Organizational Management-Chapter 11: Understanding Individual Behavior in Organizations
Chapter 11: Understanding Individual Behavior in Organizations
This chapter delves into the intricacies of individual behavior within an organizational context. It explores various factors that shape how employees think, feel, and act, providing managers with insights to better understand, predict, and influence workplace performance.
1. The Importance of Understanding Individual Behavior
Foundation for Effective Management: Without understanding individuals, managers cannot effectively motivate, communicate, lead, resolve conflicts, or design appropriate jobs.
Predicting and Influencing Performance: Knowing how attitudes, perceptions, and personality traits influence behavior allows managers to better predict performance and design interventions to improve it.
Building Strong Teams: Understanding individual differences is crucial for forming cohesive and high-performing teams, where diverse strengths can be leveraged.
Addressing Workplace Issues: Many workplace problems (e.g., conflict, low morale, resistance to change) stem from individual differences and require a nuanced understanding of human behavior to resolve.
Employee Well-being: A manager who understands individual stress points, motivations, and learning styles can foster a more supportive and productive environment.
2. Foundations of Individual Behavior: Attitudes, Perception, Personality
These three elements form the bedrock of an individual's psychological makeup in the workplace.
A. Attitudes:
Definition: Evaluative statements—either favorable or unfavorable—concerning objects, people, or events. They reflect how an individual feels about something. Attitudes have three components:
Cognitive Component: The belief, opinion, or knowledge component (e.g., "My boss is unfair.").
Affective Component: The emotional or feeling component (e.g., "I dislike my boss.").
Behavioral Component: The intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something (e.g., "I'm looking for another job.").
Cognitive Dissonance: A state of discomfort experienced by an individual who simultaneously holds two or more conflicting cognitions (ideas, beliefs, values, or emotions). People are motivated to reduce this dissonance.
Managerial Relevance: Managers observe dissonance when employees hold conflicting beliefs (e.g., "I believe in sustainability" but work for a polluting company). Reducing dissonance can lead to attitude or behavior change.
Key Job-Related Attitudes:
Job Satisfaction: An individual's general attitude toward his or her job. A highly satisfied employee holds positive attitudes toward the job.
Impact: Linked to lower turnover, lower absenteeism, higher productivity, higher customer satisfaction, and improved organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs - discretionary behaviors that promote effective functioning).
Job Involvement: The degree to which an employee identifies with his or her job, actively participates in it, and considers his or her perceived performance level important to self-worth.
Organizational Commitment: The degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization.
Employee Engagement: When employees are connected to, satisfied with, and enthusiastic about their jobs. Highly engaged employees are passionate about their work.
B. Perception:
Definition: The process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment. People's behavior is based on their perception of reality, not necessarily reality itself.
Factors Influencing Perception:
Perceiver: Attitudes, motives, interests, experience, expectations.
Target: Novelty, motion, sounds, size, background, proximity, similarity.
Situation: Time, work setting, social setting.
Perceptual Distortions/Biases (similar to decision-making biases in Chapter 7):
Selective Perception: People interpret what they see based on their interests, background, experience, and attitudes.
Halo Effect: Forming a general impression about an individual based on a single characteristic (e.g., judging someone as overall good because they are punctual).
Stereotyping: Judging someone on the basis of one's perception of the group to which that person belongs.
Contrast Effect: Evaluating a person's characteristics that are affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics.
Projection: Attributing one's own characteristics to other people.
Managerial Relevance: Managers need to be aware of how their own perceptions (e.g., in performance appraisals) and those of their employees can be biased and lead to misjudgments or misunderstandings.
C. Personality:
Definition: The unique combination of emotional, thought, and behavioral patterns that affect how a person reacts to situations and interacts with others.
The Big Five Personality Model (OCEAN):
Openness to Experience: Imaginative, artistic, curious, intellectual. (Related to creativity, innovation).
Conscientiousness: Responsible, dependable, persistent, organized. (Strongly correlated with job performance across many occupations).
Extraversion: Sociable, gregarious, assertive. (Related to performance in sales, management roles).
Agreeableness: Good-natured, cooperative, trusting. (Related to teamwork, customer service).
Neuroticism (Emotional Stability): Calm, self-confident, secure vs. nervous, anxious, depressed, insecure. (Emotionally stable individuals tend to be happier, less stressed, and more resilient).
