Organizational Behavior Essay

The evolution in understanding human beings as resources in organisations has excelled over generations. Picture an organisation. Whether it is a multinational corporation or a local shop; take away the individuals and what is there left? Not a whole lot. There will still be resources such as empty buildings or strong finances but nothing that allows for a functioning business.
The study of Organisational Behaviour shows the importance to understanding individuals in the work place and the complexity to how different each person is. As put by Robbing and Judge (2013), “We aren’t all the same. This is obvious enough, but managers sometimes forget that they need to recognise and capitalise on these differences to get the most from their employees.”
Contemporary work forces contain a diverse variety of ethnic origins, nationalities, disabilities and factors to what actually makes a person. This essay will show the importance of individuals within organisations whilst looking at those factors which shape individuals: personality, values, attitudes, perception, motivation and emotions. To fully understand the importance of the area of study, it must first be looked at how it in how it has developed over the years. The Hawthorne study is one of the key breakthroughs on influencing how a workforce and individuals should be managed. This study was under-taken between 1924 and 1932 at a Western Electric Company in Chicago named Hawthorne Works. (Mayo. 1933). Part of the study involved isolating a small group of workers away from the main group so that their behaviour could be observed more closely. The output of the small group showed to increase steadily and absences shown to be one third of that of the main group (Mayo. 1993). After evaluation it proved to be the case that performance was influenced significantly through the amount of care and attention that was made.
Organisations are now becoming increasingly aware of the importance of individuals as a resource and how the correct approach to management can influence success through the ever-growing theories and studies. To gain an understanding on how to get the most out of an employee, personality must firstly be evaluated. Although not all may agree, there is a strong argument for personality being the main source of politicking in organisations. Bacharach and Lawler (1998) describe this type of politics as focusing on the use of power to affect decision making in an organisation, or on self-serving and organisationally unsanctioned behaviours. Personality traits or a contrast in two or more peoples personality traits normally dictate the playing of politics in organisations. Although there are many personality traits that can be looked when studying individuals, for the purpose of politics, narcissist, machiavellian, self-monitoring and introvert traits will be looked at. A narcissist can be descibed as a person who love themselves. In the modern working environment, it is very common to work as part of a team or a group. Having a high narcissist personality can cause problems when working with others towards a goal. Take for example a football team, whether or not how good the person is, it is vital to work together as a team in order to achieve the best performance. No matter how good a single person is, they cannot do it all by themselves. A narcissistic personality may try and keep the ball themselves as opposed to passing to others and then sacrifice possession as a result thus harming the team’s performance. Team mates will then in time develop a disliking to the approach of the individual and politicking will begin to occur. The Machiavellian personality-characterised by the will to manipulate and deceive others to achieve personal goals-is comfortable in a political environment. (Robbins and Judge. 2013) An example scenario where this type of individual will use their personality in an organisation is when the opportunity for promotion arises. Outwith carrying out their job to a high standard, other approaches may be taken such as telling others they are not applying for it when in fact they will, playing down others to the manager, playing others against each other or ‘sucking up’ to their manager. High self-monitors poses an internal desire for control and a need for power and are likely to engage in political behaviour. (O’Connor and Morrison. 2001) Because of the self-belief that they can control their own environment, just like the Machiavellian trait, will take a proactive stance and attempt to manipulate certain situations to suit a desired outcome. Introverted individuals on the other hand will not choose not to participate in political behaviour when it can be avoided. An organisation with high political behaviour can discourage trust between co-workers and different level of management and lead to stress which is one of the most common long term reasons for sick leave. (Anonymous. 2013)
Moving on from personality, the essay will now look at values in individuals. Robbins and Judge (2013) states that values are, “basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence.” Values are described as being absolute and most are developed through the early stages of lives through parenting, teachers, friends and others. There is also evidence linking personality to values, suggesting that the values we hold are partly genetically transmitted traits. (Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz, and A, Knafo. 2002) Values are separated into two classifications, terminal and instrumental. Terminal values being desirable end-states; goals that are looked to be achieved in an individual’s life. Instrumental values are the means of achieving the terminal value and the mode of behaviour to get there. (Robbins and Judge. 2013) An example scenario would be a university student valuing a strong degree as a means of getting a good job; this would be considered a terminal value. The means of achieving the terminal value would be through hard work and study being instrumental gaining the grades needed. Values are said to lay the foundations for, and influence, the attitudes, perception and motivation of individuals.
