Organizational Behavior

Chapter Two

• Foundation of Individual differences

 Organizational Behaviour

Hailemichael Mulie (MBA, MA, M.COM, PhD)

 Chapter Two : Individual Differences and Work behavior
Dealing with diversity and individual differences has to be included among the
most important issues challenging all managers.
Different Components of Individual Difference
Values and Attitudes
• Values can be defined as broad preferences concerning appropriate
courses of action or outcomes. As such, values reflect a person’s sense of
right and wrong or what “ought” to be.
• Sources and Types of Values
• Parents, friends, teachers, and external reference groups can all influence
individual values.
• The noted psychologist Milton Rokeach has developed a well-known set of
values classified into two broad categories.
• Terminal values reflect a person’s preferences concerning the “ends” to be
achieved; they are the goals individuals would like to achieve during their
lifetime.
• Instrumental values reflect the “means” for achieving desired ends. They
represent how you might go about achieving your important end states.
 Gordon Allport lassification of Values
• These values fall into six major types
• Theoretical—Interest in the discovery of truth through
reasoning and systematic thinking.
• Economic—Interest in usefulness and practicality, including
the accumulation of wealth.
• Aesthetic—Interest in beauty, form, and artistic harmony.
• Social—Interest in people( Affection) and love as a human
relationship.
• Political—Interest in gaining power and influencing other
people.
• Religious—Interest in unity and in understanding the
cosmos/heavens as a whole.
 2. Attitudes
• A simpler definition of attitude is a mindset or a tendency to act in a
particular way due to both an individual’s experience and temperament
( nature).
• Attitudes are influenced by values and are acquired from the same sources as
values: friends, teachers, parents, and role models. Attitudes focus on specific
people or objects.
• an attitude is a predisposition to respond in a positive or negative way to
someone or something in one’s environment.(like , dislike)
• A work-related attitudes.
1. The behavioral component is an intention to behave in a certain way based
on your specific feelings or attitudes.
• Attitudes and Cognitive Consistency Leon Festinger, a noted social
psychologist, uses the term cognitive dissonance to describe a state of
inconsistency between an individual’s attitudes and his or her behavior.
• Cognitive dissonance refers to any inconsistency that a person perceives
between two or more of one’s attitudes or between one’s behavior and
attitudes. E.g. smoking
2. The affective component of an attitude is a specific feeling regarding the
• Affective- emotional or feeling (fear)

• Cognitive- attitude made up of beliefs,

opinions, knowledge and information

(destruction)

• Behavioral- intention to behave in a certain

way toward someone or something (touch)

 TYPES OF attitudes "A person can have
thousands of attitudes , but OB focuses our
attention on a very limited number of job-
related attitudes .
 These job-related attitudes tap positive or
negative evaluations that employees hold about
aspects of their work environment.
 Most of the research in OB has been concerned
with three attitudes: job satisfaction, job
involvement, and organizational commitment.
 Contd..
 Job Related Attitudes
Job satisfaction -general attitude toward the job
Job involvement- degree to which an employee
identifies with the job
Organizational commitment- employee’s
loyalty towards the organization
Employee engagement- employees are
connected to, satisfied with and about their job
 Aptitudes, Abilities and Skills
• Aptitude represents a person’s capability of learning
something, whereas:
• ability reflects a person’s existing capacity to perform the
various tasks needed for a given job and includes both
relevant knowledge and skills.
• In other words, aptitudes are potential/likely abilities,
whereas abilities are the knowledge and skills that an
individual currently possesses.
• Aptitudes and abilities are important considerations for a
manager when initially hiring or selecting candidates for a
job.
 Managerial skills and competencies

• A skill is an ability to translate knowledge into action that results in a

desired performance. Robert Katz divides the essential managerial
skills into three categories: technical, human, and conceptual.
• Technical Skills A technical skill is an ability to perform specialized
tasks.
• Such ability derives from knowledge or expertise gained from
education or experience.
• This skill involves proficiency at using select methods, processes,
and procedures to accomplish tasks. Highly required at lower level
management.
• Human Skills Central to managerial work and team leadership are
human skills, or the ability to work well with other people. They
emerge as a spirit of trust, enthusiasm, and genuine involvement in
interpersonal relationships.

