Welcome back to BUS293 Organisational Theory and Behaviour.

Previously, we have looked

at the importance of effectively managing groups in the workplace, however managers also
need to understand individual differences to influence individual performance in the workplace.
Perception, self-concept, and the perceptual process all shape the way an individual interprets
the environment around them, and thus informs and compounds these individual differences.
This topic examines individual differences in behaviour, personality, values, and perception.

The MARS model identifies the four variables of individual behaviour and performance,
Motivation, Ability, Role Perceptions, and Situational Factors. Motivation is the force within
a person that affects their willingness to perform a job.

Ability is the aptitudes – the potential abilities – and the learned capabilities – which are the
skills and knowledge people already possess. Cognitive, physical, and emotional aptitudes all
contribute towards work performance, and are usually tested for during the recruitment process.
The related job skills can then be enhanced through training and professional development.

Role perceptions are how much a person understands their job duties, and they help clarify
where the person should be directing their effort.

Situational factors are conditions outside of the employees control that help or hinder behaviour
and performance.

If one or more of motivation, ability, role perception, or situational factors are low, then
behaviour and individual performance will be impacted.

There are five main types of workplace behaviour.

Firstly, Task performance refers to goal-directed behaviours under the individual’s control that
support organisational objectives. Proficient task performance is how well the work is
performed, Adaptive task performance is how well employees respond to change in the
workplace and their duties, and Proactive task performance is how well employees take the
initiative to anticipate and change to benefit the organisation.

Organisational citizenship behaviours consist of various forms of cooperation and helpfulness

to others that support the organisation’s social and psychological context, for example assisting
co-workers and sharing work resources. They might be required behaviours, or discretionary
behaviours.

Counterproductive work behaviours are voluntary behaviours that have the potential to harm
the organisation directly or indirectly. These include creating unnecessary conflict, avoiding
work obligations, and taking shortcuts that risk work quality.

Joining and staying with the organisation refers to agreeing to become an organisational
member and remaining with the organisation. These behaviours are influenced by both
individual and organisational factors, and are important to the organisation as increased
employee turnover is costly as there is not only a high cost of replacing people who leave, but
also the cost of lost knowledge in the form of intellectual capital leaving the organisation as
well.

Maintaining work attendance includes minimising absenteeism if capable of working and

avoiding scheduled work if not fit for work. Low work attendance, or high absenteeism, is
attributed to situational factors such as illness or family demands, however aspects such as
work-related stress, or job dissatisfaction are more likely to result in absenteeism.

People exhibit a range of behaviours, however within these there are discernible patterns
referred to as personality traits. Personality is the relatively enduring pattern of thoughts,
emotions and behaviours that characterise a person, along with the psychological processes
behind those characteristics.

Personality traits are broad concepts about people that allow us to label and understand
individual differences. They are impacted by both heredity and environment, and are generally
categorised into five key dimensions of personality, known as “The Big Five”.

Conscientiousness and emotional stability (low neuroticism) predict individual performance in

most job groups. Extraversion is associated with performance in sales and management jobs,
whereas agreeableness is associated with performance in jobs requiring cooperation, and
openness to experience is associated with performance in creative jobs.

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator is another method of categorising personality, and identifies
competing orientations for getting energy, perceiving information, processing information and
making decisions, and orienting to the external world. It is popular in organisations and widely
used, however is a poor predictor of job performance and is not recommended for use in
selection or promotion activities.
These models of personality are not comprehensive, and thus miss out on some positive traits,
such as honesty, interpersonal characteristics, and resilience, as well as negative traits such as
narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.

Personality profiling helps organisations to filter potential employees with traits that are linked
to required job-specific behaviour. however, there is still concern that it can unfairly
discriminate, and there is the potential for ‘faking’, where people fill in the questionnaires with
what they believe the organisation wants to hear, rather than an accurate representation of
themselves.

Values reflect a persons’ sense of right and wrong, and what they should do, whereas
personality traits reflect what a person naturally tends to do. They can influence workplace
attitudes, behaviours, and outputs and when personal values are similar to team shared values,
and/or organisation values, there is value congruence.

