OB People Gary Kelly – CEO – Southwest Airlines: “My top priority is, as it always has been at Southwest, our people. If our employees love working at.

OB

People

• Gary Kelly – CEO – Southwest Airlines:• “My top priority is, as it always has been at Southwest, our

people. If our employees love working at Southwest Airlines, everything else will fall into place.”

• Stanford’s Jeffrey Pfeffer – There is a substantial and rapidly expanding body of evidence, some of it quite methodically sophisticated that speaks to the strong connection between how firms manage their people and the economic results achieved.

• However, undue emphasis on short term profits precludes long-term efforts to nurture human resources.

• Also excessive layoffs, when managers view people as costs rather than asset, erode trust, commitment and loyalty.

7 people centered practices in successful companies

• Job security (to eliminate fear of layoffs)• Careful hiring (emphasizing a good fit with the company

culture)• Power to the people (via decentralization and self-managed

teams)• Generous pay for performance• Lots of training and development• Less emphasis on status ( to build a we feeling)• Trust building (through sharing of critical information)

4-P cycle of continuous improvement

• People:- Skill development- Motivation- Teamwork- Personal development & learning- Readiness to change and adapt- Increased personal responsibility for orgn outcomes- Greater self-management- Decreased stress• Products:- Better quality goods and services- Greater customer satisfaction- Job creation

4-P cycle

• Processes:- Technological advancement- Faster product development and production cycle times- System flexibility- Leaner and more effective administration- Improved communication and information flow- Organizational learning- Participative and ethical decision making• Productivity:- Reduced waste and rework- More efficient use of material, human, financial, and

informational resources.

Effective Manager’s skill profile

• Managers get results with and through others.1. Clarifies goals and objectives from everyone involved.2. Encourages participation: upward communication and suggestions3. Plans and organizes for an orderly work flow.4. Has technical and administrative expertise to answer orgn related

questions.5. Facilitates work through team building, training, coaching & support.6. Provides feedback honestly and constructively.7. Keeps things moving by relying on schedules, deadlines, and helpful

reminders.8. Controls details without being overbearing.9. Applies reasonable pressure for goal accomplishment.10. Empowers and delegates key duties to others while maintaining goal

clarity and commitment.11. Recognizes good performance with rewards and positive

reinforcement.

The field of OB

• An interdisciplinary field dedicated to better understanding and managing people at work.

• Three basic levels of understanding are : individual, groups & organization.

• Draws upon a diverse array of disciplines: psychology, management, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, economics, political science, psychometrics, decision making theory, ergonomics, human stress management, ethics, etc.

• OB is not an everyday job category like an engineer, accountant, etc.

• OB is a horizontal discipline that cuts across virtually every job category, business function, and professional speciality.

• Everyone needs a solid grounding in OB

Historical perspective

• Three significant landmarks in the evolution of understanding and managing people:

- The human relations management- The total quality management movement- The contingency approach management

Human Relations Movement

• The Hawthorne Legacy: The experiment in Hawthorne plant of Lincoln Electric.

• Writings of Mayo and Follett: Mayo advised managers to attend to employees emotional needs. Follett advised managers to motivate performance instead of simply demanding it. A pull rather than push.

• McGregor’s theory Y: Positive assumption of emp by managers.

• The movement opened the door to more progressive thinking about human nature.

TQM Movement

• Total Quality Management (TQM) has enabled the quality of products and services to be improved compared to the past.

• TQM: The orgn’s culture is defined by and supports the constant attainment of customer satisfaction through an integrated system of tools, techniques and training.

- This involves the continuous improvement of organizational processes, resulting in high quality products and services.

• 4 common TQM principles:- Do it right the first time to eliminate costly rework- Listen to and learn from customers and employees- Make continuous improvement an everyday matter- Build teamwork, trust and mutual respect.

Contingency approach to management

• The approach calls for using management concepts and techniques in a situationally appropriate manner.

- Instead of relying on ‘one just way’.• The approach encourages managers to view organizational

behaviour within a situational context.• According to this perspective, evolving situations, not hard-

and-fast rules, determine when and where various management techniques are appropriate.

New directions in OB

• Three general new directions:- Human & Social capital- Positive OB- Impact of the internet revolution

Human & Social Capital

• Human capital is the productive potential of an individual’s knowledge and actions.

• Orgns invest in resources to build their human capital to spur them forward.

• Five human capital outcomes:1. Leadership / managerial practices: Effectiveness of leaders and

mgrs to optimize the orgn’s human capital2. Workforce optimization: optimizing the perf of the working staff3. Learning capacity: Orgn’s ability to learn, change and improve4. Knowledge accessibility: Getting & sharing knowledge5. Talent engagement: Orgn’s ability to retain, engage, and

optimize the value of its talent.• Social capital is productive potential resulting from strong

relationships, goodwill, trust and cooperative effort.

Positive OB

• In the past theory and research became preoccupied with mental and behavioural pathologies; or, what is wrong with people.