• .
 contd
• Conceptual Skills All good managers are able to view
the organization or situation as a whole and to solve
problems to the benefit of everyone concerned.
• It is a cognitive skill, highly required at top level mgmt.
• This capacity to analyze and solve complex and
interrelated problems is a conceptual skill.
• It involves the ability to see and understand how the
whole organizational system works, and how the parts
are interrelated.
• Conceptual skill is used to identify problems and
opportunities, gather and interpret relevant
information, and make good problem-solving decisions
that serve the organization’s purpose.
 Personality
• Definition: What is personality?
• Personality is a dynamic organization, inside the person, of
psychophysical systems that create the person’s characteristic patterns
of behavior, thoughts and feelings.( G.W. Allport, 1961).
• More or less stable, internal factors . . . make one person’s behavior
consistent from one time to another, and different from the behavior
other people would manifest in comparable situations. (Child, 1968)
• The term personality represents the overall profile or combination of
characteristics that capture the unique nature of a person as that
person reacts and interacts with others.

• Personality combines a set of physical and mental characteristics that

reflect how a person looks, thinks, acts, and feels.
• An understanding of personality contributes to an understanding of
organizational behavior in that we expect a predictable interplay
between an individual’s personality and his or her tendency to behave
in certain ways.
 Personality Determinants

• Brain storming/discussion point

• Is personality inherited hereditary
determined, or is it formed by experience?
• You may have heard someone say something
like, “She acts like her mother.” Similarly,
someone may argue that “mr Mohammed is
the way he is because of the way he was
raised. "what it Implies?
 contd
• These two arguments illustrate the nature/nurture controversy:
• Is personality determined by heredity, that is, by genetic
endowment, or by one’s environment? These two forces
actually operate in combination.
• Heredity consists of those factors that are determined at
conception, including physical characteristics, gender, and
personality factors.
• Environment consists of cultural, social, and situational factors.
• The impact of heredity on personality continues to be the
source of considerable debate.
• Perhaps the most general conclusion we can draw is that
heredity sets the limits on just how much personality
characteristics can be developed; environment determines
development within these limits.
 Traits and Classifications (Goldberg, 1993)
1. The Big five model or Taxonomy

• Extraversion vs introversion - Outgoing, Gregariousness (sociable) Assertiveness

(forceful) Activity (energetic) Excitement-seeking (adventurous) Positive emotions
(enthusiastic) Warmth (outgoing).
• Agreeableness vs. antagonism- good-natured, trusting, cooperative, Trust
(forgiving) Straightforwardness (not demanding) Altruism (warm) Compliance (not
stubborn) Modesty (not show-off/boasting) Tender-mindedness (sympathetic).
• Conscientiousness vs lack of direction -Responsible, dependable, persistent,
Competence (efficient) Order (organized) Dutifulness (not careless) Achievement
striving (thorough) Self-discipline (not lazy) Deliberation (not impulsive).

• Neuroticism vs Emotional stability - worried, insecure, Anxiety (tense) Angry

hostility (irritable) Depression (not contented) Self-consciousness (shy)
Impulsiveness (moody) Vulnerability (not self-confident)
• https://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/
neurotic-cropped.jpg
• Openness to experience vs closed to experience - Imaginative, curious, broad-
minded, Fantasy (imaginative) Aesthetics (artistic) Actions (wide interests)
Feelings (excitable) Values (unconventional).
 2. social traits, personal conception traits, and
emotional adjustment traits,
A. Social traits are surface-level traits that reflect the way a
person appears to others when interacting in various social
settings.
• Sensation type people: prefer routine and order and
emphasize well-defined details in gathering information
• Institutive type people: - type individuals prefer the “big
picture.” They like solving new problems, dislike routine
information.
B. personal conception traits
• The personal conception traits represent the way
individuals tend to think about their social and
physical setting as well as their major beliefs and
personal orientation concerning a range of issues.
 Contd
Locus of Control The extent to which a person feels able to control his or
1.

her own life is concerned with a person’s internal–external orientation.

• People have personal conceptions about whether events are controlled
primarily by themselves, which indicates an internal orientation, or by
outside forces, such as their social and physical environment, which
indicates an external orientation. Internals, or persons with an internal
locus of control, believe that they control their own fate or destiny. In
contrast, externals.

