Organisational Behavior Issues - Assignment Example

1. Using organisational examples compare and contrast the terms “emotional labour” and “emotional intelligence”. Emotional labour can be defined as the process by which employees are expected to control their emotions in line with guidelines and rules that are defined within an organisation. For instance, in a hospital setting, nurses are expected to behave in a certain way that is appropriate for the nursing profession and for the organisation in which they work. What this implies is that if a person works as a nurse, he or she is expected not to show his or own behaviour in the workplace but to assume the behaviour that is expected of a nurse. This concept was clearly captured in Hochschild’s (1983) definition of emotional labour, which implied that emotional labour involves the suppression or induction of feelings so as to maintain an outward appearance that reflects in others a feeling of being cared for and protected. For instance, nurses are expected to present themselves as caring people to reassure patients of the care they are giving them. In this sense, nurses suppress their own feelings in order to portray themselves as people who are caring and concerned about the needs and feelings of the patients that they are attending to. Emotional labour applies to different types of jobs, which like nursing, share three types of attributes. The first attribute is that such jobs involve voice or face-to-face contact with the public. For instance, nurses and flight attendants are directly in contact with the people they are offering their services to. Secondly, jobs in which emotional labour applies require the worker to elicit an emotional state in another person. For instance, a flight attendant has to smile to make travellers happy while a nurse has to use reassuring words to give patients hopes of recovery. Thirdly, jobs that involve emotional labour enable employers some level of control of over employees. This is because the employees are required to behave in a certain way as required by their employer. Emotional intelligence on the other hand refers to the ability of people to recognise their own as well as other individuals’ emotions, to make a distinction between different feelings and mark them appropriately, and to make use of emotional information to direct thoughts and behaviour. Emotional intelligence enables people to know how they feel, to manage their emotions well as impulses, to motivate themselves and to persist in their jobs, to empathise with others, and to handle the emotions of others. There is a notable connection between emotional labour and emotional intelligence. This lies in the notion that emotional intelligence influences the performance of tasks over and above the general personality and mental ability factors. In particular, jobs that require high emotional labour need a high level of emotional intelligence in the individuals that perform them. During a change process in an organisation for instance, the change can be enabled by paying keen attention to emotions. The same applies to a hospital setting where doctors and nurses have to make critical decisions within a short time to save a patient’s life. The high emotional labour involved requires emotionally intelligent individuals who are able to recognise and make use of their own and others’ emotional conditions to solve the problem at hand. 2. Discuss two consequences of distress and provide an example of how organisations can assist employees in managing their work-related stress. Distress refers to negative stress. Distress is caused by bad experiences in organisations or in the various environments that employees undertake their activities. Unlike eustress, which is positive stress that is caused by good things such as getting a job promotion or an award or a positively challenging task, distress is associated with negative consequences. Two of the consequences are physiological symptoms and psychological symptoms. Physiological symptoms include a number of medical illnesses that have a stress-linked component. The most notable medical illnesses of this type include high blood pressure, headaches, heart disease, peptic ulcers, backaches and strokes. Although the link between distress and some physiological problems is not clear, it can be argued that people who are under distress are likely to have some of the aforementioned conditions and others. For instance, working for long hours without breaks due to high work pressure is likely to result in problems such as backaches, eye problems and headaches. Straining of the eyes due to too much exposure to the computer screen and backaches due to poor sitting positions or sitting for long hours are particularly common problems. Distress can also indirectly aid the progression of diseases. For example, too much preoccupation with work can result in severe individual stress, like the Japanese concept of Karoshi – which means death caused by overwork. Psychological symptoms of distress include problems such as burnout, depression, irritability, loss of motivation and a decline in job satisfaction. Individuals who are overworked are likely to experience effects such as burnouts due to over-commitment to work or other responsibilities. In turn, such individuals are likely to experience problems such as depression due to failure to achieve some of their goals or work targets. This leads to conditions such as the individuals becoming irritable, having a run-down feeling, and losing interest or satisfaction in the job. Organisations can assist employees in managing their work-related stress by implementing a number of changes that address the cause of the stress. To start with, an organisation can focus on removing the cause or causes of stress. For instance, if the negative stress is caused by a poor job design, the organisation can think of a way of redesigning the job and breaking it down into small smaller and simpler tasks that suit the needs of different individuals. Organisations can also help their employees to deal with work-related stress by providing them with social support or assisting them to receive social support. For example, an organisation can arrange for team-building activities such as periodic travelling or physical fitness that can help employees reduce stress and enhance the formation of social bonds across and within various units. Further, organisations can help employees to manage work-related stress by changing the employees’ perceptions towards stress and controlling the consequences of stress. For instance, team leaders can advise their team members that stress is not necessarily a bad thing if it is taken positively. By focusing on the positive aspects of stress, employees can focus on how to turn the stress into positive outcomes and this will help control the effects of the stress. Organisations can also help their employees to withdraw from the stressors such as noise or failure to plan effectively that results in a work overload at some point. 