• Psychologists like Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers pulled together the concept of positive psychology.

• The approach recommended focusing on human strengths and potential as a way to possible prevent mental and behavioural problems and improve the general quality of life.

• It is about valued subjective experiences: well-being, contentment, and satisfaction; hope and optimism and flow and happiness.

• At the individual level it is about positive individual traits.• At the group level: civic virtues, better citizenship,

responsibility, nurturance, altruism, tolerance, work ethic.

Internet & E-Business revolution

• Internet is a tool that dramatically lowers the cost of communication.

• Enables speedier communication• We can be at different places at the same time.

Ethics

• The problem when discussing ethics is that there is no universal standard of ethical behaviour.

• Ethics involves the study of moral issues and choices.• It is concerned with right versus wrong, good versus bad, and

the many shades of grey in supposedly black and white issues.• Moral implication springs from virtually every decision, both

on and off the job.• Managers are challenged to have more imagination and the

courage to do the right thing.• Ethics and unethical conduct is a product of a complex

combination of influences: Ethical codes, orgn culture; orgn size and structure; perceived pressure for results; corporate strategy; political and legal environment; industry and national culture;

Ethics

• The individual decision maker has a unique combination of personality characteristics, values and moral principles, leaning towards or away from ethical behaviour.

• Personal experiences with being rewarded or reinforced for certain behaviours and punished for others also shapes the individual’s tendency to act ethically or unethically.

• Also men and women have different orientation towards organizational behaviour.

• Top management support in creating an ethical work environment is crucial.

• Larger firms are more likely to behave illegally.• Tendency among the middle and lower level managers to act

unethically in the face of perceived pressure to deliver results.

Ethics

• By fostering a pressure cooker atmosphere for results, managers can unwittingly set the stage for unethical shortcuts by employees who seek to please and be loyal to the company.

• Ethical decisions frequently involves tradeoffs.• You start with if the action is legal; if not then don’t do it.• If legal, then consider the impact of the action on the shareholder

value.• A decision maximizes shareholder value when it results in a more

favourable financial position for the orgn.• Next consider if the action is ethical.• That will be based on considering the positive effect of the action

on an orgn’s key constituents against the benefit to the shareholder.

• In all cases the manager is considered to act on issues that benefit shareholders more than to other constituents.

General Moral Principals for managers

• Dignity of human life: the lives of people are to be respected.• Autonomy: all people are intrinsically valuable and have to

right to self-determination• Honesty: the truth should be told to those who have the right

to know it.• Loyalty: Promises, contracts and commitments should be

honoured.• Fairness: people should be treated justly.• Humaneness: Our actions should accomplish good and we

should avoid doing evil.• The common good: Actions should accomplish the “greatest

goods for the greatest number” of people.

Improving orgn’s ethical climate

• Behave ethically yourself.• Screen potential employees• Develop and communicate a meaningful code of ethics:- Distribute to every employees- Top management support important and seen- Refer to specific practices and ethical dilemmas likely to be

encountered by target employees.- Should be evenly enforced: rewards for compliance and strict

penalties otherwise.• Provide ethics training• Reinforce ethical behaviour• Create positions, units, and other structural mechanisms to

deal with ethics.

Orgn Culture, Socialization & Mentoring

Culture

• It is a set of shared, taken-for-granted implicit assumptions that a group holds and that determines how it perceives, thinks about, and reacts to its various environment.

• The way we do things around here.• It is shaped by four key components:- The founder’s values, the industry and business environment,

the national culture and the senior leader’s vision and behaviour.

• The culture influences the type of orgn structure adopted, and a host of prctices, policies and procedures implemented in pursuit of orgn goals.

Layers of orgn culture

• Three fundamental layers; each varies in terms of outward visibility and resistance to change and each level influences the other.

1. Observable artifacts:- At the visible level, artifacts consists of the physical

manifestations of an orgn’s culture.- Includes manner of dress, awards, myths and stories,

published list of values, observable rituals and ceremonies, special parking spaces, decorations, etc.

- Also includes visible behaviour exhibited by people and groups.

- Artifacts are easier to change than the less visible aspects of orgn culture.

Layers of orgn culture

2. Espoused values:- Values are: concepts or beliefs, pertain to desired end states or

behaviour, transcends situations, guide selection or evaluation of behaviour and events, and are ordered by relative importance.

- Espoused values represent the explicitly stated values and norms that are preferred by the orgn.

- Managers hope that as they are communicated, they will directly influence employee behaviour.

- Enacted values: represent the values and norms that actually are exhibited or converted into employee behaviour.

- They represent the values employees ascribe to an orgn based on their observations of what occurs on a daily basis.

- Imp for mgrs to reduce the gap between espoused and enacted values – significantly influence employee attitudes and orgn perf.

