Personality, perception and attribution

In the last week we started an interest topic relating with the behavior in the organization.
Perception, personality and attribution are characteristics that influence in a direct way the organizational behavior.

Perception is often compared with a pair of glasses, cause each individual understand, feel and see the world in a particular way. The perception is reflected in the way that a person act and behave. As Peter Lindsay and Donald A. Norman said in the book Human Information Processing: An Introduction to Psychology: “Perception is the process by which organisms interpret and organize sensation to produce a meaningful experience of the world… perception in humans describes the process whereby sensory stimulation is translated into organized experience.”

Frequently, the perception distorted the reality. People tend to leak information about events or situations experienced by selecting information from their environment. This leads the individual to change reality.

Personality, on the other hand, is defined as "An individual's pattern of psychological processes arising from motives, feelings, thoughts, and other major areas of psychological function. Personality is expressed through its influences on the body, in conscious mental life, and through the individual's social behavior." (Mayer, 2005)

Psychologist Fritz Heider (1896–1988) defined attribution in his 1958 book The Psychology of Interpersonal Relation as: “what people perceived and believed about what they saw dictated how they would act, even if their beliefs about what they perceived were invalid.”

A worker could attribute their performance in the organization to external factors in the environment or internal factors like knowledge. Judge the performance of a worker based only in one of these factors can have negative results in the motivation of the employee and in the organization.

References

• Peter Lindsay & Donald A. Norman: Human Information Processing: An Introduction to Psychology, 1977.
• Mayer, J. D. (2005). A classification of DSM-IV-TR mental disorders according to their relation to the personality system. In J. C. Thomas & D. L. Segal (Eds.), Comprehensive handbook of personality and psychopathology (CHOPP) Vol. 1: Personality and everyday functioning. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
•http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/A-Bud/Attribution-Theory.html#ixzz0wKaWdKPI
• Heider, Fritz.The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations.New York: Wiley, 1958.
• Takao Inamori, Farhad Analoui, "Beyond Pygmalion effect: the role of managerial perception", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 29 Iss: 4, pp.306 – 321

Attitudes and values

Attitude is “a mental and neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual's response to all objects and situations with which it is related” (Allport, 1935). This mean that attitudes are formed, the individuals are not born with the attitudes. Also means that our attitudes are reflected in our actions and reactions.
That is why attitude is related with evaluation, cause based on past experiences and a social learning, individuals evaluate a current situation an behave according to that evaluation.

Based on how we form our own attitudes is appropriate to say that another of the characteristics is that attitudes may change. Experiences in future situations and persuasion can change a person's behavior.

The Organizational Behavior studies are concerned with work-related attitudes and behavior. The employee’s attitude toward work can affect the job satisfaction, and the commitment with the organization.

Values are the set of ideas and beliefs of a group or a society. Values contain judgmental element as to what is right or not. Organizational values set standards of behavior in an organization, developing norms or guidelines.

Values provide the foundation for understanding a person’s attitudes, perceptions and personality, that’s why, is an important issue that explains the behavior of a person.


References

• http://users.ipfw.edu/bordens/social/attit.htm
• Gregorio Martín-de-Castro, José Emilio Navas-López, Pedro López-Sáez, Elsa Alama-Salazar, (2006) "Organizational capital as competitive advantage of the firm", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 7 Iss: 3, pp.324

Questions

1. Please explain, using your own words, the concept of Pygmalion Effect. What are the potential implications, uses, or challenges that this effect may pose for organizations engaging into international operations that require the understanding of diverse cultural contexts? Can you use this concept to explain the relationship between national and organizational cultures?

The Pygmalion Effect tries to explain how expectation interferes in the relations between the perceiver and the target. In other words, and applied to organization, when managers put their faith in an employee and believe that this organizational member could achieve something great, the person is more able to achieve a goal in a big way.

The theory also takes us automatically to think in the importance of trust as a motivational tool, cause managers play an important role in the organization, act as leaders, if they believe in their employees they are helping them to have a better performance. The Pygmalion Effect phenomenon talks about how people try to adapt their behavior to others expectation.

This phenomenon is easy to see in a work setting. “An employee’s quality of work and mind-set toward challenges depends on understanding what is expected of the employee. Understanding comes through example. Just as a new employee adapts and performs based on observing behaviors that are rewarded, existing employees will do the same in a culture-change initiative.” (Kathleen Goolsby, 2006)

In today’s international environment, organizations are more competitive, and success is more critical than ever. Leaders are the responsible of the environment and the team work results, that’s why motivation is a key factor.

In an international context different cultures meet, it happens in organizations. Making cultural differences do not affect the environment in the organization depends on what employees believe that their superiors expected of them.

As has been said by many, organizations have a special feature, are constantly changing, more so in an international environment. Workers must adapt to different circumstances almost every day, and understanding the Pygmalion Effect can make a difference. The way, in which organizational leaders communicate, motivate, and encourage their team work affect the work environment.

The Pygmalion effect also can explain the relationship between national and organizational cultures. An easy way to understand this is analyzing what happens when an employee is new to a company. The employee adapts its behavior according to what he/she see in the organization, although their performance is not that which dictates their national culture.

But, as the expectations you have on employees can be good, can also be bad. A negative expectation on the performance of subordinates may also affect the working environment. Also, the manager’s positive expectation does not enhance the performance of the worker. Those two cases lead the worker to feel discouraged and assign the result of what happened to external wedges.

As a personal opinion I believe that the expectations you have about someone and how that is communicated must be clear. Set high expectations and believe that a person can perform better than their capabilities allow them to, is a big mistake. As indeed is expected very little from someone who can give more.



References


Kathleen Goolsby, (2006) “Leadership Behaviors Can Hinder Corporate Goals”, Partnering Intelligence newsletter.

Takao Inamori, Farhad Analoui, "Beyond Pygmalion effect: the role of managerial perception", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 29 Iss: 4, pp.306 - 321