Organizational Performance - Essay Example

Organizational Performance 1. Personality and Performance In many cases, personalities have emerged as strong indications of personal performance in organizations. As such, there are numerous performance tests focusing on the personality of employees in gauging their performance and abilities in the workplace. Rothstein & Goffin noted that managers and human resource personnel are continuously applying the use of personality measures to understand their staff and their suitability for the jobs for which they are being evaluated.1 Moreover, Heller (2005) in a research observed that in 2003, 30% of American companies predominantly applied personality tests to screen job applicants.2 One of the many personality traits that gauge the suitability of job applicants is the integrity test, which is given to thousands of prospective job seekers with more than 40% of companies in Fortune 100 list indicating to have applied personality tests in gauging the suitability of workers including the CEOs. Moreover, Judge & Lepine noted a close correlation between the big five traits, which are referred to as bright traits considering that each trait resulted in some positive implications and that there was direct evidence linking the traits to social desirability.3 For instance, Judge & Lepine explained that individuals with stable emotions tend to be happier and are usually good job performers than those with unstable emotions.4 Moreover, extroverts tend to have better relationship qualities and higher subjective-wellbeing characteristics. Extroverts are in some cases better communicators, an aspect that is desirable in the workplace where teamwork and collaboration are vital for improved performance. Therefore, considerations for such personality traits draw managers to develop some bias towards individuals with the required traits commensurate with the job at hand. However, Neal et al. reported negative relations between extroverts and personal proficiency in the workplace.5 However, Neal et al. observed that openness had a positive relation to the proactivity of an individual as well as to organizational proactivity. Moreover, the study indicated that the conscience of the individual employee had a strong relation to individual performance of a task. In other words, the research revealed that people whose conscious state is tuned towards achieving a certain task may perform better than those who are not, while the openness of the individual had bearings on the proactivity of such an individual. The development of the five factors model largely points to the importance of personal traits in determining their suitability for the task. These findings were expounded Rothstein & Goffin argument that through the use of the five factor model, meta-analytical evidence has supported the use and relevance of personality measures for predicting job performance to a good degree of accuracy.6 Moreover, Judge & Lepine explained the need for values and diversity among employees, which may impact teams positively, though such positive effects are only limited to situations that require employees to have diversity and different perspectives.7 Therefore, there is a need to consider personality traits before assigning prospective employees their respective jobs. Many leading companies have successfully used personality tests not only to test the IQ of the person, but also to determine their suitability for their respective job depending on their personality traits based on evidence based practice. As such, the implication is that companies are in a better position to get a good match of personality traits depending on the job demands. Moreover, it makes it possible to align employee’s personality to the overall organizational behavior with much ease. 1. Avoiding cognitive biases In most cases, people are affected with biases even without their knowledge. In other words, while people may perceive their decisions as objective and devoid of any biases, in usually, such people are quick to make biased decisions without recognizing such biases in their decisions. Banaji, Bazerman and Chugh explained that most people suffer from “inflated self-perceptions” and have numerous cases of “illusion objectivity.”8 Such biases at a subconscious level may contradict with the beliefs that hold closely. Therefore, it is only through critical cognitive discovery of these biases that individuals make objective decisions devoid of the risks of the biases that may affect their decisions negatively. According to Banaji, Bazerman and Chugh, even managers who strive to make the best objective decisions have their decisions infiltrated by some levels of biases, though at unconscious levels.9 Such biases lead to some degree of subjectivity, which may influence the final decisions. The result is subjective judgments that undermine the standing of the manager’s role and credibility, which may affect the overall organizational performance. However, with proper recognition of the cognitive biases affecting such managers through deeper reflections and soul searching, such managers may discover such biases, avoid them and make objective decisions that are ethically sound. Considering that biases usually emanates from the unconscious levels in the decision making process, managers have to delve deeper into their associations to find any biases that may affect their decisions. For instance, a belief that the disabled people are relatively weak