Layers of orgn culture

3. Basic assumptions:- Basic underlying assumptions are unobservable and

represent the core of orgn culture.- The constitute orgn values that have become so taken for

granted over time that they have become assumptions that guide orgn behaviour.

- They are thus highly resistant to change.

Functions of orgn culture

1. Give members an organizational identity:- Southwest Airways, a fun company to work with, values

employees satisfaction and customer loyalty over corporate profits.

2. Facilitate collective commitment:- 31,000 Southwest Airways employees are committed to the

mission of customer service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride and company spirit.

3. Promote social system stability:- It reflects the extent to which the work envm is perceived as

positive and reinforcing, and the extent to which conflict and change are effectively managed.

4. Shape behaviour by helping members make sense of their surroundings: How the orgn does what it does and how it intends to accomplish its long term goals.

Outcomes associated with orgn culture

• Orgn culture can be a driver of employee attitudes, orgn effectiveness & performance.

• Studies: orgn culture correlated with emp behaviour & attitudes.• Congruence between individual values and orgn values

significantly associated with orgn commitment, job satisfaction, intention to quit, perf and turnover.

• Orgn culture did not predict orgn financial performance.- However, financial perf higher among companies that had an

adaptive and flexible culture.• Studies of mergers indicated that failure normally due to

incompatible cultures.• Essential that mgrs consider consistency between orgn’s culture

and the diff change initiatives that the orgn pursues to achieve goals.

Embedding culture in orgns

• An orgn’s initial culture is an outgrowth of the founder’s philosophy and values.

• Over time, the original culture is either embedded as is or modified to fit the current orgn situation.

• Embedding a culture involves a teaching process: Members teach each others about the orgn’s preferred values, beliefs, expectation and behaviours. You use one or more of the foll mechanisms:

1. Formal statements of orgn philosophy, mission, vision, values, and materials used for recruiting, selection, and socialization.

2. The design of physical space, work environments and buildings3. Slogans, language, acronyms, and sayings4. Deliberate role modelings, training programs, teaching, and

coaching by managers and supervisors.

Embedding culture in orgns

5. Explicit rewards, status symbols and promotion criteria.6. Stories, legends and myths about key people and events.7. The orgn activities, processes, or outcomes that leaders pay

attention to, measure, and control.8. Leader reacts to critical incidents and organizational crisis.9. The workflow and orgn structure.10. Organizational systems and procedures.11. Orgn goals and the associated criteria for recruitment,

selection, development, layoffs, and retirement of people.

Embedding culture through Mentoring

• Mentoring can serve to embed the culture in an orgn:- Creating a sense of oneness by promoting the acceptance of

the core values of the orgn.- Socialization aspect of mentoring also promotes a sense of

membership• Mentored employees performed better and grew faster in the

orgn.• They worked on more challenging assignments and were

more satisfied with their jobs.

Developing Global Managers

Developing a Global Mindset

• Managing a global economy is about patterns of thinking and behaviour as about trade agreements, goods and services and currency exchange rates.

• Extended periods in a single dominant culture ingrains assumptions about how things are and should be.

• Need to develop a global mindset: open-mindedness, adaptability, and a strong desire to learn.

• Societal culture involves “shared meaning” that generally remain below the threshold of conscious awareness.

- They involve taken for granted assumptions about howone should perceive, think, act, and feel.

• Culture comes in layers. To understand it you have to unpeel it layer by layer.

Societal & orgn culture

• Culture affects orgn behaviour in two ways:- Employees bring societal culture with them to work in the

form of customs and language.- Orgn culture in turn affects the individual’s values, ethics,

attitudes, assumptions and expectations.• Mixing of societal and orgn cultures can produce interesting

dynamics in multinational companies.• Unlike Japanese workers, Americans are not interested in

making small step-by-step improvements in increasing quality. They want to achieve the breakthrough, the impossible dream.

• Ethocentrism: the belief that one’s native country, culture, language, and modes of behaviour is superior to others – bad for business.

Global Manager

• Need to develop a global mindset and cross cultural skills.• Developing skilled managers who move from culture to

culture takes time.• All cultural difference need to be viewed as tendencies and

patterns. All Italians and all Koreans are not the same!!• Cultural intelligence is the ability to accurately interpret

ambiguous cross-cultural situations.• To develop cultural intelligence you need to first develop

emotional intelligence, and then practice in ambiguous cross cultural situations.

Hofstede Study

• Cross cultural comparison of 1,16,000 IBM employees from 53 countries: 4 cultural dimensions:

1. Power distance: How much inequality does someone expect in social situations.

2. Individualism – collectivism: How loosely or closely is the person socially bonded?

3. Masculinity – Femininity: Does the person embrace streotypically competitive, performance-oriented masculine traits, or nurturing, relationship-oriented feminine traits?

4. Uncertainty avoidance: How strongly does the person desire highly structured situations?

• Hofstede’s conclusion: a) Mgnt theories and practices need to be adapted to local cultures; b) Cultural arrogance is a luxury individuals, orgns and nations cannot afford in a global economy.

