How Individual Differences and Organizational Behavior Influence the Work Process - Essay Example

Psychology at work is about understanding the processing that individuals have at their work environment. Psychology is about people’s behaviour, thoughts and emotions and how they are related to their duties and responsibilities at work. Arnold (2005) explains that every organization has its own internal sophisticated system for assessing employees, management and cost-benefits. For an organization to be successful it needs to treats its workers as valuable assets (Arnold, 2005). In this regard work psychologists seek to carefully study the tendencies in people’s behaviour, thoughts and feelings to work to create a positive and successful working environment. In this paper I will attempt to elaborate on how individual differences and organizational behaviour influence the work process. To better deliver and communicate my point I decided to focus on two topics – leadership and approaches to work motivation. The organization that I choose as placement is in the customer service industry, so the priority for the company is to keep the customers satisfied, creating company loyalty policies. Drenth (1998) outlines briefly that the history of work psychology dates back from hundred years ago, when scholars, researchers and psychologists started to analyze the circumstances of the industrialization on the overall work processes. The specificities around that workload, and the labour market in the industrial era posed significant questions about the sickness absences, child labour, occupational stress, welfare differences and training and development devices. All these led to the creation of organization psychologists who provided care for the workers (Drenth, 1998). Even though technology become all too important, human factor enriches the work process to an irreplaceable degree. Therefore, studying human factor determines the main tendencies in work psychology. People at work are constantly interacting with each other, they exchange skills, obtain new knowledge through training, though still each employee besides the particular work role that he is performing remains individual, with his unique behavioural characteristics, personal attitude, reactions and style. The topic of leadership is significant not only for the organization and psychology at work, but also for the whole social science field. Furnham (2005) notes that authors from various disciplines from literatures, economics, and management are trying to determine the factors that make “good” leaders and what are their strengths and personal traits. In their study Hogan, Curphy and Hogan (1994) summarize that the fundamental task of the leader is to construct and maintain high performing team. The team should be competitive and complete effectively the company’s goals. They easiest way to evaluate whether someone holds leadership abilities is to test how successful his team will be in terms of performance (Hogan, Curphy and Hogan, 1994). Thus, leadership is directly connected with the organization’s productivity. Hogan, Curphy and Hogan (1994) describe that there are several distinguishable features that a leader should possess – competence about the business area he is managing, being honest and trustworthy, have a visionary about the near future, hold a sense of direction and purpose and apply techniques to motivate his subordinates. As we know from experience, however, possessing the required qualifications or specific personal features, do not necessarily make from you a good leader. The organization that I would like to take as an example is customer service oriented. My placement is in the sales department where we are constantly balancing between company polities and monthly targets and customers’ demands, needs and feedback. When at work, employees take different roles which they implement – they are serious, because they sale products, they are caring and responsive to the clients, they sympathize with them. But, when sales representatives are on break or go for their lunch, they change their play role. Now they make jokes, laugh, or exchange personal feelings. The question is to find the middle ground and to be able to create equilibrium between the work role leaders hold and the human, personal attitude. To illustrate the point made, I would give an example with a work situation that happened in the company. As sales representative each is given a monthly target which he has to reach, in order to get a bonus and to increase the profit margin. In order for people to be motivated the new team leader changed the existing bonus system and now employees receive a per cent of the profit margin made by them. The leader showed both his competences of the market, his understanding about worker’s compensation and properly balanced his leader’s responsibility and manager’s decision making. House (1998) on the other hand provides slightly diverse features that the leader should hold. For him leadership is characterized primarily by group activities – maintaining and initiating duties at work, meeting expectations and preserving positive interactions between the workers and the clients. On one aspect House (1998) and Hogan, Curphy and Hogan (1994) share similar view – that the leader have to exercise his influence through accurately communicating the organizational goals with the individual strivings and achievements. In this way the leader will ensure that employees share the same vision about their work and company goals, will create opportunities for his subordinates and will build confidence within the team and his own. Furnham (2005) notes that good leadership qualities or abilities are something people were born with and you are not trainable or fixed if applied incorrectly. For me leaders especially in the customer service industry should first of all preserve their human attitude. I will exemplify this with the organization under question referring to a real situation. One of the sales representatives was showing very disappointing target results in the last few months. There was no obvious reason why this is. However, the team leader tried to understand the sales and without everybody knowing was holding personal meetings with him. Soon, he was moved to a different department and we blamed the tough and merciless leader