2. Authoritarianism/Dogmatism: Both “authoritarianism “and “dogmatism

“deal with the rigidity of a person’s beliefs. A person high in
authoritarianism tends to adhere rigidly to conventional/conservative
values and to obey recognized authority.

• This person is concerned with toughness and power and opposes the
use of subjective feelings.
. Dogmatism: An individual high in dogmatism sees the world as a
threatening place.
 contd
• From an ethical standpoint, we can expect highly authoritarian
individuals to present a special problem because they are so
susceptible to authority that in their eagerness to comply they may
behave unethically. For example, Nazis who were involved in war
crimes during World War II were high in authoritarianism or
dogmatism.
3. Machiavellianism The third personal conceptions dimension is
Machiavellianism, which owes its origins to Niccolo Machiavelli.
(Italian) The very name of this sixteenth-century author evokes
visions of a master of guile, deceit, and opportunism in interpersonal
relations. Machiavelli earned his place in history by writing.

• The Prince, a nobleman’s guide to the acquisition and use of power.

The subject of Machiavelli’s book is manipulation as the basic means
of gaining and keeping control of others. From its pages emerges the
personality profile of a Machiavellian—someone who views and
manipulates others purely for personal gain.
 Machiavellianism: The personality characteristic of
Machiavellianism (Mach) is named after Nccolo Machiavelli,
who wrote in the sixteenth century on how to gain and use
power.
High in Machiavellianism:
An individual high in Machiavellianism is pragmatic, maintains
emotional distance.
High Machs manipulate more, win more, are persuaded less,
and persuade others more than do low Machs. It has been
found that high Machs flourish when they interact face to face
with others rather than indirectly;
In jobs that require bargaining skills (such as labor negotiation)
or that offer substantial rewards for winning (as in
commissioned sales), high Machs will be productive.
 contd
4. Self-Monitoring A final personal conceptions trait of special
importance to managers is self-monitoring.
Self-monitoring reflects a person’s ability to adjust his or her behavior
to external, situational (environmental) factors.
High self-monitoring individuals are sensitive to external cues and
tend to behave differently in different situations.
High self-monitors can present a very different appearance from their
true self.
In contrast, low self-monitors, aren’t able to disguise/mask their
behaviors— “what you see is what you get.” observe friends in
your office.
There is also evidence that high self-monitors are closely attuned to
the behavior of others and conform more readily than do low self-
monitors.
 C. Emotional adjustment traits

• The emotional adjustment traits measure how much an individual

experiences emotional distress or displays unacceptable acts. Often
the person’s health is affected. Although numerous such traits are
cited in the literature, a frequently encountered one especially
important for OB is the Type A/Type B orientation.
• Type A and Type B Orientation
Type A orientation are characterized by impatience, desire for
achievement, and perfectionism. tend to work fast and to be abrupt,
uncomfortable, irritable, and aggressive.
• Type A managers are detail oriented and with high performance
standard which leads resistance to change, overzealous/enthusiastic
control of subordinates, and various kinds of interpersonal
difficulties, which may even include threats and physical violence.
Type B orientations in contrast are characterized as more easygoing
and less competitive in relation to daily events. Type B managers tend
to be much more laid back and patient in their dealings with co-
workers and subordinates.
Type “A” & “B” Personality:

Type ‘A’s: A person with a Type “A” personality is “aggressively

involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and
more in less and less time, and, if required to do so, against the
opposing efforts of other things or other persons”.

Type “A” Personalities are:

i. are always moving, walking, and eating rapidly;
ii. feel impatient with the rate at which most events take place;
iii. strive to think or do two or more things at once;
iv. cannot cope with leisure time;
v. measuring their success in terms of how many or how much
of everything they acquire.
 Perception
Definition: Perception
• Perception is the process by which people select, organize, interpret,
retrieve, and respond to information from the world around them.
• This information is gathered from the five senses of sight, hearing,
touch, taste, and smell.
• The perceptions or responses of any two people are also not
necessarily identical, even when they are describing the same event.
• Through perception, people process information inputs into responses
involving feelings and action.
• Perception is a way of forming impressions about oneself, other people,
and daily life experiences.
• It also serves as a screen or filter through which information passes
before it has an effect on people.

