ORGANIZATION

BEHAVIOR PART 3


CHAPTERS:
1. Values and Attitudes
2. Transactional Analysis and Johari Window

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CHAPTER 1: VALUES AND ATTITUDES-

Values:

Values are global beliefs of a person about what is right, good or desirable that
guides his actions and judgments across a variety of situations.

Values have both content and intensity attribute. This means that content helps the
person decide if a conduct is important or desirable, intensity helps him decide how
important or desirable is the conduct.

For example, an old person in a village in India might have a value system that
considers “patriarchy” as good and desirable. The content of his value is patriarchy
and intensity is the level of importance attached to patriarchy.

The following are features of values:
• Values are relatively stable and enduring. If we question our values then they
might change but more often they are reinforced rather than challenged.
• Values are most central to the core of a person. Values define personality
traits of a person.


Importance of understanding Values:
• Understanding Values of people help in laying foundations of attitudes,
perceptions and motivations of people. For example, hiring a person who
believes in performance linked pay will not benefit an organization paying on
the basis of seniority. The person will experience job dissatisfaction and his
productivity will be low due to lack of sync with organizational method of
payment and reward.

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Terminal versus Instrumental values:

Terminal values are the ends to be achieved by an individual whereas Instrumental
values are the means for achieving desired ends.

Attitudes:

The way we respond to someone or something in our environment defines our
attitude. When a person says that he likes or dislikes something, an attitude is being
expressed.

Attitude defines a person’s feelings, thoughts and predisposition to act towards
some object in the environment.


Components of attitude:
There are 3 basic components of an attitude-

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As can be seen in diagrams above, the components are:

1. Cognitive or informational- in this stage, a person (A) attains information
about other person’s ideas or beliefs or values or attitudes.
2. Emotional or affective- after attaining information about other person’s ideas
or values, (A) would make emotional conclusions in his own self.

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3. Behavior or action- after having made conclusions about the other person or
thing in his own self, (A) would express his emotions through his behavior or
actions. This expression of feelings is the last and final stage of attitude.



Functions of attitudes:

Attitudes help people by performing 4 important functions-

1. Adjustment function- attitude of other people or organizations help us adjust
to our work environment or to presence of other people. A positive attitude
by others motivates or induces us to adjust to their presence.
2. Ego Defensive function- ego defensive function is often used to cope with a
feeling of threat or guilt. Whenever a person feels threatened by elements in
the environment, he uses ego defensive function to justify and defend his
attitude or feelings.
3. Value Expressive function- attitude helps people by providing a basis for
expressing their values. A value system of freedom is expressed through
positive attitude towards decentralization of authority within the
organization.
4. Knowledge function- attitudes help people to make sense of what is going on
around them and thus act as a substitute for knowledge.




Cognitive Dissonance: (Leon Festinger)

Example to understand cognitive dissonance- you are at work, and you notice that it
appears to be okay if people take a longer lunch than one hour. The company and
the supervisors do not seem to address the issue, yet you believe you should only

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take a 1-hour lunch, as that is what the employee manual states. However, if the
company seems okay with it, you can see how you might be conflicted regarding
what to do.
What you are experiencing is cognitive dissonance, or the uncomfortable tension
that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time.
From the example, you believe you should only take an hour lunch as that is 'right,'
but it appears as if the company is okay with you taking more than an hour lunch.

Such a situation is called as cognitive dissonance. It refers to any incompatibility that
an individual might perceive between two or more of his attitudes or between his
behavior and attitudes.

Any form of inconsistency is uncomfortable and thus, the person experiencing
cognitive dissonance will try to reduce the dissonance and hence the discomfort.

The following steps are taken to reduce cognitive dissonance-

1. Change our behavior-The first aspect to look at is changing your behavior. If
there is an internal conflict, we can at times change our behavior to help us
deal with the conflict at hand. In the case of the long lunch hour, we might
decide we too can take a longer lunch and thus eliminate the cognitive
dissonance that is present in our minds. By removing one of the conflicting
issues, in a sense making a decision or choice between the two, we leave
ourselves with no choice and thus no conflict.
2. Justify our behavior by changing the conflicting cognition- Potentially, we will
not change our behavior. Maybe we believe it is right and correct and not
something we should change. Thus, we will begin to justify the behavior, or,
for lack of a better term, make it right in our own minds. Maybe we think all
the people that take those long lunches are just not going to be here long
because they are not showing the company they care. Here, we are justifying
why we are acting the way we act and again removing one aspect of the
conflict.

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3. Justify our behavior by adding new cognitions- we can add new concepts,
ideas, or behaviors to explain or justify conflicts - to transform nonsense into
sense. For our issue that we have been talking about, we might start to
believe that the people that take the long lunch maybe work late each day,
and that is why they take the longer lunch, and maybe the company is okay
with that. In a sense, you added a new cognition to the conflict, and that one
justified the cognitive dissonance that you had going on in your mind.



Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:
It is the process by which a person attempts (consciously or sub consciously) to
convert his attitudes, beliefs and expectations into reality. For example, if A predicts
that his day is going to go bad, he will try hard to look at everything negatively so
that he gets a negative response from everything and everyone around him and can
ultimately call his day as bad.
Self-fulfilling prophecy may be held in both positive and negative ways.
A positive self- fulfilling prophecy is called as “Pygmalion effect”. In a workplace, if a
manager expects high results from his subordinates, this actually results in higher or
better performance by the workers/ subordinates. This is called as Pygmalion effect.
It works by increasing self-efficacy or self-belief of workers and thus increasing their
performance on the job.


Job Related Attitudes:

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Job Satisfaction- JS is a person’s attitude towards his job. A person with high job
satisfaction holds positive attitude towards the job, while a person who is
dissatisfied with his job holds negative attitude towards the job.

Job Involvement- degree of psychological identification with a job defines job
involvement. A person is said to be involved in his job if he considers the work
important to his self worth.

Organizational commitment- organization commitment takes a person to a level
ahead of job involvement. While job involvement means identifying with one’s job,
organization commitment means identifying with one’s employing organization.

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CHAPTER 2: TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS AND JOHARI WINDOW-

Transactional Analysis-
TA is a technique used to help people better understand their own and other’s
behavior. TA was developed by Dr. Eric Berne.

Whenever 2 or more people interact with each other, there is a transaction taking
place. Analysis of such a transaction is called as transactional analysis. It is a
technique of analyzing and understanding inter-personal behavior.

According to TA, every person’s personality is made up of 3 parts called as EGO
STATES. An ego state can be defined as a pattern of behavior a person develops as
he or she grows up, based on feelings and experiences.

The 3 Ego states are: Parent, Adult and Child ego state.

• Parent Ego- The Parent Ego state of a person comprises the Judgmental,
value laden, rule making and moralizing component of personality.
• Adult Ego- This state is authentic, direct and reality based. It is more rational
and fact seeking.
• Child Ego- The child ego constitutes the emotional, creative, spontaneous
and impulsive component of personality.

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It is important to note that the ego states are not attached to one’s chronological
age. In one’s daily life, a person is likely to display all 3 ego states in different
situations.

Under Transactional analysis, transactions or social interactions between people are
analyzed. Transactions can be complementary or non complementary in nature.

Complementary transactions are interactions where ego states of the sender and
receiver in the opening transaction are simply reversed in the response.
Diagrammatically-

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In a complementary transaction, the message by a person gets the predicted

response from the other person. In such a case, both persons are satisfied and
communication is complete.

Under Non-Complementary Transactions, the stimulus and response is not parallel.
For example, when a manager tries to communicate on adult-to-adult basis but the
subordinate responds on a child-to-adult basis, the transaction becomes non-
complementary and incomplete because of lack of sync between the sender and
receiver.

In the above diagram, the sender is trying to communicate on an adult-to-adult basis
by asking the question “how are you?” but the receiver of message responds on a
child-to-parent basis by answering “why do you care?” which is an impulsive and
spontaneous response.
Communication tends to get blocked in non-complementary or cross transactions.
There are also chances of conflict in such conversations.

A third type of transaction is “Ulterior transaction”. In an ulterior transaction,
communication has double meaning. At the surface level, there is a clear adult
message but there is a hidden message at the psychological level.

The fourth type of transaction is “Gallows transaction”. An inappropriate response to
the sender of a message creates a Gallows Transaction. For example, “a mother
laughing on the falling of her child” is an inappropriate response and thus a gallows
transaction.

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Life Positions:
People normally make assumptions about themselves and about others. These set of
assumptions are called as life positions by Harris. Life positions are more permanent
than ego states. They are learnt and developed with experience. Harris has described
them in terms of “okeyness”.
Diagrammatically-

• I’m OK you are not OK- these people tend to think that no one can be trusted
to do a work as well as they themselves can do. These people are often
dominated by their critical parent.

• I’m OK, You are OK- this is termed as ideal life position. These people have
positive outlook towards life.

• I’m not OK you are not OK- negative thinkers who feel bad about themselves
and see the whole world as miserable. They tend to give up on everything.

• I’m not OK you are OK- these people underestimate themselves and feel that
others are more competent than they are and others have a better life.


Johari Window-
Johari Window was developed by Joseph and harry, naming it Jo-hari. Johari window
is a window made of 4 different quadrants that together represent a total person in
relation to others.

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There are two key ideas behind the tool:

1. That you can build trust with others by disclosing information about yourself.
2. That, with the help of feedback from others, you can learn about yourself and
come to terms with personal issues.

By explaining the idea of the Johari Window, you can help team members to
understand the value of self-disclosure, and you can encourage them to give, and
accept, constructive feedback.

By disclosing information about oneself, a person is making herself known to others.
If the person decides not to disclose information about herself, then she is either
hidden/ private or unknown (3 or 4).
There are two possibilities if a person decides to disclose one’s feelings or
personality traits or information- Public or Blind.
Public is a person who discloses information about herself but also takes feedback
seriously and knows about oneself (feelings, behavior etc)
A person is termed as blind if she is unable to take the feedback effectively and thus
does not know about one’s feelings, behavior or personality traits.

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