organizational behavior

1.1 attitude

What is an attitude? Allport (1935) defined an attitude as a mental or neural

state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive

or dynamic influence on the individual’s response to all objects and situations

to which it is related. A simpler definition of attitude is a mindset

or a tendency to act in a particular way due to both an individual’s

experience and temperament. Attitudes help us define how we see situations, as well as define how

we behave toward the situation or object.

Formation of Attitudes

How are attitudes formed? Attitude formation is a result of learning, modeling

others, and our direct experiences with people and situations. Attitudes

influence our decisions, guide our behavior, and impact what we selectively

PERCEPTION

Perception is closely related to attitudes. Perception is the process by

which organisms interpret and organize sensation to produce a meaningful

experience of the world (Lindsay & Norman, 1977). In other words, a

person is confronted with a situation or stimuli. The person interprets the

stimuli into something meaningful to him or her based on prior experiences.

However, what an individual interprets or perceives may be substantially

different from reality.

The perception process follows four stages: stimulation, registration,

organization, and interpretation

A person’s awareness and acceptance of the stimuli play an important

role in the perception process. Receptiveness to the stimuli is highly

selective and may be limited by a person’s existing beliefs, attitude, motivation,

and personality . Individuals will select the stimuli

that satisfy their immediate needs (perceptual vigilance) and may

disregard stimuli that may cause psychological anxiety (perceptual

defense)

Social Perception

Social perception is how an individual “sees” others and how others perceive

an individual. This is accomplished through various means such as

classifying an individual based on a single characteristic (halo effect),

evaluating a person’s characteristics by comparison to others (contrast

effect), perceiving others in ways that really reflect a perceiver’s own attitudes

and beliefs (projection), judging someone on the basis of one’s

perception of the group to which that person belongs (stereotyping),

causing a person to act erroneously based on another person’s perception

(pygmalion effect), or controlling another person’s perception of

oneself (impression management).

Halo Effect

The halo effect occurs when an individual draws a general impression about

another person based on a single characteristic, such as intelligence, sociability,

or appearance. The perceiver may evaluate the other individual

high on many traits because of his or her belief that the individual is high

in

 Contrast Effects

Research has provided evidence that perceptions are also subject to what

is termed perceptual contrast effects. Contrast effects relate to an individual’s

evaluation of another person’s characteristics based on (or affected

by) comparisons with other people who rank higher or lower on the same

characteristicsone trait.

Projection

Whereas, contrast effect is the perception of an individual based on the

comparison to others, projection is the attribution of one’s own attitudes

and beliefs onto others. All of us are guilty of unconsciously projecting

our own beliefs onto others

StereotypingIn 1798, printers invented a new way to permanently fix and reproducevisual images. This precursor to modern photographic printing processeswas called stereotyping.

Personality

Personality encompasses a person’s relatively stable feelings, thoughts, and behavioral patterns. Each of us has a unique personality that differentiates us from other people, and understanding someone’s personality gives us clues about how that person is likely to act and feel in a variety of situations. To manage effectively, it is helpful to understand the personalities of different employees. Having this knowledge is also useful for placing people into jobs and organizations.

An attitude

An attitude refers to our opinions, beliefs, and feelings about aspects of our environment. We have attitudes toward the food we eat, people we meet, courses we take, and things we do. At work, two job attitudes have the greatest potential to influence how we behave. These are job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

 Job satisfaction refers to the feelings people have toward their job. If the number of studies conducted on job Organizational commitment is the emotional attachment people have toward the company they work for. A highly committed employee is one who accepts and believes in the company’s values, is willing to put out effort to meet the company’s goals, and has a strong desire to remain with the company. satisfaction is an indicator, job satisfaction is probably the most important job attitude.

Organizational commitment is the emotional attachment people have toward the company they work for. A highly committed employee is one who accepts and believes in the company’s values, is willing to put out effort to meet the company’s goals, and has a strong desire to remain with the company.

Factors Contributing to Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment

Motivation is the set of forces that cause people to choose certain behaviors from among the many alternatives open to them.

Motivation And Performance In Organizations.

An employee's performance typically is influenced by motivation, ability, and the work environment. Some deficiencies can be addressed by providing training or altering the environment, motivation problems are not as easily addressed. Motivation is important because of its significance as a determinant of performance and its intangible nature.

The technical view assumes that organizational learning is about the effective processing, interpretation of, and response to, information both inside and outside the organization. This information may be quantitative or qualitative, but is generally explicit and in the public domain…. The social perspective on organization learning focuses on the way people make sense of their experiences at work. These experiences may derive from explicit sources such as financial information, or they may be derived from tacit sources, such as the ‘feel’ that s skilled craftsperson has, or the intuition possessed by a skilled strategist.
Motivation is a very important for an organization because of the following benefits it provides:-

1. Puts human resources into action

Every concern requires physical, financial and human resources to accomplish the goals. It is through motivation that the human resources can be utilized by making full use of it. This can be done by building willingness in employees to work. This will help the enterprise in securing best possible utilization of resources.

2. Improves level of efficiency of employees

The level of a subordinate or a employee does not only depend upon his qualifications and abilities. For getting best of his work performance, the gap between ability and willingness has to be filled which helps in improving the level of performance of subordinates. This will result into-

1. Increase in productivity,
2. Reducing cost of operations, and
3. Improving overall efficiency.
2. Leads to achievement of organizational goals

The goals of an enterprise can be achieved only when the following factors take place :-

1. There is best possible utilization of resources,
2. There is a co-operative work environment,
3. The employees are goal-directed and they act in a purposive manner,
4. Goals can be achieved if co-ordination and co-operation takes place simultaneously which can be effectively done through motivation.
3. Builds friendly relationship

Motivation is an important factor which brings employees satisfaction. This can be done by keeping into mind and framing an incentive plan for the benefit of the employees. This could initiate the following things:

1. Monetary and non-monetary incentives,
2. Promotion opportunities for employees,
3. Disincentives for inefficient employees.

In order to build a cordial, friendly atmosphere in a concern, the above steps should be taken by a manager. This would help in:

                       iv.          Effective co-operation which brings stability,

                         v.          Industrial dispute and unrest in employees will reduce,

                       vi.          The employees will be adaptable to the changes and there will be no resistance to the change,

                     vii.          This will help in providing a smooth and sound concern in which individual interests will coincide with the organizational interests,

                   viii.          This will result in profit maximization through increased productivity.

          Leads to stability of work force

Stability of workforce is very important from the point of view of reputation and goodwill of a concern. The employees can remain loyal to the enterprise only when they have a feeling of participation in the management. The skills and efficiency of employees will always be of advantage to employees as well as employees. This will lead to a good public image in the market which will attract competent and qualified people into a concern. As it is said, “Old is gold” which suffices with the role of motivation here, the older the people, more the experience and their adjustment into a concern which can be of benefit to the enterprise.