3. Compare and discuss formal power and personal power as bases for power. Which of the two types of power in your opinion is the most effective type of power? Formal power refers to the power that an individual derives from his or her position in an organisation. On the other hand, personal power denotes the power that stems from a person’s unique traits with regard to how the person relates with others in spite of his or her position in an organisation. Formal power has three bases: legitimate power, reward power and coercive power. Legitimate power is the power that is given to an individual by organisations. Specifically, different positions that are assigned a formal power of authority by an organisation have legitimate power. For instance, different types of leadership positions normally get legitimate power from the concerned organisation and accept power of the person that occupies such a position. Turning to reward power, this is a form of power that enables an individual to be in a position to give rewards to others. Reward power may occur due to the position of a leader in an organisation, such as a middle-level manager awarding a pay rise based on one’s performance or assigning an individual a more attractive work schedule. Coercive power on the other hand refers to a leader having the capacity to punish others by denying them things such as promotion recommendations, pay rises or other benefits. Personal power has two bases, namely expert power and referent power. Both bases of power are related to the characteristics of a person as noted above. Expert power relates to a situation in which some leaders are experts in some area or are recognised for their ability to get things done well. The unique knowledge or ability gives such people a source of power since others will seek their advice or assistance in solving various problems. When a leader has a personality that makes it possible him or her to influence the behaviour of others, they can be said to possess referent power. The attributes that enable leaders to influence others include charisma, charm, wit, empathy and enthusiasm among others. In my opinion, personal sources of power are the most effective type of power compared to formal sources of power. This is due to the notion that since personal power emanates from the characteristics of an individual, it is guided by the interpersonal relationship between a leader and his or her followers. Notably, managers who exhibit referent and expert power are likely to inspire their followers to be enthusiastic, motivated, and more committed to an organisation and its goals. As opposed to formal power such as coercive power where leaders focus on punishing followers if they do not follow the set rules, personal power will focus on building relationships. This can ultimately enhance problem-solving and increase motivation and satisfaction levels among employees. More importantly, the referent power base of personal power involves leaders’ influence through charisma, personal liking, and reputation among other traits. This can make employees in an organisation to be inspired to emulate the traits of the leaders. Consequently, organisations with a personal power base are likely to have employees who are more committed than those that focus on formal bases of power. 4. Conflict can be described as an ongoing activity when an interaction crosses over to become an inter-party conflict. Explain the conflict process highlighting its core stages. A conflict is said to occur when there is an interaction of mutually dependent parties who perceive opposition of certain goals, and who regard the other party as causing obstruction to the achievement of these goals. In other words, parties who are in conflict will perceive incompatibility of goals between them, have differences in regard to interpretation of facts, and have disagreements based on what they expect of each other behaviourally. The conflict process can be analysed based on five core stages. The first stage is incompatibility of goals or potential opposition. This involves the presence of conditions that generate opportunities for disagreements to arise. Not all the conditions may lead directly to a disagreement, but one of them is a sine qua non for conflict to arise. The factors involved include such issues as personal values, organisation patterns, scarcity of resources and organisational structure among others. The existence of different opinions or positions regarding any of these factors may be a precursor to a conflict. For instance, a team member who has a habit of reporting to work late and causing delays in completion of team projects is likely to face opposition from the other team members who do not like such behaviour. The second stage is realisation and personalisation of an issue in question. If any of the factors cited in the first stage cause frustration, the possibility of explicit opposition will be realised in the second stage. The antecedent situations can result in conflict only when one or more parties are impacted by, and are aware of, the conflict. Nonetheless, the mere perceiving of a conflict does not of necessity imply that the conflict is personalised. As an example, group members may realise after some days that one group member has a habit of coming to work late and that this affects their ability to meet their projects’ deadlines. The third stage of the conflict process is intentions. Intentions influence people’s perceptions and feelings as well their overt behaviours. One party has to infer the intent of another party in order to know how to react to the other party’s behaviour. Many conflicts are escalated simply by one party ascribing the wrong intentions to another party. For instance, the members of a team in which one individual habitually reports to work late may think that their colleague has an intent to sabotage their efforts to meet project deadlines. The fourth stage involves behaviour. This stage is important because it is the step where conflicts become visible. The stage encompasses the actions, statements and responses made by the parties in the conflict. For instance, the group members may accuse the member who reports to work late of deliberately doing so because he or she has other businesses outside the workplace. The member in question may on the other hand respond that his or her colleagues do not understand his background and why he/she often comes to work late. The fifth stage is outcomes. The actions and reactions made by conflicting parties result in ramifications. The outcomes may be functional or dysfunctional. Functional outcomes imply for instance that the conflicting parties may agree to find ways of addressing the problem. On the other hand, dysfunctional outcomes are destructive and may involve the parties not being able to work together to the extent that their group performance is decreased. Read More