizes on the totality and interrelatedness of all behaviors. There are four components in Self Concept: Self Image : The self image is the way one sees oneself. Ideal Self : It denotes the way one would like to be and it differs from self image. Looking Glass-Self : It is the perception of a person about how others are perceiving his qualities and characteristics. Real Self : The real self is what one really is. The first three aspects of selfconcept are the functions of individual perception and they may be same as real-self or different from it.
Personality, Attitude and Job Satisfaction Job satisfaction has been defined as a pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one s job; an affective reaction to one s job; and an attitude towards one s job. Weiss (2002) has argued that job satisfaction is an attitude but points out that researchers should clearly distinguish the objects of cognitive evaluation which are affect (emotion), beliefs and behaviors. This definition suggests that we form attitudes towards our jobs by taking into account our feelings, our beliefs, and our behaviors An individual's personality is influenced by factors like heredity, external environment, and person-situation interaction. Some of the personality attributes that have an impact on an individual's behavior are the locus of control, Machiavellianism, self-esteem, self-monitoring, propensity to risk-taking.
Contd.. The locus of control refers to the degree to which people believe that they can determine their own fate. People high on the locus of control (called internals) tend to move up the career ladder quickly. Attitudes are evaluative statements (favorable or unfavorable) about objects, people or events. Attitudes are acquired from parents, teachers and members of the peer group, apart from the predispositions acquired at birth. The three job-related attitudes are job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. According to Edwin A. Locke, job satisfaction is the pleasurable or positive emotional state that results when an individual evaluates his job or job experience. Job involvement refers to the degree to which a person psychologically identifies with his job, actively participates in it, and considers that his performance in the job contributes to his selfworth.
Contd. Attitudes enable people to adapt to their work environment. They are also used by people to defend their ego, express their values, and to interpret events. The cognitive dissonance theory refers to the incompatibility that an individual may perceive between two or more of his attitudes, or between his behavior and attitudes. The efforts made by an individual to reduce dissonance depend on the significance of the elements that give rise to the dissonance, the extent to which they can be controlled, and the rewards that the individual is likely to lose by not overcoming the dissonance.
Learning
Concept Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves. Human learning may occur as part of education, personal development, or training. It may be goaloriented and may be aided by motivation. The study of how learning occurs is part of neuropsychology, educational psychology, learning theory, and pedagogy.
Any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience Learning components: Involves Change Is Relatively Permanent Is Acquired Through Experience
Types of Learning Simple non-associative learning Habituation Sensitization Associative learning Classical conditioning Imprinting Observational learning Play Enculturation Multimedia learning E-learning and augmented learning Rote learning Informal learning Formal learning Nonformal learning Nonformal learning and combined approaches Tangential learning Dialogic learning
Classical Conditioning Theories of Learning A type of conditioning in which an individual responds to some stimulus that would not ordinarily produce such a response. Operant Conditioning A type of conditioning in which desired voluntary behavior leads to a reward or prevents a punishment. Social-Learning Theory People can learn through observation and direct experience.
Classical Conditioning Pavlov s Dog Drool Key Concepts: Unconditioned stimulus A naturally occurring phenomenon. Unconditioned response The naturally occurring response to a natural stimulus. Conditioned stimulus An artificial stimulus introduced into the situation. Conditioned response The response to the artificial stimulus. Thisisapassiveformoflearning. Itisreflexiveandnot voluntary notthebesttheoryforoblearning.
Operant Conditioning B. F. Skinner s concept of Behaviorism: behavior follows stimuli in a relatively unthinking manner. Key Concepts: Conditioned behavior: voluntary behavior that is learned, not reflexive. Reinforcement: the consequences of behavior which can increase or decrease the likelihood of behavior repetition. Pleasing consequences increase likelihood of repetition. Rewards are most effective immediately after performance. Unrewarded/punished behavior is unlikely to be repeated.
Social-Learning Theory Based on the idea that people can also learnindirectly: by observation, reading, or just hearing about someone else s a model s experiences. Key Concepts: Behavioral modeling Observing and modeling behavior of others Learning behavior consequences Observing consequences that others experience Self-reinforcement Reinforcing our own behavior with consequences within our control
Shaping: A Managerial Tool Systematically reinforcing each successive step that moves an individual closer to the desired response. Four Methods of Shaping Behavior: Positive reinforcement Providing a reward for a desired behavior (learning) Negative reinforcement Removing an unpleasant consequence when the desired behavior occurs (learning) Punishment Applying an undesirable condition to eliminate an undesirable behavior ( unlearning ) Extinction Withholding reinforcement of a behavior to cause its cessation ( unlearning )