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Reflection 3

Karina Durand

School of Business, University of the Cumberlands

BADM 532–A03 Organizational Behavior

Dr. Johnny Chavez III

January 13th, 2022

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Reflection 3

The book Essentials of Organizational Behavior by Robbins & Judge (2021) explains that a

person's perception is how they interpret the stimuli that their senses have been exposed to in a

way that will allow them to form meaning in relation to their environment. It is key to understand

that people can experience the same exact situation and yet interpret those situations in different

ways, giving them different perceptions. Each person's personal characteristics will influence

that perception, but so will other factors such as their own personal background and experiences,

and specific biases they might be prone to. The self-serving bias of the attribution theory

explains that we are going to judge ourselves in a way that favors us, meaning that we will

attribute anything positive that happened to us to an internal factor, and anything negative that

happens to us to an external factor. We also use distinctiveness, consensus, and consistency to

determine if we will attribute an effect to an internal factor or an external factor. It is important

to understand the different biases that we can be subjected to because if we are not aware of

them, we will then think that our unfair assumptions are objective and will act upon them as

truth, which will lead our behavior to be unfair. However, if we acknowledge that we are biased

we can then consciously choose to find more objective ways to make decisions (Robbins &

Judge, 2021).

The book (Robbins & Judge, 2021) continues to explain that to make decisions we need

just enough information because it would be impossible for us to actually process all the

information necessary to make the optimal or perfect decisions in each scenario. Once again, that

perspective will influence our decision making and many biases can come into play like

confirmation bias or overconfidence bias (Robbins & Judge, 2021). One of the main biases that I

have encountered is the escalation of commitment. I am aware and afraid of it because I have
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seen how it affects decision-making. That is the bias that leads people to stay in casinos even

after they have lost a lot of money, or continue playing the lottery, or stay in abusive

relationships. In essence, they believe that they have already invested so much in something that

they need to get a return so they keep on investing in it instead of cutting the bait, which is what

they ideally would do in that situation. I have seen that happen at work when a person was

promoted to a position they did not deserve. The person that promoted them at first did not want

to acknowledge that they made a wrong decision, and because they had already invested the time

in training the person and they wanted to get a return on that investment. They continued training

the person for ten months straight and the person in those ten months could still not do the job

they had been training to do and the manager kept on wasting resources on retraining an

individual.

When it comes to motivation, people have traditionally thought that satisfaction and

dissatisfaction are on a continuum, but they are actually two separate spectrums. One can be

satisfied and dissatisfied at the same time for different reasons in reference to the same thing, in

this case, their job. Many factors affect motivation. Intrinsic rewards are known to have a

stronger effect than extrinsic rewards, and when extrinsic rewards come into play, they diminish

the effect of the intrinsic rewards. Specific goals that people can have control over and accept for

themselves can have a strong influence on motivation. The expectancy theory lets us know that

people who expect to attain goals from their effort will then be motivated to make that effort

have a better performance to receive that reward and attain that goal

For Lewis Vacation Rentals to offer its employees a 1% share in the company profit over

the next six months is a great idea. Although they are “messing” with the pay, they are not

affecting negatively the employee’s base pay so it does not add undue stress, and they are adding
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a commission. Now the employees will have the opportunity to make more than they did before

and how much they make as a company will directly impact how much do they take home they

are going to ensure that every person involved is maximizing profit so that they can each earn

more. Variable pay does not work for everyone, but those who do become motivated by it

pressuring those who do not will lead everyone to be on board.

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References

Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2021). Essentials of organizational behavior (15th ed.). Pearson.