Understanding and Managing

Individual Behavior
 *Learning Outcomes
* Identify the focus and goals of organizational behavior (OB).
* Explain the role that attitudes play in job performance.
* Describe different personality theories.
* Describe perception and the factors that influence it.
* Discuss learning theories and their relevance in shaping
behavior.
* Discuss contemporary issues in OB.
 NEWS ROOM

*Flipkart acquires Upstream Commerce

to optimise pricing of products
*Walmart-backed e-commerce marketplace
Flipkart has acquired Israeli-based
Upstream Commerce for an undisclosed
amount as it looks to further optimise the
pricing of products on its platform to better
compete with rival Amazon
*Upstream Commerce is a retail price
optimisation platform that tracks prices and
availability of products across several
retailers including Walmart, Amazon,
Barnes&Noble and Costco to give its
customers real time insights that help them
be more competitive.
 DEFINITIONS

 An attitude is a mental state of readiness, learned and organized

through experience, exerting a specific influence on a person’s
response to people, object, and situation with which it is
related.

 Attitudes are learned predispositions towards aspects of our

environment. They may be positively or negatively directed
towards certain people, services, or institutions.
 TYPES OF ATTITUDE
 Attitudes are of three types.
­ Positive Attitude:
An inclination that brings out a desired output for persons and
organizations can be referred to as positive attitude. Individuals with
positive attitude generally believe that there is some good opportunity
in every situation. In other words these people are optimistic.
­ Negative Attitude:
The inclination of a person that leads to an undesirable result for
individuals and organizations can be described as negative attitude.
Negative attitudes are punished in order to discourage the same action
in the future.
­ Neutral Attitude:
People with a neutral attitude do not feel like giving suggestions with
respect to an event or feel that there is a need to change.
 COMPONENTS OF
ATTITUDE
• It refers to the emotional aspect of attitude that influences the
feelings of an individual.
Affective • For example: “I am afraid of snakes”.

• It refers to the behavioural part of attitude. The behavioral

component consists of an individual’s tendency to behave in a
particular way towards an object or a person.
Behavorial • For example: “I will scream if I see a snake”.

• It refers to opinion or belief part of attitude. When a person makes

an opinion or judgment on the basis of available information it is
called cognitive part of attitude.
Cognitive • For example: “In my opinion snakes are dangerous”.

 Every attitude has three components that are represented in what

is called the ABC model of attitudes: A for affective, B for
behavioural, and C for cognitive.
 ATTITUDES AND ITS
 Utilitarian: CLASSIFICATION
This refers to the attitude of an individual which has been created through
self- or community interest . For example, the hike in pay, which exudes
positive reaction and attitude from an employee, which in turn impacts the
environment positively.
 Rationale and Knowledge:
Understanding the rationale behind why a task is being allotted to a particular
individual or a group or why the organization has devised a specific type of
strategy is another means by which people form attitudes, which are positive
dispositions of the form and are better for the organizations’ environment.
 Ego-defensive:
Usage of attitude to protect the ego results in negative attitude. For example, a
manager’s criticism of an employees' work without offering suggestions for
improvement can evoke a negative response from the individual.
 ATTITUDES AND ITS
CLASSIFICATION
 Value-expressive:
People develop central values over time and it is
the responsibility of the managers to understand
the importance of values from an employee’s
perspective.
 IMPACT OF ATTITUDE ON
WORKPLACE
 Validation:
The workplace attitude contributes to the events that happen
within the organization. For example, if there is a sales drop in a
particular product for an organization, then an organization with a
negative attitude will try to be defensive about the same while the
one with a positive attitude will immediately find out the causes
behind the sales drop.

 Competition:
Attitudes in general boost the competitive environment at the
workplace. A negative attitude is responsible for creating mistrust
among employees whereas in a workplace with a positive attitude,
inducing competitiveness is taken positively, which inspires
employees to perform better.
 IMPACT OF ATTITUDES ON
WORKPLACE
 Inventiveness:
Innovation has always remained an important aspect for
business of any kind and a positive workplace attitude
encourages inventiveness because employees feel that their ideas
will contribute towards achievement of organizational goals. A
negative attitude restricts inventiveness as employees do not feel
obliged to contribute to company growth. 

