Much as many may not know, the use of stereotypes is one thing that is done regularly and often

in our daily life’s, from abusive language, to jokes of inferiority on women, to tribal remarks and
hence not much attention is paid to it because individuals may not understand the impact of view
its impact as mere. However stereotypes have negative impacts on individual, community and or
even organisational growth. Thus this piece of writing is aimed at discussing the negative effects
of stereotypes in the organisation and state how these would be detrimental to an organisation
growth by using a renowned organisation of one’s choice. The work will begin by providing
working definitions of key terms that include organisations and stereotypes, it will further go on
to give synopsis of stereotypes and organisations before engaging in the discourse of how
stereotypes detriment organisation growth and providing a logical conclusion

Stereotypes are false or misleading generalizations about groups held in a manner that renders
them largely, though not entirely, immune to counterevidence (Blum, 2004).

An organisation, particularly when an organisation is talked about, it must be thought of a group

of individuals brought together to attain certain set objectives or goals for a business or firm.
(Smith, 1987) defines an organisation as “a consciously coordinated social entity, with a
relatively identifiable boundary, which functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a
common goal or set of goals.

Stereotypes are assumptions made about a group of people and are applied to individuals,
irrespective of their personal characteristics, because of their affiliation with a certain group.
Stereotypes can be positive, negative or neutral. While both positive and negative stereotypes
can be harmful, they can occasionally serve as a learning experience, as we'll find out at the end
of the lesson (Lippmann, 1922).

The term derives from the Greek stereos, meaning solid, and tupos, meaning image or
impression, from tuptein, to strike. A stereotype was originally a solid printing mould or plate
which, once cast, was difficult to change, but the word was adapted for its present usage by
Walter Lippmann in his classic book, Public Opinion (1922). Lippmann was the first to articulate
the ‘cognitive miser’ theory, according to which stereotypes serve an important function as
cognitive simplifications that are useful for the economical management of a reality that would
otherwise overwhelm us with its complexity. The phenomenon of stereotyping has become a
standard topic in sociology and social psychology in recent years, early empirical studies (for

Page | 1
example, Katz and Braly, 1933) stressed the surprising degree of consensus in the stereotypes
depicting different ethnic groups. Literature suggests that labelling theorists in sociology have
emphasized the power of stereotypes in generating invidious emotional responses to deviant
individuals or minority group members. Frustration-aggression theory in psychology also
stimulated interest in the dynamics of prejudice and emphasized the motivated nature of many of
our stereotypes (Dollard et al., 1939).

stereotypes are nothing more than cognitive categories that often satisfy emotional needs, prove
quite resistant to disconfirming information, and operate as powerful cognitive magnets to which
such information is assimilated, thus stereotypes can be positive or negative. Negative
Stereotypes so then can be many common stereotypes that are derogatory, in that they're based
on negative references to a person's ethnicity and race, age, gender, politics or sexual orientation.
The use of stereotypes prevents people from getting to know one another and interacting
effectively based on individuating information. The term individuating information refers to the
aspects of a person that make him or her unique (Dollard et al., 1939).

For example, imagine a new coworker has a political affiliation that differs from someone’s.
Based on the negative stereotypes affiliated with the coworker's political party, if you make
assumptions about the new colleague, one might start off with a hostile and unfriendly
relationship. This could significantly impede the ability to work together. However, if one get to
know the new coworker as an individual, they might be able to put aside any political differences
for the sake of productivity. Hence individuals might also develop some new political
perspectives of their own and build a strong working relationship built on mutual understanding.
This holds true for any individual and any potential stereotypes (Jones & Colman, 1996).

Stereotypes are usually defined as relatively fixed and oversimplified generalizations about
groups or classes of people. In practice, they generally focus on negative, unfavorable
characteristics, although some authorities include in their conceptions of stereotypes positive
social overgeneralizations as well (Jones & Colman, 1996).

Organisation thus are social units of people that are structured and managed to meet a need or to
pursue collective goals. All organizations have a management structure that determines
relationships between the different activities and the members, and subdivides and assigns roles,

Page | 2
responsibilities, and authority to carry out different tasks. Organizations are open systems they
affect and are affected by their environment (Bruno, 1994).

Organization thus are important because they allows individuals and groups to perform tasks
more efficiently by helping people find information and items faster, and also allow groups to
work together without wasting time. Organization must be seen vital too for dealing with
information as well. When items are organized, finding them is easier, and the time is takes to
organize a home or office will save time that would otherwise be spent searching, it must be
acknowledged that the importance of organisation cannot be restricted and will vary wide such as
they important part of logistics; warehouse management deals with ensuring that everything is
stored in a designated location. Efforts to reorganize items can lead to time saved as well.

