The Nature of Organization Performance - Example

Name : xxxxxxxxxxx Institution : xxxxxxxxxxx Title : The Nature of Organization Performance Tutor : xxxxxxxxxxx @2010 The Nature of Organization Performance Introduction Attribution Errors Attribution errors results where there is misjudgment or when people view and start judging the actions of other especially the negative ones. In such a case, the one who is observing does not take into consideration the reasons behind the negative actions. It is not unusual for human beings to infer events and their outcomes as consequences of focused or intended actions of an individual. This is a deep founded bias in people’s perception which has always been there all along the human history. When examining the outcomes in the business organizations, individuals are prejudiced towards justifications which associate the outcomes with the other people within or without the organization. But in real sense, much of the actions that take place in an organization are due to the fact that people put efforts to make it ensure they take place. Examples are where the employees are involved in accidents that level them injured could be by falling on slippery floors. The conclusion will be that there was poor walking style by the employee and the caution will be he or she should be more careful. This them leaves the issue of a slippery floor not tackled. Another example is where there is drop in the performance of an industry and the manager instead of looking for the root cause, he or she lays the blame on the employees for their reduced efforts in the organization. Instead of looking at other factors that may have led to the production drop, the blame is so quickly laid on the employees (Jones, & Harris, 1967). The Halo Effect This is a logical bias where the insight of a particular character is guided by the awareness of previous character traits in a series of interpretations. The first psychologist to shore up the halo effect was known as Edward L. Thorndike after carrying out an experimental research. He found a relationship between all the good traits and all the bad traits in an individual. In this he meant that people are faster to recognize a bad trait in an individual who had been involved in a bad action previously. People do not think of other is a mixed perspective where an individual can have both bad and good traits. Instead they tend to justify the good trait with the previous ones and the same for the bad traits. The halo effect is also felt in human resource management in the organizations where the human resource manager may associate the negative outcomes in the organizations with a negative trait that he or she had noticed before in one of the employees. Sometimes the failure in the organization may have been contributed by the employee who is perceived on the positive side but due to the halo effect, it is associated with the employee who had ever done a negative act in the organization. The halo effect may lead to disputes in an organization and may affect the drivers of performance. The relationship between the management and the employees of an organization may get cold and production may be affected. The working environment of the negatively perceived employee may become unbearable and most of them may leave the job. An employee who may become a victim of hale effect form one of the leaders may also feel discouraged and loose his expertise. The management may tend to disapprove everything he or she does and this may make him feel not trusted. It is however very important to judge a person according to the current performance and the current trait that one is portraying other than in reference to the previous actions (Rose, 2005). Dangers of making attribution errors in judging the drivers of performance in an organization Attribution errors are highly persistent and eventually the most unconstructive among the cognitive shortfall in any organization. When the management of an organization cannot get into terms and agree on the sources of the negative outcomes, they decrease the depressive worries and get answers to any explanation by setting other people as the causes of the outcomes. The blame is moved off their shoulders and placed on other individuals who sometimes may have no relationship with the occurrence of the incident. In this case, the organization assumes and spoils the opportunity to discuss and find out the killer in their business organization. This may continue for a long time in the organization until the performance of the business organization goes beyond reconstructible level and it eventually collapses. The relationship between the management and the ground level employees may also weaken and the employees may lose the morale of working for the organization. Cases in any organization should be handled with a lot of care since they can change the organization from a better place to one that is worse. The drivers of performance in an organization are divided into three. These are leadership, direction and the people. Leadership is basically promoting, supporting, and creating logic of meaning, reason, and direction. All the players in the organization should also be part of that effort together with the leaders. This role involves offering an environment where things can start happening differently. The achievement of this however depends on the type of a person and the situation. There is no defined correct way of doing this. A high level of self awareness is therefore needed in the adoption of a specific leadership form and the incorporation of a personal style. For success in any organization, all the players have to be involved and engaged in the organization. This is very important for an organization that is after achieving change. Issuing commands cannot help to achieve this but effective leadership can do. Direction in an organization includes the objectives, strategies and the plans in the organization. The objectives are the mission and the vision or the purpose of the organization. It is figure that the organization wants