Q.1 : What is organizational behavior? Discuss its relevance.
Ans. : Organizational behavior is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals,
groups, the structure have on behavior within organization for the purpose of applying such
knowledge towards improving an organization’s effectiveness”
Three major components - Individual, Group & Structure constitute the organization behavior.
OB also applies the knowledge gained about individuals, groups and the effect of structure on
behavior; which make organization work more effectively.
Usually, OB studies two important issues :
1. What do the people do in an organization ?
2. How does that behavior affect the performance of the organization ?
OB mainly focuses on how to improve the productivity, reduce absenteeism and turnover and
increase employee citizenship and job satisfaction.
We all hold generalization about the behavior of people. Some of them may provide valid
insights into human behavior, many are erroneous. OB uses systematic study to improve
prediction of behavior that would be made from intuition alone.
The world is changing at the cosmic speed and so the behavior of the people, people
continually changes their responses to the same situations over a period of time. Such changes
in behaviors are most apparent in the growing economy like India.
No, more the business is circumscribed under the same definition. Business has gone globally,
so the employees of such organizations have to work with the people with different cultures,
different perception and different goals. OB helps the managers to handle such situations at
organizations.
The people have turned to career orientation from family orientation; in the urban areas of
growing economic countries the concept of marrying at late age and having a single child have
become most common. So, the priorities of the people is being changed, their investment
policy and plans for future have been deviated from the earlier era. For an organization, it is
very important to identify such changes and catering the products and services accordingly.
OB helps the managers to do this.
Helping the employee to maintain job-family balance is the greatest challenge before the
management, work-at-home concept is gaining the popularity day by day, amongst the people
who are career oriented and want to undergo the overtime without disturbing the family life.
As a result of aggressive advertisement strategy, that the organization follow, the consumer
have become more selective about meeting their needs, and so the mall culture have
increasingly replaced the small retailers. OB helps to map out the consumers behavior.
OB offers both challenges and opportunities for managers. It offers specific insights to improve
a manager’s people skills.
Social networking has wide meaning now. Social networking sites such as orkut & others helps
the management to know about global trend. Of course, social networking is the part of OB.
It recognizes the difference and helps managers to see the value of workforce diversity and
practices that may need to be changed when managing in different countries. Workforce
diversity may be observed through one of the following respects : Caste or tribes, states,
gender, age, temporary/permanent etc.
It improves quality and employee productivity by showing managers how to empower their
people, design and implement change programs, improve customer service and help employees
balance work/life conflicts.
It provides suggestion for helping managers meet chronic labor shortages.
It can help managers to cope in a world of temporariness and to learn ways to stimulate
innovation.
In short, OB can offer managers guidance in creating an ethically healthy work climate.
Q.2:Define Learning and discuss types of Learning.
Ans. :“Learning is any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience.”
It means if as a result of experience an individual behaves, reacts, responds differently than
earlier he/she used to, we can say that learning has taken place.
Learning is either good or bad change in behavior; but the change must be the permanent.
Learning is only confirmed when the relatively permanent change comes to individual’s action,
change in thought process only is not considered as learning.
There are three major types of Learnings :
1. Classical Conditioning
2. Operant Conditioning
3. Social Learning
1. Classical Conditioning :
· Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov forwarded this theory of learning in early 1900s.
· “A type of conditioning in which an individual responds to some stimulus that would not
ordinarily produce such a response.”
· When stimuli, one compelling and the other neutral are paired, the neutral one becomes
conditioned stimulus; i.e. it takes on the properties of unconditioned stimulus after a
condition.
e.g. :
1. When Pavlov presented the dog with a piece of meat, the dog exhibited a noticeable
increase in salivation. When Pavlov withheld the presentation of meat and merely rang a
bell, the dog did not salivate. Then Pavlov proceeded to link the meat and the ringing of
the bell. After repeatedly hearing the bell before getting the food, the dog began to salivate
as soon as the bell rang. After a while, the dog would salivate merely at the sound of the
bell, even if no food was offered.
In this case, the meat was an unconditioned stimulus; it invariably caused the dog to react
in a specific way (i.e. to salivate – unconditioned response). The bell was an artificial
stimulus (conditioned stimulus), which was originally neutral (not inducing the desired
response), but after it was paired with the meat, it indicted the dog to salivate (conditioned
response) even presented alone.
2.At some manufacturing plant - every time when the top officials from head office are
scheduled to make a visit to the plant, the plant management cleans up the administrative
offices and wash the windows. This goes on for years. As a result the employees would
turn on their best behavior and look prim and proper whenever the windows were cleaned,
even in those occasional instances when the cleaning was not paired with the visit of the
top officials from the head office.
