Managing Diversity and Perception - Essay Example

Perception is a process that enables us to interpret our surroundings. There are four stages of social perception.These are encoding and simplification, selective attention, storage, and retrieval and response. The aspect of perception is an interesting factor to consider in organizational behavior, in diverse individuals from across the globe. Perception has great importance in the managerial duties such as leadership, hiring, communication, performance appraisal, and interpersonal influence, counterproductive work behaviors, and physical and psychological well-being (chapter 4,). On the other hand, Causal Attribution is the suspected or inferred causes of behavior. Invalidity of this attributes may bring vast implications in an organization. For example, individual performs poorly may be punished by the supervisor who attributes poor performance with laziness. The problem may be caused by poor training and not lack of effort. Kelley’s model tries to explain how different people tend to understand the reasons behind certain behaviors that they have observed. This understanding can only be realized only if the external attributions are to be made when there is low consistency and the consensus and distinctiveness are high. On the other hand, for one to realize personal responsibility attribution consistency must be high and consensus and distinctiveness should be relatively low. Therefore, if a student tend to argue with the professor in class, it is essential to consider Kelley’s model so as to come up with an amicable solution to such a case. It is essential to try and understand the reason behind that student’s argument to make sure if there is any consistency in what that the student is doing. Formulating an attribute would minimize any chance of having a conflict. Managing diversity is necessary in every organization across the globe. However, quite a number of organizations are not conversant with managing diversity. This has caused many a lot of buriers especially when an organization tries to move forward with any diversity initiative. Some of these buriers include ethnocentrism, poor career planning, inaccurate stereotype and prejudice, and an unsupportive and hostile working environment for diverse employees. Such buriers can be avoided if managers of this organization can work extra hard in managing diversity. These managers should be on the forefront to show the rest of the team what should or should not be done so as to realize their goal in that organization. Doing this makes the employee has a positive thought about the whole idea of managing diversity and thus making the employee put all their energy and time in working together with their manager. The perceptions that people have been exceedingly influenced by the information that these people receive. Therefore, it is hard to have the same perception as compared to other people. The information that one receives is stored and processed and in return there is a certain reaction that follows. We are able to move forward in or day-to-day life by the decisions that we make and our behaviors. This knowledge of perception and how we behave is something to be highly considered at work places. Perception and managing diversity are two important subjects that go hand-in-hand. For an organization to manage diversity effectively, managers should portray a picture that will make other employees want to follow them. Employees tend to have a perception that they can relax at work especially if they see their manager doing the same thing. In order for one to realize his or her goals in life, it is essential to pursue the organizational goals in a rational and logical manner. The level of intelligence that people has determined the outcome of work. To have a good relationship with both the manager and other staff it is essential to consider having more positive emotions rather than negative ones, for instance, when having a detrimental day at work especially when the manager puts a lot of pressure in your work, one should become well-versed in how to deal with his or her emotions. Holding back the anger and frustration might be helpful but also damaging. Sometime it is essential to speak out and let the other workers know how you feel towards them. In order to build a self-efficacy in OB course one must have certain knowledge and skills in life. This knowledge enables one to develop emotional intelligence and thus relate with others in an amicable way. These skills include Self-Awareness, self management, and social awareness. All human being has their own way of thinking and acting. This unique style and personality is what makes us different in life and especially at work. The mental and physical characteristics or traits have implications in how we work and relate with other work mates. The long list of individual personality has been simplified to a smaller list referred to as the Big Five personality. The big five dimensions are emotional stability, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness. These personality dimensions have been of exceptional importance to my daily interactions and will help me cope with other people that I will meet at my work place. With emotional balance, I will manage to compose myself in case of pressure from my boss and other workmates. The ability to be agreeable will help out especially where work is delegated to me even if I do not like that work. Being open to experience will help me learn new things at work and gain more knowledge that will be of help in the future. When organization are hiring, training or promoting their employees, they tend to run many test before making their final decision. One of these tests is the personality test. Performance of individuals is related to their personality. Therefore, if I was a chief financial officer in a bank and needed a vice president I would considerably look at the personality of the interviewee before coming to a decision. I would arrive at an attempt to dig out if the applicants have a powerful positive correlation with the job that they have applied. Another thing to consider is the humility that the candidates portray and their level of honesty. This is because the post to be filled deals a lot with the finances of the bank and thus an honest person will handle the finances properly. I would also consider hiring someone who is quite agreeable. Someone whom I can