9 Cultural dimensions from the GLOBE project

• GLOBE: Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness

1. Power distance: How much unequal distribution of power should there be in organizations & society?

2. Uncertainty avoidance: How much should people rely on social norms and rules to avoid uncertainty and limit unpredictability?

3. Institutional collectivism: How much should leaders encourage and reward loyalty to the social unit, as opposed to the pursuit of individual goals.

4. In-group collectivism: How much pride and loyalty should individuals have for their family or orgn?

5. Gender egalitarianism: How much effort should be put into minimizing gender discrimination and role inequalities?

9 culture dimensions, GLOBE project

6. Assertiveness: How confrontational and dominant should individuals be in social relationships?

7. Future orientation: How much should people delay gratification by planning and saving for the future?

8. Performance orientation: How much should individuals be rewarded for involvement and excellence?

9. Humane orientation: How much should society encourage and reward people for being kind, fair, friendly, and generous?

Foreign assignment

• Siemens and other global players need a vibrant and growing cadre of employees who are willing and able to do business across cultures.

• Expatriate: anyone living and / or working outside their home country.

- Expatriated when transferred to another company and repatriated when transferred back home.

• Key cross cultural competencies:- Building relationships- Valuing people of diff cultures- Coping with ambiguity- Translating complex information- Adaptability and flexibility- Managing stress.

Foreign assignment

• Finding the right person (with a supportive and adventurous family) for a foreign position is a complex, time-consuming and costly process.

• Realistic job expectations are a must.• Cross cultural training to help adjust to a foreign culture.• Avoid cultural shock: anxiety and doubt caused by an

overload of unfamiliar expectations and social ques.• Provide support through host country sponsors• Avoid reentry shock.

MANAGING INDIVIDUALS

Perception

Perception

• Perception can be a source of communication distortion and conflict between people from diff cultures.

• Our perception and feelings influenced by info we receive from newspapers, magazines, TV, family and friends.

• We store info stored in memory to interpret the world around us; this interpretation influence how we respond and act towards others.

• We are constantly striving how to make sense of the world around us.

• Perception is a cognitive process that enables us to interpret and understand our surroundings.

• Social perception involves a four-stage information processing sequence.

Social Perception

1. Selective attention and comprehension:- People constantly bombarded by physical & social stimuli in

the environment.- Attention is the process of becoming consciously aware of

something or someone.- Attention can be focused on info either from the

environment or from memory.- Some stimuli is salient when it stands out from its context:

e.g. a 120 kg man in a women’s aerobic class (not in a weightlifting event).

- Research: people have a tendency to pay more attention negative than positive information – leading to negativity bias.

Social Perception

2. Encoding and Simplification:- Raw info is interpreted or translated into mental

representations.- To do this perceivers assign information to cognitive

categories; e.g dog, animal.- People, events, and objects are interpreted and evaluated by

comparing their characteristics with info contained in their schema -- a mental picture of a particular event or stimuli.

- People use stereotypes (an individual’s set of beliefs about the characteristics or attributes of a group) to organize and simplify social info.

- However stereotypes can lead to poor decisions- We use the encoding process to interpret and evaluate our

envm.

Common perceptual errors

a. Halo: A rater forms an overall impression about an object and then uses that impression to bias ratings about the object.

b. Leniency: A personal characteristic that leads an individual to consistently evaluate other people or objects in an extremely positive fashion.

c. Central tendency: The tendency to avoid all extreme judgments and rate people and objects as average or neutral.

d. Recency effects: Tendency to remember recent information. If recent info is negative, will be evaluated negatively.

e. Contrast effects: Evaluating people or objects by comparing with characteristics of recently observed people or objects.

Social Perception

3. Storage and Retention:- The phase involves storage of info in long term memory.- The long-term memory is divided into three compartments:- i. Event memory: on specific and general events- ii. Semantic memory: knowledge about the world. It is a

mental dictionary of concepts (e.g. an American)- iii. Person memory: information about a single individual or a

group of people.4. Retrieval & Response:- Information retrieved when making judgments and decisions- Our judgment could be based on interpreting info by

comparing with that in the memory or just retrieving a judgment already made from memory.

Managerial Implications

1. Hiring:- Interviewers base hiring decisions based on impressions of

how the applicant fits the perceived reqms of the job.- Inaccurate perceptions produce poor hiring decisions.- Physical attraction often bias hiring decision.- Hence important in training interviewers appropriately.2. Performance Appraisal:- Faulty schema about what constitutes good or poor

performance.- This can erode work motivation, commitment and loyalty.- Managers need to accurately identify behavioural

characteristics and results indicative of good performance.- Objective measures will provide better results than subjective

ones.