• The quality or accuracy of a person’s perceptions, therefore, has a

major impact on his or her responses to a given situation. Perceptual
 Factors influencing the perceptual process

• The factors that contribute to perceptual differences and the

perceptual process among people at work are summarized here
under
• The Perceiver A person’s past experiences(shape our biases
opinions nad expectations), needs or motives, personality, and
values and attitudes, Mood(Happy or sad) may all influence the
perceptual process. A person with a strong achievement need
tends to perceive a situation in terms of that need.
• Self concept: if we have positive self concept for ourself, we see
others with same positive attributions of another person.
 Contd..
• The Setting The physical, social, and
organizational context of the perceptual setting
also can influence the perceptual process.

• The Perceived Characteristics of the perceived

person, object, or event, such as contrast,
intensity, size, motion, and repetition or weight,
estimated age, race and gender are also important
in the perceptual process.
• Intensity can vary in terms of brightness, color,
depth, sound, and the like.
 Stages of the perceptual process
1. Attention and Selection Our senses are constantly bombarded with so
much information that if we don’t screen it, we quickly become
incapacitated with information overload. Selective screening lets in only a
tiny proportion of all of the information available.
2. Organization Even though selective screening takes place in the attention
stage, it is still necessary to find ways to organize the information
efficiently.
• Schemas help us do this. Schemas are cognitive frameworks that
represent organized knowledge about a given concept or stimulus
developed through experience.
• A mental model or representation built up through
experience about a person, an object, a situation, or an
event.”
• A self schema contains information about a person’s own appearance,
behavior, and personality. For instance, a person with a
decisiveness/certainity schema tends to perceive him or herself in terms
of that aspect, especially in circumstances calling for leadership.
 contd
• Person schemas refer to the way individuals sort others into
categories, such as types or groups, in terms of similar perceived
features. The term prototype, or stereotype, is often used to
represent these categories; it is an abstract set of features
commonly associated with members of that category.
• A script schema is defined as a knowledge framework that
describes the appropriate sequence of events in a given situation.
For example, an experienced manager would use a script schema
to think about the appropriate steps involved in running a meeting
or decision.
3. Interpretation Once your attention has been drawn to certain
stimuli and you have grouped or organized this information, the
next step is to uncover the reasons behind the actions.
That is, even if your attention is called to the same information and
you organize it in the same way your friend does, you may
interpret it differently or make different attributions about the
 Contd
• Retrieval So far, we have discussed the stages of the
perceptual process as if they all occurred at the same
time.
• However, to do so ignores the important component
of memory. Each of the previous stages forms part of
that memory and contributes to the stimuli or
information stored there.
• The information stored in our memory must be
retrieved if it is to be used. This leads us to the
retrieval stage of the perceptual process.
• All of us at times can’t retrieve information stored in
our memory. More commonly, our memory decays,
so that only some of the information is retrieved.
 Perceptual Errors
which of the circles is bigger at the center? Our vision is not independent of things we
perceive
 Errors/distortions
1. Self-Perception
• Human beings are prone to errors and biases when perceiving themselves.
Moreover, the type of bias people have depends on their personality.
• Many people suffer from self-enhancement bias.
• This is the tendency to overestimate our performance and capabilities and
see ourselves in a more positive light than others see us.
• People who have a narcissistic/egoist personality are particularly subject
to this bias, but many others are still prone to overestimating their abilities
(John & Robins, 1994).
• At the same time, other people have the opposing extreme, which may be
labeled as self-effacement bias.

• This is the tendency for people to underestimate their performance,

undervalue capabilities, and see events in a way that puts them in a more
negative light. We may expect that people with low self-esteem may be
particularly prone to making this error.
 Common Perceptual Distortions/errors

2. Stereotypes or prototypes
• One of the factors biasing our perception is stereotypes.
Stereotypes are generalizations based on group characteristics.
For example, believing that women are more cooperative than men,
or men are more assertive than women, is a stereotype. Stereotypes
may be positive, negative, or neutral.
• When we judge someone on the basis of our perception of the
group to which he or she belongs, we are using the shortcut called
stereotyping.
• That is, they can prevent managers from getting to know people as
individuals and from accurately assessing their needs,
preferences, and abilities.
Treating or seeing different individuals as one and same in many
characteristics
 3. Halo effects

