The Field Of Organizational Behavior Commerce Essay Example

on the Big Five personality dimensions. These five dimensions include extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. Each dimension will now be explained:

Extraversion

Extraversion refers to the inclination to be sociable, outgoing, self-assertive,
talkative,
and active.

People who possess a high level of extraversion enjoy engaging in social activities and conversing with others, making them well-suited for occupations that involve significant interaction. Research has indicated that extroverted individuals excel in sales and managerial positions, perform admirably in training programs, and generally experience greater job satisfaction. Consequently, companies like Avon and The Sharper Image could derive advantages from implementing a valid personality test to evaluate extraversion as part of their hiring process.

Emotional Stability

Emotional stability pertains to the inclination to encounter positive emotions such as feelings of security, tranquility, and ease. Conversely, those lacking emotional stability often frequently experience emotions such as anxiety, depression, anger, and embarrassment. Individuals with lower emotional stability are also more susceptible to work-related stress.

Despite the weak correlation between emotional stability and job performance, interesting research suggests a link between emotional stability and other important work behaviors. For example, a meta-analysis revealed that individuals with low levels of emotional stability tend to exhibit low levels of employee motivation.a?¶

Agreeableness

The characteristic traits of agreeableness include kindness, forgiveness, tolerance, trustworthiness, and compassion. An employee who is described as "someone who gets along with others" demonstrates high agreeableness. This trait can be advantageous in being an effective team player and beneficial in roles that require positive interpersonal relationships and assisting colleagues.a?· Conversely, those lacking agreeableness are often perceived as rude, cold, uncaring, unsympathetic, and antagonistic.

Jobs and professions that require individuals with a high level of agreeableness include client service,

sales, auditing, nursing, education, and social work.

Conscientiousness

Individuals with conscientiousness are known for their reliability, organization skills, thoroughness, and responsibility. They also have a tendency to persevere through challenges, work diligently, and find satisfaction in completing tasks. This trait is highly valued by organizations as it ensures efficiency and effectiveness in the workplace. Conversely, employees lacking conscientiousness may display sloppiness, inefficiency, carelessness or even laziness. Research findings indicate a strong correlation between conscientiousness and job performance.

In summary, hardworking employees perform exceptionally well in diverse industries. Recent research also indicates that diligent individuals demonstrate increased motivation and job satisfaction, as well as other crucial work behaviors like dependability, attentiveness, and fewer counterproductive actions.

Openness to Experience

This last personality trait depicts an individual's inclination towards varied interests and their willingness to embrace risks. Notable characteristics include curiosity, open-mindedness, creativity, imagination, and intelligence. Those with a high level of openness to experience thrive in dynamic sectors that constantly evolve and prioritize innovation.

Individuals who create dramatic special effects for large-budget action movies need to possess high degrees of this personality dimension.

The Importance of Values in the Workplace

Values have been a part of organizational behavior for some time, but their popularity has grown in recent years. One reason for this is the increased awareness and sensitivity to cultural differences brought about by globalization. Organizations depend on individuals to make decisions and take actions that align with corporate objectives. Global organizations face the challenge of aligning people with diverse values towards common goals, which can lead to conflict due to differences in personal, organizational, and cultural values.

The Ethical Values and Behavior

Ethics is closely related to the discussion on workplace values. As mentioned earlier,

ethics involves studying moral principles or values that determine whether actions are right or wrong and outcomes are good or bad.

Both employees and clients highly value companies and their leaders who demonstrate ethical values. Research has demonstrated that employees consider a company's moral consistency to be equally significant as their salary. Social responsibility pertains to the ethical obligation of an individual or organization towards those impacted by their actions. Individuals who possess a strong sense of social responsibility are more motivated to assist others, regardless of any personal benefit, and refrain from actions that obstruct others' objectives.

The Three Ethical Principles

Various philosophers and scholars have identified several universal ethical principles that should guide ethical conduct.

Most of these rules and fluctuations can be summarized into three basic values.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism proposes that the option chosen should seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In simpler terms, it suggests selecting the option that brings the highest level of satisfaction to those affected. This rule is also known as consequentialist because it focuses on the effects of actions rather than how those effects are achieved. However, utilitarianism can sometimes lead to unethical decisions because it evaluates morality based on outcomes instead of the means used to achieve them.

