Organizational Behavior

Table of Contents
Answer of the Question No.1
Introduction 2
Understanding Human behaviour 2 How self-evaluation helps----------------------------------------------------------------3 Answer of the question No.2
Introduction 4
Prejudice is counter productive 4 Personal Experience---------------------------------------------------------------------------------5

Answer of the Question No.1

Introduction
In a fast changing world of competitive environment and complex dynamics, a result-oriented leadership warrants of an excellent grasp of behavior of persons making the organization and the constant self-assessment to respond to the changing situation timely and appropriately to remain successful.

The momentum of the organization depends on the leader(s) of the organization. A leader not only needs to envision but also should have the capacity to take right decisions to face the challenges through human interactions, employing leadership skills such as energizing, enabling, empathizing, expressing personal support. Expressing confidence in people, demonstrating personal excitement, seeking and finding success are essential but all the initiatives can have different consequences, if not implemented by, and with, the appropriate person(s). Hence, understanding human behavior is very important for a leader.

Equally important for a successful leadership is the need for self-assessment for producing meaningful change in the organization. The processes of self-assessment provide tools to lead to the development of a strategic organizational plan with clearly defined short and long-term goals, measurable objectives, identified fiscal and human resources, and enhanced consumer and community partnerships. Self-assessment can also provide a vehicle to measure outcomes for personnel, organizations, population groups and the community at large.

Understanding Human Behavior
Human nature is mysterious. A great number of psychologists, writers have spent ages to understand human nature and have found it very difficult. Famous author Mark Twain said, “Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.’’ So, it is not easy to understand human behavior. ‘’The behavior of people, however, cannot be studied in isolation. It is necessary to understand interrelationships with other variables, which together comprise the total organization. To do this involves consideration of interactions among the formal structure, the task to be undertaken, the technology employed and methods of carrying out work, the process of management and the external environment (Laurie 2006:29). In such case the formal structure to understand human behavior is self –assessment as we know that a leader innovates, develops, focuses on people, inspires trust and shares goals.

Perhaps we all should agree that in the earth no two persons are alike. At first we come in the earth with our own inherited genetics, other factors such as parents, society, culture develop us and we all become distinct human beings. ‘Our sense of self is shaped by our inherited characteristics and by influences in our social environment .The process of growing up such as the impact of our early family life, the country in which we live –has a significant part to play in our identity. (Laurie 2006:111).

Focusing only on the superficial level and commanding may bring failure to a leader. Leaders must know what stimulates people and under what states of affairs they can give their best outputs. Thus understanding human nature, his/her shortcomings and strengths help a leader to allocate job properly. A very off-putting person can even perform best in a team. Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “anybody can become angry- that is easy, but to be angry with the right person at the right time and for the right purpose and in the right way- that is not within everyone’s power and that is not easy.’ Deeper understanding provides ways, shows potential tools, which make a leader more powerful. Using Carrot-stick model is not at all enough to have better output from subordinates. “One reason that the reward/ punishment model does not always explain human behavior well is that one person’s punishment. When we extend the same carrot to everyone in the organization, only those who value that reward will respond. When we use the same whips (threats) on everyone in the organization, not everyone responds. (James,2001:8).Self-evaluation can help a leader to understand human behavior, develop relationships and influence people to share goal.

How Self-evaluation Helps
Self-evaluation is provided to help a leader determine what actions are necessary to cultivate a performance culture in an organization. A thorough self-assessment allows the leadership to understand the organisation’s strengths and weaknesses, aiding the organisations to design appropriate strategy for moving forward (Porter and Finn, 1994; Van der Wiele, 1995). Several researchers and practitioners provided different definitions for self-assessment. Nuland and et al., 2000 defined self-assessment as: “an investigation within the own organisation in a structured and systematic way, after which decisions are taken in group and in consensus. The actions are prioritised and have a strategic importance. The realisation of these actions allows you to achieve a breakthrough in results”.

A comprehensive self-evaluation helps the leadership in numerous ways in accomplishing its roles and responsibilities, including leading for results in a highly present day competitive environment. The organizational self-assessment has distinctive benefits, amongst others, are: (a) it identifies areas wherein improvement needed and thus focus efforts can be made, (b) it helps optimize the use of your resources, (c) improves collective efforts, as it emphasizes opportunities for improvement, not “fixing blame”, (d) It is performance focused, not people focused, (e) it covers the organization as a whole, not just one or two aspects, (f) it consolidates and bring synergies in areas such as information flow, planning practices, decision making processes, and control mechanisms, and (g) finally it brings results.

Most importantly, a self-assessment thrives team building. The working of groups and the influence they exert over their membership is an essential feature of human behavior and of organizational performance. The self-assessment by the leadership allows them to use groups in order to achieve a high standard of work and improve organizational effectiveness.

In fine, an objective self-assessment identifies “cause and effect” relationships, helping the leaders to devise corrective or new strategies and actions to put in place to produce meaningful change for rewarding outcomes. Therefore, self-assessment is an approach that is basically used to deliver improvements in quality and performance of an organization.