 Withholding:
Employee retention is being impacted by the attitude in the
workplace. An organization with positive attitudinal environment
makes the employees feel that they have a big role in the
contribution towards organizational success. A negative attitude
CHANGING ATTITUDES IN THE
WORKPLACE
Set Example 
Identify Motivators
Eliminate Troublemakers
Proper Ambience 
Recognition
Support
Vedanta's Anil Agarwal calls for policies
to reduce dependence on imports
* Vedanta Chairman Anil Agarwal has written to Prime Minister
Narendra Modi, batting for a better policy environment to raise
investments and reduce India’s dependence on imports of
natural resources.
* Policies and legislation conducive to ensuring greater
investment in the natural resources sector to make India self-
sufficient and take away its dependency on imports,” he wrote
in the letter dated September 12
 LEARNING DEFINITIONS

 Learning is a change in personality self-described as a new

pattern of reactions in the form of skills, attitudes, habits,
intelligence, or an understanding.—Wetherington

 Any process through which experience at one time can alter an

individual's behaviour at a future time.—Peter Gray

 Learning associated with changes in a person's behaviour to some

situation caused by repeated experiences in that situation, where
changes in behaviour cannot be explained or basic innate
response tendencies, maturation.—Hilgard Bower
 LEARNING THEORIES
 Classical Conditioning
­ Unconditioned Stimuli: The meat being offered to the dog was
unconditioned stimuli that forced the dog to act in a specific manner.
­ Unconditioned Response: The response to unconditioned stimuli is
referred to as unconditioned response. In this experiment, the
unconditioned response was increase in salvation.
­ Conditioned Stimuli:  Ringing of the bell was a conditioned stimulus.
­ Conditioned Response: The response of the dog in reaction of
ringing the bell alone is known as conditioned response.
 LEARNING THEORIES

 Operant Conditioning Theory

­ Individuals learn to behave in a particular manner in order to
achieve or avoid something. According to F. Skinner, operant
conditioning behavior is expected to be repeated if
consequences are favourable and vice-a-versa. Therefore, the
connection linking actions (behaviour) and consequences are
the core of operant conditioning theory.
 REINFORCEMENT
 The meaning of the word ‘reinforce’ is to strengthen. This term has been used in
operant conditioning to refer to any stimulus that helps strengthen or increases the
possibility of a particular response.
­ For example, if you want a monkey to perform somersault on demand, you may
give it a treat every time it does so. The monkey will ultimately realize that
performing a somersault on order will result in a reward (treat). This reward
(treat) is reinforcing as the monkey likes it and will tend to perform somersault
as and when instructed in the future.
­ A child may tend to study harder for the next time if he/she realizes that the
teacher appreciates good marks.
 Reinforcers may be either primary or secondary.

­ Primary Reinforcers: It is any reinforcer that does not need to be learnt. It

occurs naturally. For example, air, food, water, and so on.
­ Secondary Reinforcers: They are also known as conditioned reinforcers. It is a
learned reinforcer. For example, hike in salary for good performance.
 TYPES OF
REINFORCEMENT
 PERCEPTION
Perception can be defined as a process by which individuals
select, organize, and interpret their sensory impressions, so as to
give meaning to their environment. Perception is a multifaceted
cognitive process and varies from one individual to another.
Perception is the process in which individuals receive a wide
range of information about their surroundings through all the five
senses, assimilate them, and then interpret them. The same
information can be perceived differently by different people.
Perception plays a vital role in identifying how an individual
behaves in the organization.
 PERCEPTUAL PROCESS
The perceptual process consists of six phases:
 Receiving:
The process of perception begins with the reception of stimuli from the
environment. These stimuli may be received from different sensory organs.
 Selection:
It deals with separating the significant and insignificant data so that the
relevant data can be processed further. The selection phase is influenced by
external and internal factors.
 Organizing:
Once data are selected they are organized systematically to make them
meaningful. There are three magnitudes of perceptual organizing as mentioned
below:
• Figure background:
This principle states that the correlation of an object to its background
influences perception.
 PERCEPTUAL PROCESS
• Perceptual Grouping:
The principle of grouping includes the following:
­ Similarity: The greater the similarity of stimuli, the greater would be the
tendency to consider it as a group.
­ Proximity: It refers to considering the factors that are close to each other as a
group.
­ Closure: It means to perceive the whole part when nothing exists
­ Continuity: It refers to individual’s ability to perceive continuous lines or
patterns. It refers to an individual’s capability to perceive some features of an
object as remaining constant, regardless of variations in the stimuli.
 Interpreting:
Once data are received and organized the perceiver then interprets the
information. In other words, this is the phase in which the perceiver assigns meaning
to the information. There are three major factors that affect the process of
interpretation. These include the perceiver, the perceived, and the situation.
 PERCEPTUAL PROCESS
 Checking:
The next phase checks whether the interpretations made are right or
wrong. To check the consistency of the interpretation, an individual can
put up a series of questions to himself or others and try to get answers
for these questions to verify if the interpretation was correct.
 Reacting: 
The last phase of the perceptual process is reacting. In this phase,
the perceiver takes an action in response to the perception. The action
taken is influenced by the perception made. It means the action will be
positive if the perception is favourable and negative if the perception is
unfavourable.
PERCEPTUAL PROCESS

Selecting Stimuli
Receiving Stimuli
External Factors: Nature, Location, size
(External and Internal)
Internal Factors: Age, learning, needs

Organizing
Figure Background
Interpreting
Perceptual Grouping ( Similarity,
proximity, closure, continuity)

Checking Reacting
FACTORS INFLUENCING
PERCEPTION
The Percieved
(Size, Motion, Colour,
etc.)