Furthermore, it acknowledges situations in which a small number of individuals may experience severe oppression for the benefit of others.

Individual rights

This ethical belief recognizes that everyone possesses entitlements that enable them to behave in specific ways. Some commonly mentioned rights include freedom of movement, physical security, freedom of speech, fair trial, and freedom from torture.A?A? The principle of individual rights extends beyond legal rights. For example, an individual may have the

right to privacy while employers retain the right to monitor email communications. However, a challenge with individual rights arises when certain rights clash with others. For instance, the shareholders' right to be informed about corporate activities may conflict with an executive's right to privacy.

Distributive Justice

The concept of distributive justice suggests that inequality is considered acceptable under specific circumstances: (1) ensuring equal access to desirable positions in society, and (2) using these inequalities to benefit the least privileged individuals. The first condition stresses equal opportunities for securing well-paid jobs and other valuable positions. The second condition recognizes that some individuals may receive greater rewards if they ultimately improve the circumstances of those who are less privileged. For example, individuals in hazardous occupations should be compensated more if their willingness to take risks benefits the less privileged.

The issue with this regulation is the lack of agreement in society regarding which activities are most advantageous for those who are least at ease.

Emotions at Work

Emotions refer to sentiments towards something, someone, or an event that result in a state of preparedness. Instances filled with emotions inform individuals and raise awareness about events that may impact important personal goals. Strong emotions demand attention and disrupt cognitive processes. Additionally, they create a sense of readiness to respond to these events.

In simpler terms, these emotions motivate individuals to work towards their goal of attending. Scholars have categorized these various emotions into six classes: anger, fear, joy, love, sadness, and surprise. With the exception of surprise, each of these general emotional classes encompasses various specific emotional experiences. For example, researchers have discovered that shock and anxiety often combine to form the general

emotional class known as fear. Emotions are felt through thoughts, actions, and bodily reactions.

An individual may experience fear in a stressful situation by mentally feeling it, showing it through facial expression, and developing a faster pulse. Facial expressions and other behavior play an interactive role in the emotional experience. Emotions are directed towards someone or something. Feeling joy, fear, and other emotional episodes towards tasks, customers, presented speeches, software programs used, and so on. This contrasts with moods, which are less intense emotional states that are not directed towards anything in particular.

Figure: Types of Emotions in Workplace

Emotions, Attitude, and Behavior

Emotions are related to attitudes, but the two concepts are different.

Attitudes encompass beliefs, assessed feelings, and behavioral intentions towards an object.A?a?µ Emotions are subjective experiences, while attitudes involve judgments. People experience emotions, but think about attitudes. Emotions are typically temporary, whereas attitudes towards a person or something remain relatively stable over time.

Figure: Model of Emotions, Attitudes, and Behavior

The Nature of Employee Attitudes

Attitudes are sentiments and beliefs that largely influence how employees perceive their environment, commit to intended actions, and ultimately behave. Attitudes create a mental framework that impacts how individuals perceive something else, much like a window provides a perspective into or out of a building. While the window allows visibility of certain elements, the size and shape of the frame limit the observation of other components.

Additionally, the color of the glass may affect perception accuracy, just as the "color" of attitudes affects how work environments are perceived and judged. Organizational behavior directors are highly interested in employees' attitudes towards their jobs, careers, and the organization. While many factors contributing to job

satisfaction can be controlled by directors, individuals also differ in their inherent temperaments when entering organizations. Certain individuals are optimistic, cheerful, and gracious; they exhibit positive affectivity.

While some individuals have a positive attitude and are content with their work, others tend to be negative, pessimistic, cranky, or even abrasive. This is known as negative affectivity. It appears that people have an inherent disposition towards being satisfied or dissatisfied, and managers can only partly influence how employees respond. Nevertheless, it is crucial to examine job satisfaction.

Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction pertains to the favorable or unfavorable feelings and emotions that employees have towards their work. It also includes their overall attitude of liking or disliking something. Job satisfaction generally focuses on individual employees. When the evaluation of individual satisfaction is averaged across all members of a work unit, it is referred to as morale.

Monitoring group morale is crucial because individuals often look to their colleagues for social cues and adjust their own attitudes to fit those of the group. The development of attitudes typically takes place over a long period of time and job satisfaction or dissatisfaction similarly emerges as employees learn more about their workplace. However, job satisfaction is not static, as it can decline as well as improve. Managers cannot establish high satisfaction conditions and then ignore them, as employees' needs and perspectives may suddenly change.

