Answer To: Module assessment Assignment 1. Organisational Behaviour This will consist of an individual...
Preeti answered on Apr 21 2021
Running Head: ORGANISATION BEHAVIOUR & WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIP
“Through the process of perception we select stimuli from the environment, make sense of them, and create meaning from them” Discuss this topic in the context of organisational behaviour and workplace relationships.
Introduction
Perception is understood as a ‘born way before they are’, an individual is introduced to new experiences forming new form of sensations layer, and, a massively complex pyramid of perception is formed with each new experience and sensation. It is an infinite mathematical equation continues to multiple throughout one’s lives and, it is too complicated for human mind to calculate and understand this infinite mathematical equation. This calculation gets build upon exponentially that one couldn’t imagine, underlining the reason as why perceptions are unique to every individual (Levy and Reiche, 2018).
As defined by Lindsay and Norman, Perception is a process allowing individuals to analyse and interpret sensory impressions for deriving meaning from the environment stimuli. This definition reiterates the fact that perception is a cognitive interpretation of individuals’ surroundings by the way of human senses, what they see, hear and feel. The way or manner in which an individual interprets the data and information around plays critical role in shaping and influence the perception. In a workplace setting, perception in context to human relations is always viewed as challenging as individuals may not always understand someone’s else thinking and behaviour, and, accepting same as their own (Louvieris, Driver and Powell-Perry, 2012).
Perceptual process at the workplace
Stating simply, it is a cognitive process allowing an individual to select, organise, and gives meaning to the environmental stimuli. This cognitive process aims at enabling individuals to make sense of environment inputs, objects, people and events, as each person/individual gives meaning to stimuli differently and perceive same thing and object in different ways. It is worth mentioning that organisation’s environment constantly bombard individuals with several kinds of environmental stimuli, which, in turn, shapes and affect their sense of seeing, hearing, smelling, taste and touch. An individual is at discretion of choosing or paying attention to particular stimuli at a particular moment shapes and influences his behaviour (Miao, Humphrey and Qian, 2018).
Perceptual process at the organisation is depicted below:
(Source: Miao, Humphrey and Qian, 2018).
The above figure has exhibited and illustrated basic framework of perception as a cognitive process. Every individual selects environmental stimuli as per his choices and responds differently. With the help of perceptual interpretation, managers can understand reasons behind individual differences at workplace. Individuals perceive the environment around them in unique way, and, make sense of environmental stimuli by observation, selection, and interpretation (Phillips and Gully, 2013). The selection of stimuli depends on intensity, size and impatience, in general sense; people perceive and interpret stimuli as per their needs, emotions, and attitudes. Self-concept is the translation portion exhibited, for example, an individual desires to receive positive feedback on his performance, and then the respective employee would more clearly remember positive statements and negative statements received by manager. Again, this notion of observing, selecting and translating meaning to the stimuli and clues would form the basis of perceptual process, which leads to three specific kinds of internal responses-attitude, feelings and motivation.
In organisation context, there are good and strong chances that an individual’s perception is inaccurate, which might be due to misinterpreting stimuli results in perceptual errors. Each individual selects cues and stimuli that influence his or her overall perception of people; objects and symbols, there are good chances that these factors pose potential for imbalance. People often misinterpret or misperceive another person, group or object in context of their behavioural understanding regarding others, as well, behavioural context, in which people find themselves (Qureshi and Hassan, 2013).
One classic study conducted by Rensis Likert illustrated this fact where perceptions of superiors and subordinates are examined to determine the amounts and types of recognition that are received by subordinates for good performance. Both supervisors and subordinates are asked ‘how often subordinates receive good rewards for their good work’. It is found that managers and employee visualise the world in different perspectives, depending on environmental stimuli and understanding of organisational programs. The subjective perceptions are going to be quite different for managers and employees, due to tolerance and coping with stimuli in work environments. Leaders assume responsibility of creating a framework that permits, manages and respects perceptual differences; allow it to be voiced without any kind of fear and impatience (Razmerita, Kirchner and Nielsen, 2016).
There are several examples and illustrations in organisational context explaining how manager’s expectations shape the behaviour and performance of employees. It is, therefore, argued that perception is a passive factor shaped considerably by learning, experience and education. Through providing training and improving cognitive abilities, one can improve different skills and using it to perceive the world around in more aware and improved learning capacity (Saari and Judge, 2014).