delegate job and he will do it willingly and to the level best. The four key components of emotional intelligent that I consider being my strong suits are transparency, self-confidence, adaptability, and optimism. On the other hand, there are other elements of emotional intelligent that are my weak point. These include building bond, empathy, developing others and change catalyst. These elements affect my daily activities either in a positive or negative way. It is essential to understand what other employees feel and find ways to relate with them so as to realize the organization goals. As a manager, doing this motivates the workers and builds up a relationship that is healthy for the organization. If an employee is behaving in a negative way it is essential to direct him or her to the right direction. The manager of that organization will check the emotion and attitude of the employee before approaching him or her. A good manager will try to find out why the employee is behaving that way and what factors have led to such a behavior. Then after finding out the cause of the problem he or she will work together with the employee to come up with a solution. Lack of job satisfaction may lead employees to quit their job and thus making them to quit the job and apply somewhere else. Causes of job satisfactions include discrepancy, value attainment, need fulfillment, equity and genetic component. These causes are the reason why many organizations have come up with different job designs so as to satisfy their employees. The three most job designs that I consider being used in the future are job rotation design, job enrichment design, and job enlargement design. These designs will motivate employees to keep working for the betterment of the organization. The behaviors that employees portray at work may lead the organization to realizing its goals or drag the organization behind. If an employee exhibits a counterproductive work behavior, his or her behavior is likely to have a negative effect on the organization in terms of productivity and the image of the company. The employee will not work effectively as a result of his or her behavior. Motivation of employees is highly valuable in an organization. It makes the employees work effectively and efficiently thus meeting the goal of the organization. The three most important things that I have leant in this chapter are that personal factors and contextual factors greatly influence an employee’s motivation to work. Motivation behaviors and outcome are realized from motivation and engagement of the employees toward work. On the other hand, different employees who want to scale high prefer moderate risk and a situation where they have the power to control their purpose in life. Even as many organizations try hard to motivate its employees, some of the employees simply cannot be motivated at work. This happens in cases where the employee believes that all his or her needs are met. The employee may also feel that he or she is satisfied will everything that is offered, and thus making it hard to motivate him os her. On the other hand, a number of employees do not understand the meaning of equality at work. In a case where manager try to practice fairness or justice at work some employees tend to view this as an inequality strategy. Managers reward employees according to their performance, therefore, when employees are not performing they will not be rewarded. This makes such an employee to feel neglected and treated unfairly. In some cases, employees report working with a low expectancy for successful performance. To boost such a person’s morale to work is important to the organization. In order to increase the person’s expectancy I would come up with a design that will link performance and value reward. I will promise such a person an increment in salary and promotion according to his performance or ask the person what he or she would like incase he performs well. Some scholars say that for one to reach his or her goal one is required to set his goals higher than expected. However, this contradicts with the expectancy theory which allows managers to help employees accomplish their goals but not to make their goals harder to achieve. In addition, professors can use equality, expectancy and goal-setting theory to motivate their students. Ensuring that the students are aware of what rewards to expect after they have attained the goals set will motivate them to study harder. When Dan Hesse took over as the CEO in 2007, he laid out some principle recommendations to improve the efficiency and productivity of the company. He proposed reduction in bureaucracy, simplified documentation and a three pillar strategy which was to strengthen the brand, improve the customer experience and increase profits. The information about performance is referred to as feedback. Feedback that I received and was motivational was the good grades that I got after studying very hard. The feedback that was instructional was the advice I received from my parents on how to keep up with my good performance. Performance is linked to feedback. To receive 360-degree feedback, one must be focused and learn to listen to other subordinates. In addition, upward feedback to managers is provided by lower-level employees. Managers should realize that the main reason why people work is to get money to better their life. Therefore, a manager who thinks that money cannot motivate employees is particularly wrong and should change that thought. In conclusion, to strengthen the behavior of the employees certain strategies should be emphasized. These strategies include the positive and negative reinforcement, for example, promotion or demotion according to performance. Other strategies are punishment and extinction weakens behavior, for example, suspension at work because of a certain adverse behavior. Proper definition of these strategies should be found in terms of their actual impact. These strategies can be effective or ineffective (Chapter 8, Pg 220). For example demoting someone can make that person lose morale at work, but the intention of the manager was to make that person work extra hard. When an employee is suspended from work they might end up having a detrimental attitude towards the person that led to their suspension rather than changing their behavior for the better. Work cited "McGraw-Hill's Connect." McGraw-Hill's Connect (New). N.p., n.d. Web. 17 June 2013. Read More