Value congruence is linked to increased job satisfaction and decreased turnover. however, too
much congruity can lead to a corporate cult which undermines creativity, flexibility, and
business ethics. Some value incongruence benefits an organisation as the diversity of opinion
leads to better decision making, and creativity.

Ethical values are viewed as highly important for corporate leaders to have, and a persons
values, their sense of right and wrong, is likely to determine the level of their ethical behaviour.

There are three ethical principles that underline ethical behaviour. End-result ethics, or
utilitarianism, is the ends justify the means, and suggests the end result is what should be
considered when making that decision. Duty based ethics, or individual rights, is the
responsibility we have to others and ourselves to do good. And social contract ethics, or
distributive justice, is the responsibility we have to the common good. All three principles
should be considered when making ethical decisions.

In addition to ethical principles and values, moral intensity- the degree to which an issue
demands the application of ethical principles, moral thresholds – a person’s ability to recognise
and deal with ethical dilemmas, moral foundations – intuition-based principles that govern
judgements and actions, and situational factors such as management pressure influence ethical
conduct in the workforce.

To support ethical behaviour in the workplace, organisations can implement codes of ethical
conduct to motivate and guide employee behaviour, anonymous hotlines for employees to
report unethical behaviour, and ethics audits to identify organisational gaps. However, the most
powerful tool to ensure ethical conduct is shared values reinforcing the ethical conduct which
is supported and modelled by corporate leaders.

Cross cultural values are those that differ across different cultures around the world. Hofstede
summarises these into five categories. Individualism, which is valuing independence and
personal uniqueness; collectivism which is valuing duty to groups we belong to and group
harmony; power distance, which is the extent to which people accept unequal distribution of
power; uncertainty avoidance, which is tolerating or feeling threatened by ambiguity and
uncertainty; and achievement orientation, which is valuing competition over cooperation. An
awareness of these differences can help in understanding different behaviours such as either a
willingness, or hesitance to, speak up to management and voice a differing opinion.

However, many studies into cross cultural values and knowledge have used small samples from
subsets of the population, and generalise, which may not represent an entire culture. They also
tend to assume that countries have one culture, which is increasingly not the case. And applying
cross-cultural knowledge without keeping this in mind can lead to stereotyping, which is one
of the errors that can influence the perceptual process.

Perception is the process of receiving information about, and making sense of, the world around
us.

The process usually follows the steps of Receiving environmental stimuli through our senses,
subconsciously selecting which stimuli to focus on, organising, and interpreting that
information using categorical thinking and mental models, to determine attitudes and
behaviours.

To efficiently manage the amount of information we have to process, our brain has developed
methods to select and sort information. These methods, although increasing efficiency,
sometimes result in errors.

Confirmation bias occurs as a result of selective attention, where we tend to focus on, or select,
the information that confirms our beliefs, and ignore information that contradicts this. For
example, if we believe that a particular project is a good investment, any evidence that
reinforces this belief will stand out more, and seem more relevant than evidence to the contrary.

In the organisation and interpretation stage, the brain categorises people, objects, and situations
with other similar items such as by gender, age, race, clothing style, proximity, or interests. It
also attempts to fill in the blanks, so if there is information you don’t know, it will assume it
based on prior images or experience.

This is how stereotyping can occur subconsciously, as the brain groups people into a category
based on a small amount of information, and then assumes other characteristics based on them
belonging to that category. Stereotypes are formed to some extent through personal experience,
but are mostly developed through exposure to media. Although everyone engages in
stereotyping as a non-conscious energy saving process that simplifies our understanding of the
world, it leads to perceptual biases and flawed decision making, as every individual is unique,
and not defined by a social group to which they belong.

