Individual Behavior

(MBA-7000)

Session 02

Lecturer : Ragukumar1 S.T

Individual Behavior at Workplace

Focus Understanding and managing individual behavior at workplace

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MARS model of individual behavior
MARS = Motivation, Ability, Role perception and Situational
factors. These are all critical influences on an individuals voluntary
Individual
behavior and performance.
Characteristics

McShane et al (2016): Organizational Behavior: Emerging Knowledge. Global Reality McGraw-Hill Education

Motivation: The forces within a person that affect his or her direction, intensity and persistence
of voluntary behavior
Ability: The natural aptitudes and learned capabilities required to successfully complete a task
Role perceptions: The degree to which a person understands the job duties assigned to or
expected of him or her
Situational factors: Those conditions that are beyond the employee’s immediate3control that
constrain or facilitate behavior and performance eg. Access to productivity tools, Time etc.
Personality
Personality is the relatively enduring pattern of thoughts, emotions and behaviors that
characterize a person, along with the psychological processes behind those characteristics

• Personality- the sum of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with
others.
• Personality is a product of both nature (hereditary) and nurture (our socialization,
life experiences and other forms of interaction with the environment)

Measuring Personality:
• Personality can be described in terms of the measurable traits a person exhibits.
• Personality assessments have been increasingly used in diverse organizational
settings. In fact, eight of the top 10 U.S. private companies and 57 percent of all
large U.S. companies use them. Personality tests are useful in hiring decisions and
help managers forecast who is best for a job.
• Personality is usually assed by self report inventories and peer reports

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One simplistic view of personalities

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Favorite world: Do you prefer to focus on the outer
world or on your own inner world? This is
called Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I).

Information: Do you prefer to focus on the basic

information you take in or do you prefer to interpret
and add meaning? This is called Sensing (S) or
Intuition (N).

Decisions: When making decisions, do you prefer to

first look at logic and consistency or first look at the
people and special circumstances? This is
called Thinking (T) or Feeling (F).

Structure: In dealing with the outside world, do you

prefer to get things decided or do you prefer to stay
open to new information and options? This is
called Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).

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Research results on validity
mixed-MBTI® is a good tool
for self-awareness and
counseling. Should not be used
as a selection test for job7
candidates.
The Big Five Personality Traits

Big Five, is the most well-

defined and supported
personality framework to-
date.
McShane et al (2016): Organizational Behavior:
Emerging Knowledge. Global Reality McGraw-Hill
Education

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Personality Assessment

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Values
Basic convictions on how to conduct yourself or how to live your life that is personally or
socially preferable – “How To” live life properly. Values are one important, especially
central component of our self and personality, distinct from attitudes, beliefs, norms, and
traits. Values are critical motivators of behaviors and attitudes.

Theory of Basic Human Values

A simple gesture of concern Vs a display of dominance

Schwartz’s circumplex model, (Schwartz et al,2012)

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Values across cultures
Value Sample countries Representative beliefs/behaviours in ‘high’ cultures
Individualism High: Australia, United Defines self more by one’s uniqueness; personal goals have
States, Chile, Canada, priority; decisions have low consideration of effect on others;
Medium: Japan, Denmark relationships are viewed as more instrumental and fluid.
Low: Taiwan, Venezuela

Collectivism High: Israel, Taiwan Defines self more by one’s in-group membership; goals of
Medium: India, Denmark self-sacrifice and harmony have priority; behavior regulated
Low: Australia, by in-group norms; in-group memberships are viewed as
Germany, Japan stable with a strong differentiation with out-groups.
Power Distance High: India, Malaysia Reluctant to disagree with or contradict the boss; managers
Medium: United States, are expected and preferred decision makers; perception of
Japan dependence (versus interdependence) with the boss.
Low: Australia, Israel
Denmark
Uncertainty High: Belgium, Greece Prefer predictable situations; value stable employment,
Avoidance Medium: Australia, Norway strict laws and low conflict; dislike deviations from normal
Low: Denmark, Singapore behaviour.