In this case, turning on the best behaviors by the employees is a usual response to visit of
top officials (unconditioned stimulus), not to cleaning the windows (conditioned stimulus).
But, as the cleaning the windows have been paired with the visit of top officials for a
prolong period of time, turning on the best behaviors becomes the usual response to
cleaning the windows (Conditioned response).
2. Operant Conditioning :
· Harvard psychologist B.F.Skinner forwarded this theory of learning.
· “Condition in which desired voluntary behavior leads to a reward or prevents a
punishment.”
· Acc. to this concept, any behavior is driven by its possible rewards.
· For an individual if the reward for any behavior ‘A’ is found to be positive (i.e. desirable),
and that for the other behavior ‘B’ is not positive or negative (i.e. undesirable); the
probability of repeating the behavior A by that individual is much greater than repeating
the behavior B.
e.g.:
If in an organization, an employee is highly appreciated and rewarded desirably for his/her
overtime work, he/she would like to undergo the same again on demand by the
management of organization. But, if once done overtime work is not recognized at all or
less recognized by the management and so has not been rewarded at desire level of the
employee, the chances become less that the same employee will undergo that again.
3. Social Learning :
· Social Learning is an extension of Operant conditioning.
· Acc. to this concept the observation and perception of an individual have the considerable
impact over his/her behaviors. So, social Learning may be a direct learning or an indirect
learning.
· “People can learn through observation and direct experiences.”
e.g. :
Much of what a child learns that comes from the observation and perception made by the
child about the behaviors of parents, friends, teachers etc.
· Parents, teachers, peers, motion picture, bosses etc., whose behaviors are imitated by an
individual, are called as model for that individual.
· Following four processes have been found to determine the influence that a model has on
and individual.
(a) Attentional Processes : People learn from a model only when they recognize and pay
attention to its critical features. We tend to be most influenced by models that are
attractive, repeatedly available, important to us, or similar to us in our estimation.
(b) Retention Processes : A model influence will depend on how well the individual
remembers the model’s action after the model is no longer readily available.
(c) Motor Reproduction Processes : After a person has seen anew behavior by observing
the model, the watching must be converted to doing. This process then demonstrates
that the individual can perform the modeled activities.
(d)Reinforcement Processes : Individual s will be motivated to exhibit the modeled
behavior if positive incentives or rewards are provided. Behaviors that are positively
reinforced will be given more attention, learned better, and performed more often.
Q3. Explain personality traits
Ans:According to Gordon Alpoet, personality is the dynamic organization within the
individual of those psychophysical systems that determining his environment.
Therefore personality can be viewed as a sum total of ways in which an individual
reacts to and interacts with others. It is most often described in terms of measurable traits
that a person exhibits.
Some enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behaviour are shy, aggressive,
submissive, lazy, ambitious, loyal and timid. Those characteristics, when they re exhibit in a large
no. of situations, are called personality traits. The more consistent the characteristics and the more
frequently it occurs in diverse situations, the more important that traits is in describing the
individual.
These traits help in employee selection people to jobs, and matching in guiding career
development decisions.
E.g. If certain personality types performs better on specific jobs, management could use
personality tests to screen job candidates and improve employee job performance.
Personality of a person is shaped by both hereditary and environmental factors.
Heredity:-
It refers to those factors that were determined at conception, physical stature, facial
attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle composition and reflexes, energy level and biological
rhythms are some of the characteristics which are passed on from generation to generation. The
heredity approach agues that the ultimate explanation of an individual’s personality is the
molecular structure of the genes, located in the chromosomes.
There are three different streams of research lending creditability to the argument that heredity
plays an important part in determining an individual’s personality.
1. The first look at the genetic underpinning of human behaviour and temperament.
2. The second address the study of turns that were separated at birth.
3. The third examines the consistency in job satisfaction overtime and across situation.
Further support for the important of heredity can be founding studies of individual job
satisfaction
.Q4.Write a short note on MBTI.
Ans:In order to generalize the personality traits and providing practical guidance to organizational
decision makers, the Myers-Briggs type indicator is a dominant frame work for identifying and
classifying traits.
The most widely used personality assessment instrument in the world, it is a 100 question
personality test that ask people how they usually fell or act in particular situations. This test
classifies individuals as:-
1. Extroverted or introverted (E or I)
2. Sensing or intuitive (S or N)
3. Thinking or feeling (T or F)
4. Judging or perceiving (J or P)
Extroverted v/s introverted (E or I):-
Extroverted are outgoing, social able and assertive while intro are quite and shy.
Sensing v/s intuitive:-
Sensing types are practical and prefer routine and order they focus on detail. Incentives rely
on unconscious processes and look at the “big picture”.
Thinking v/s feeling:-
Thinking types use reasons and logic to handle problems. Feeling types rely on their
personal values and emotions.
