Organizational Behavior Essay

12th August 2013

Submitted by Kunal Bhasin (2121119)

To Anne Ricketts

(1968)

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How do an Individuals Perceptions and Values, within an Organization, impact on the Organizations outcomes?

If I was to explain what an organization is, how its culture is formed, and how its individuals have an impact on its outcomes, I would simply ask one to imagine a country. A country is a classic example of an organization on a much larger scale. A country (organization) has citizens (individuals) who have a set of individual values and perceptions that, collectively, give rise to a culture (i.e. organizational values). Having established that its own citizens derive the culture of a country, it will not be wrong to say that, the culture has a great impact on the countrys outcomes and performance in different fields, internationally. With the example before, we can also say that an individuals perceptions and value, within an organization, have a great impact on the organizations outcome. In this essay I would be talking about individuals values, their perceptions, and organizational culture that will answer our main question, i.e., how an individuals perceptions and values influence the organizations outcomes.

Organizational Culture Edgar Schien (cited by McCormick, 2008) explained organizational culture as combined behaviors adopted by the individuals in an organization to accomplish the organizations mission. Giving a more to-the-point definition McCormick (2008) defined organizational culture as behaviors, of those who work there, that are directed by a system of corporate values. These corporate values are often reminded to the individuals in an organization by a mission statement. This mission statement is a unique statement that is a slogan for the organization, telling the employees what is their purpose in the company and what is the mission of the organization. Having said that an organizations culture is the combined behavior or system of values that directs the employees to work towards the organizations outcomes, it is necessary to understand that many organizations, rather most organizations do not know, exactly, what value systems to focus on, to get the best outcomes. Most values automatically 2 ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR KUNAL BHASIN (2121119)

come in an organization with the employees and the leaders as explained by Heathfield (2013), that the core values of senior leaders play an important role in the development of an organizations culture because these leaders have a great deal of power to set the directions and define the daily actions along with a great influence on the managers. This power and influence helps in establishing a quality of the work environment for people and better outcomes are achieved.

Schein (2010) stated that the sources of a culture are the beliefs, values and assumptions of founders of organizations; the learning experiences of group members as their organization evolves; and new beliefs, values and assumptions brought in by new members and new leaders. In this definition all the sources are important but the first one, i.e., values and beliefs of founders, is the most important because founders are the ones who choose the mission of the organization and define how it will work to achieve its goals. They are also important because they choose the members and leaders that will join the organization. This process of choosing the new members is crucial because if an individuals personal values are completely different from the organizations values he/she will never be able to fit in that culture and as a result the outcomes of the organization will not be as good as they could be if all the individuals had similar values and worked together as a team.

Individuals Values Berrett (2013) pointed out that sociologists explained values as ideals and customs of a society that are regarded by the people, but he preferred to define values in a more practical way: values are a shorthand method of describing what is important to us individually or collectively at any given moment in time. The concepts represented by values can be summed up in a word, for example, punctual, which means the individual is on time or before time, never late. Shwartz (2006) further explained that when a person thinks of his/her values he/she thinks of what is important to him/her in life. Everyone has a number of values with different priorities in life an d thats why a specific value might be very important to one person and unimportant to another. In

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an organization the individual or the group of individuals that start with the organization bring their values, which are the initial values of an organization. According to Heathfield (2013) values are the guiding factors of what happens in the workplace. The core values of the employees in the workplace, their past experiences and their upbringing mix with the founders values to form an organizations corporate culture.

McShane & Glinow (2010) mentioned that people arranged values in a preferential order, which is called a value system. Some individuals value new challenges more than they value conformity, others value generosity more that they value frugality. Every individuals value system is unique and is formed through socialization from parents, religious institutions, friends, personal experiences, and the society they live in. For example, a person from India would greet people by joining hands, whereas, a person from America would shake hands, different behaviors take place for the same reason due to the values they picked up from different cultures.

As we grow older and/or experience new things our values tend to change, not all values but some of them change. These values change due to a fundamental reason, i.e., needs. Berrett (2013) stated that values of an individual are a reflection of what he/she considers to be his/her needs. In other words the values of an individual are formed by his/her needs. The individual evaluates what her/she needs and compares which values will get him/her closer to accomplishing his/her needs. When that individual in the organization feels his/her needs are not being met his/her values change and this causes him/her to not work as efficiently as before. This is sometimes voluntary and most of the times involuntary. The reason for this loss of efficiency is lack of motivation. McShane & Glinow (2010) mentioned that motivation is within an individual and not in his/her behavior but it reflects in his/her behavior. Having established that values in an organization change according to the needs of an individual, it will be correct to say that the organizational outcomes are affected by individuals values. That effect can be either positive or negative, but that depends on
Comment [AR1]: Such a good point

Comment [AR2]: Could have solved he/sh etc with their

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several factors, one of them being value congruence. McShane & Glinow (2010) described value congruence as how similar an individuals value system is to the value system of the organization and other individuals in the organization. McShane & Glinow (2010) added that individual-organization value congruence leads to higher job satisfaction, loyalty and lower stress and turnover. Value congruence leads to motivation and the individuals see their needs being fulfilled. Whereas, if there is lack of value congruence it can cause lack of motivation, lack of job satisfaction and more stress, which will eventually lead to lower performance and bad outcomes. The leaders who have the power to motivate the individuals and align their values with the organizations values can control this. Understanding individuals perceptions can give more answers.