• A halo effect occurs when one attribute of a person or situation

is used to develop an overall impression of the individual or
situation.
• Halo effects are common in our everyday lives. When meeting a
new person, for example, a pleasant smile can lead to a positive
first impression of an overall “warm” and “honest” person.
• The result of a halo effect is the same as that associated with a
stereotype, however: Individual differences are obscured.
• Halo effects are particularly important in the performance
appraisal process because they can influence a manager’s
evaluations of subordinates’ work performance.
• For example, people with good attendance records tend to be
viewed as intelligent and responsible.
 4. Selective perception
• Selective perception is the tendency to single out those
aspects of a situation, person, or object that are consistent
with one’s needs, values, or attitudes.
• This perceptual distortion is identified in a classic research
study involving executives in a manufacturing company.
When asked to identify the key problem in a comprehensive
business policy case, each executive selected problems
consistent with his or her functional area work assignments.
• For example, most marketing executives viewed the key
problem area as sales, whereas production people tended to
see the problem as one of production and organization.
• These differing viewpoints would affect how the executive
would approach the problem; they might also create
difficulties once these people tried to work together to
improve things.
 5. Projection
• Projection is the assignment of one’s personal attributes to other
individuals; it is especially likely to occur in the interpretation
stage of perception.
• It is the tendency for people to see their own traits/qualities in
others.
• A classic projection error is illustrated by managers who assume
that the needs of their subordinates and their own coincide.
• Suppose, for example, that you enjoy responsibility and
achievement in your work. Suppose, too, that you are the newly
appointed manager of a group whose jobs seem dull and routine.
• You may move quickly to expand these jobs to help the workers
achieve increased satisfaction from more challenging tasks
because you want them to experience things that you,
personally, value in work.
• If you project your needs onto the subordinates, individual
differences are lost. Instead of designing the subordinates’ jobs
to fit their needs best, you have designed their jobs to fit your
 6. Contrast effects

• Here, we show the perceptual distortion that can occur when, say, a person
gives a talk following a strong speaker or is interviewed for a job following a
series of mediocre/average applicants. We can expect a contrast effect to
occur when an individual’s characteristics are contrasted with those of
others recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same
characteristics.
• Clearly, both managers and employees need to be aware of the possible
perceptual distortion the contrast effect may create in many work settings.
7. Prejudice
• Prejudice is an unfounded dislike of a person or group based on their
belonging to a particular stereotyped group. For instance, an individual may
dislike people of a particular religion, or state that she does not want to
work with someone of a particular ethnicity.
• Prejudice can lead to negative consequences in the workplace and, in
particular, to discrimination.
• An extreme from of prejudice is scapegoating (blaming a person or a group for the actions of others or for conditions
not of their making.
8. First-impression error: Individuals place a good deal
of importance on first impressions. First impressions are
lasting impressions.
We tend to remember what we perceive first about a
person, and sometimes we are quite reluctant to change
our initial impressions.
First-impression error means the tendency to form lasting
opinions about an individual based on initial perceptions.
Primacy effects.
9. 8. Similar to me mirrors: people use them selves as a
benchmark in perceiving others. This implies a similar to
me mirrors.
 Perceptual Grouping
• Grouping is the tendency to curb individual stimuli in to meaningful
patterns. For example if we perceive objects or people with similar
characteristics, we tend to group them together and this organizing
mechanism helps us to deal with information in an efficient way rather
than getting bogged down and confused with so many details. Some
examples of groupings are;
A. Similarity: the principle of similarity states that, the greater the
similarity of the stimuli, the greater the tendency to perceive them as
common group. it is exemplified when objects of similar shape, size,
color tend to be group together.
Eg. Visitors to a certain plant with white hats and the supervisor with blue
hat, the employees can easily identify all the white hats as visitors.
B. Proximity: The law of nearness -all other things being equal, stimuli
that are near each other tend to be group together.
C. Closure: the principle of closure relates to the tendencies of people to
perceive objects as a whole, even when some parts of the object are
missing. E. g..Triangles, rectangles, circles w/c are not with full shape
 contd
• Continuity: continuity is related to closure but there is
some difference. Closure supplies missing stimuli,
where as the continuity principle says that a person
will tend to perceive continuous lines of pattern. The
continuity may lead to inflexible non creative thinking
on the part of the organizational participants.
• Only the obvious patterns or relationships will be
perceived.
• Because of this type of perception the inflexible
managers may require that employers follow a set
and step by step routine leaving no ground for
implementation of out of line innovative ideas.