Judging v/s perceiving:-
Judging types want control and prefer their world to be ordered and structured. Perceiving
types are flexible and spontaneous.
16 personality types are brought out by this test. Some to list out are:-
INTJ (Intuitive, Thinking, and Judging):-
They are visionaries. They have original minds and great drive for their own ideas and
purposes. They are sceptical, critical, independent, determined and stubborn.
ESTJ (Extrovert, Sensing, Thinking, And Judging):-
They are organizers, realistic, logical analytical, decisive and have a natural head for
business or mechanics. They like to organize and run activities.
ENTP (Extrovert, Thinking, and Perceiving):-
They are conceptualizes, Innovative, individualistic, versatile and attracted to
entrepreneurial ideas. They are resourceful in solving challenging problem but may neglect routine
assignments. They represent only 5% of the population.
E.g. Some firms like Apple Compute, Fed Ex, Honda Motors, Microsoft and Sony fall in
this category.
MBTI test being a valid measure of personality is questionable as it is categorizes a person
as one or the other type by having no. in between, though people can be both extroverted and
introverted. It is unrelated to job performance and so it should not be used as a selection tool for
choosing among job candidates.
Still, it is widely used by cos. like Apple Computer, AT&T, Citigroup, GE, 3MCo, Tata
Motors, hospitals educational institutes and Indian defence services as it helps in increasing self awareness
and provides carrier guidance.
Q5. Explain big 5 models.
Ans:A tool for identifying and classifying personality traits is a five factor model of personality
called the “Big five”. Undertaken by John Bearden, recently it brought out five dimensions
encompassing most of the significant variation in human personality. They are as follows:-
Extroversion:-
Extroverts tend to be gregarious, assertive and social able. Introverts are reserved, timid
and quiet.
Agreeableness:-
It refers to an individual’s propensity to defer to others. Highly agreeable people are co
operative, warm and trusting. People low on agreeableness are cold disagreeableness and
antagonistic.
Conscientiousness:-
A highly conscientious person is responsible, organized, dependable and persistent. Low on
in all easily distracted, disorganized and unreliable.
Emotional stability:-
It tests person’s ability to withstand stress. People with positive emotional stability tend to
be calm, self-confident, and secure. Those with negative scores are nervous, anxious, depressed
and insecure.
Openness to experience:-
Extremely open people are creative, curious and artistically sensitive. Those at the other
end are conventional and find comfort in familiar.
Big five has found relationships between personality dimensions and job performance.
Looking at different professions like police managers, salespeople and semiskilled and skilled
employees, job performance was measured in the terms of performance rating, training profieiricy
and personal data. People high at conscientiousness were having a higher job performance and low
at it had high job knowledge which led to higher job performance and organizational citizenship
behavior.
Other personality dimensions depended on performance criterion and occupational group
both.Extroversion predicted performance in high social interaction professions like managerial
and sales positions.Openness to experience predicted training proficiency.
Negative emotional stability was defined as helping job performance. It had aspects both
helping and hindering performance as due to nervousness, motivating yourself, decision making
and risk taking become difficult.
Big five brought out some facts regarding work and life like.
Extroverts though high on impulsiveness, absenteeism and risk taking are happier in there
jobs and lives and have more friends then introverts.
Agreeable people are given first preference while choosing a friends, organization team
members and they are happier and do better one than disagreeableness ones.
Conscientious people are performance oriented and less creative. They live longer than less
conscientious people as they take better care of themselves but their habit of being organized and
structured hinders them to adapt to changing contexts.
People with high emotional stability tend to be healthy and happy, but people low at it tend
to make better and faster decisions in bad mood also.
People high on openness to experience are creative, less religious, politically liberal and
couple better with organization change.
Thus the big five model brings out different traits of people and judge them accordingly.
Q6.Explain Hofstede’s framework for ascending culture.
Ans:As our world is becoming a new global village, managers have to become capable of
working with people from different culture. It is necessary to explain and predict behaviour of
employees from different countries as values differ across culture and a good manager must be
capable of understanding these differences.
Hofstede’s framework for assessing cultures:-
Gert Hofstede in late 1970’s analyzed variations among cultures. He surveyed more than
116000 IBM employees in 40 countries about their work related values. Five value dimensions of
national culture were defined as follows:-
Power distance:-
The degree to which people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations
is distributed unequally. Country having high power distance rating has inequalities of power and
wealth and vice versa. High power distance rating countries follows a class or caste system
discouraging upward mobility of citizens and countries scoring low on it stress on equality and
opportunity.
Individualism v/s collectivism:-
Individualism is the degree to which prefer to act as individual rights rather than being
group members.Collectivism is a tight social framework in which people in a group expect other members
of the same group to look after and protect them.