to display to the people outside. Strategy is the collection of ideas that when brought together and implemented, they will contribute to the attainment of the organization purpose. Plans are the details of activities that are to be undertaken by certain individuals or groups. This may include the aims and the objectives and the desired path towards their attainment (Learmonth, & Harding, 2006). People are the players in all the plans, direction and in attainment of the objectives. For the success of the organization, the people involved must have the required knowledge and skills, with personal goals in line with the goals of the objectives. They should be fully committed to the organization, be ready to take up the responsibilities in the organization as their own take the problems of the organization also as their own. These are the drivers of the performance of the organization. When attribution errors comes in, the performance is affected. Leadership being the key in the success of any organization can also be affected by attribution errors. For example, the organization directors may start making biased judgment on some failing issues in the organization and attributing them to the managers. The lower employees may also start attributing some organization issues to the leaders in the organization. When this begins, the leadership is put into a question and this will affect the whole organization. The commands form the leader will be ignored and this might paralyze the functioning of the whole organization. The direction of the organization can also be affected by attribution errors. When an organization fails to achieve the goals, it may be attributed to the plans where the players might say that it is the plans that were not well designed. The strategy may also be blamed in that the wrong one was adopted. Attribution error is about judging the other player in case one thing fails to work and therefore the whole is an issue of a blame game. Attribution error is highly felt by the people who are the drivers of entirely everything in the organization. It is the people who plan, put forward the ideas, implement, asses, and evaluate. However, for the people to achieve all this, they must be provided with all the necessary resources. Managers cannot achieve effective leadership when hot trained on management skills, producers cannot produce when not offered with the raw materials and so on. It is therefore necessary for the one who is involved to ensure that all the materials and resources are in order to avoid laying blames on other when the outcomes are not as expected. The aim of every high class business executive is to discover the solutions to greater performance. It is also hard to achieve leadership in the market and also very hard to maintain the top position. This is due to the high competition in the market, the always changing technology and also the moving international forces. At the same time, theses businesses are expected to bring forth profitable returns to the share holders. However, most of the executive leaders in the businesses find approaches for the delivery in the wrong places. This sometimes brings in negative outcomes into the organization and consequently a decrease in the performance of the organization (Shavelson, Baxter, & Pine, 1999). Assessment of performance An organization that has got the plans of improving its performance must first of all have a clear picture of its current status. This can then be used as a yardstick to measure future growth and to determine the tendency in order to estimate the outcomes of the prospected efforts. The process of evaluating the performance of the business consists of the assessment of the management, the organization itself and the production procedures. The objective of all this assessment is to discover the strengths and the openings within the business organization form a ground for laying the strategy for production improvement and to offer an objective structure for evaluating the progress towards the set goals. The Criteria for Performance Excellence is used as the structure for the assessment. This criterion is aimed at helping business organizations to improve on their general performance and on its capabilities, and also to give ever-increasing value goods to the clients leading success in the market. The benefits of performance assessment includes the understanding of the major organization drives, how to measure their activity and how these activities are in line with the goals and objectives of the organization. The other benefit is on the improvements in some of the areas that enhances the performance of the organization and in laying the basis for the strategic action.The framework for assessment of organizational performance consist of three concepts; these are organization environment, organizational motivation, organizational performance and organizational capacity. Organizational capacity is the capacity of an organization to utilize its available resources to execute duties and requirements. During the assessments of an organization, the resources, structures and the procedure that the organization uses in its efforts to achieve the goals and objectives are also assessed. The practices that are carried out in the organization in terms of financial and human resource management should also be assessed. Within the organization structure, planned leadership involves the plans and the position management by the leaders who guides the path for the organization to follow. The concept of organizational capacity therefore requires that organization should be able to manage its relationship outside the organization as inter-organizational relationships (Shavelson, Baxter, & Pine, 1999). Organizational motivation indicates the fundamental character of the organization. It is the factor that guides the members of the organization to do the organization activities. Some of the drivers to the performance of the members of the organization are the history of the organization and its evolution process. This helps in indicating