Organizational Behavior - Essay Example

some of the key activities that Personnel/Human Resource Managers are likely to be involved in. Select one of these activities and discuss how it can make a contribution to the organization. Talent Acquisition (Selection or Recruitment) Retention of employees Employee Engagement Employees Development Strategies Performance Recognition and Rewarding Compensation strategies Outsourcing Managing Diversity Managing Diversity The world has become a globalized village. Today, the businesses do not operate in one city or country. They operate on global scales. Even if they did not operate on global scale they would still have to manage people belonging from all over the world in their organizations. For this reason, organizations are now becoming more and more diverse as they are opening themselves to the world. Workplace diversity refers to the different people belonging to backgrounds, race, ethnicity, sex, gender, beliefs, religion, culture and difference in physical abilities work together in one organization. When we talk about diversity, it is mostly meant like defined above people belonging to different cultures and so on. Diversity includes qualities and abilities that are different for every individual and when they meet together in one organization, they bring with them their thoughts, expertise, opinions and so on which are different than our own. Organizations are not only made up of individuals but are made up of teams and groups. They work together to achieve one common organizational goal despite their diverse differences as mentioned above. To manage such vast workplace diversity is the main concern of the managers today. All the people in the organization are required to work together in peace and harmony so that organizational goals could be realized. HR Managers have a duty to come up with different strategies to manage the workforce diversity to improve workplace productivity. Diversity is a valuable asset of any organization. This is because if different people are working together, they can create new ideas and products that could result in competitive advantage for any company. The key activity of the HR managers does not only include how to manage the diverse workforce. It also includes how to manage work/life balance and providing diversity training. Looking at the past it can be seen that workforce has changed significantly. More and more women have entered the organizational world and account for almost 50% of the workforce. (Foot and Hook) To cater the needs of the work\life balance especially for the women with dependent children, flexible working hours are now part of the provisions of Employment Act (2002). The work/life balance was not only issue for the women but also for he men who found it hard to manage their personal responsibilities because of heavy workloads. (Robbins and Sanghi. Pg 509). Today, managers have instituted different strategies to provide work/life balance for all the employees. These include flexible scheduling, job sharing, closing offices for special occasions, eldercare resources, intranet work/life website, leave with pay, on-site child care, concierge services, focus on employees’ actual performance not face time and so on. (Robbins and Sanghi. Pg 510) The management of workplace diversity maximizes the ability to contribute to organizational goals from all its employees. This can be done using diversity training. In this training HR managers develop programs where employees can learn to respect and value individual differences, increase cross-cultural understanding and confront stereotypes. (Robbins and Sanghi. Pg 511) Other strategies that the HR managers adopt is the concept of ‘treat others as you want to be treated’. The underlying assumption of this proverb is that people should be treated with the same respect as you would like to receive the respect from others. This concept is not related to any kind of difference in race, gender, culture or any other respect. If a person as an individual wants to be treated nicely which infact everyone wants, then others in the workplace should do so. The HR managers are trying to enforce this concept to manage the workplace diversity. In today’s increasing organizational diversity, all the above mentioned strategies of HR can help the employees work in collaboration to achieve the goals and aims of the organization and to promote it. Word Count: 664 With reference to concepts and theories relating to perception, explain why two people who witness the same event may have a different interpretation of what happened. Perception is defined as “an active mental process which involves the selection, organization, structuring and interpretation of information in order to make inferences and give meaning to the information.” (Rollinson, 2005-text book) Perception can also be defined as “the process that individuals go through in order to organize and interpret their sensory impressions to give meaning to their environment.” (Robbins and Sanghi, 2005) All the individuals attach different connotations and meanings to events that take place around him. When two people witness a certain event they may interpretation of what might have happened. This behavior can be attributed to different concepts of perception. Both the people might be using different concepts of perception in interpreting the outcome of the event. First, the difference might be due to selective perception. Both the people will only select such pieces of information that interests them, or it relates to their backgrounds, culture, attitude and so on. For example, if two people witness that a employee got on the bad side of the manager, the manager will give a bad performance evaluation to that employee. Although it might not happen in reality and the manager might end up giving that employee a good evaluation. Second reason for different interpretation might be due to concept of expectancy. Each witness might have seen what is usually expected in such an event rather than what actually occurs. For example, if a bomb blast occurred at some place, it will be commonly perceived that some terrorist groups are associated with it although it might not be so and after investigation it would be found out that one of the fellow countrymen did it. Another concept that can be related to different interpretation is stereotyping. This is a very common concept of perceive things and people now-a-days. It means that a person is judged on the basis of what is generally perceived about the group or race or culture to which he belongs to. The two people can have different interpretation because they might be using the concept of stereotyping for judging the event that occurred. They might associate their feelings to the interpretation of what they perceive of the event. For example one person would associate the event to stereotyping and other might perceive it to the expectancy concept. Another reason for difference of opinions could be related to the concept of cognitive dissonance. According to this concept an individual can distort the information if it is inconsistent with their beliefs to fit it with what they believe. Both the person witnessing the event might forget some of the information as they could not reconcile it with their ideas or convictions and can then interpret the outcome differently. According to what we have studied, two people can interpret the event differently due to internal factors that affect the perception of an individual. It depends on the person’s ability to remember which can be affected by different factors such as intensity of an event or familiarity or novelty. Another factor involved can be associated with a person’s past experience that leads the person to develop expectations which are not real. Also the personality of an individual person can affect the perception of that certain individual. Another very important concept of perception is the attribution theory which could lead to different interpretations of one event. In this theory a person assigns causes or motives to people’s behavior. (Robbins and Sanghi, 2005) Both the persons have different ideas and attitudes and behaviors. This could lead both of them to interpret the outcome as their mental capabilities allow them to understand the event. The halo effect or the horns effect can also lead a person to perceive an event either positively or negatively. If a person perceives an event positively, he will have different interpretation of the event unlike the person who perceives the event negatively. All the above concepts of perception can lead any individual to perceive an event, an individual or anything else for that matter differently. Word Count: 667 Robbins, S. and Sanghi S. (2005) ‘Organizational Behavior’ Eleventh Edition. United States: Pearson Education Inc. ISBN 0 131 91435-9. Accessed August 11, 2008. Pg 509-511 Foot, M. and Hook, C. (2002) ‘Introducing Human Resource Management’ Third Edition. London: Financial Times/Prentice Hall. ISBN 0 273 65143-9 Rollinson, D. (2002) ‘Organisational Behaviour and Analysis: An Integrated Approach’. Second Edition. London: FT/Prentice Hall Read More