Achievement High: Austria, Japan Focus on outcomes (versus relationships); decisions based
Orientation Medium: Australia, Brazil on contribution (equity versus equality); low empathy or
Low: Sweden, Netherlands showing emotions (versus strong empathy and caring)

Sources: Individualism and collectivism descriptions and results are from the meta-analysis reported in D. Oyserman, H. M. Coon and M. Kemmelmeier, ‘Rethinking
Individualism and Collectivism: Evaluation of Theoretical Assumptions and Meta-Analyses’, Psychological Bulletin, 128 (2002): 3–72. The other information is from G.
Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences, 2nd edn (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001). [McShane et al , 2016]

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Values and individual behavior

Personal values guide our decisions, behavior and performance to some extent. However one
influence on the values–behavior link is the situation. Work environments influence our
behavior, at least in the short term, so they necessarily encourage or discourage values-
consistent behavior.
Values congruence
Values congruence refers to how similar a person’s values hierarchy is to the values hierarchy
of the organization. Person–organization values congruence leads to higher job satisfaction,
loyalty and organizational citizenship, as well as lower stress and turnover

Value differences between groups

Source: Based on W. C. Frederick and J. Weber, “The Values of Corporate Managers and Their Critics: An Empirical Description and Normative Implications,” in 14
W. C. Frederick and L. E. Preston (eds.) Business Ethics: Research Issues and Empirical Studies (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1990), pp. 123–44.
Self-Concept
An individual’s self-concept can be described by three characteristics:
complexity, consistency and clarity.
Complexity refers to the number
of distinct and important roles or
identities that people perceive about
themselves (executive, friend, wife, sports fan,
etc.)

Consistency refers to what extent most of the

individual’s self-perceived roles require similar
personality traits, values and other attributes. (To
be an MMA fighter and a Monk -low consistency)

Clarity, is the degree to which a person has a clear,

confidently defined and stable self-concept

Self-concept complexity, consistency and clarity influence a person’s wellbeing, behavior and
performance. People tend to have better psychological wellbeing when they have multiple
selves (complexity) that are well established (clarity) and are similar to each other and
compatible with personal traits (consistency).

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Self-enhancement
A person’s inherent motivation to have a positive self-concept (and to have
others perceive him or her favourably), such as being competent, attractive,
lucky, ethical and important.

Self-verification
A person’s inherent motivation to confirm and maintain his or her existing self-concept.

Self-evaluation
Self-evaluation is mostly defined by three elements: self-esteem, self- efficacy and locus of
control.

Self-esteem—the extent to which people like, respect and are satisfied with themselves
Self-efficacy —a person’s belief that he or she has the ability, motivation, correct role
perceptions and favorable situation to complete a task successfully
Locus of control — A person’s general belief about the amount of control he or she has
over personal life events

The social self

Social identity (also called external self-concept) is the central theme
of social identity theory, which says that people define themselves by the
groups to which they belong or have an emotional attachment 17
Perceptions
Perception is the process of receiving information about and making sense of the world. It
includes determining which information to notice, how to categorize this information and how to
interpret it within the framework of our existing knowledge.

A model of the perceptual process:

Characteristics of the perceiver also influence selection attention, usually without the perceiver’s
awareness. When information is received through the senses, our brain quickly and non-
consciously assesses whether it is relevant or irrelevant to us and then attaches emotional markers
(worry, happiness, boredom) to the retained information.

Emotional markers help us to store information in our memory; those emotions are later
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reproduced when recalling the perceived information.
Attribution Theory
An attempt to explain the ways we judge people differently, depending on
the meaning we attribute to a behavior, such as determining whether an
individual’s behavior is internally or externally caused.

Fundamental attribution error:

The tendency to underestimate
the influence of external factors
and over estimate the Influence
of internal factors when making
judgments about the behavior of
No others.
(Low consistency)

Self-serving bias The tendency

Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Ltd.
Kelley’s covariation model
for individuals to attribute their
own successes to internal factors
and put the blame for failures
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on external factors.
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Shortcuts Used in Judging Others
Selective perception - The tendency to choose to interpret what one sees based on
one’s interests, background, experience, and attitudes.
Assumed similarity – the assumption that others are like oneself.
Stereotyping – judging a person on the basis of one’s perception of a group to which
he or she belongs.
Halo effect – a general impression of an individual based on a single characteristic.

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Emotions and Attitude

In the 2018 championship match between

Serina Williams , 38, and Naomi Osaka, 22,
Osaka soundly defeated Serena Williams, 6-2,
6-4, in the women’s final of the United States
Open, blocking Williams from winning a record-
tying 24th major singles title.