Answer of the question No.2

Prejudice can be hurtful and destructive - discuss how you can personally reduce prejudice in your workplace - please provide an example.

Introduction:
Prejudice is a negative feeling and judgments about individuals or about a group (e.g. ethnic group, religious group, racial group, sexual orientation, social class). Prejudice is formed by society, family and even by workplaces. Prejudice has, in many instances, acted as the seed of hatred and violence.

Though the story of prejudice is age old, now a day as people from different groups and backgrounds are becoming vocal against discrimination, the organizations are being subjected to tension and attention. ‘’More and more women, blacks, and other minorities have entered and will continue to enter to work force. Members of these groups are becoming more and more numerous in visible roles in business organizations and more and more outspoken and insistent on fair and equitable treatment. This has caused tension in many organization’’ (James et al.,1990:1). To make an organization more effective, prejudice needs to be addressed and managed. But unfortunately sometime the person who drive organization develop institutional prejudice as they promote, recruit people, who belong to the same groups. Nonetheless, there are ways to reduce prejudice in organization to make the organization more successful. Prejudice is counterproductive
Organizations need to hire employees from different groups, backgrounds and skills to enhance productivity. Leaders are increasingly realizing that discrimination is wrong, as they understand a more diverse workforce has the ability to increase organization’s capacities. While some managers are trying to fight against prejudice, others are still struggling to make their organization inclusive with diverse group. The process of inclusiveness is complex and marred with conflicts. ‘‘Instead, many attempts to increase diversity in the workplace have backfired, sometimes even heightening tensions among employees and hindering a company’s performance’’(David, et al., 1996:2). Rising workplace diversity not only depends on recruiting and but also retaining more people from diverse ethnic, minority and marginalized groups.

Senge (cited in Robert and David, 2004:3) stresses that broader organizational change requires alignment in which all members of a team have a commonality of purpose, a shared vision, and an understanding of how their personal roles support the overall strategy. To empower an organization or leader thus, alignment is necessary.

Leading an organization forward, management needs to bring in a code of conducts on diversity and affirmative actions, assessing economic and social consequences as best as they can.

A personal experience
When I submitted a proposal to an organization’s CEO for making an investigative program, he laughed at me, saying: ‘do you mean it?’ After a series of dialogues, he agreed. During preparation for the first episode, while working at night, the camera crew used to ask me every time: “shall we take someone else, if any problem arises?” I said, ‘no’. After being successful, I continued investigations on several topics involving high profile crimes, corruptions, etc. But, I noticed my colleagues used to stare at me differently. They could not take it easily that a woman is doing an in depth investigative journalism. I felt very uncomfortable and stopped sharing my plans and experience with them.

I believe, though, I have been able to convince the management to engage a female to work on what has been stereotyped domain of male macho broadcasters, the management were not able to put in place a comprehensive strategy and implementation plans towards elimination of all forms of dominance (e.g. hierarchy, function, race, gender, etc). If I were the leader of that organization I would have embarked upon discrimination-and-fairness paradigm and gradually moving towards introduction of the learning-and-effectiveness paradigm to secure diversity’s true benefit.

I would definitely try to comprehend the differences to leverage it and to value the difference, as we know valuing difference advance fundamental change in a person or in an organization.

Bibliography:

Laurie, M. (2006:29).Essentials of Organizational Behavior. England.:Pearson education ltd.

James, G.(2001) A leaders guide to why people behave the way they do.University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, charlottesville

Laurie,M. (2006:111).Essentials of Organizational Behavior. England.:Pearson education ltd.

Nuland, Y. and et al. (2000). Excellent: A Guide for The Implementation of The EFQM-Excellence Model, Comatech bvba. Porter, L. and Finn, M. (1994), TQM Self-assessment in the UK, The TQM
Magazine, Vol. 06, No. 4, pp. 56-62.

Van Der Wiele (1995), State-of-the-Art study on Self-assessment, The TQM Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 13-17.

James G. Clawsen and Bryan Smith(1990)prejudice in Orhanization.university of Virginia Darden School Foundation, charlottesville

David A. Thomas and RobbinJ Ely(1996) making Differences Matter,Harvard Business Review

Robbert S. Kaplan and David p. Norton(2004) Organization Capital:Leadership,Alignment, and Teamwork,Harvard Business School Publishing

Bibliography: Laurie, M. (2006:29).Essentials of Organizational Behavior. England.:Pearson education ltd. James, G.(2001) A leaders guide to why people behave the way they do.University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, charlottesville Laurie,M. (2006:111).Essentials of Organizational Behavior. England.:Pearson education ltd. Nuland, Y Van Der Wiele (1995), State-of-the-Art study on Self-assessment, The TQM Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 13-17. James G David A. Thomas and RobbinJ Ely(1996) making Differences Matter,Harvard Business Review Robbert S