CHAPTER 4Individuals in organizatio

CHAPTER 4
Individuals in organizations:personality,perceptions and learning
Conclusion
In order to reward individual effort while ensuring employees word together harmoniously, we need to understand something of their individual behavior. The way individuals act in the workplace is a symptom of a complicated configuration of variables .Personality plays a key role in shaping behavior and a number of attempts to map its components have been made. Some writers believe personality is too complex to be measured and is continually changing (idiographic), while other consider it to be stable over time and ‘testable’ (nomothetic).
The latter perspective holds that particular identifiable traits and types help explain personality and thus behavior. Eysenck’s model of introversion-extroversion, stability-neuroticism is arguably the most reliable of these models, with many subsequent instruments being based on its tenets.
However, the relationship between personality and behavior remains unclear; this is explained in part, by the role of perception is a function of a target, context and the individual concerned, It is the way in which people make sense of their world using the five senses and through an internal process of filtering and interpreting. We also like to interpret the behaviour of others by attributing it to one cause or another, broadly into internal and external.
Unfortunately, perception is susceptible to bias whereby individuals make erroneous attributions or ‘short-cut’ a longer process when interpreting information. Typically, these short cuts include selective perception, the halo effect, stereotyping and so on. If decisions are made on the basis of a skewed perception, serious consequences may result.
The concept of learning of learning has an important role to play in attempting to understand and explain behaviour because much of how individuals act in the workplace is learned. Clearly if managers need employees to behave in a certain manner, they have to provide effective training. The best Training procedures must be based on a sound understanding of learning theory. In short, two generic approaches exist: one is behavioural and the other is cognitive. Much workplace behaviour can be learned or modified using the former but it does not account for the employee’s ongoing cognitive processes. For explain the notion of selectivity, motivation and/ or attiudes sufficiently well.
Cognitive theories alert us to these individual differences and also encourage an action-learning approach with reflection and application of knowledge of knowledge to new situations. The effectiveness of behavioural or cognitive modification techniques depends on the job or situation and also on obtaining an accurate assessment of employee skills and abilities. Once a current inventory is established, appropriate programmes can be devised.