Organizational behavior Part I: what is it and why is it important for employers? Christina Catenacci - Human Resources Subject Matter Expert Organizational behavior has been defined as the field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups and structures have on behavior within organizations, particularly workplaces, in order to improve the organization s effectiveness. But is it important for employers to understand organizational behavior? There might be many reasons, but one is to improve management skills by predicting and influencing behavior in employment situations. The study of organizational behavior examines how the following variables affect productivity, absenteeism, turn over and job satisfaction: Individual-level variables: o Biographical characteristics, personality, ability and learning o Perception and individual decision making o Values and attitudes o Motivation Group-level variables: o How group members are influenced by expected patterns of behavior o What are considered acceptable patterns of behavior o The degree to which group members are attracted to each other Organizational variables: o Structural design o Human resource policies and practices o Work stress levels o Internal culture Employers try to understand and manipulate these variables in order to generate increased productivity, decreased absenteeism, lower turnover and higher job satisfaction. Let s take a look at the first of the individual-level variables: personality, ability and learning. Personality Personality is the sum total of ways an individual reacts and interacts with others, depending on factors such as heredity, environment and context. Personality traits are enduring characteristics that describe an individual s behavior, which can be grouped into various personality types. Understanding
the personality traits of an employee can aid in reducing hiring mismatches, reducing turnover and increasing job satisfaction. Employers must acknowledge that certain personalities are more suited to some jobs than others. What s more, employers can seek certain personality traits that are generally associated with job success and satisfaction, and thus make better hiring selections. For example, one interesting personality trait is locus of control, the degree to which people believe they are masters of their own fate. Those with an internal locus of control believe they control what happens to them. Those with an external locus of control believe that what happens to them is controlled by outside forces such as luck or chance. Research has shown that individuals with an external locus of control are less satisfied and involved with their jobs and have higher rates of absenteeism. Externals tend to be dissatisfied with their jobs since they feel they have little control over organizational outcomes that are important to them. However, externals are more compliant and follow directions more easily; in fact, externals tend to excel in jobs that are well-structured. Contrastingly, internals attribute organizational outcomes to their own actions, and are more likely to quit a dissatisfying job to find one they enjoy. Moreover, since internals believe they control their health through proper habits, they tend to have lower rates of illness and absenteeism. Furthermore, internals are more motivated to achieve, and try harder to control their environment. As a result, they perform well on sophisticated tasks in managerial or professional jobs. Internals are also drawn to jobs where they can take initiative and act independently. Since they continually strive to improve, they require challenge, immediate feedback and responsibility (control over results) in order to perform at a high level. Ability Ability is an individual s capacity to perform the tasks involved in a job. Ability directly influences an employee s level of performance and satisfaction through the ability-job fit. An effective selection process can ensure a better ability-job fit: employers must perform a job analysis to identify the particular abilities required to perform a job successfully, and subsequently test, interview and evaluate job candidates to determine if they possess the required abilities. The ability-job fit can be tweaked over time through job promotions, internal transfers and fine-tuning a job to bring out the employee s specific strengths. Employers can also provide training to ensure their employees abilities remain current. Individuals can have various types of abilities intellectual or physical which may or may not be necessary for job success and ability-job fit. Generally, the higher an employee rises in an organization s hierarchy, the more general intelligence and verbal abilities are required to perform the job successfully. However, a high IQ may be important in jobs where an employee must exercise some discretion, but it is not as predictive in routine jobs where there is little opportunity to exercise discretion. On the other hand, tests that assess verbal, numerical, spatial and perceptual abilities are strong predictors of job proficiency across all types of jobs. Other aspects of intellectual ability include perceptual speed, inductive reasoning and verbal comprehension. Conversely, some jobs require physical abilities such as strength, flexibility,
coordination, balance and stamina. The employer must find a way to identify which abilities are most important to perform a certain job within the organization, and find a candidate that has those abilities. Learning Learning is any permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience. Can learning concepts provide us with any insights that can explain and predict behavior at work? Absolutely. In fact, conditioning and shaping are important tools for explaining levels of productivity, absenteeism rates, lateness and quality of work. Most importantly from an employer s perspective, learning strategies can help eliminate undesirable behaviors at work. There are a few different learning theories that apply in the employment context. Let s take a look at social learning. People can learn through observation and respond to how they perceive and define consequences, not necessarily by consequences to themselves. For instance, an employee might learn that it is unacceptable to dress informally for meetings with customers in the office because a coworker was warned not to wear an informal outfit during such a meeting. Additionally, shaping systematically reinforces each successive step that moves an individual closer to a desired response. There are four ways to shape behavior: Positive reinforcement a behavior is followed with something pleasant (e.g., a boss praises an employee for a job well done) Negative reinforcement a behavior is followed by the withdrawal of something unpleasant (e.g., a boss removes an undesirable