Masculinity v/s feminity:-
A high masculinity rating indicates the culture having the separate roles for men and
women with men dominating the society.
A high feminity rating culture emphasis equality between men and women. Here, women
are treated as the equals of men in all aspects of the society.
Uncertainty avoidance:-
In cultures scoring high on uncertainty avoidance, people have on increased level of
anxiety about uncertainty and ambiguity, so emphasis on laws, regulations and controls are more.
Cultures scoring low on this dimensions have a greater tolerance for a variety of opinions.
They are less rule oriented, take more risk and more rapidly accept change.
Long term v/s short term orientation:-
The newest edition to the Hofstede’s typology, it focuses on the degree of a society’s long
term devotion to traditional values. People in cultures with long term orientation look to the future
and value thrift, persistence and tradition. In a short term orientation, people value the here and
now, change is accepted rapidly and commitments do not act as barriers to change.
Scoring different countries on Hofstede’s dimensions, Malaysia scored the highest i.e. it is a
collectivistic countries and a high power distance one. Mexico and Philippines tend to be high on
power distance united states and great Britain are individualistic countries with low power
distance, having short term orientation, low uncertainty avoidance and high on masculinity. South
America nation’s tend to be higher on uncertainty avoidance and Asian countries have a long term
orientation.
His findings however received some criticisms as it was based on a single company (IBM)
and his data was 30 years old. After his research many changes in the world scene have taken place
which are not considered also some unexpected results as that of Japan being considered average
on collectivism has been produced.
Inspite of these concerns hofstede has been one of the most widely citied social scientist
ever and his framework has a great value even today.
Q7.Explain Rokeach value survey.
Values can be defined as “a specifies mode of conduct or instate of existence in personally
or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence. When
we rank an individuals values in terms of their intensity, we obtain that person’s value system. All
of us have a hierarchy of values that forms our value system.
The value that an individual possesses can be classifiedMilton Rokeach created the Rokeach value survey (RVS) which consisted of two sets are
called:-
1. Terminal values
2. Instrumental values
Terminal values:-
They refers to desireable end-states. These are the goals that a person would like to achieve
during his or her life time.
Instrumental values:-
They refers to preferable modes of behaviour, or means of achieving the terminal values.
RVS values vary among groups. People in same occupation hold similar values. Surveying
the corporate executives, members of the steel workers union and members of a community
activist group it was found that when “equality” and “helpful” were given highest and second
highest rank in the activist group the other two groups ranked them 12th and 13th and 14th
respectively.
These difference make it difficult when these groups have to negotiate with each other and
create conflict over the organization economic and social policies.
Thus RVS brings out the different values held by different groups and their resultant consequences. Q8. EXPLAIN ATTRIBUTION THEORY.
(Person perception: making judgment about other.)
Perception:-
It is a process by which individual organize and interpret their sensory impressions in
order to give meaning to their environment. Attribution theory has been proposed to develop
explanation of the ways in which we judge people differently.
This theory basically suggests that when a person observes an individual’s one attempt to
determine whether it was internally or externally caused. To determine this it largely depends on 3
factors:-
(1)Distinctiveness
(2)Consensus
(3)Consistency
Internally caused behaviors are those that are believed to be under personal control of the
individual.
Externally caused behavior is seen as resulting from outside causes.
(1)Distinctiveness:-
It refers to whether an individual displays different behaviors in different situations.
E.g. If an employee come late one particular day the observer will likely to give external
attribution. But if it comes late regularly it is considered as internal cause.
(2)Consensus:-
If every one is faced with a similar situation responds in the same way this can say that
the behavior shows a consensus.
E.g. If the entire employees took the same route and came late this is an external effect in the
consensus is high. But if an employee who follows the same route and reach on time it is an
internal effect this shows consensus is low.
(3)Consistency:-
In this an observer looks for consistency in a person action. Does the person respond the
same over time?
E.g. If a person is late for 10 minutes and it is perceived continuously for two to three times in a
week it is a high consistency it an internal cause. And if its for the first time or once in the span of
three or four month it consider an external effect and low consistency.
There are some errors or biases that disort attributions. A tendency to underestimate the
influence of external factors and overestimates the influence of internal or personal factors. This is
called FUNDAMENTAL DISTRIBUTION ERROR.
E.g. Vadilal underestimate the influence of AMUL of being successful and overestimate
the lack of influence of its personal employee and factor.
A tendency for individuals to attribute their own success to internal factors while putting
blame for failure on external factors. This is known as SELF SERVING BIAS
E.g. Good result in GCET exams is considered to be my effort and if the result come low
than blame goes to the institute.
Hence attribute theory that people make shortcut in judging others on the basis of their
behavior.