Organization also deals with ideas and abstract concepts, and it is related to categorization. A
zoologist, for example, might need to identify a particular animal, by using an organized system
of categorization, the zoologist would be able to find attributes of the animal in question and
identify it quickly using organized reference material. Thus it must be understood that humans
excel at finding patterns, and organization allows people to rely on their ability to cope with
patterns to locate items and information more easily. Alphabetical organization, for example,
allows people to know where to look. Other systems are popular as well. The Dewey Decimal
System helps people know where to find a book by categorizing the books by subject matter
(Mackie, and Hamilton, 1993).

In this case, an organisation that would considered in the discourse of try to improve
comprehension of stereotypes detriment to organisation growth will be the University of Zambia-
UNZA. The University of Zambia is the highest learning institution of the Southern Africa
nation of Zambia. Built in 1996, 2 years after independence, the sore idea was to train and
develop human resource personnel, guided by a driving force or motto of service and excellence.
As aforementioned in ensuring delivery of service, the university seeks to attain indeed excellent
service delivery to its client and particularly the nation at large, on the basis of non-patrician,
non-racial, non-segregation or biased towards anything but uphold of academic excellence (The
University of Zamia, 2017).

One very strong stereotypical assumption as in the case of the University of Zambia especially as
regards to student’s populace is the aspect of viewing female’s students as weak and less

Page | 3
knowledgeable. A negative stereotype which get to demine female students despite others might
overcome the challenge. Such stereotypical thinking have negative effects of toward s work
cooperation and relations, which may seem as a now and then situation but expedite even further
to society as individuals progress life (Allport, 1954).

In an institution such as the aforementioned, the stereotype of racial discrimination can have
huge negative growth of an institution. Since the University is built on values such as non-
racism, having such stereotype can hugely affect the operations of the university. It is said,
Racism can influence child health and development through multiple pathways. Institutional and
cultural racism can harm health through stigma, stereotypes, prejudice and racial discrimination,
all of which can lead to differential access to a broad range of societal resources and
opportunities required for health. Perceived or self-reported discrimination–defined as a
behavioral manifestation of a negative attitude, judgement, or unfair treatment towards members
of a group–is also an important yet often neglected psychosocial stressor with substantial
deleterious health impacts throughout life (Katz and Braly, 1933).

Another variable thought to affect economic growth of the institution is gender inequality.
Gender inequality can manifest itself in many areas, such as education, employment, politics,
and sports. While gender inequality is a very undesirable situation for any country, its’ effect on
economic growth is what’s important for this paper. The first area that comes to mind when
thinking about this relationship is employment. Studies testing the relationship between
inequality in employment and economic growth have generally found that employment
inequality has a sizeable negative impact on growth. Gender inequality can have an effect too
even on an institution such as the University of Zambia (Zanna and Olson, 1994).

In conclusion, it must be alluded that although stereotypes are generally viewed as the
maladaptive extreme of the cognitive processing continuum, and serve to perpetuate social
conflict and discrimination, there is also much evidence that they may be readily discarded when
judging individual group members. Thus it appears that some individuals are quite capable of
maintaining strong and rather rigid views of typical group members even when these views do
not necessarily influence how a particular member is perceived or evaluated.

Page | 4
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J. and Sanford, R. N. (1950), The

Authoritarian Personality. New York.

Allport, G. W. (1954), The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge: MA.

Bruner, J. S. (1957). ‘On perceptual readiness’, Psychological Review, 64.

Dollard, J., Doob, L. W., Miller, N. E., Mowrer, O. H. and Sears, R. L. (1939), Frustration and
Aggression, New Haven, CT.

Katz, D. and Braly, K. (1933), ‘Racial stereotypes in 100 college students’, Journal of Abnormal
& Social Psychology, 28.

Lippmann, W. (1922), Public Opinion, New York.

Mackie, D. M. and Hamilton, D. L. (eds) (1993), Affect, Cognition, and Stereotyping: Interactive
Processes in Group Perception, San Diego, CA.

Oakes, P. J., Haslam, S. A. and Turner, J. C. (1994), Stereotyping and Social Reality, Oxford:
Oxford Press.

Zanna, M. P. and Olson, J. M. (eds) (1994), The Psychology of Prejudice, Hillsdale, NJ. REF

Jones, E. E., & Colman, A. M. (1996). Stereotypes. In A. Kuper and J. Kuper (Eds), The social
science encyclopedia (2nd ed., pp. 843-844). London: Routledge.

Page | 5