During that match the chair umpire Carlos

Ramos, gave the 23-time Grand Slam champion
three separate on-court violations. Williams
was penalized for illegal coaching, breaking her
racket and verbal abuse.

Commenting on this later she suggested that

the umpire’s actions were motivated by sexism.

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Emotions
Emotions are physiological, behavioral
and psychological episodes experienced
towards an object, person or event that
create a state of readiness

Circumplex model of emotions

What is ‘emotional labour’?

The effort, planning and control needed to
express organizationally desired emotions
during interpersonal transactions

Evaluation-evaluating environmental
conditions as good or bad, helpful or
harmful, positive or negative and so forth.

Activation- the resultant state of readiness

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Attitude
Attitudes are evaluative statements - either favorable or unfavorable-
about objects, people, or events. They reflect how we feel about
something.

Example

Cognitive = evaluation :- My supervisor gave a promotion to a coworker who deserved it less than I did. My supervisor
is unfair.
Affective = feeling :- I dislike my supervisor!

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Behavioral = action :- I’m looking for other work; I’ve complained about my supervisor to anyone who would listen.
 A model of emotions, attitudes and behavior

Cognitive dissonance
An emotional experience caused by a perception that our
beliefs, feelings and behavior are incongruent.
Imagine that you have just signed a contract for new electronic white boards to be installed
throughout the company’s meeting rooms. The deal was expensive but, after consulting
several staff, you felt that the technology would be valuable in this electronic age. Yet you felt
a twinge of regret soon after signing the contract. This emotional experience is cognitive 27
dissonance.
Stress
Stress is as an adaptive response to a situation that is perceived as challenging or
threatening to the person’s wellbeing.
General adaptation syndrome
Stress is typically described as a negative
experience. This is known as distress—the
degree of physiological, psychological and
behavioral deviation from healthy
functioning. However, some level of
stress—called eustress—is a necessary
part of life because it activates and
motivates people to achieve goals

Alarm reaction stage occurs when a threat or challenge activates the physiological stress
responses- individual’s energy level and coping effectiveness decrease in response to the initial
shock.
Resistance stage activates various biochemical, psychological and behavioral mechanisms that
give the individual more energy and engage coping mechanisms to overcome or remove the
source of stress.
Exhaustion happens when people have a limited resistance capacity but the source of stress
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persists.
Stressors: the causes of stress
Stressors include any environmental conditions that place a physical or emotional
demand on a person

Harassment and incivility Work overload

Workaholic 29
Low task control
OBMod
Organizational behavior modification is the application of learning principles to influence
organizational behavior. It can be seen as a form of operant conditioning or reinforcement
theory.

Organizations that encourage the members to learn and undertake desired behaviors
and not to undertake undesired behaviors follow five main steps:

1. Identify the observable, objective and measurable behaviors relevant to the desired
organizational performance.
2. Measure the frequency with which those behaviors actually occur under normal
conditions. Provide baseline performance data as a point of reference to compare with
changes in step 5.
3. Determine the antecedents of the behaviors, the reinforcements to encourage patterns of
behavior and the consequences that follow from those behaviors.
4. Develop an intervention strategy for change in order to strengthen desirable behaviors
and weaken undesirable behaviors, through the use of operant conditioning and
reinforcement theory including punishment if necessary.
5. Measure and evaluate systematically (using the same measure as in step 2) the extent to
which the frequencies of desired behaviors and undesired behaviors have changed, and
improvements in organizational performance.

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Reinforcement Theory
A theory that behavior is a function of its consequences.

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Johari window - Knowing yourself
A simple framework for looking at self-insight. This classifies behavior in matrix form between
what is known–unknown to self and what is known–unknown to others in order to encourage
a reduction of the individual’s ‘hidden’ behavior through self-disclosure and of the ‘blind’
behavior through feedback from others.

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Behavioral modelling
Behavioral modelling has been one of the most crucial strategies of enhancing workplace
productivity. Employees may select the most ideal and astute manager of their organization in
order to start mirroring their behavioral or dispositional or cognitive styles.

Social learning
Theory: The view
that we can learn
through both
observation and
direct experience.

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Trait Activation Theory

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