Ans. : Organizational behavior is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals,
groups, the structure have on behavior within organization for the purpose of applying such
knowledge towards improving an organization’s effectiveness”
Three major components - Individual, Group & Structure constitute the organization behavior.
OB also applies the knowledge gained about individuals, groups and the effect of structure on
behavior; which make organization work more effectively.
Usually, OB studies two important issues :
1. What do the people do in an organization ?
2. How does that behavior affect the performance of the organization ?
OB mainly focuses on how to improve the productivity, reduce absenteeism and turnover and
increase employee citizenship and job satisfaction.
We all hold generalization about the behavior of people. Some of them may provide valid
insights into human behavior, many are erroneous. OB uses systematic study to improve
prediction of behavior that would be made from intuition alone.
The world is changing at the cosmic speed and so the behavior of the people, people
continually changes their responses to the same situations over a period of time. Such changes
in behaviors are most apparent in the growing economy like India.
No, more the business is circumscribed under the same definition. Business has gone globally,
so the employees of such organizations have to work with the people with different cultures,
different perception and different goals. OB helps the managers to handle such situations at
organizations.
The people have turned to career orientation from family orientation; in the urban areas of
growing economic countries the concept of marrying at late age and having a single child have
become most common. So, the priorities of the people is being changed, their investment
policy and plans for future have been deviated from the earlier era. For an organization, it is
very important to identify such changes and catering the products and services accordingly.
OB helps the managers to do this.
Helping the employee to maintain job-family balance is the greatest challenge before the
management, work-at-home concept is gaining the popularity day by day, amongst the people
who are career oriented and want to undergo the overtime without disturbing the family life.
As a result of aggressive advertisement strategy, that the organization follow, the consumer
have become more selective about meeting their needs, and so the mall culture have
increasingly replaced the small retailers. OB helps to map out the consumers behavior.
OB offers both challenges and opportunities for managers. It offers specific insights to improve
a manager’s people skills.
Social networking has wide meaning now. Social networking sites such as orkut & others helps
the management to know about global trend. Of course, social networking is the part of OB.
It recognizes the difference and helps managers to see the value of workforce diversity and
practices that may need to be changed when managing in different countries. Workforce
diversity may be observed through one of the following respects : Caste or tribes, states,
gender, age, temporary/permanent etc.
It improves quality and employee productivity by showing managers how to empower their
people, design and implement change programs, improve customer service and help employees
balance work/life conflicts.
It provides suggestion for helping managers meet chronic labor shortages.
It can help managers to cope in a world of temporariness and to learn ways to stimulate
innovation.
In short, OB can offer managers guidance in creating an ethically healthy work climate.
Q.2:Define Learning and discuss types of Learning.
Ans. :“Learning is any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience.”
It means if as a result of experience an individual behaves, reacts, responds differently than
earlier he/she used to, we can say that learning has taken place.
Learning is either good or bad change in behavior; but the change must be the permanent.
Learning is only confirmed when the relatively permanent change comes to individual’s action,
change in thought process only is not considered as learning.
There are three major types of Learnings :
1. Classical Conditioning
2. Operant Conditioning
3. Social Learning
1. Classical Conditioning :
· Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov forwarded this theory of learning in early 1900s.
· “A type of conditioning in which an individual responds to some stimulus that would not
ordinarily produce such a response.”
· When stimuli, one compelling and the other neutral are paired, the neutral one becomes
conditioned stimulus; i.e. it takes on the properties of unconditioned stimulus after a
condition.
e.g. :
1. When Pavlov presented the dog with a piece of meat, the dog exhibited a noticeable
increase in salivation. When Pavlov withheld the presentation of meat and merely rang a
bell, the dog did not salivate. Then Pavlov proceeded to link the meat and the ringing of
the bell. After repeatedly hearing the bell before getting the food, the dog began to salivate
as soon as the bell rang. After a while, the dog would salivate merely at the sound of the
bell, even if no food was offered.
In this case, the meat was an unconditioned stimulus; it invariably caused the dog to react
in a specific way (i.e. to salivate – unconditioned response). The bell was an artificial
stimulus (conditioned stimulus), which was originally neutral (not inducing the desired
response), but after it was paired with the meat, it indicted the dog to salivate (conditioned
response) even presented alone.
2.At some manufacturing plant - every time when the top officials from head office are
scheduled to make a visit to the plant, the plant management cleans up the administrative
offices and wash the windows. This goes on for years. As a result the employees would
turn on their best behavior and look prim and proper whenever the windows were cleaned,
even in those occasional instances when the cleaning was not paired with the visit of the
top officials from the head office.
In this case, turning on the best behaviors by the employees is a usual response to visit of
top officials (unconditioned stimulus), not to cleaning the windows (conditioned stimulus).