The attribution process is another area of perception that can lead to perceptual errors and affect
decision making. This is where a decision is made as to whether the behaviour, action, or event
was caused by external or internal factors. Self-serving bias is the tendency to take credit for
success, and blame others for failure. For example, if your favourite sports team won, it was
due to them being more skilled, more dedicated in training, and executing a better strategy.
Whereas if your favourite sports team lost, it was due to poor referee calls, or the opposing
team playing unfairly, or unforeseen injuries.

Self-fulfilling prophecy explains the situation where our perception influences our behaviour,
which then reinforces the initial perception. For example, if a manager believes that an
employee will do well, then they are likely to provide more support and challenging goals,
which then lead the employee to do well. On the other hand, if a manager believes that an
employee will perform poorly, and reprimands and monitors them closely, the employee is
likely to become resentful and perform poorly, which they would not have done if the manager
had had an initial belief that they would perform well. Because of this, it is important that
managers maintain a positive, but realistic, perception of all employees and that organisations
have a culture of support and learning.

Halo effect is similar to stereotyping, however rather than assuming characteristics of a person
based on a group to which they belong, you assume characteristics of a person based on one
prominent characteristic or event. For example, assuming someone is a bad student who doesn’t
care about their grades because they turned up unprepared, or late, to class.

False-consensus effect is where we assume that the way we think or behave is the way most
people are thinking or behaving. For example if you believe the company you work for doesn’t
care about their employees and treats them poorly, you would also assume that most of your
coworkers also feel the same way.

Primacy effect is the term for judging a book by its cover, or the lasting nature of first
impressions. A negative first impression is very difficult to change, as after categorising that
person negatively, we selectively focus on information that confirms that impression.

Finally, recency effect is when the most recent information takes precedence in our perception
and decision making. This is seen when managers undertaking an annual review of an
employees performance focus on the most recent performance as it’s most easily recalled,
rather than looking at the whole year overall.

As we are all human, we cannot bypass the perceptual process, however we should try to
minimise perceptual errors and biases to make sure our decision making is as objective as
possible. We can improve perception firstly through an awareness of perceptual biases, as
knowing they exist makes it easier to identify when you are potentially making a perception
error. Secondly, improving self-awareness involves becoming more aware of your own beliefs,
values, and attitudes, which increases understanding of patterns and biases in your own
decision making and behaviours, and tends to make people more open minded and less
judgemental. Finally, meaningful interaction is spending time with, and working closely with,
others. This increases our knowledge about individuals and as we get to know them, and their
unique attributes, better, we have increased empathy and understanding towards them, and rely
less on the mental shortcuts that result in perceptual errors.

These methods for improving perception are also needed for developing a global mindset, as it
is the ability to perceive, appreciate, and empathise with people from other cultures and to
process complex cross-cultural information. With increasing globalisation, diversity, and
transnational corporations, having a global mindset is becoming increasingly valued in
organisations. A global mindset enables people and organisations to develop better cross-
cultural relationships, digest huge volumes of cross-cultural information, form networks and
exchange resources more rapidly across borders, and to identify and respond more quickly to
emerging global opportunities.

Self-concept is internal perceptions, or how we perceive ourselves. It is the self-beliefs and

self-evaluations that guide decisions and actions, including whether or not a role or company
is a good fit with who you are and who you want to be.
Self-concept has three facets, complexity, consistency, and clarity. Complexity is the number
of distinct identities or roles people fill, for example mother, sister, daughter, friend, student,
engineer, and manager. High complexity protects self-esteem when one identity is damaged by
failure, and contributes to adaptive decision making and performance, however maintaining
and juggling these can be stressful. Low complexity people who identify mostly with their
work identity often invest more in skill development and have lower absenteeism and turnover.
Consistency is how similar these roles or identities are. Some people move between roles and
identities more easily than others, and occupational self-concept, or the ability for a person to
focus on their work-self, is important for when someone is working from home. Finally, Clarity
is the confidence in, and awareness of their important identities. High clarity is seen as essential
for leadership, and enables people to more efficiently direct their effort towards career
objectives, it also reduces the threat of interpersonal conflict and so leads to more constructive
problem solving behaviours to resolve conflict. However, it can also contribute to role
inflexibility and make it difficult to adapt to changing job duties and organisational conditions.
Low self-concept clarity leads to increased stress when making decisions and increased threat
of social forces that undermine self-confidence and self-esteem.