Managerial Implications

3. Leadership:- Employee’s evaluation of their leader effectiveness is

influenced by their schemata of good and poor leaders.- Good leaders perceived to exhibit the foll behaviours: assign

specific tasks to grp members; telling that they have done well; setting specific goals to the group; letting group members take decisions; getting the group to work as a team; maintain definite standards of perf;

4. Communication and personal influence:- Social perception is a screening process that can distort

communication, both coming and going.- Your ability to influence others is based on the schemas in

the other’s regarding age, gender, ethnicity, appearance, personality, etc.

Behavioural tendencies to avoid while selling

1. Being a pushover: Giving up on an idea rather than defending it.

2. Being a robot: When answering questions about your ideas don’t use canned answers.

- First try to understand the other’s point of view or source of confusion than respond with specific answers.

3. Being a used car salesman: Tendency involves being pushy, close minded and argumentative.

4. Being a charity case: tendency characterized by desperation and pleading.

Attributions

• Theory based on the premise that people attempt to infer causes for observed behaviour.

• We constantly formulate cause-and-effect explanations for our own and other’s behaviour.

• Causal attributions are suspected or inferred causes of behaviour

• E.g. a supervisor who attributes an employee’s poor performance to a lack of effort might reprimand that individual.

• People often formulate causal attributions by considering the events preceding an observed behaviour.

• Heider (founder of attribution), proposed that behaviour can be attributed either to internal factors within a person (ability) or to external factors within the environment (difficult task).

Attributional tendencies

• Two tendencies that distort one’s interpretation of observed behaviour:

1. Fundamental attribution bias: reflects ones tendency to attribute other person’s behaviour to his or her personal characteristics, as opposed to situational factors.

- This bias causes perceivers to ignore important environmental forces that often significantly affect behaviour.

- Westernized cultures tend to exhibit this attribution more.2. Self-serving bias: Represents one’s tendency to take more

personal responsibility for success than for failure.- Employees attribute success to internal factors (hard work)

and failures to external factors(tough job, bad luck, bad co-workers etc.)

Managerial application and implication

• Explains how managers handle poorly performing employees.• Mgrs gave employees more immediate, frequent and negative

feedback when they attributed their performance to low effort- The effect more pronounced when the managers success

dependent on the employee’s performance.• The managers tended to transfer employees whose performance

was attributed to a lack of ability- These mgrs did not take action when poor perf was attributed to

external factors beyond the employee’s control.• Mgrs tend to disproportionately attribute behaviour to internal

causes.• An emp. attribution for self perf have dramatic effects on

subsequent motivation, perf. personal attitudes, slf-esteem.• Employees displays high perf and job satisfaction, when they

attribute success to internal factors.

Diversity

Managing Diversity

• Diversity represents the multitude of individual differences and similarities that exist among people.

• Layers of Diversity:- Personality is the center; a stable set of characteristics resp for

a person’s identity.- The next layer; a set of internal dimensions: Age, gender, sexual

orientation, physical ability, etc. primary dimensions not within our control but strongly influence our attitudes, assumptions, etc.

- Next layer, external influences: Religion, educational backgrounds, Work experience, marital status, income, geographical location, etc. They represent individual differences we have ability to control.

- The final level consists of orgn dimensions such as seniority on the job, job title, work location, work field, union affiliation, etc.

Diversity in the workplace

• Women are encountering a glass ceiling• Racial groups are encountering a glass ceiling and perceived

discrimination.• Mismatch between educational attainment and occupational

requirement – underemployment.• The aging workforce.

Barrier and challenges to managing diversity

1. Inaccurate stereotypes and prejudice: Assumptions that diversity hiring will mean sacrificing competence and quality.

2. Ethnocentrism: Assumption that one culture’s rules and norms are better than that of other.

3. Poor career planning: Providing few opportunities for diverse people to reach senior position.

4. An unsupporting and hostile environment for diverse employees: excluded for social events and friendly camaraderie in the workplace.

5. Lack of political savvy on the part of diverse employees.6. Difficulty in balancing work and family issues; women especially.7. Fear of reverse discrimination.8. Diversity not seen as an orgn priority.9. Incorporate in the Appraisal and reward system.

Self-concept, Personality, Emotions

Self-concept

• Self is the core of one’s conscious existence.• Awareness of oneself is referred to as self-concept.- The concept that an individual has of himself as a physical,

social, spiritual or moral being.• A self-concept would not have been possible without the

capacity to think.

Self-esteem

• It is a belief about one’s own self-worth based on an overall self-evaluation.

• Individualistic cultures socialize people to focus more on themselves.

• People in collectivist cultures are socialized to fit into the community and to do their duty.

• Low self-esteem can be raised more by having the person think of desirable characteristics possessed rather than of undesirable characteristics from which he or she is free.

• High self-esteem is the result of good performance and not the other way round.

Building self-esteem in self and others

• The six pillars of self-esteem:1. Live consciously: Be actively and consciously engaged in

what you do and with whom you interact.2. Be self-accepting: Don’t be overly judgmental or critical of

your thoughts and action.3. Take personal responsibility: for own decisions and actions

in life journey.4. Be self-assertive: Be authentic and willing to defend your

believes when interacting with others.5. Live purposefully: Have clear near and long term goals and

realistic plans for achieving them. Create a sense of control.6. Have personal integrity: Be true to your work and values.