But, as the cleaning the windows have been paired with the visit of top officials for a
prolong period of time, turning on the best behaviors becomes the usual response to
cleaning the windows (Conditioned response).
2. Operant Conditioning :
· Harvard psychologist B.F.Skinner forwarded this theory of learning.
· “Condition in which desired voluntary behavior leads to a reward or prevents a
punishment.”
· Acc. to this concept, any behavior is driven by its possible rewards.
· For an individual if the reward for any behavior ‘A’ is found to be positive (i.e. desirable),
and that for the other behavior ‘B’ is not positive or negative (i.e. undesirable); the
probability of repeating the behavior A by that individual is much greater than repeating
the behavior B.
e.g.:
If in an organization, an employee is highly appreciated and rewarded desirably for his/her
overtime work, he/she would like to undergo the same again on demand by the
management of organization. But, if once done overtime work is not recognized at all or
less recognized by the management and so has not been rewarded at desire level of the
employee, the chances become less that the same employee will undergo that again.
3. Social Learning :
· Social Learning is an extension of Operant conditioning.
· Acc. to this concept the observation and perception of an individual have the considerable
impact over his/her behaviors. So, social Learning may be a direct learning or an indirect
learning.
· “People can learn through observation and direct experiences.”
e.g. :
Much of what a child learns that comes from the observation and perception made by the
child about the behaviors of parents, friends, teachers etc.
· Parents, teachers, peers, motion picture, bosses etc., whose behaviors are imitated by an
individual, are called as model for that individual.
· Following four processes have been found to determine the influence that a model has on
and individual.
(a) Attentional Processes : People learn from a model only when they recognize and pay
attention to its critical features. We tend to be most influenced by models that are
attractive, repeatedly available, important to us, or similar to us in our estimation.
(b) Retention Processes : A model influence will depend on how well the individual
remembers the model’s action after the model is no longer readily available.
(c) Motor Reproduction Processes : After a person has seen anew behavior by observing
the model, the watching must be converted to doing. This process then demonstrates
that the individual can perform the modeled activities.
(d)Reinforcement Processes : Individual s will be motivated to exhibit the modeled
behavior if positive incentives or rewards are provided. Behaviors that are positively
reinforced will be given more attention, learned better, and performed more often.
Q3. Explain personality traits
Ans:According to Gordon Alpoet, personality is the dynamic organization within the
individual of those psychophysical systems that determining his environment.
Therefore personality can be viewed as a sum total of ways in which an individual
reacts to and interacts with others. It is most often described in terms of measurable traits
that a person exhibits.
Some enduring characteristics that describe an individual’s behaviour are shy, aggressive,
submissive, lazy, ambitious, loyal and timid. Those characteristics, when they re exhibit in a large
no. of situations, are called personality traits. The more consistent the characteristics and the more
frequently it occurs in diverse situations, the more important that traits is in describing the
individual.
These traits help in employee selection people to jobs, and matching in guiding career
development decisions.
E.g. If certain personality types performs better on specific jobs, management could use
personality tests to screen job candidates and improve employee job performance.
Personality of a person is shaped by both hereditary and environmental factors.
Heredity:-
It refers to those factors that were determined at conception, physical stature, facial
attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle composition and reflexes, energy level and biological
rhythms are some of the characteristics which are passed on from generation to generation. The
heredity approach agues that the ultimate explanation of an individual’s personality is the
molecular structure of the genes, located in the chromosomes.
There are three different streams of research lending creditability to the argument that heredity
plays an important part in determining an individual’s personality.
1. The first look at the genetic underpinning of human behaviour and temperament.
2. The second address the study of turns that were separated at birth.
3. The third examines the consistency in job satisfaction overtime and across situation.
Further support for the important of heredity can be founding studies of individual job
satisfaction
.Q4.Write a short note on MBTI.
Ans:In order to generalize the personality traits and providing practical guidance to organizational
decision makers, the Myers-Briggs type indicator is a dominant frame work for identifying and
classifying traits.
The most widely used personality assessment instrument in the world, it is a 100 question
personality test that ask people how they usually fell or act in particular situations. This test
classifies individuals as:-
1. Extroverted or introverted (E or I)
2. Sensing or intuitive (S or N)
3. Thinking or feeling (T or F)
4. Judging or perceiving (J or P)
Extroverted v/s introverted (E or I):-
Extroverted are outgoing, social able and assertive while intro are quite and shy.
Sensing v/s intuitive:-
Sensing types are practical and prefer routine and order they focus on detail. Incentives rely
on unconscious processes and look at the “big picture”.
Thinking v/s feeling:-
Thinking types use reasons and logic to handle problems. Feeling types rely on their
personal values and emotions.