Wellbeing generally increases with higher levels of the aspects of self-concept.

There are four processes that shape self-concept. Self enhancement is the motivation to have a
positive self-concept, and have others perceive them favourably. It tends to lead to
overconfidence, with individuals rating themselves above average, and can contribute to a can-
do attitude, however this also increases risk-taking behaviour and taking longer to recognise
their mistakes.

Self verification is the motivation to confirm and maintain their self-concept, for example when
people accept compliments that confirm their beliefs about themselves, but reject those that
don’t. This affects the giving of and acceptance of feedback in the workplace.

Self-evaluation is mostly defined by three elements. Self-esteem represents an overall

evaluation and is how much a person likes, respects and is satisfied with themselves. Self-
efficacy is how much someone believes they can accomplish a task, and locus of control is how
much belief a person has in their ability to control personal life events. Having high self-esteem,
high self-efficacy, and an internal locus of control is generally associated with increased
wellbeing.
Finally, the social self identifies the motivation for individuality – someone’s personal identity,
and the motivation for belonging – their social identity. Everyone tries to balance these
identities, but an individual’s priorities can differ, for example a doctor may have a high priority
towards their social identity due to the status awarded by being a member of the medical
profession. People who prioritise social identities are more likely to abide by team norms and
be influenced by peer pressure.

Self-concept has quite a significant effect on individual behaviour in many ways, including
perception and decision making, motivation, team dynamics and leadership, and several other
organisational behaviour topics, and thus will be revisited in later podcasts.

Managers, and team members, need to understand individual differences in order to influence
individual performance in the workplace. These individual differences impact the motivation,
ability, and role perceptions aspects of the MARS model of individual behaviour, and should
be used to maximise the performance of an organisation, and your assignment teams. Try
reducing perceptual biases and increasing meaningful interactions with your team members to
improve communication and interactions, and consequently produce a better report overall.
Thank you.
Welcome back to BUS293, Organisational Theory and Behaviour. This topic explores the
conceptual foundations of employee motivation and the practical applications of these
theories.

Motivation is one of the four essential drivers of individual behaviour and performance
and plays a large part in employee engagement. Employee engagement is defined as an
individual’s emotional and rational motivation, particularly a focused, intense, persistent
and purposive effort towards work-related goals. It is emotional involvement in,
commitment to and satisfaction with the work, as well as a high level of absorption in the
work and a sense of self-efficacy about performing the work.

There are two main theoretical approaches to motivation – content theories and process
theories. Content theories look at What motivates people, also referred as their needs or
drives, whereas process theories look at How people are motivated.

The main content theories are: Four-drive theory, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and
McClellands learned needs theory.

The content theories posit that people have certain drives and needs, and if they are met,
the person will be motivated. Alternately, if they are not being met, they will be
demotivated. It is important to note that the content theories are impacted by individual
differences, and cultural differences emphasise different needs. For example, in countries
with high uncertainty avoidance such as Japan and Greece, security tends to motivate
employees more than self-actualisation. Regardless, managers being aware of the
categories that employees may need for motivation is a useful tool in order to gauge what
may be impacting on the work effort of employees.

The main Process Theories are Equity Theory and Expectancy Theory.

Equity theory focuses on the motivating factor of unfairness, and posits that if a person
feels that their situation is unfair, or inequitable, that they will want to take action to
rectify the situation. People compare their inputs and rewards to others inputs and
rewards, and if they feel they are receiving proportionately less than others, this is known
as negative inequity, or underreward. If they feel they are receiving proportionality more
than others, this is known as positive inequity, or over-reward. When there is this
inequity, people will engage in behaviours to restore equity, for example: changing work
inputs by reducing level of effort, changing rewards by asking for a raise, leaving the
situation by quitting their job, changing comparison points by comparing with a different
co-worker, distort the comparisons by rationalising the inequity, or acting to change the
inputs or rewards of the comparison person by asking them to take on more work. The
perceptual process again comes into play when making equity comparisons, as what one
employee considers a fair pay rise may not be perceived the same way by another.