for destroying the sales atmosphere and self-confidence. What turned out was that the sales was expecting triplets and he was worried about his wife and did not feel concentrated over his work at all, so he asked the leader, if there is a way to be transferred to a different department where no targets are set, in order to him to feel relaxed and take care of his family. Some may disagree that personal matters are unimportant at the workplace, but in the customer service industry individual content and gratification is everything. Some scholars like Zaleznik (1977) tried to make a distinction between leaders and managers. He argues that they differ fundamentally in the way they work, influence others and think about the situation. The main difference between leaders and managers is that while managers carry on rather analytical, intellectual and rational function, the leaders are inspired by determination, self-confidence, and organizational values. Furnham (2005) says that work psychologists and scientists focusing on management theory have prolonged discussions over leader’s styles, weaknesses, functions and skills. The reason why this is so, is because each researcher concentrates on different aspects and features of the leader. Leaders vary not only within the company, but also within the business field and sector. There are political leaders, military, economic, business. Leadership is a process of influencing the behaviour and actions of other individuals or groups towards achieving the best organizational or other results. For assessing how “good” or successful a leader is, we have to take into consideration the sector he is working at, his personality, his qualifications and previous work experience. Moreover, we have to account for the kind of power which leaders wield and how important their positions is within the organization. We may conclude that there are various theories about leaders and leadership. Each of them is unique because it explains in details specific aspects of the field. There are no correct or incorrect methods or particular qualities that describe leaders. This only confirms the idea that individuality can not be defined and placed into a graph. Thanks to individual differences, leaders and organizations can be competitive and innovative, to pass boundaries and to achieve market triumphs. The study of leadership is a vast and immense area and with the development of information and communication technology new studies emerge every day. Leadership theory is a dynamic realm because it involves other disciplines – psychology, sociology, management, behavioural studies. Whichever leadership doctrine we choose to adopt we have to investigate the specificities that it applies to and to which business sector it is directed. The other topic within the paper that I would like to pay attention is approaches to work motivation. When debating over motivation at the workplace we can clearly see that it is directly linked with the concepts of psychology. Arnold et al (2005) apply the need theory to the motivation and psychology. In the work setting, Arnold et al (2005) recognize two major traditions. The first is based on the idea of psychological growth and the other focuses on the approaches tackling specific needs. Maslow (cited in Arnold et al) came up with a model theorizing human functions and dividing them into five classes of needs. These are: 1. physiological – the need to eat, drink, have sex, in general, the most primitive, biological needs; 2. safety – the need for physical and mental safety – environment securing this; 3. belonging – the need to feel accepted and part of the society, group, sense of attachment; 4. esteem – the need to feel valued and appreciated, respected by others, to be significant to others; 5. self-actualization – the need to fulfill the individual’s potential – to develop and acquire additional skills, knowledge and express them. Obviously, for individuals to progress they have to more up to hierarchy. Besides Maslow’s theory which dominated the work motivation approaches for decades, there are others. Baumeister and Leary (1995) concluded that in circumstances the need to belong is more powerful and persevering than the other needs. Human beings are socially constructed, thus, they create social bonds and feel attached to them. Often, especially at friendly and positive work environment, people are reluctant to break this bond even if they are unsatisfied with their professional and career development. An example can be given with the service company. A sales representative works over customer’s files, reaches the target, he is happy with the salary and bonus and is surrounded by helpful and supportive colleagues. Though, what the sales is missing is the challenging moments, lack of routine, dynamic environment. To an extent, he believes that the work as sales bores him and he does not feel motivated to accomplish more than the regular bonus goal. However, due to the pleasant working environment, the team work and the colleagues who turned into his friends, he is not motivated enough to change his job. People feel strongly driven to unite under familiar and already achieved status and frequent social interactions with familiar people fill other needs – for safety and self-esteem. The interpersonal relations at work affect not only the work processes and individual achievement, but also form an unbreakable feeling of belonging. Another need-based approach to motivation is offered by Murray (1938). He discovers that people need to achieve goals helps their motivation to overcome obstacles, to make decisions, to strive for new alternatives, to exercise power. In order for people to prove their qualifications and competences, they seek to complete tasks that are difficult, but not totally impossible. Such people are excellent choice for the sales team, since they are self-motivated and responsible towards the goals set. The need to accomplish also creates the competitiveness within the company, because different sales departments compete, thus are willing to come up with innovative ideas and to push the limits of their imagination. In a sales team, to reach the target is the biggest achievement which is utilized by leaders to improve the quality of the work. Another approach to work motivated is the expectancy theory proposed