SESSION A JOURNAL – INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR AND DECISION-MAKING

Instructions: Complete the following questions, which are worth 5 points each.
Seek to apply what you have learned from the chapters, and what you learned completing the
self-assessments.
Write 3-5 sentences per question.

Chapter 3
1. Describe how the “big five” personality attributes might affect you own behavior in
dealing with colleagues (superiors, peers, & subordinates).
Right now, I am leading a team and it’s a combination of onshore and offshore where I
am using “big five” personality attributes Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion,
Agreeableness, Emotional stability (or Neuroticism).
But still I am grooming myself and working on certain issue i.e. short temper and
emotional stability due to this I had many conflicts with management to deal on certain
issue.
2. What stereotypes do you form about people? Are they good or bad?
Initially I don’t decide, and it’s depends on need then I discuss with people and decide
either he/she is good or bad in aspect of his/her knowledge and capability.

3. As a manager, how would you go about trying to make someone a better

organizational citizen?
Organizational citizenship behavior deals with the actions and behaviors of individual in
team hence I am selecting a person based on capability and contributions and will train
them in following way.
A Sense of Purpose
Workers feel a more significant sense of purpose and work meaningfulness. This means
that employees feel their work is essential and useful to the organization.
Clear Up Role Ambiguity
As time goes by, roles need to be redefined or changed to reflect a worker’s skill set
better.
Feeling in Control
Workers get the opportunity to decide what they want to put more time into and how
they want to accomplish it

4. Analyze your Cross-Cultural Awareness Self-Assessment Exercise. What were 2 areas

where you feel you have strong cross-cultural awareness, and 2 areas where you feel
you can improve. What are some steps you can take to improve these areas?
 So far, I worked for multiple clients in different time zone and learned a lot about other
culture and work environment, but I learned a lot i.e. disciplined work, when I was
working for Japan clients.
Still I am working on myself to learn different type of work culture and effective
communication, so I can work in organized way.

5. Reflect on all three self-assessment exercises. As you compared your answers to others
in your group, what surprised you? Were there any themes or conceptual patterns
did your group synthesize from your individual results?

Self-assessment tool is designed to explore individual cultural competence. And It

assist me to leaving in diverse environment.

Know myself: I have a clear sense of my own ethnic, cultural, and racial identity.
Share my culture: I am aware that in order to learn more about others I need to
understand and be prepared to share my own culture.
Be aware of areas of discomfort: I am aware of my discomfort when I encounter
differences in race, color, religion, sexual orientation, language, and ethnicity.

Most of the time I see people are confused about his himself.

Yes, initially I was very aggressive because management were not recognizing my
work and skills though I was doing best in my team. After multiple complaints
management decide to start employee assessments program.

CHAPTER 8
1. Some have argued that people, not organizations, make decisions and that the study of
“organizational” decision making therefore is pointless. Do you agree with this
argument? Why or why not?
Yes, most of the time people makes decisions but 70 % of the decisions for the
organizational and 30 % is political. So as per my understanding it’s vice-versa.
Also, it depends on person to person and need. For me studying about “organizational”
decision can help anyone to grow in any organizations.
2. Can you think of a time when you satisficed when making a decision? Have you ever sub-
optimized?
Yes, on many occasions.
Once upon a time I was about to change my employer and I have been selected by 3
different employers, but I have chosen one because of the job profile and money offer.
But when I joined it was not satisfied after looking into work culture. Then immediate I
leave the employer and learned a lesson, based on this I started re-negotiating with
remaining other 2 employers and got the clear picture about the job profile.
 And now I can proudly say that was my best my best decision of my life!

3. Describe a situation in which you experienced escalation of commitment to an

ineffective course of action. What did you do about it? Do you wish you had handled it
differently? Why or why not?
Escalation of Commitment (EoC) behavior occurs when a Decision-Making Unit (DMU),
such as an individual or group, continues with a course of action despite receiving negative
feedback about it.
I am working at client site and co-ordinate with onsite and offshore team, but their
escalation matrix defined by client after certain time for work and that missed by multiple
time which caused huge penalty because of miscommunication and dependency.
Later, we analyzed the situation we overcome the dependency which help us to improve
the SLA.
4. How comfortable or uncomfortable are you in making risky decisions?
It’s depends on situations, if something relevant to me I am taking risk after analyzing the
situations but if it’s relevant to team or business which may impact others as well then, I
am deciding after discussing from stockholders.

5. Do you consider yourself to be relatively more or less creative? Recall an instance in

which you made a discovery using the four phases of the creative process.
Yes, I am creative but can’t say more and less it’s all about situations and subject
knowledge. There are many instances where I have given out of box solution and it’s help
team a lot to fix this issue.
As previously I have mentioned we have penalty if we missed customer SLA and my
company already paid it multiple time but when I assigned to this project, worked on SLA
and crated a work flow in solution manager system which help team to improve the SLA
and avoid any further penalty.