Organizational Behaviour - I

Assignment
Team Number: 3
Section B

Members:

 Akshaya Balaji - RSB08006

 Lokesh Srinivasan – RSB08090

 Rajkiran - RSB08058

 Vishnu Prasad R - RSB08084

 Sowmiya V - RSB08072

 Chitra Bagavathy - RSB08094

 Indhumathi - RSB08096
How does the situation or environment affect the degree to which
personality predicts behaviour?

Situation
Typically, a person’s personality predicts how a person would behave. But in certain
scenarios environment and situations disrupt this translation of personality into behaviour.
A research states that “The clearest means of defining consumer situations resides in the
objective features which characterize a locus in time and space. Such elements include both
antecedent conditions for the internal states the participant brings to the situation and the
physical elements he attends there. These features lend themselves to direct behaviour
taxonomy without the need to infer internal responses of the individual to the situation.”
When it comes to how certain situations disrupt the predictable behaviour, the situation
strength theory categorises situations into strong situations and weak situations. According to
it strong situation enforces the right behaviour despite the aversion of an individual to act in a
different way, while weak situations give complete independence to an individual to do as
one wishes.
Situation strength can be classified into Four fundamental elements namely Clarity,
Consistency, Constraints and Consequences.

Clarity
As clear an employee’s job description, their work duties, their role in their team is defined as
strong the situation becomes as they neither go above and beyond for someone else’s
responsibilities nor they take care of illegitimate tasks for which they are unnecessarily
demanded. A weak situation can be found in start-ups where a single person fills multiple
shoes while not being compensated fairly for it in the guise of learning.

Consistency
The Consistency of the tasks done on a typical work day determines the strength of the
situation. The more monotonous an individual’s job gets the situation becomes that stronger.
For example, a customer care employee might rarely get a unique case while a bartender
might get to meet more colourful characters during a shift. Thus, making the bartender to
come up with unique solutions or even get into a fight as a weak situation unravels.

Constraint
A bridled horse tends to stay on the track and doesn’t get to go off course as its freedom is
restricted to the handler’s whip. When an individual’s actions are regulated by authority it
leaves lesser space for the individual to act freely thus minimising the personality and the
strong situation dictates how they should and do act. An employee might not particularly like
a person in power but when there comes an organizational need for them to interact rather
than express their distrust towards them, they will interact how a neutral person or maybe
even be a lot nice to them if they are focused in career goals.
A research study states that before a person acts on their intention, situational variable tend to
interrupt them affecting their behaviour directly. So, if situation variables are constrained
effectively, it decreases the discrepancy between an individual’s intention and behaviour.

Consequences
When a person’s daily task in their job could result in dire consequences if they deviate from the
norm, their environment is enforced with various monitoring parameters to check on the periodically
as well as have countermeasures in position in case they decide to act on their own. For example, A
train’s locomotive pilot is supposed to report every anomaly over the radio regardless of how minute
they are and has a lesser tendency to speed in areas they shouldn’t unlike a delivery driver who races
against the clock putting him or herself as well as others at risk.

Environment
Environment is one of the key factors that effects the organization forces that can affect its structure,
such as suppliers, customers, competitors, and public pressure groups." Dynamic environments create
more uncertainty for managers than do fixed ones. To reduce uncertainty in key market arenas,
managers may widen their structure to sense and respond to that uncertainty. Most companies, any
organization's environment has three dimensions: capacity, volatility, and complexity,

Capacity
Capacity refers to the degree to which the environment can support growth. Which can buffer the
organization in times of relative scarcity. For example, A call centre can field 7,000 calls per week. A
café can brew 800 cups of coffee per day. It may change depending upon environment.

Volatility
Volatility describes the degree of instability in the environment. A dynamic environment with a high
degree of unpredictable change makes it difficult for management to make accurate predictions. For
example, when a rupture suddenly happens in the political arena, it may create chaining effects on the
whole environment and make it very unstable. Every single manager knows that the world economy is
intertwined. As per study it can also change behaviours in was that render people less honest and vice-
versa

Complexity
Complexity is the degree of divergence and concentration among environmental factors is known as
complexity. Environments, such as the tobacco business, where for example, a company offering
services that use rapidly developing or sophisticated technologies is more complex than one selling
essential goods. Environments that exhibit heterogeneity and dispersion, such as the broadband sector,
are complicated, diversified, and have a large number of competitors.

This three-dimensional characterization of the environment allows us to draw some broad

generalisations regarding environmental uncertainty and structural configurations. An
environment should be more organically shaped the more scarce, dynamic, and complex it is.
More people will favour a mechanistic structure if the environment is abundant, steady, and
uncomplicated.
 References
EBSCO Database: Regional Business News Accession Number:
201306241252PR.NEWS.USPR.NY37186
Joseph A. Cote Jr. and John K. Wong (1985),"The Effects of Time and Situational Variables
on Intention-Behaviour Consistency", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 12,
eds. Elizabeth C. Hirschman and Moris B. Holbrook, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer
Research, Pages: 374-377.
Russell W. Belk (1975),"The Objective Situation As a Determinant of Consumer Behaviour",
in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 02, eds. Mary Jane Schlinger, Ann Abor,
MI: Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 427-438.