Self-efficacy

• I can do that.• People confident of their ability tend to succeed.• A person’s belief about his or her chances of successfully

accomplishing a specific task.• Self-efficacy arises from the gradual acquisition of complex

cognitive, social linguistic, and/or physical skills through experience.

• Helpful nudges from parents, role models and mentors are central to the development of high self-efficacy.

• Oppositely, those with low self-efficacy expectations tend to have low success rates.

• Chronically low self-efficacy is associated with a condition called “learned helplessness” ‘ the belief that one has no control over one’s environment.

Positive self-efficacy – behavioural patterns

• Be active, select best opportunities• Manage the situation – avoid or neutralize obstacles• Set goals – establish standards• Plan, prepare, practice• Try hard: persevere• Creatively solve problems• Learn fro setbacks• Visualize success• Limit stress

Self-monitoring

The extent to which a person observes their own self-expressive behaviour and adapts it to the demands of the situation.

Being highly responsive to social and interpersonal cues of situationally appropriate performance.

High self monitor and low self monitors are criticized.- High self monitors called chameleons, too readily adapt to

situation- Low self monitors criticized for being insensitive.• Not a matter of right or wrong, but a source of diversity which

need to be understood.• Not an either-or proposition. A matter of degree.• Research: a positive relationship between self-monitoring and

success.• Be consciously aware of your self image and how it affects others.

Self-Management

• Social learning theory: Individuals acquire new behaviour through the interplay of environmental cues and cognitive processes.

• When you consciously control this learning process yourself, you are engaging in self-management.

• By arranging envm inducements, generating cognitive supports, ans producing consequences for their own actions people are able to exercise some measure of control over their own behaviour.

Covey’s Eight Habits

1. Be proactive: Choose right means and ends in life; take resp for action.

2. Begin with the end in mind: Be goal oriented3. Put first things first: Establish firm priorities, strike a balance

between daily work and potential for future accomplishments.4. Think win/win: Seek creative and mutually beneficial solutions.5. Seek first to understand and then to be understood: listen well6. Synergize: the whole is better that the sum of the parts.7. Sharpen the saw: Self renewal: mental, Spiritual;

Social/emotional and Physical8. Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs: Self

actualization, doing things passionately, making significant contribution.

Personality – Definition

Individuals have their own way of thinking and acting, their own unique style and personality.

The dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment.

The sum total of the ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others.

The individual’s personality is made up of heredity, environment and moderated by the environment

Your personality type is determined by preferred way of relating to others and to the world – how you focus your attention, acquire information, make decisions, and orient yourself towards the outside world

Personality Attributes affecting OB

• Locus of control: Internals and Externals• Machiavellianism: Pragmatism, emotional distance, believes

ends justify the means• Self-esteem: degree individual like or dislike themselves• Self-monitoring: Individual’s ability to adjust behaviour to

external situations• Risk taking: Willingness to take chances• Type A and B personality: - A: Impatient; hectic pace; can’t cope with leisure; obsessed with numbers;

measuring - B: No sense of urgency; play for fun and relaxation; relax without guilt

The Big Five Model

Extraversion: outgoing, talkative, sociable, assertive

Agreeableness: Trusting, good natured, cooperative, soft hearted

Conscientiousness: Dependable, responsible, achievement oriented, persistent

Emotional stability: Relaxed, secure, unworriedOpenness to experience: Intellectual, imaginative,

curious, broadminded

Sixteen Personality Factors

Person – Job Fit

• Fit between an individual’s personality characteristics and his/her occupational environment.

• Holland’s six personality types:- Realistic: Physical activities requiring skill, strength and

coordination- Investigative: Activities involving thinking, organizing and

understanding- Social: involving helping and developing others- Conventional: Rule related, orderly and unambiguous- Enterprising: Verbal activities with opportunities to influence

others and attain power- Artistic: Prefers ambiguous and unsystematic activities that

allow creative expressions

Shaping Personality

• We are constantly playing different roles, in different situations and with different people

• Sometimes situations shape our role – we step into different costumes to take on different roles

• Occasions when there is an uncertain fit between who we are or expect to be and the role required

• Changes mean we need to act in a new way, perhaps change your image and bring out a hidden side of you.