Directors must continuously monitor employee attitudes over time. Job satisfaction is just one component of overall life satisfaction. Factors outside of work can indirectly affect how employees feel about their job. Similarly, because a job plays a significant role in workers' lives, job satisfaction influences their overall life satisfaction. Therefore, directors

need to observe not only the job and immediate work environment but also employees' attitudes towards other aspects of life.

Figure: Relationship Between Life Satisfaction and Age

As individuals age, they initially tend to experience higher levels of job satisfaction. It is presumed that they adjust their expectations and adapt better to their work situations.

People with higher-level businesss are generally more satisfied with their occupations as they are better paid, have better working conditions, and make fuller usage of their abilities. This satisfaction may endure as publicities become less frequent and they enter retirement.

Job Involvement

Job involvement refers to the extent to which employees immerse themselves in their occupations, invest time and energy in them, and consider work as a fundamental part of their overall lives. It is important for individuals to have meaningful jobs and perform well in them, as this contributes to their self-image. When job loss occurs, it can have traumatic effects on individuals' regard needs. Employees with higher job involvement are more likely to believe in the work ethic, have high growth demands, and enjoy participation in decision making.

As a result, employees rarely come late or miss work, and they are willing to work long hours and strive for excellence. Job engagement is similar to organizational commitment, where employees align with the organization's values and goals and feel a sense of unity with the company.

Organizational Commitment

Organizational commitment, also known as employee loyalty, refers to the extent to which an employee identifies with the organization and desires to actively participate in it. Like a strong magnetic force attracting one metal object to another, it measures an employee's willingness to remain with a company in the

future.

Commitment is the emotional connection and engagement with the organization. It reflects the belief in the mission and goals, willingness to put effort into their achievement, and intention to continue working there. Committedness is stronger among long-term employees, those who have experienced personal success, overcome major obstacles to entry, and work within a committed employee group.

Table: Factors that Inhibit and Stimulate Employee Commitment

• Suppressing Factors
• Stimulating Factors
• Excessive blaming
• Insincere gratitude
• Failure to follow through
• Incompatibilities and incongruities
• Inflated egos and bullying
• Clarity of rules and policies
• Investments in employees (training)
• Respect and appreciation for efforts
• Employee engagement in efforts
• Employee engagement and autonomy
• Making employees feel valued
• Reminders of employee investments
• Providing support to employees
• Creating opportunities for employees to show caring for others
• Organizationally committed employees will typically have good attendance records, willingly adhere to company policies, and experience lower turnover rates.

It is beneficial to distinguish between three types of organizational commitment.A?

Affective Commitment

Affective commitment refers to a positive emotional state in which employees desire to exert effort and choose to remain in the organization.

Normative Commitment

Normative commitment is the decision to stay attached due to strong cultural or familial ethics that motivate employees to do so.

They believe they should be committed because of others' belief system and their own internalized norms and feelings of duty.

Continuance Commitment

Continuance commitment encourages employees to stay because of their high investment in the organization

such as time and effort, and the economic and social losses they would incur if they left. Managers should be aware of the levels of each type of commitment of their employees and work to strengthen each type for effective employees.

Work Attitudes

Attitudes are emotional states that are typically stable over time and focused on a particular aspect of one's job. Employees do have feelings towards their jobs that are both diffuse and highly dynamic, where they reflect overall views and can change within a day, hour, or minute. These fluctuating attitudes towards their jobs are referred to as work tempers.

An employee's work temper can range from negative ("I hate this undertaking today") to positive ("Right now I am excited by this new challenge"), and from weak to strong and intense. Strongly positive work tempers are visible in workers' energy, passion, verve, and enthusiasm. These positive types of work tempers are important to a director because they will predictably result in closer attention to client service, lower absenteeism, greater creativity, and interpersonal cooperation.

MARS Model of Individual Behavior and Performance

A useful model for understanding the drivers of individual behavior is the MARS model of individual behavior and performance. The MARS model shows the four factors which are motivation, ability, role perceptions, and situational factors have a combined effect on individual performance. If any factor weakens, employee performance will decrease which then leads to lower productivity.