Other Relevant Personality Traits:
Locus of Control: The degree to which people believe they control their own fate (internal locus) vs. believing external forces control them (external locus).
Machiavellianism: The degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means.
Self-Esteem: An individual's degree of like or dislike for himself or herself.
Self-Monitoring: An individual's ability to adjust his or her behavior to external situational factors.
Risk-Taking: Propensity to take risks.
Managerial Relevance: Understanding personality traits helps managers assign appropriate tasks, form effective teams, and adapt their leadership style. However, managers must avoid stereotyping based on personality and recognize that behavior is also influenced by the situation.
3. Values and Ethics in the Workplace
Values: 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. They are relatively stable and influence attitudes and behaviors. (Revisit Chapter 4 on ethics).
Terminal Values: Desirable end-states of existence (e.g., happiness, security, self-respect).
Instrumental Values: Preferred modes of behavior or means of achieving terminal values (e.g., honesty, ambition, capability).
Managerial Relevance: Understanding individual and organizational values is crucial for creating an ethical culture, motivating employees, and ensuring person-organization fit. Value congruence (when individual values align with organizational values) leads to higher satisfaction and commitment.
4. Learning and Reinforcement Theory
Learning: Any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience.
Operant Conditioning (B.F. Skinner): Behavior is a function of its consequences. People learn to behave in ways that lead to desired outcomes and avoid behaviors that lead to undesired outcomes.
Reinforcement:
Positive Reinforcement: Providing a desirable consequence after a desired behavior (e.g., praise, bonus). Increases likelihood of behavior.
Negative Reinforcement: Removing an unpleasant consequence after a desired behavior (e.g., manager stops nagging when task is completed). Increases likelihood of behavior.
Punishment: Applying an undesirable consequence after an undesired behavior (e.g., demotion, reprimand). Decreases likelihood of behavior.
Extinction: Withholding reinforcement for a previously reinforced behavior, causing it to diminish.
Social Learning Theory: Individuals can learn by observing others and by direct experience.
Key Processes: Attentional processes, retention processes, motor reproduction processes, reinforcement processes.
Managerial Relevance: Managers can use reinforcement principles to shape employee behavior, encourage desired actions, and discourage undesirable ones. Effective managers provide timely and specific feedback (reinforcement). Modeling appropriate behavior (social learning) is also crucial.
5. Emotional Intelligence (EI)
Definition: The ability to understand and manage one's own emotions, and to understand and influence the emotions of others. It's distinct from cognitive intelligence (IQ).
Components of EI (Goleman):
Self-Awareness: Knowing one's own feelings, strengths, weaknesses, values, and goals, and their impact on others.
Self-Regulation (or Self-Management): Managing one's internal states, impulses, and resources (e.g., controlling anger, trustworthiness, conscientiousness, adaptability).
Social Awareness (Empathy): Understanding the feelings, needs, and concerns of others; sensing unspoken emotions.
Relationship Management (or Social Skills): Adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others (e.g., influence, conflict management, communication, building bonds).
Managerial Relevance: EI is increasingly recognized as a critical factor for managerial success, particularly in leadership and team-based roles. Managers with high EI are often better communicators, motivators, and conflict resolvers.
6. Stress Management
Definition of Stress: A dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, demand, or resource related to what the individual desires and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important.
Sources of Stress (Stressors):
Organizational: Task demands (e.g., job design, deadlines), role demands (e.g., role ambiguity, role conflict), interpersonal demands (e.g., bad relationships with colleagues), organizational structure, organizational leadership.
Personal: Family issues, financial problems, personality characteristics.
Consequences of Stress:
Physiological: Headaches, high blood pressure, heart disease.
Psychological: Anxiety, depression, decreased job satisfaction, burnout.
Behavioral: Reduced productivity, increased absenteeism, higher turnover, poor decision-making.
Managing Stress (Individual and Organizational Approaches):
Individual: Time management, physical exercise, relaxation techniques, social support networks.
Organizational: Improved communication, employee selection and placement, realistic goal setting, redesigning jobs, stress management programs, employee assistance programs (EAPs), supportive organizational culture.
Managerial Relevance: Managers have a responsibility to identify and mitigate workplace stressors, as excessive stress negatively impacts employee well-being and organizational performance. A supportive manager can buffer stress.