Factors shaping perception
People’s perception at the workplace are influenced by three main factors-perceiver, target and the situation.
i) The perceiver is the individual observing and interpreting immediate environment. It is worth mentioning that perceiver poses certain characteristics having significant impact on the manner in which actions, and other things are perceived. The attitude, motives, interests, experiences and expectations of perceiver is having direct relationship and impact on what is perceived. For example, if a manager strives towards goal achievement, employee would consider leader as a goal achievement oriented person, and, if any team member given an excuse for not achieving something, the person or employee is likely to be perceived as a lazy fellow who is not enthusiastic towards achieving goals. Therefore, any behaviour exhibited by employee in contrary to the expectation of manager, might led manger to form and develop negative perception about employee (Tan and Nasurdin, 2011).
ii) Target includes objects, such as employee, sound, proximity, background, and feature of employee or boss likely to form specific perception by manager and employee.
iii) Situation or context is the time and work environment that play strong role in perception. Act done at the wrong time might result in formation of biased and negative perception. For example, a downsizing exercise implemented by a management might be perceived as sabotage or punishment by employees, who might develop and air several grievances against management (Bjorkman and Welch, 2015).
Perception in different aspects of organisation behaviour
Organisation behaviour is a field of study aimed at ascertaining impact of individuals, groups and structure on their behaviour within organisation, and, applying this knowledge in improving overall effectiveness of the organisation. Starting with the process of selecting stimuli to interpreting and making sense out of them, people are required to comprehensively and deeply understanding stimuli for forming and working out the appropriate responses (Dobre, 2013). With respect to organisation’s managers, process of understanding perception gives several benefits, such as improved decision making, designing performance-appraisal system and communication medium with others, as shown below:
i) Decision making: When leader is aware of the factors that influence employees’ perception, they know the strategy to attract their attention. In simple words, appropriate decision for the organisation is taken by the managers in light of factors affecting employees’ perception. In this process, gaining a comprehensive understanding of the situation is recommended where manager put all the relevant information together with the purpose of enriching the content of stimulus they are focussing on a particular time. The more information considered and evaluated by managers, more roundly and comprehensive outcome will be created (Edwards, 2010).
Attribution theory is useful mechanism in this regard used to explain how leaders judge people differently, in accordance to the meaning they assign and attribute to a given behaviour. The theory suggests the fact that when any leader or manager observes employee’s behaviour, they should attempt or give importance to internal and external factors that caused the behaviour. An individual can control internally caused behaviours, but, externally caused behaviour result from outside factors that are not under the control of the person. Decision making, however, depends on three factors such as distinctiveness, consensus and consistency. All these factors depend on managers’ ability to recognise how employees react to perceptions, not in reality. Whether a manager’s decided wage levels are highest in the industry, they are less relevant when employees do not perceive them to be. Managers need to pay close attention to how employees perceive management’s action and strategies in order to make grounds for accurate perception (Guibault and Angelopoulos, 2016).
ii) Performance Appraisal system: Understanding the process of perception is critical in effective performance appraisal systems, this is particularly true, when leaders pay attention to the subjective biases. It requires consensus between managers and employees, as which factors should be paid attention and how employee should do the job, what are the results that employee needs to achieve, and, how to design rewards to employees.
Reinforcement theory proposes that an individual directs his or her behaviour in accordance to the expected consequences and reinforces. This theory argues that behaviour is externally caused, and, positive reinforces increase the probability that behaviour will be repeated. For example, if manager at the firm consistently review the performance against the defined standard and performance planning, there are greater chances that problems could be solved in minimal time. In this process, managers also assume responsibility to provide factors and conditions for motivating employees to optimum performance and solving their problems as soon as possible. In performance assessment process, the main point is to remove any kind of subjective biasness and judgement to the most extent, avoid judging employees on personal choice, preference or past experience (House, et al., 2012).
iii) Communication system: Often, perceptual problems are found as frequently encountering in the communication process. There are high chances of perceptual problem between manager and employees where it is expected that managers should show dedication and devotion to perceive and understand employees deeply. For improving communication between manager and employees, it is necessary to create good work environment for improved outcome (Jugdev and Muller, 2015).
Perceptual errors
There are several stimuli exist in internal and external environment that can attract perceiver’s attention, when people pay attention to specific stimuli, they also collect series of information for interpreting it as whole. This interpretation is affected by various biases and errors, said to be avoided for perceiving stimuli and getting appropriate response from it. Some such perceptual errors are:
a) Stereotype: This type of perceptual error is stated in simplest sense as ‘typecast’ that disrupt the perceptual process. Leaders develop certain type of generalised statements that influence several aspects of human resource activity and planning. For example, an employee is facing difficulty in getting a promotion as employer has formed and developed specific negative impression about the employee. The promotion is not...