• You need to make a personality change to alter the way you act or are, to fit better or get along with others

• We are quite plastic and can adapt ourselves to behave differently

Shaping Personality

• Possible to make a 180 degree change in our personality:- Need to determine personality traits that no longer work and

figure out what qualities we need to adopt to become successful

- Practice the new traits• Another way to create change in your personality: be aware

of the trait you are using, control it and use a more appropriate one

• 4 steps to changing your personality:- Determine how you want to change --- what or who you want to become- Create a mental script --- imagine yourself in the new role- Practice your mental script to reinforce your new image of yourself- Play out your mental script in life. • Check out what aspect of your personality you do not like and

imaging the opposite

Mental Scripting

• In mental scripting you create a detailed scenario in which you mentally play out a desired role again and again until you create a habit or a pattern of action

- As you repeatedly experience the action mentally, you reinforce the pattern in your mind

- This, in turn, makes you feel more and more certain you can play the role, and the confidence carries over into playing the scene in every day life

• Once you have created a mental script, practice applying it in the real world

- Practice it a few minutes every day, until you feel really that new trait becomes part of you.

Attitudes

• Defined as a learned disposition to respond in a consistently favourable or unfavourable manner with respect to a given object.

• An attitude is the energy that fuels your thoughts, feelings, and action based on the difference between your expectations and perceptions (our definition of reality) of a situation.

• Thoughts spark our attitude.• Once the mind is stimulated, you consciously or unconsciously

think about the situation.• We develop attitudes in our formative years:- Good news, we all start with good attitudes- Bad news, we later learn how to sour our attitudes.• We are influenced by our environment: family, friends,

colleagues, teachers, etc.

Attitudes

• Three types of people and attitudes:1. Spectators:- Some people go through life watching it happen around them- Their life experiences are limited because they “play safe”.- Would rather observe/support others, don’t take risks, make

mistakes- Have a neutral attitude about life.2. Critics:- Stay on the sidelines of life- Perceive themselves as experts in the game of life, pride

themselves in finding fault with others.- Want their complaints to be heard and understood- Have a negative attitude to life.

Attitudes

3. These people are the players in the game of life- They eagerly await opportunities to learn something new

and to grow, personally and professionally.- They take risks and are not afraid to make mistakes- They have a positive attitude to life.• Our attitude can be situation specific lasting only

temporarily.• You can get all the types in a team: spectators will attend

but not take part or take resp.• Critics will spend time complaining about what happened or

criticizing what is planned.• Players could follow through to get good ideas

implemented, and tasks completed; will engage themselves in planning and executing the project.

Maintain a Positive Attitude

1. Start fresh each day: Give self a pep talk2. Clarify and prioritize your life: Clarify purpose; Visualize

your future; Set goals for yourself; prioritize your actions3. Enjoy the moment: Appreciate life; search for the ‘golden

nugget’ – there is something good in everything; Reward yourself

4. Express, don’t suppress your feelings: Smile, laugh, cry. Unfortunately told not to express feeling when young.

5. Surround yourself with positive influences: positive images, positive smells, positive feelings, positive tastes.

Positive attitude in the workplace

1. Make the most of your work: find positive aspects of your job and concentrate on it: making money, work-life balance, learn new skills.

2. Self-fulfilling prophecy: the more you expect from a situation, the more you get it.

3. Self-talk: Make positive statements about yourself; change negative talk to positive talk.

4. Visualize the positive: Practice makes perfect and then see yourself successful in your ventures.

5. Attack problems head on: address it immediately.6. Look at the bright side: Life is full of good and bad.7. Put your sense of humour to work: Make work fun.

Emotions

• In an ideal world of mgnt, employees pursue orgn goals in a logical and rational manner.

• Emotional behaviour seldom factored in the equation.• Anger and jealousy, both potent emotions, often push aside logic

and rationality in the workplace.• Mgrs use fear and other emotions to both motivate and intimidate.• Managers more effective with an ability to be logical and rational

decision makers and be emotionally charged.• Too much emotion can be disastrous.• Emotions: complex, patterned, orgasmic reactions to how we think

we are doing in our lifelong effort to survive and flourish and to achieve what we wish for ourselves.

• Orgasmic: emotion involves the whole person, biological, psychological and social.

Emotion

• Felt emotion is a natural state• Displayed emotion is when we show what we feel.• Negative emotions are triggered by frustration and failure when

pursuing our goals• Positive emotions are congruent or consistent with an important

lifetime goal.• E.g. Passing or failing an exam.• Emotional labour: “Smile, look happy for the customers”. Faking

it.• Employees may bottle up feeling of frustration, resentment and

anger, which are not appropriate to express.• If not given a healthy expressive outlet, this emotional repression

can lead to a syndrome of emotional exhaustion and burnout.• Emotional contagion: when someone’s bad mood sours yours.

Emotional Intelligence

• The ability to manage oneself and one’s relationship in mature and constructive ways.