is an association that may lead to biases in the hiring process, though the manager may not have any negativity towards such disabled people. The above argument was further validated by Greenwald et al. in a meta-analysis of 122 studies on prediction of judgment and related mental measures using the Implicit Association Test (IAT).10 Greenwald et al. noted that, for some socially sensitive topics, there were low self-report measures and high rates of IAT validity measures.11 This could suggest that topics considered socially sensitive had some resemblance to research related to racial and other intergroup characters. Therefore, the research brought out strong attitude-behavior relations, which supports the argument that individuals may have some level of biases, though they may be unconscious to such biases, which ultimately affects their decisions or behavior. In supporting this argument, Kahneman and Tversky observed that, in some cases, people may make conclusions based on the frequency of occurrence, the ease of occurrence of the problem at hand and based on the prevalence of the problem among their near acquaintances.12 For instance, a manager may have in mind the concept that a business venture will certainly fail based on the difficulties that the venture encounters and the number of previous ventures that have failed. In addition to biases based on the frequency of occurrences, some cases of biases may result from imagination, which occurs when an aspect is not memorable, but has to be arrived at logically. Therefore, it only through understanding the unconscious levels of biases that a manager might be prepared to recognize and prevent such biases from influencing his/her decisions, which would lead to ethical and sound judgments on any problem at hand. 2. Developmental Networks In the current complex organizational setting, on-job training is an effective approach through which skills may be leveraged across working teams. As such, mentorship programs are continuously integrated within organizational cultures, which require the less skilled employees be mentored by the highly skilled employees thereby facilitating sharing of skills. Therefore, developmental networks are of critical importance to the protégés and to the organization in general. Mentorship programs are based on the social network theory on which developmental networks are strongly hinged. Higins and Kram observed that developmental networks have a major role in integrating the social network theory and research studies in mentoring.13 In this case, the developmental networks are made of people that a protégé considers assuming an active interest and to participate in advancing the protégé's career in ensuring professional, social and mental development.14 The number of developmental relationships that a protégé has will impact the skills, values and qualities that the protégé develops in the end. For instance, a protégé with a developer from school, from a professional association, from an employer and another from a community based organization such as a religious body has higher chances of developing a wide range of useful qualities in all levels of association. Such a protégé will have an added advantage than the ones with developmental networks from the place of employment only. This might suggest that establishing a range of developmental networks has higher advantages in that an individual looks outside the place of employment for developmental assistance, which may impact better and more qualities than those depending on a few developmental networks within the place of employment. Therefore, a protégé will benefit more from "high developmental network diversity and high developmental relationship strength" as they will have a wide range of mentorship with strong relationships with such mentors, as the social network theory illustrates.15 Chandler, Kram & Yip further elaborated that the mentoring outcome for protégés is not limited to the personality of the individual and the quality of his/her relationship only.16 On the contrary, the mentoring outcome includes other parties in developmental networks in addition to affecting the larger organization within which they have to operate. As such, developmental networks are responsible for micro aspects such as globalization. This is because, according to the social network theory, the relationship between people is critical in ensuring the emergent of informal communication patterns in organizations. The patterns of communication are then used to determine the place of employees in the organization and other effects of communication networks that are important in the development of the organization. As such, the developmental networks have to be considered in taking the perceptions of all members of such networks into consideration towards advancing the protégé's career.17 Dobrow et al. also noted the possibility of such developmental networks leading to promotions and improving the performance of the protégé due to the qualities that the protégé gains from these developmental networks. Therefore, developmental networks are always beneficial to the protégé and to the organization in general. 