Attitudes are evaluative judgements made towards someone or something. Breckler (1984) describes an attitude as there being three respective components to an attitude: cognitive, affective and behavioural. The cognition stage of an attitude is the evaluation of an individual to the given situation or environment. Affective stage is then the feeling or emotion gained from the cognitive stage, with behavioural then being the form of action taken, the intention to behave in a certain way towards someone or something. There are three main job attitudes focused on in the study of organisational behaviour which scale the positive or negative evaluations that employees hold towards their working environment. These are job satisfaction or dissatisfaction, Job Involvement and Organisational Commitment. (Moynihan and Pandey. 2007) When people discuss their attitude towards their work, they often mean the level of job satisfaction based on an evaluation of its characteristics. Key elements consist of the nature of the work, supervision, present pay, promotion opportunities and relationship with co-workers. The level of Job satisfaction employees have can affect an organisation to a great extent. Robbins and Judge (2013) shows that satisfaction proves to have a direct correlation with performance, when both satisfaction data and productivity are collected from organisations it is found that the ones with more satisfied employees tend to be more effective than organisations with fewer. In return the level of job satisfaction employees have influence the customer service of the organisation, the absenteeism and staff turnover. It makes sense that a person that does not enjoy their work will be more inclined to miss it or more severely look for other prospects elsewhere. Job involvement shares a relation to job satisfaction and is considers the degree to which people identify with their job psychologically and consider their perceived performance important to self-worth. (Blau and Boal. 1987) Employees with a high level of involvement strongly identify with and really care about the work they do. Organisational commitment measures the extent to which an employee identifies with an organisation and its goals, if commitment is there, the employee will wish to remain in their position of the organisation. Just like in satisfaction there is a negative relationship between absenteeism and turnover when commitment is low. (Robbins and Judge. 2013)
Values, discussed earlier, also influence individual’s perception. Robbins and Judge (2013) state that, “perception is a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.” However, what is perceived by a person could be significantly different from reality. Perception is vital when studying organisational behaviour as people’s behaviour is not based on reality itself but in fact their perception on what reality is. When an individual perceives a target, the interpretation is influenced to a great extent by their personal characteristics such as already been discussed in the essay. Perception does have its negative aspects in organisations as well as in society as a whole. Often people take shortcuts when judging others, an example being stereotyping, which is a common process in day to day life. Generalising people based on the group to which he or she belongs seems an easy means to simplifying a complex world. (Robbins and Judge. 2013) Groups can be age, ethnic origin, religious views, and disabilities and so on. Overall perceptions of individuals play a big part in any organisation. In the employment process, interviews are commonly used. Research carried out by Willis and Todorov (2006) suggests that impressions are made on others within a tenth of a second, based on the first glance. If at first a negative impression is made, they are then difficult for interviewers to look past. Generally speaking a ‘good applicant’ is judged more on the absence of unfavourable characteristics than the presence of favourable ones. (Robbins and Judge. 2013) It is vital that the impressions made on the individual are relate to whether they suit the job role and the organisation itself. Other aspects which perception plays a large part in are performance expectance and performance evaluation. Expectations become reality, If a manager expects high performance of employees, they will strive to reach them and not let them down. On the other hand, if low expectations are held then they are likely to be met. (Robbins and Judge. 2013) In performance evaluation subjective evaluations can be problematic as the judgement on performance is ultimately down to perception of the evaluator.
Emotions and moods heavily shape the behaviour of individuals in organisations. Given the extensive role that emotions play in people’s lives, it is surprising that only till recently the field of organisational behaviour has given the topic little attention. (C. D. Fisher and N. M. Ashkanasy. 2000) It is clear that a person’s moods and emotions is going to affect their work within an organisation and evaluating what triggers and influences them can be beneficial. In this area of study, three terms are used which are closely intertwined. Affect is defined by Barsade and Gibson (2007) as “a broad range of feelings that people experience, including both emotions and moods.” Emotions are then described as intense feelings that are directed at someone and moods as Feeling that tend to be less intense and moods where cause if often general and unclear. Emotions are caused by a specific event and last only seconds or minutes. They are specific with examples being fear, happiness and disgust. Emotions are often accompanied by with body language such as facial expressions. Moods on the other hand last for a longer duration, hours or days and tend to have unclear causes. The mind-set is more general, dimensions being positive or negative affect that are composed of multiple emotions. Moods are generally expressed through body language and are cognitive in nature. (Robbins and Judge. 2013) Stress in the work place has already been touched on in political environments. Emotions and moods is a large contributor to stress levels, as found in a study by Fuller, Stanton, Fisher, Spitzmuller, Russel and Smith (2003), “a constant diet of even low-level stressful events has the potential to cause workers to experience gradually increasing levels of strain over time.”. When the ‘strain’ is being developed, performance will decrease similarly, when moods and emotions are high performance will correspond. This makes it vital for organisations and managers to understand people’s emotions and moods. Having a good understanding on what causes an employee’s emotions and moods can allow managers to influence them. This can be done in ways such as managers simply being in a good mood themselves which will have a ‘rubbing-off’ effect on others. Using humour and giving employees genuine tokens of appreciation for work well done can also be affective.