Judging v/s perceiving:-
Judging types want control and prefer their world to be ordered and structured. Perceiving
types are flexible and spontaneous.
16 personality types are brought out by this test. Some to list out are:-
INTJ (Intuitive, Thinking, and Judging):-
They are visionaries. They have original minds and great drive for their own ideas and
purposes. They are sceptical, critical, independent, determined and stubborn.
ESTJ (Extrovert, Sensing, Thinking, And Judging):-
They are organizers, realistic, logical analytical, decisive and have a natural head for
business or mechanics. They like to organize and run activities.
ENTP (Extrovert, Thinking, and Perceiving):-
They are conceptualizes, Innovative, individualistic, versatile and attracted to
entrepreneurial ideas. They are resourceful in solving challenging problem but may neglect routine
assignments. They represent only 5% of the population.
E.g. Some firms like Apple Compute, Fed Ex, Honda Motors, Microsoft and Sony fall in
this category.
MBTI test being a valid measure of personality is questionable as it is categorizes a person
as one or the other type by having no. in between, though people can be both extroverted and
introverted. It is unrelated to job performance and so it should not be used as a selection tool for
choosing among job candidates.
Still, it is widely used by cos. like Apple Computer, AT&T, Citigroup, GE, 3MCo, Tata
Motors, hospitals educational institutes and Indian defence services as it helps in increasing self awareness
and provides carrier guidance.
Q5. Explain big 5 models.
Ans:A tool for identifying and classifying personality traits is a five factor model of personality
called the “Big five”. Undertaken by John Bearden, recently it brought out five dimensions
encompassing most of the significant variation in human personality. They are as follows:-
Extroversion:-
Extroverts tend to be gregarious, assertive and social able. Introverts are reserved, timid
and quiet.
Agreeableness:-
It refers to an individual’s propensity to defer to others. Highly agreeable people are co
operative, warm and trusting. People low on agreeableness are cold disagreeableness and
antagonistic.
Conscientiousness:-
A highly conscientious person is responsible, organized, dependable and persistent. Low on
in all easily distracted, disorganized and unreliable.
Emotional stability:-
It tests person’s ability to withstand stress. People with positive emotional stability tend to
be calm, self-confident, and secure. Those with negative scores are nervous, anxious, depressed
and insecure.
Openness to experience:-
Extremely open people are creative, curious and artistically sensitive. Those at the other
end are conventional and find comfort in familiar.
Big five has found relationships between personality dimensions and job performance.
Looking at different professions like police managers, salespeople and semiskilled and skilled
employees, job performance was measured in the terms of performance rating, training profieiricy
and personal data. People high at conscientiousness were having a higher job performance and low
at it had high job knowledge which led to higher job performance and organizational citizenship
behavior.
Other personality dimensions depended on performance criterion and occupational group
both.Extroversion predicted performance in high social interaction professions like managerial
and sales positions.Openness to experience predicted training proficiency.
Negative emotional stability was defined as helping job performance. It had aspects both
helping and hindering performance as due to nervousness, motivating yourself, decision making
and risk taking become difficult.
Big five brought out some facts regarding work and life like.
Extroverts though high on impulsiveness, absenteeism and risk taking are happier in there
jobs and lives and have more friends then introverts.
Agreeable people are given first preference while choosing a friends, organization team
members and they are happier and do better one than disagreeableness ones.
Conscientious people are performance oriented and less creative. They live longer than less
conscientious people as they take better care of themselves but their habit of being organized and
structured hinders them to adapt to changing contexts.
People with high emotional stability tend to be healthy and happy, but people low at it tend
to make better and faster decisions in bad mood also.
People high on openness to experience are creative, less religious, politically liberal and
couple better with organization change.
Thus the big five model brings out different traits of people and judge them accordingly.
Q6.Explain Hofstede’s framework for ascending culture.
Ans:As our world is becoming a new global village, managers have to become capable of
working with people from different culture. It is necessary to explain and predict behaviour of
employees from different countries as values differ across culture and a good manager must be
capable of understanding these differences.
Hofstede’s framework for assessing cultures:-
Gert Hofstede in late 1970’s analyzed variations among cultures. He surveyed more than
116000 IBM employees in 40 countries about their work related values. Five value dimensions of
national culture were defined as follows:-
Power distance:-
The degree to which people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations
is distributed unequally. Country having high power distance rating has inequalities of power and
wealth and vice versa. High power distance rating countries follows a class or caste system
discouraging upward mobility of citizens and countries scoring low on it stress on equality and
opportunity.
Individualism v/s collectivism:-
Individualism is the degree to which prefer to act as individual rights rather than being
group members.Collectivism is a tight social framework in which people in a group expect other members
of the same group to look after and protect them.