This concept of fairness is referred to as organisational justice, which consists of

distributive justice (perceived fairness in the outcomes we receive relative to our
contributions and the outcomes and contributions of others) and procedural justice (the
fairness of the procedures used to decide the distribution of resources). Companies need
to consider not only equity of the distribution of resources but also fairness in the process
of making resource allocation decisions to ensure the motivation and engagement of
employees.

Expectancy theory looks to explain WHY a person would put in effort to contribute
towards organisational performance. It looks at the expectancy, instrumentality, and
valence components of the process. Expectancy is the probability that the person putting
in effort will be able to perform at the task. If a person can put in effort and subsequently
perform, expectancy, and therefore motivation, would be high. However, if a person puts
in effort but, due to factors outside of their control – such as a lack of appropriate training
or ability, is unable to perform, the low expectancy would cause motivation to be low.
Instrumentality is the probability that performance will lead to an outcome. If a person
knows that their performance will result in an outcome, instrumentality, and therefore
motivation, will be high. However, if a person performs well and no outcome, or reward,
is available, the low instrumentality would cause motivation to be low. Finally, Valence is
the value a person places on the various outcomes. If the rewards or outcomes are valued
then valence is high, and so motivation will be as well. If the rewards are not what the
person wants or values, then valence will be low, and subsequently motivation. Even if
two of these three factors are high, if any one of them is low, then motivation will be as
well.
The implications for managers are that to maintain high levels of expectancy, they need
to select employees with the ability to perform, train them to direct this ability
appropriately, support them with organisational resources, and clearly identify their job
requirements. To maintain high levels of instrumentality they need to have clear
psychological contracts, communicate the rewards for good performance, and have
reward systems that clearly reward employees for the stated good performance. To
maintain high levels of valence, an awareness of what employees need, want, and value
must be established, and rewards tailored to match these.

Expectancy theory is based in the probabilities of an outcome affecting motivation and

behaviour, but doesn’t explain how employees learn these probabilities. Organisational
behaviour modification takes the behaviourist view that the environment teaches people
to alter their behaviour so that they maximise positive consequences and minimise
adverse consequences and consists of four basic reinforcement strategies.

Positive reinforcement is when desired behaviours are rewarded by wanted, or positive,

outcomes. It increases the likelihood of the desired behaviour being repeated, and is most
effective when the reward is received as soon as possible after the desired behaviour is
exhibited.

Negative reinforcement is when desired behaviours are rewarded by the removal of

negative, or unwanted, consequences. For example, a worker made to work night shifts
is allowed to return to regular day shifts once quality of work improves. Both positive and
negative reinforcement are intended to encouraged desired behaviours.

Punishment is when undesired behaviours are responded to with negative consequences.

For example, if a worker is not giving good customer service they could receive a written
warning, verbal reprimand, or be given the ‘bad jobs’ that no one wants to do. It is used
not to encourage positive behaviour, but to discourage negative behaviour. There are
major reservations with using punishment, as it results in negative emotions towards the
punisher and the organisation, so it should only be used in extreme cases (for example,
theft).

Extinction is when undesired behaviours are No Longer rewarded by positive or wanted

outcomes. For example, if a worker is late and co-workers would usually cover for them,
the manager instructs the co-workers to no longer cover for the late worker. This then
removes the prior reward reinforcing the behaviour, which was the co-workers just
doing the work until the late worker arrives. When the behaviour is then no longer
reinforced, it will reduce in frequency. This strategy, like punishment, is used to eliminate
undesired behaviours.

Expectancy beliefs are not only learned through personal interaction with the
environment, but also through observing others and anticipating potential consequences
of their actions. This is the social cognitive theory.