All of what has been discussed up until now helps us understand motivation and how it helps shape individuals. Robbins and Judge (2013) define motivation as, “the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal.” There are numerous theories which look to evaluate what motivates a worker. One of which is Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y approach. McGregor had two distinct views on human beings: one basically being negative, branded Theory X, and the other positive, branded Theory Y. Theory X makes the assumption that individuals put into this bracket dislike work, are lazy, dislike responsibility and must be coerced to perform. It is assumed that individuals belonging to Theory Y enjoy work, are creative, seek responsibility and exercise self-direction. (McGregor. 1960) Although there is certainly truth to this theory, there is generally a more detailed approach to understanding motivation. Take for example the cognitive evaluation theory, a contemporary theory of motivation developed form self-determination. This theory holds states that allocating extrinsic rewards for behaviour that have previously been intrinsically rewarded tends to decrease the overall level of motivation as the reward can be seen as controlling. (Deci, koestner and Ryan. 1999) A quote from an employee of the Human Society obtained from Robbins and Judge (2013) helps sum up this theory “It’s strange… I started work at the Human Society as a volunteer. I put in 15 hours a week helping people adopt pets. And I loved coming to work. Then, 3 months ago, they hired me full time at $11 an hour. I’m doing the same work I did before. But I’m not finding it nearly as much fun.” Another person could be in the exact same situation but be more motivated through getting a wage. This shows the extent to how individuals are different and will have their own means of motivation. Managers in organisations should be sensitive towards individual differences, spend the necessary time to understand what is important and see the importance of meaningful and constructive feedback.
In conclusion, there are many factors which help shape the individuality of a person. Such has been discussed throughout the essay. It cannot be stressed enough how important individuals are as a resource to an organisations. It is imperative that this is realised and the necessary management is taken in order to survive, succeed and grow as a business. Even more so in today’s society, with a wide diversity in the work force managers must realise the complexity of each employee as an individual and how to get the most out of them. In competitive markets, an effective and efficient market can be a great advantage and through the study in individual behaviour this can be achieved.

References
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References: Anonymous . (2013). Stess. Available: http://www.anxietyuk.org.uk/about-anxiety/stress/. Last accessed 10th Dec 2013. C D. McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise (New York: McGraw Hill, 1960) D E. L Deci, R. Koestner and R. M. Ryan, “A Meta-Analytic Review of Experiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin 125, no. 6 (1999) , pp. 627-668 E G. J. Blau and K. R. Boal, “Conventionalizing how Job Involvement and Organizational Commitment Affect Turnover and Absenteeism,” Academy of Management Review (April 1987), p.290 J J. Willis and A. Todorov, “First Impressions: Making Up Your Mind after a 100ms Exposure to a Face,” Psychological Science 17, no. 7 (2006), pp. 592-598 Robbins, S and Judge, T Robbins, S and Judge, T. (2013). Diversity . In: Paoli, L Organizational Behavior. 15th ed. London: Pearson Education. p74. Robbins, S and Judge, T. (2013). Emotions and Moods. In: Paoli, L Organizational Behavior. 15th ed. London: Pearson Education. p132-144. Robbins, S and Judge, T. (2013). Perception and Individual Decision Making. In: Paoli, L Organizational Behavior. 15th ed. London: Pearson Education. p204-207. Robbins, S and Judge, T. (2013). Personality and Values. In: Paoli, L Organizational Behavior. 15th ed. London: Pearson Education. p178-180. Robbins, S and Judge, T. (2013). Power and Politics . In: Paoli, L Organizational Behavior. 15th ed. London: Pearson Education. p461. S.B Bacharach. and E. J. Lawler, “Political Alignments in Organizations,” in R. M. Kramer and M. A. Neil (eds.), Power and Influence in Organizations (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998), pp.68-69 S S. J. Breckler, “Empirical Validation of Affect, Behaviour and Cognition as Distinct Components of Attitude.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (May 1984) , pp. 1191-1205 S W. E. O’Connor and T. G. Morrison, “A Comparison of Situational and Dispositional Predictors of Perceptions of Organizational Politics,” Journal of psychology (May 2001), pp.301-312.