Figure: MARS model of Individual Behavior and Performance

Employee Motivation

Motivation represents the forces within a person that affect the direction, strength, and continuity of his or her voluntary behavior. Direction refers to the fact that motivation is goal-oriented, not random.

People are motivated to

work on time, finish a project ahead of schedule, or achieve various other goals. Intensity refers to the amount of effort devoted to reaching the goal. For example, two employees may be motivated to finish their project ahead of schedule, but only one of them puts in enough effort to accomplish this goal. Ultimately, motivations involve different levels of continuity, meaning the effort continues for a specific period of time.

Employees have the option to persist in their efforts until completion or they may choose to give up before finishing.

Ability

A second factor that affects individual behavior and performance is a person's ability. This includes both innate talents and learned skills that are necessary for successfully completing a task. Aptitudes are natural gifts that assist employees in learning specific tasks more quickly and performing them better. Learned skills are the abilities and knowledge that have been acquired, including both physical and mental attributes, as well as the knowledge gained and retained for future use.

Employee Competences

Many organizations now prefer to hire employees based on their general competences rather than specific job qualifications due to the rapidly changing external environment. Competences encompass not only natural and learned abilities, but also an individual's values and personality traits.

Person - Occupation Matching

There are three main ways to match individuals and their competences with the requirements of a job. One approach is to select candidates whose existing competences align best with the job's demands. This method involves comparing each applicant's competences with the specific requirements of the job or work unit.

A second attack involves providing preparation so that employees can acquire the necessary

skills and knowledge. The third strategy for matching individuals to jobs is to redesign the job so that employees are assigned tasks that align with their capabilities.

Role Perceptions

Role perceptions refer to a person's beliefs about what behaviors are appropriate or necessary in a specific situation, including the specific tasks that make up their job, the relative importance of those tasks, and the preferred behaviors to accomplish them. Role perceptions help clarify the preferred way of effort. Organizations can improve role perceptions by clearly describing each employee's responsibilities and demonstrating how those goals relate to the overall organizational objectives. Additionally, employees can clarify their role perceptions through collaboration and receiving frequent and meaningful performance feedback.

Situational Factors

Job performance is influenced by various factors, including motivation, abilities, and role perceptions. However, the situation in which an employee works also plays a significant role. Situational factors refer to external conditions that either restrict or enable an employee's behavior and performance. Examples of these factors include time, individuals, budget, and physical work facilities. It is important to note that these factors are controlled by others within the organization.

Other situational features such as consumer penchants and economic conditions come from the external environment and are beyond the control of employees and organizations. Motivation, ability, function perceptions, and situational factors all impact conscious workplace behaviors and performance outcomes.

Behavior Modification: Learning Through Reinforcement

One of the oldest perspectives on learning, known as behavior modification or operant conditioning, takes the extreme view that learning is completely dependent on the environment. Behavior modification doesn't challenge the idea that thinking is part of the learning process, but it sees human thoughts as insignificant intermediate stages between

behavior and the environment. Behavior modification focuses on voluntary behaviors, which are referred to as operant behaviors because they impact or "operate" on the environment in desired ways. These operant behaviors are different from reflexive behaviors, which are involuntary responses to the environment like pulling back a hand from a hot stove or blinking when a bright light is turned on.

A-B-C's of Behavior Modification

Behavior modification acknowledges that behavior is influenced by two environmental occurrences: the antecedents that precede behavior and the consequences that follow behavior. These principles are part of the A-B-C model of behavior modification, where the primary goal is to change behavior (B) by managing its antecedents (A) and consequences (C). Antecedents are events preceding the behavior, informing individuals that certain behaviors will have specific consequences. While antecedents are important, behavior modification primarily focuses on the effects of behavior.

Consequences refer to events that occur as a result of a specific behavior and have an impact on its occurrence in the future. These events are influenced by the concept of consequence in the field of law, which states that the likelihood of repeating a certain behavior depends on its effects. If a behavior is followed by a positive experience, an individual is more likely to repeat that behavior. Conversely, if the behavior is followed by a negative experience or no response at all, the individual is less likely to repeat it. The concept of consequence provides an explanation for how individuals learn to associate behaviors with specific responses in their environment.

Table: A-B-C 's of Behavior Modification

• Ancestors
• What happens

before the behaviour