work task from the employee and reassigns it after a job well done on a major project) Punishment a behavior is followed by something unpleasant (e.g., an employee is disciplined for not following safety procedures prior to using equipment) Extinction a behavior is followed by the elimination of any reinforcement (e.g., a manager stops praising an employee s work; over time, the desired behavior will cease) There are also various schedules of reinforcement. Continuous reinforcement means that a desired behavior is reinforced each and every time it is displayed. Intermittent reinforcement means that a desired behavior is reinforced often enough to make the behavior worth repeating, but not every single time the behavior is displayed. For instance, an employee s biweekly pay check is an example of fixed-interval reinforcement. Praise from a boss every five times a project is completed successfully is an example of fixed-ratio reinforcement. How can employers use the learning models to their advantage? Take the example of significant absenteeism in the workplace: in addition to disciplining for chronic culpable lateness (punishment), it is important to positively reinforce coming to work on time every day. For instance, a quarterly lottery, in which the names of all employees who came to work on time and had no culpable absences were put in a draw to win a prize, would positively reinforce employees on a variable-ratio schedule (a
positive result would occur following a varied number of good attendances). Studies have shown that punishment alone is not as effective in eliminating undesirable behaviors compared to positive reinforcement of the opposite desirable behavior. Stay tuned to the next part in the series where I examine other individual level variables such as perception, values, and motivation! Workplace organizational behavior part II: Perception In a previous post in this series, I discussed the definition of workplace organizational behavior and how certain individual-level variables including biographical characteristics, personality, ability and learning affect productivity, absenteeism, turnover and job satisfaction. In this post, let s examine how one s perception influences productivity, absenteeism, turnover and job satisfaction. What is perception? It has been defined as the process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment. What one perceives can be substantially different from what another person perceives, and both can be very different than the actual objective reality. In fact, behavior is based on one s perception of what reality is, not reality itself. Why is this important? Behavior in the workplace is based on people s perception of the workplace. There are many factors that influence how something is perceived. For instance, factors pertaining to the perceiver can involve the person s attitudes, motives, interests, experience and expectations. Factors associated with the context can involve time, work setting and social setting. Finally, factors related to the actual target can involve novelty, motion, sounds, size, background and proximity. But what does this have to do with employment? Well, there are various ways that a person can perceive a situation in the work environment that can lead to problems. For example, the following can occur among employees in the workplace on a daily basis: Fundamental attribution error The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behavior of others Self-serving bias The tendency to attribute one s own successes to internal factors and blame one s own failures on external factors Selective perception The tendency to selectively interpret what is seen based on one s interests, background, experience and attitudes Projection The tendency to attribute one s own characteristics to other people Stereotyping The tendency to judge someone on the basis of the perception of a group to which that person belongs Halo effect The tendency to draw a general impression about an individual based on a single characteristic
As you can imagine, the way a person perceives a job applicant during an interview can affect an organization. For example, interviewers may like one aspect of the interviewee, and then pursuant to the halo effect, assume the interviewee is entirely a good fit with the company because of that one characteristic. Or interviewers may learn they have one thing in common with the interviewee and project that they are similar to the interviewee in every way, making a good fit for the organization. Alternatively, an employee may not get a promotion because an employer has formed a negative impression about the employee simply because that person belongs to a particular religious group. This is stereotyping and is clearly contrary to human rights legislation, but given human nature s tendency to gather things and people into groups and make general impressions, it may happen more often than one might think. As well, an employee may be considered to be disloyal or not putting enough effort into a project. These characteristics are subjectively judged based on an employer s perceptions. For example, one supervisor may consider an employee to be loyal, while another supervisor may consider that same employee to be too conforming and insincere. In terms of perceptions, research has shown that what employees perceive from their work situation influences their productivity most. Therefore, to influence productivity, it is necessary for employers to assess how workers perceive their jobs. Likewise, absenteeism, turnover and job satisfaction have more to do with an employee s perception of the job. Those individuals who perceive their jobs as negative are likely to have increased absenteeism, more frequent turnover and less job satisfaction. The only way to influence these variables is to understand how an employee subjectively perceives the workplace. Consequently, perception influences decision-making within an organization. Take the example of the interview. Within the first few minutes of the interview, the interviewer has learned some information about the interviewee and has formed an impression based on various perceptions. The interviewer then decides whether the candidate is a good fit with the company. The remaining time in the interview is typically spent asking select information that supports the initial decision. Though we are all human and have a background and a particular perspective on which we rely when perceiving things in the work setting, it is important to be aware of the various factors that influence our perceptions, especially when making important decisions that affect the organization. Sometimes it is a good idea to have a few decision makers provide an opinion when making big decisions to ensure that various perceptions are considered before taking the plunge.