3. Organizational justice Organizational justice has been found to have the potential to improve many benefits related to employees and organizations. Some of the benefits that may accrue from organizational justice include enhanced job performance, better citizenship behavior, and customer satisfaction and reduced conflicts in the organization.18 Although businesses are economic institutions, they go beyond being economical setups to be social institutions. As people attend to economic activities within an organization, there is also an urgent need to address issues of ethical obligations of one party to another among the involved parties. Therefore, considering that organizational members have many demands from the organization, such members among other important issues, they seek to have a sense of moral property that determines how people are treated within an organization, referred to as organizational justice.19 Therefore, organizational justice is the glue that binds people together in an organization and facilitates teamwork approach towards organizational goals. As Cropanzano et al. argued, a just organization involves the understanding that people are in the organization for the long-term and need to understand how they have to be treated morally within the organization. In other words, under the control model, employees have more reference for justice because it makes it possible for employees to predict and determine the outcomes that are most likely to emanate from the organizations. Colquitt et al. explained that organizational justice is a confirmation that organizational authority trustworthiness, prevention of fears relating to exploitation of employees and legitimizing the actions of an organization.20 Consequently, in fair treatment, employees reduce the day-to-day uncertainty about their predicaments and enhance organizational citizenship; employees develop a higher degree of loyalty to the organization. In other words, employees with a high sense of organizational justice will enhance their organizational citizenship behavior and develop loyalty to the organization due to the uncertainty in their working life as well as looking forward to a future that is in their control, and which is predictable. This would suggest that, reduced organizational justice leads to counterproductive work behavior as workers have to use most of their time dealing with uncertainties, fears and other negative effects that an employee suffers from, finally affecting the organizational performance. Simons and Roberson observed an association between the perceptions of justice their commitment levels and the outcome of the employee turnover as well as customer satisfaction.21 This might suggest that employees who have a perception of justice within an organization have improved commitment towards organizational performance and have higher outcomes per unit level as well as high levels of satisfaction within the organization. These qualities are necessary for developing strong citizenship behavior within an organization and improved organizational performance. Employees in such an organization offer their best potentials to the organization due to the high level of satisfaction and security that they perceive in such organizations. As such, organizational justice within an organization would lead to better organizational performance than in organizations with low organizational justice levels. Therefore, organizational justice is critical in helping to determine the levels of satisfaction among employees, their commitment to the organization, and the consequent organizational performance driven by such responsibility. Reference List Banaji, R. et al. ‘How (un) ethical are you?’ Harvard Business Review, http://hbr.org/2003/12/how-unethical-are-you/ar/1, 2003 (Accessed 30th April, 2014). Chandler, D. et al. ‘An Ecological Systems Perspective on Mentoring at Work: A Review and Future Prospects.’ The Academy of Management Annals, vol. 5, no. 1, 2011, p. 523. Colquitt, A. ‘Justice and personality: Using integrative theories to derive moderators of justice effects.’ Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 100, 2006, p. 110 Cropanzano, R. et al. ‘The Management of Organizational Justice.’ Academy of Management Perspectives, 2007, p35 Dobrow, R. et al. ‘A Review of Developmental Networks: Incorporating a Mutuality Perspective.’ Journal of Management, vol. 40 no. 4, 2011, doi: 10.1177/0149206311415858 Greenwald, A. G. et al. ‘Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta-analysis of predictive validity.’ J Pers Soc Psychol, vol. 97, no.1, 2009, pp. 17-41 Higgins, C. et al. ‘Reconceptualizing Mentoring at Work: A Developmental Network Perspective.’ The Academy of Management Review, vol. 26, no. 2, 2001, p. 264 Judge, T. A. & LePine, J. A. ‘The bright and dark sides of personality: Implications for personnel selection and team configuration’ in J. Langan-Fox et al. Research companion to the dysfunctional workplace: management challenges and symptoms. Cheltenham: Elgar Publishing Inc., 2007, pp. 332-355. Neal, A. et al. ‘Predicting the form and direction of work role performance from the Big five model of personality traits.’ Journal of Organizational Behavior, no. 33, vol. 2, 2012, p. 183. Rothstein, M. and Goffin, R. ‘The use of personality measures in personnel selection: What does current research support?’ Human Resource Management Review, vol.16, 2006, p155 Simons, T. and Roberson, Q. ‘Why managers should care about fairness: The effects of aggregate justice perceptions on organizational outcomes.’ J Appl. Psychol. Vol. 88 no. 3, 2003, p. 432 Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D. ‘Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.’ Science New Series, vol. 185, no. 4157, 1974, p. 1126. Read More