The Organizational Behavior Principles Presentation - Essay Example

The importance of this factor stems out of its determining role in the employees' job satisfaction, level of stress and interest. There are three most commonly used approaches to integration of job design: efficiency perspective, motivation perspective, and quality perspective. The efficiency perspective developed on the base of the scientific management and its primary goal is to economize on the costs of production activities. We can think about one of the aspects of the efficiency perspective, namely process engineering, as a potential tool to increase efficiency of the sales force performance.

However, the efficiency perspective does not really have the positive impact on the workers' motivation and effort. Generally speaking, process engineering assesses the sequence of tasks required to produce a particular product or service and analyzes the way those tasks fit together into an integrated job. It also examines tasks to see which should be performed by people and which can possibly be automated without compromising on the performance. The motivational perspective concentrates on fitting the characteristics of jobs to the needs and interests of the people who performs them and, therefore, provides the opportunity for satisfaction at work.

Although, its commonly used tools, which include vertical, horizontal, comprehensive, and sociotechnical job enrichment, are applicable to a greater extend to the manufacturing organizations, the motivational perspective may provide us with useful insights as well. We may consider allocating to the new product line sales team those sales managers who have had previous experience with new products' launches and are excited about participating in such a challenge. The quality perspective incorporates both elements of motivational and efficiency perspectives and emerged later when the total quality management began gaining popularity.

Closely interconnected with the motivational theory and job design is the goal setting process. As the goal commitment and performance are positively related, the task of proper goal setting gains importance. Every company wants to rely on its workers doing "the best they can". Although such a goal is intended to guide job performance in everyday situation, research in the organizational behavior field has consistently demonstrated that instructions shaped in this way can hinder the working performance.

In contrast, Wagner and Hollenbeck (2005) note that more than 100 studies support the assertion that performance is enhanced by goals that are both specific and difficult (120). Two additional elements that help in motivating the employees are feedback, so the progress can be monitored, and incentives, so the goal accomplishment takes on meaning. Therefore, the goals of the new sales team should be both specific, meaning quantified and personalized, and challenging. Moreover, following the steady evolutionary growth should be rewarded.

Specific and difficult goals are especially effective when incorporated into a continuous improvement cycle in which future goals consist of reasonable increments on the fulfilled goals of the past. The aggressive but achievable goals encourage people to develop effective task strategies and sharpen their mental focus on the task. However, their major advantage is that they direct attention to specific desired results, clarifying perceptions of