People learn from stimulus, behaviours, and consequences experienced by others, not
just themselves. This alters a person’s instrumentality as they expect a similar outcome
to the one they observed, if they have similar performance. A person uses modelling, or
vicarious learning, to acquire behaviours by observing and imitating others. This alters a
person’s expectancy as they can more efficiently translate effort into performance.
Mentoring is used in the workplace to capitalise on this idea of social learning. The theory
emphasises self-regulation of individual behaviour, including self-reinforcement, which
is the tendency of people to reward and punish themselves as a consequence of their
actions, such as building natural rewards into your task and establishing constructive
thought patterns.

Self regulation is also the cornerstone of motivation through goal-setting and feedback.

Goal setting is the process of motivating employees and clarifying their role perceptions
by establishing performance objectives. This helps improve the expectancy stage of
expectancy theory by amplifying intensity and persistence of effort and by clarifying
employee role perceptions, so their effort is more effectively channelled towards
behaviours that will improve work performance.
Goal setting is more complex than just picking a target and working towards it or telling
someone to just ‘do their best’, for example challenging and specific goals are more likely
to motivate and lead to higher performance than easier or vague goals. The
characteristics required for effective goals are summarised in the acronym SMARTER.
Firstly, goals should be specific. This clarifies performance expectations and improves the
effort-performance linkage. Goals being measurable further clarifies performance
expectations and allows self-monitoring of progress.

Although we mentioned before that challenging goals are more motivating, they need to
be achievable. Easy goals lead to performance that is well below the persons potential,
whereas goals that are too difficult will lower a person’s effort-performance expectancy
as they will not believe they can achieve the goal set. Goals need to be relevant, both to
the organisation and the individual’s role, and be within their control. They also need a
due date, so when they should be measured and reviewed is clear.

Exciting goals, that encourage employee commitment, tend to be more effective, and
challenging goals are generally more exciting for most employees as they fulfil a persons’
need for achievement when they are accomplished. Employee involvement in goal setting
also increases excitement and therefore goal commitment. Finally, goals must be
reviewed, as this contributes to the measurement of goals, but also through ongoing
reflection and discussion, effort can be redirected towards more effective behaviours that
help goal achievement. This feedback is also a potential source of recognition that fulfils
achievement needs.

Effective feedback is also similarly complex, with some of the same characteristics as
effective goal setting. It should be specific, relevant, and timely, being given as soon as
possible after the behaviour or results occur. It should be credible, being composed of
complete and accurate information, unbiased, and communicated in a supportive and
empathetic manner. It should also be sufficiently frequent. The ideal frequency will
depend on the task and the person, given more often for those learning new tasks, and
based on the work cycle of the job.

The delivery of feedback can also contribute to its effectiveness. Strengths-based

coaching (also known as appreciative coaching) maximises employee potential by
focusing on employees’ strengths rather than their weaknesses. This minimises the
impact of self-verification to maintain their self-concept. Employees usually prefer non-
social feedback sources, such as computer printouts and statistics available on a staff
intranet, to learn about their progress towards goal accomplishment as this is seen as
more accurate, and less damaging to self-esteem. However, employees should receive
some positive feedback from social, interpersonal sources.

Limitations to goal-setting are firstly, that important aspects of performance that are
difficult to measure may be ignored, as when there is a high focus on goal achievement,
what gets measured gets done. Secondly, very difficult goals may motivate some people
to engage in unethical behaviour to achieve the goal or create stress which undermines
overall job performance. Thirdly, goal setting tends to interfere with the learning process
and should be avoided with new employees or where there is an intense learning process
occurring in an established job. Finally, goal achievement being tied to financial rewards
motivates employees to set easier goals and convince management that they are difficult
so there is a higher probability of achieving the financial reward.

For organisations, and teams, to be successful, members must be motivated to perform

the required behaviours. The use of monetary, or extrinsic rewards should be used with
caution, as behaviours can be modified more effectively through improving the
expectancy relationship, organisational justice, and goal setting. Managers need to enable
competency building and empowerment, and minimise impediments to performance to
maintain employee motivation and improve employee engagement. Thank you.