Individuals Perceptions Perception is the process of receiving information about and making sense of the world around us. It entails determining which information to notice, how to categorize this information, and how to interpret it within the framework of our existing knowledge. (McShane & Glinow, 2010, pp. 68) It can also be said that an individuals values have an affect on the way he/she perceives things. As discussed earlier every individual has different values similarly every individual has a different perception. Attitude and behavior of an individual is affected greatly by his/her perception. Values and characteristics of the perceiver play an important role in perceiving a situation and acting on it. Selective attention is a common process in all individuals. McShane & Glinow (2010) explained selective attention as a process of paying attention to some information received by our senses and ignoring the rest. Our brain fills the gap from past experiences, future assumptions or expectations. For example, a man driving past a sign board does not read the whole sign, his senses pick up what they can and then the brain fills the whole information from memory or past experiences. Selective attention can be good sometimes but othertimes our expectations and assumptions lead to screening out potentially important information. Another reason for

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perceptual blindness mentioned by McShane & Glinow (2010) is formation of opinion or theory.

Perception at higher levels of organization holds more importance because the founders, managers or employers have to apply attribution theory to evalutate how satisfied the employee is with his/her job. Job satisfaction leads to motivation and that eventually leads to better performance and better outcomes. Employee effectiveness depends on the manager or supervisor also because of the self-fulfilling prophecy. McShane & Glinow (2010) explained that self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when an individuals expectations about another individual, under him/her, cause that individual to act in a way that is consistent to those expectations. Individuals such as managers and supervisors should be careful about their expectations of their employees because their expectations will affect their own behavior towards the employee. If the expectations are low and the managers behavior is of approval towards the employee, the employee will feel confident in what he/she is doing and will not work harder and try get better results which will lead to lower performance and not-the-best outcomes, whereas, if the employers expectations of the employee are too high, the employer will keep disapproving of the employee making him feel useless and it will result in lower job satisfaction due to overwhelming work load and it will also cause lower performance and bad outcomes.

Halo effect is another perceptual error as explained by McShane & Glinow (2010). It occurs when an individuals general impression of a person, which is based on the prominent characteristic, makes him/her overlook the other characteristics of that person. Halo effect causes an individual to over a persons not -so-prominent characteristics that could be good or bad. This takes place when the individual has less or no real information about the person and relies on his general impression of that person. This has negative effects on the effectiveness of the organization. For example, a team leader notices that one of his team members was late and thus he does not let that member actively participate in the team meeting because he assumes that the

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member is punctual so his ideas would also be ineffective, which could be a complete opposite case, that member could be the one with best the ideas but because of the halo effect the team leader will have overlooked his ideas.

From the above discussion and the detailed exploration of individuals values, individuals perceptions and organizational culture it is clear that organizational culture is made up of individual values and those individual values affect the individual perceptions. Values and perceptions form a culture that affects the outcomes of the organization. Through this essay it is illustrated that every individual is different but there is some similarity in those individuals that work together in an organization just like every spot on a leopard is different but those different spots have some similarity, which makes them a leopards spots. It is also found that every individual must work together in an organization to have a positive contribution in the outcome, these individual are all the internal stakeholders of the organization and consist of the founder(s), group members and the new members. Value system of every individual contributes to the value system of the organization and these value systems also have an impact on the individuals perceptions and those perceptions make the employee work harder and towards a similar outcome.

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Reference List

Berrett, R. (2013). The Values-Driven Organization : Unleashing Human Potential for Performance and Profit. Retrieved from http://www.weltec.eblib.com.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1331838

Heathfield, S. M. (2013). Core Values Are What You Believe. Retrieved from HumanResource. About.com: http://humanresources.about.com/od/glossaryc/g/Core-Values.htm

McCormick, B. (2008). It's the Organizations Culture : It's the Organization's Culture . Retrieved from HRD Press, Inc.: http://www.weltec.eblib.com.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=435559

McShane, S. L., & Glinow, M. A. (2010). Organizational Behavior: Emerging Knowledge and Practice for the Real World (5th Edition ed.). New York, United States of America: McGrawHill Irwin.

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership (4th Edition ed.). California, United States of America: Jossey-Bass.

Shwartz, S. H. (2006). Basic Human Values: Theory, Measurement, and Applications. Revue franaise de sociologie , 47/4.

This is a very good essay. You have covered all points clearly and demonstrated you understanding of the topic. Well done. 88%

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