the challenges that have been along the way and the mission of the organization. Motivation can also result form the existing culture in the organization and the enticements it gives. The external environment in which the systems within which the organization operates is also very important. The organization must operate in a conducive environment for it to survive. It is the environment that determines the amount of available resources with which the organization carries out its roles. The environment includes the macro economic policies, the political environment and the infrastructure. Poor infrastructure cha hinder the performance since the delivery of the materials and needed resources will delay. The technological environment is also very important because an organization that does not move with the changes in technology will always be the last position in the highly competitive markets. The assessment of the organization performance is therefore relative due to the factors considered above. For example, various organizations operate in different environments, have different capacities and have different sources of motivation. The performance therefore depends on the three factors. Some organizations operate on low technology areas while others are on the intensive technology areas. The resources that are used by the various organizations are different and the processes and the systems involved are also different. The performance may never be the same in all theses organizations. It is however very important to take into consideration theses factor before deciding on the performance assessment procedure to use (Kovner, Elton, & Billings, 2000). How to judge the quality of management without relying on single criteria of previous performance There are various aspects that need to be considerer before one makes a judgment or a conclusion about the management if a particular organization. This is where the person interested with making the judgment or drawing various conclusions about the management of a certain organization makes the conclusions based on the currently examined state and not in reference to the previous aspects of performance. In the book Hard facts, dangerous half-truths, and total nonsense: profiting from evidence-based management by Pfeffer & Sutton, the author talks of management that is based on evidence. He point s out some of the things that one needs to consider in management before incurring conclusions. First, he says that old ideas should be treated as old. This is because no idea that comes out form nowhere and most ideas in management are just the reformation of the old ones. It is important that judgment be made after the review of the old ideas that led to the formation of the new ones. The other thing that the author talks about is the need to get suspicious of the get through ideas and researches. Theses are quite rare but however knowledge moves forth as the totality of the previous work offers an idea of the next step. Another thing is to rejoice in combined luminosity and not single genius. This is because ne single person cannot execute change in the organization but it requires the communal knowledge of all the players in the organization (Pfeffer, & Sutton, 2006). The author continues to insist on the need for evidence while making performance decisions. He talks of how organization scan strengthen their performance and overcome the competition by use of evidence based management, a decision making that is guided by hard facts and not by half truths. However most of the managers base their activities on blind faith rather than on deep rooted evidence and continue to copy what others are doing without putting a question on the ideologies. In the performance judgment, there is a tendency of the halo effect and this is what leads to the managers avoiding evidence on some critical decisions. However, before an individual makes the judgment, evidence should be sought from a test on the strategies followed, the management tools used and a review of the observed codes. This review in search for evidence helps one to clearly understand the organization and the reasons for the actions that are being taken currently. The criteria of past performance may misguide the judgment since in any organization, performance is based on research where new things are identified and adopted. There is however no need of always holding unto the past mistakes done by others and always judging their current actions based on their past failures. Conclusion Attribution errors and the halo effect are all overshadowed by the evidence based management by Pfeffer & Sutton. It is wrong to judge the current behaviour of an individual based on the past experiences. For growth of any business, there is a need for looking forward to new things forms any individual. People keep changing and refreshing their thinking based on the current times. And for the success of any business, uncertainties must be there and a lot of risk taking. One has to venture into something he or she is not sure of and expect better outcomes. But if the outcomes are negative, there is always a room to take another stand instead of laying a ground for blame on those who have ever failed before. This will help any business organization to withstand the intense competition most of the market places and also to move with the technology. Bibliography Jones, E. & Harris, V., (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 3, 1-24. Learmonth, M. & Harding, N. (2006). Evidence-based Management: The very idea. Public Administration 84(2) 245- 266. Shavelson R., Baxter, G. & Pine J. (1999) Performance assessment in science. Applied Measurement in Education, 4(4): 347. Kovner, A., Elton J., & Billings. J., (2000). Evidence-Based Management. Frontiers of Health Services Management. 16 (4): 3-26. Pfeffer, J., & Sutton, R., (2006) Hard facts, dangerous half-truths, and total nonsense: profiting from evidence-based management. Harvard: Harvard Business press. Rose, M., (2005). The Halo Effect. New York: Mira publishers. Read More