• Has four key components:1. Self-awareness2. Self-management3. Social awareness4. Relationship management• The first two constitute personal competence – the

capability to determine how we manage ourselves• The next two feed into social competence – the capabilities

to determine how we manage relationships

Personal competence

1. Self-awareness:- Emotional self-awareness: reading one’s own emotions and

recognizing their impact; using ‘gut sense’ to guide decisions- Accurate self-assessment: Knowing one’s strengths & limits- Self-confidence: a sound sense of one’s self-worth &

capabilities.2. Self-management:- Emotional self-control: keeping disruptive emotions,

impulses under control- Adaptability: Flexibility in adapting to changing conditions- Achievement: The drive to improve perf to reach excellence- Initiative: Readiness to act, seize opportunities- Optimism: seeing the upside in events

Social competence

3. Social awareness:- Empathy: sensing others’ emotions, understanding their

perspectives, and taking active interests in their concerns.- Organizational awareness: reading the currents, decision

networks, and politics at the organizational level.- Service: Recognizing and meeting follower, client or customer

needs.4. Relationship management:- Inspirational leadership- Influence- Developing others- Change catalyst- Conflict management- Building bonds- Teamwork and collaboration.

Motivation: Needs, Job design, Intrinsic motivation, job

satisfaction

Motivation

• Motivation: derived from Latin – to move.• It represents those psychological processes that cause the arousal,

direction and persistence of voluntary actions that are goal directed.• Job performance model:- Individual inputs (skills): ability, job knowledge, disposition, traits,

emotions, moods, beliefs and values. Along with:- Job context (enable/limit): Physical environment; task design;

rewards and reinforcements, supervisory support and coaching, social norms, organizational culture,

- Impact on the motivational process – arousal, attention & direction; Intensity & persistence.

- This creates the motivated behaviours: Focus – what we do; Intensity – how hard we try; Quality – the way we do it; duration – how long.

- This ultimately impacts on the performance.

Need theories

• Need theories attempt to pinpoint internal factors that energize behaviour.

• Needs are psychological or physiological deficiencies that arouse behaviour.

• Two popular theories:1. Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory:- Five needs arranged in an hierarchy: physiological, safety,

love, esteem, self-actualization- When one’s physiological need is satisfied, one’s safety

needs emerge and so on up the need hierarchy- A satisfied need may lose its motivational potential.• Thus, mgrs more likely to fuel employee motivation by

offering benefits and rewards that meet individual needs

Need theories

2. McCelland’s Need theory:- Need for achievement: Desire to accomplish something

difficult; To excel oneself; to increase self-regard by successful exercise of talent.

- Need for affiliation: individuals spend time nurturing relationships; Want to be loved by the group.

- Need for power: Desire to influence, coach, teach others to achieve. Concerned with discipline and self-respect.

• Providing achievement training could be beneficial• Could consider the candidates needs during selection

process.• Mgrs should create challenging task assignments or goals

to influence performance.

Motivating through job design

• Job design / redesign – activities that involves the alteration of specific jobs or interdependent systems of jobs to improve the quality of the job experience and on-the-job productivity.

• Four major approaches:- Mechanistic- Motivational- Biological- Perceptual Motor

Motivation through Job design

• Mechanistic approach:- Industrial engineering approach: scientific management

based on research and experimentation- Improves efficiency of jobs and also facilitates automation.• Motivational approach:- Job enlargement: involves putting more variety into a

worker’s job by combining specialized tasks comparable difficulty. Horizontal loading

- Job Rotation: calls for moving employees from one specialized job to another. Interest stimulated, broader perspective of the orgn.

- Job enrichment: Building achievement, recognition, stimulating work, responsibility, and advancement into a job. Called vertical loading.

Herzberg’s theory

• Herzberg found separate and distinct clusters of factors associated with job satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

• Job satisfaction more associated with achievement, recognition, characteristics of the work, responsibility and advancement.

• These factors were all related to outcomes associated with the content of the task being performed.

• These factors were named as motivators.• Motivators cause a person to move from no satisfaction to

satisfaction.• Job dissatisfaction is associated primarily with factors in the work

context or the environment.• Company policy, administration, tech supervision, salary, IPR,

relationship with boss working conditions, determined job dissatisfaction

• Called hygiene factors. They were not motivational.

Herzberg’s theory

• From his theory Herzberg surmised that satisfaction is not the opposite of dissatisfaction.

- The opposite of job satisfaction is not job dissatisfaction, but rather no job satisfaction; also the opposite of job dissatisfaction was not job satisfaction but no dissatisfaction.

- Thus, there is a zero point between job satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

- A person who has good hygiene factors but not motivational factors will be at zero point; i.e. neither satisfied or dissatisfied.

- Job enrichment entails modifying the job such that the employee has the opportunity to experience achievement, recognition, stimulating work, responsibility and advancement. Vertical loading.

Job characteristics model

• To determine how work can be structured so that employees so that employees are internally or intrinsically motivated.

• Internal motivation is determined by three psychological states:1. Experienced meaningfulness of the work:- Skill variety: performing a variety of skills- Task identity: Performing a whole or completely identifiable

piece of work- Task significance: The extent to which the task affects the life of

people around.2. Experienced responsibility for the outcomes of the work: - Autonomy: Experience freedom, discretion and independence in

work3. Knowledge of results of the work activities:- Feedback: direct and clear info about performance.