The Perciever The Situation

( Personality, (Timing, Social
Attitude, Values, etc.) Setting, etc.)

Perception
PERCEPTION AND DECISION-MAKING
Selective Perception
Halo (Horns) Effect
Contrast Effects
Stereotyping
Rationality
Intuitive Decision-making
Anchoring Bias
Confirmation Bias
Availability Bias
Escalation of Commitment
Gender
Cultural Differences 
 Personality
* A relatively stable set of characteristics that
influences an individual’s behavior
 Personality
Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic
patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. The study of
personality focuses on two broad areas: One is understanding
individual differences in particular personality characteristics,
such as sociability or irritability. The other is understanding how
the various parts of a person come together as a whole.
The overall profile or combination of characteristics that capture
the unique nature of a person as that person reacts and interacts
with others.
Combines a set of physical and mental characteristics that reflect
how a person looks, thinks, acts, and feels.
Predictable relationships are expected between people’s
personalities and their behaviors.
 * Factors influencing Personality

• Biological factors

• Family and societal factors (Environmental)

• Situational factors
Environmental Factors
Social

Culture

Family
BIG FIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS
Extraversion and Introversion

Agreeableness

Conscientiousness

Neuroticism

Openness

 
 *Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator
• Extraversion (E)- Introversion (I)
• Sensing (S)- Intuition (N)
• Thinking (T)- Feeling (F)
• Judging (J)- Perceiving (P)
 VALUES
 Values offer a vital basis for understanding the personality, attitudes, and
perception of an individual.
 Values consist of two attributes:
­ Content Attributes.
­ Intensity Attributes.
 Types of Values
­ Economic: The emphasis is on usefulness and practicality.
­ Theoretical: It has high significance for discovery of truth through crucial and
rational approach.
­ Aesthetic: The highest value is on form and harmony.
­ Political: The emphasis is on attainment of authority and influence.
­ Social: The highest value is to the love of people.
­ Religious: It is concerned with the unity of experience and understanding of
the universe as a whole.
 Value Systems
• Represent a prioritizing of individual
values by:
 Content – importance to the individual
 Intensity – relative importance with other values
• The hierarchy tends to be relatively stable
• Values are the foundation for attitudes,
motivation, and behavior
• Influence perception and cloud objectivity
 Values in the Workplace

Values are stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our

preferences for outcomes. A value is a principle, a
standard, or a quality considered worthwhile or
desirable.
They define the right or wrong, good or bad
Value system -- hierarchy of values
Espoused vs. Enacted values:
Espoused -- the values we say we use and often think we use
Enacted -- values we actually rely on to guide our decisions
and actions
 Three Categories of Values

Personal values define who an individual is. They serve

as guides in handling situations and interacting with
others.
Organizational values are the standards that guide an
individual's behavior in a professional context. They
define how an individual accomplishes work, interacts in
professional situations, and how he makes decisions
relative to his job/career.
Cultural values are standards that guide how a person
relates meaningfully to others in different social
situations.
*Thank You…
Any Queries ?
 MCQ
1. Which is not type component of attitude
a) Affective b) Behavourial

c) Positive d) Cognitive

Answer : C
 MCQ
2. Which of the following is not part of the definition of
attitudes?
a) Learned
b) Inherited
c) Relating to some attitude object or act
d) Having an evaluative dimension

Answer: b) Inherited
 MCQ
3. All the unique traits and patterns of adjustment of the
individual is known as
(A) Personality
(B) Responsibility
(C) Creativity
(D) Authority

ANSWER- A
 MCQ
 5. In Operant conditioning procedure, the role of
reinforcement is:
(a) Strikingly significant
(b) Very insignificant
(c) Negligible
(d) Not necessary

ANSWER- A
 MCQ
4. Attitude is
(A) Tendency to react positively
(B) Tendency to react negatively
(C) Tendency to react in a certain way
(D) All of the above

ANSWER- D
 MCQ
6. A sensor organ that detects information used in the
perceptual process is:
A)the eye.
B)the ear.
C)the skin.
D)all of the above.

ANSWER- D