by Vroom (1964). Expectancy theory focuses on the process of choosing. Vroom (1964) examines how people decide upon their course of action. He saw the process as calculated and cognitive appraisal and distinguished three factors which influence the process – expectancy (will I successfully perform the task I am planning), instrumentality (will the action taken lead to positive outcomes) and valence (what value do I gain). Vroom (1964) explains that the expectancy and instrumentality are the probabilities and the valance obtained is the subjective value. Let us take as an example the sales team at the customer service company. Employees identify that they possess the necessary skills and educational background to perform their sales tasks successfully (this is the expectancy). Sales representatives aim to perform adequately their roles because they know that they will be rewarded (this is instrumentality). The workers know that they will be awarded additionally, if they deliver outstanding results, a lucrative bonus (this is valance). For me almost all job specifications and motivation approaches within every company are primarily based on the expectancy theory. Even thought people vary in their desires for success, self-actualization, career development, they all subconsciously apply Vroom’s methodology to evaluate which option will bring them more value. Sales representatives are very target oriented, thus they know that if they score high in their monthly target, they will receive per cent of the revenue they have accumulated for the company. Expectancy theory is very applicable here, because it follows how employees’ motivation is formed and what trajectory in sales’ action will lead to positive financial results. The organization that I referred to in this assignment has several areas in which it needs to completed improvements. These are the organizational behaviour, more specialized training and development programs for the newly recruited personnel, differentiation between the responsibilities of the team leaders and those of the senior managers. The area that I picked up to address is the training and development programs. Most of the recruited personnel pass an obligatory training, especially if they will be part of the sales team. Currently in the company the training lasts up to a week, which I consider insufficient to prepare the employees for all the duties they are to handle as sales representatives. As the customer services that the organization offers are highly specialized, the training has to cover the international laws which regulate the business, vocabulary terms and then the company’s sales procedures. All these have to be carefully organized in relation to whom and how will deliver the training. Although a native speaker is a must, the sales representatives are dealing with customer from all over the world, to I recommend an expert familiar with the basic cultural characteristics who is capable of providing exhaustive sources background of various cultural situations. Therefore, the sales will start their placement with the confidence that they have thorough knowledge both in the sphere that the company operates and in the different cultures that the business intermingles with. Human factor is the most vital resources for any organization. Appreciating the personnel will lead the business towards new and better achievements. The other crucial aspect is that people are individuals and even though they share common culture, values, or educational background, they differ in their attitudes, personalities, perceptions and aspirations. The vast array of individual human differences provides team leaders and managers with a never-ending challenge to find the best way to control and guide their subordinates so as to exceed in their performances. Chmiel (2000) says that managers have to seek to investigate the impact of individual diversity on the organization’s internal environment. Only then they can oversee their employees in the desired directions, because they will acknowledge that individual approaches are more important than the standardized organizational behaviour. Work psychologists focus their attention primarily on the individual level, because they understand the fact that the organization is moving forward thanks for the differences that people have. The mistakes that many companies allow to happen are that they limit the individuality at work in order to preserve a sterile work environment. As I have tried to illustrate in this paper, leaders who have individual approaches and human and proactive attitude are prone to be labeled as “good” and successful. The reason is that employees appreciated personal approaches, because they indicate deep evaluation for personal qualities. Therefore, when the employee feels valued the sense of belonging is established and the work atmosphere is more reassuring and encouraging. Understanding human behaviour in the work place requires from both managers and employees to show mutual positive feelings towards their individual differences and to find suitable attitude to preserve the affirmative work atmosphere. Leadership skills and motivation and reinforcement are of immense importance when discussing theories of work psychology. References: Arnold, John et al, 2005. Work Psychology – understanding Human Behaviour in the Workplace. Prentice Hall, 4th edition Baumeister, R.F., and Leary, M.R. .1995. The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529. Chmiel, Nik. 2000. Introduction to work and organizational psychology, Oxford: Blackwell Drenth, Pieter, 1998. A Handbook of Work and Organizaional psychology: work psychology. Psychology Press Furnham, Adrian, 2005. The psychology of behaviour at work: the individual in the organization. Routledge Press Inc. Hogan, R., Curphy, G.J., Hogan, J. 1994., "What we know about leadership: effectiveness and personality", American Psychologist, Vol. 49 pp.493-504. House, R. 1998. Leadership, In N.Nicholson (Ed.) Encyclopedic dictionary of organizational behaviour, pp.284 – 288, Oxford: Blackwell. Murray, H. A. et al. 1938. Explorations in personality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press Vroom, V. H. 1964. Work and motivation. New York: Wiley Zaleznik, A. 1977. Managers and leaders: Are they different? Harvard Business Review, pp. 67-78. Read More