Masculinity v/s feminity:-
A high masculinity rating indicates the culture having the separate roles for men and
women with men dominating the society.
A high feminity rating culture emphasis equality between men and women. Here, women
are treated as the equals of men in all aspects of the society.
Uncertainty avoidance:-
In cultures scoring high on uncertainty avoidance, people have on increased level of
anxiety about uncertainty and ambiguity, so emphasis on laws, regulations and controls are more.
Cultures scoring low on this dimensions have a greater tolerance for a variety of opinions.
They are less rule oriented, take more risk and more rapidly accept change.
Long term v/s short term orientation:-
The newest edition to the Hofstede’s typology, it focuses on the degree of a society’s long
term devotion to traditional values. People in cultures with long term orientation look to the future
and value thrift, persistence and tradition. In a short term orientation, people value the here and
now, change is accepted rapidly and commitments do not act as barriers to change.
Scoring different countries on Hofstede’s dimensions, Malaysia scored the highest i.e. it is a
collectivistic countries and a high power distance one. Mexico and Philippines tend to be high on
power distance united states and great Britain are individualistic countries with low power
distance, having short term orientation, low uncertainty avoidance and high on masculinity. South
America nation’s tend to be higher on uncertainty avoidance and Asian countries have a long term
orientation.
His findings however received some criticisms as it was based on a single company (IBM)
and his data was 30 years old. After his research many changes in the world scene have taken place
which are not considered also some unexpected results as that of Japan being considered average
on collectivism has been produced.
Inspite of these concerns hofstede has been one of the most widely citied social scientist
ever and his framework has a great value even today.
Q7.Explain Rokeach value survey.Values can be defined as “a specifies mode of conduct or instate of existence in personally
or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence. When
we rank an individuals values in terms of their intensity, we obtain that person’s value system. All
of us have a hierarchy of values that forms our value system.
The value that an individual possesses can be classifiedMilton Rokeach created the Rokeach value survey (RVS) which consisted of two sets are
called:-
1. Terminal values
2. Instrumental values
Terminal values:-
They refers to desireable end-states. These are the goals that a person would like to achieve
during his or her life time.
Instrumental values:-
They refers to preferable modes of behaviour, or means of achieving the terminal values.
RVS values vary among groups. People in same occupation hold similar values. Surveying
the corporate executives, members of the steel workers union and members of a community
activist group it was found that when “equality” and “helpful” were given highest and second
highest rank in the activist group the other two groups ranked them 12th and 13th and 14th
respectively.
These difference make it difficult when these groups have to negotiate with each other and
create conflict over the organization economic and social policies.
Thus RVS brings out the different values held by different groups and their resultant consequences. Q8. EXPLAIN ATTRIBUTION THEORY.
(Person perception: making judgment about other.)
Perception:-
It is a process by which individual organize and interpret their sensory impressions in
order to give meaning to their environment. Attribution theory has been proposed to develop
explanation of the ways in which we judge people differently.
This theory basically suggests that when a person observes an individual’s one attempt to
determine whether it was internally or externally caused. To determine this it largely depends on 3
factors:-
(1)Distinctiveness
(2)Consensus
(3)Consistency
Internally caused behaviors are those that are believed to be under personal control of the
individual.
Externally caused behavior is seen as resulting from outside causes.
(1)Distinctiveness:-
It refers to whether an individual displays different behaviors in different situations.
E.g. If an employee come late one particular day the observer will likely to give external
attribution. But if it comes late regularly it is considered as internal cause.
(2)Consensus:-
If every one is faced with a similar situation responds in the same way this can say that
the behavior shows a consensus.
E.g. If the entire employees took the same route and came late this is an external effect in the
consensus is high. But if an employee who follows the same route and reach on time it is an
internal effect this shows consensus is low.
(3)Consistency:-
In this an observer looks for consistency in a person action. Does the person respond the
same over time?
E.g. If a person is late for 10 minutes and it is perceived continuously for two to three times in a
week it is a high consistency it an internal cause. And if its for the first time or once in the span of
three or four month it consider an external effect and low consistency.
There are some errors or biases that disort attributions. A tendency to underestimate the
influence of external factors and overestimates the influence of internal or personal factors. This is
called FUNDAMENTAL DISTRIBUTION ERROR.
E.g. Vadilal underestimate the influence of AMUL of being successful and overestimate
the lack of influence of its personal employee and factor.
A tendency for individuals to attribute their own success to internal factors while putting
blame for failure on external factors. This is known as SELF SERVING BIAS
E.g. Good result in GCET exams is considered to be my effort and if the result come low
than blame goes to the institute.
Hence attribute theory that people make shortcut in judging others on the basis of their
behavior.
