UNIT -4: Organizational Behaviour-I and Individual & Interpersonal Behaviour (Part- 2)

 

Part 2- Personality and Learning

Determinants and Traits of Personality

The factors, which shape, change or develop the personality of an individual, are discussed as under. These determinants of personality can be classified into following categories:

DETERMINANTS OF PERSONALITY

1)                Biological Factors a)        Heredity b)       Brain c)        Physical Features 2)                Family and Social Factors a)        Home Environment b)       Family Members c)        Social Groups 3)                Cultural Factors 4)                Situational Factors 5)                Other Factors a)        Temperament b)       Interest c)        Character

1.       Biological factors: The ways an individual sense the external event data, interpret and respond to them are general biological characteristics of human biological system. The study of biological contribution to personality can be divided into:

a)  Heredity: It is transmission of the qualities from ancestor to descendant through a mechanism lying primarily in the chromosomes of the germ cells. These qualities are present in a person by birth. Heredity refers to those factors like physical stature, facial attractiveness, sex, temperament, muscle composition, energy level and biological rhythms etc. that were determined at conception. At conception, each parent contributes chromosomes containing thousands of genes, which seems to be transmitter of traits in the child. Saying such as “like father, like son" proves the above discussion. Thus, heredity is generally more important in determining a person's temperament than his values and beliefs.

b)  Brain: It plays very important role in shaping personality. The structure of brain determines personality. People normally say that a person with more number of lines on his brain is more intelligent. Different people will give value to different things. For some beauty is more valuable than intelligence. However, no conclusive proof is available so far about the nature of relationship between brain and personality.

c)  Physical Features: Another factor that contributes to personality formation is physical characteristics of an individual. While defining personality some individuals give higher weights to physical features of an individual. The external appearance includes height, weight, colour, facial features etc of the individual while determining his personality. The normal belief is that the healthy person is lazy and the thin is angry determines the individual personality. In today's competitive environment for the job of sales executive the physical appearance is an asset of an individual.

 

2.       Family and Social Factors: Family plays an important role in early personality development. The infant acquires those behaviour patterns that depend upon the socio-economic level of the family, family size, birth-order, race, religion, parent education level, geographic location etc. Social factors include the person’s interaction with other people throughout his life. The family and social factors are categorize as below:

a)                 Home environment: It is a critical factor in personality development. A child will have soft personality if he will grow in a warm, loving and protective environment. And if everybody in the family is busy in their life and have no concern for each other then the infant will have rigid personality. The key variable is not the parents per se rather the type of environment that is generated for the child.

b)                Family Members: Parents and other family members have strong influence on personality development of the child. Parents have more impact than other members of the family do in building the child's personality. We generally see that small children behave like their parents. The relationships between the parents and children are higher then between the children and teachers in building child's personality.

c)                 Social Group: In addition to home environment and family members, there are other influences from the social placement of the family. Social groups includes the person’s interaction with other people which starts with playmates during childhood and continue with peers at work, associates and other work groups. The internal and external work environment continues to influence the people personalities, perception and behaviour throughout his life.

 

The home environment, family members and social groups influence the socialization and identification process of an individual. Socialization is a process by which an infant acquires from the wide range of behavioral potentialities that are  open to him at birth, those behavior patterns that are customary and acceptable to family and social groups. It starts with the initial contact between an infant and mother and continues with interaction of infant with other family members and social groups. Identification process occurs when a person tries to identify himself with some person whom he feels ideal in the family. Generally a child in the family tries to behave like his father or mother.

 

3.       Cultural Factors: According to Hoebel, Culture is sum total of learned behaviour traits which are manifested and shared by the members of the society. The culture within which a person is brought up is very important determinant of behaviour of a person. Culture is a unique system of perception, beliefs, values, norms, patterns of behaviour and code of conduct that influence the behaviour of the individual. It determines what a person is and what a person will learn. The way of talking and dressing sense of Hindus and Muslims are entirely different, as they are prone to different cultures. Each culture trains its members to behave in the ways that are acceptable to the group. The difference among individual behaviour is also based upon socio-economic classes, ages, education, professions and geographic regions. As skilled have different behaviour pattern than the unskilled workers do.

 

4.       Situational Factors: An individual personality is generally stable and consistent; it may change in different situations. An individual life is unique in terms of events and experience, but these experience sometimes change the structure of the entire personality of an individual. Suppose there is a worker who is very fond of doing work. But sometime due to overload he becomes frustrated from the existing job. Due to this changed situation, his personality composition also changes. Thus demand of different situation may call for different aspects of one’s personality.

 

5.      Other Factors:

a)  Temperament: It is the degree to which one responds emotionally. It is distributed according to normal distribution.

b)  Interest: An individual has many interests in various areas. Top executives in any organization do not have common interest. Thus the organization should provide them job rotation and special training programs to satisfy their interest.

c)  Character: It means honesty. It is very important requirement for responsible jobs. It is resistance to stealing and cheating others. It is likely that an individual may not steal in normal circumstances, but this can be the demand of undesirable circumstances. For example, if the family of an individual is starving, there is a great probability that one will steal. Thus before analyzing the undesirable character of an individual, one should study his situation as well.

d)  Schema: It is an individual’s belief, frame of reference, perception and attitude which the individual possesses towards the management, job, working condition around him, pay scale, fringe benefits, compensation mechanism, development towards religion, government and satisfaction gained from environment. Thus the complete behavior of an individual is dependent upon the external stimuli.

e)  Motives: These are the inner drivers of an individual. They represent goal directed behavior of individual. Motives help in determining one’s behavior towards a goal.

Thus, the above factors affect the formation and development of personality. At each stage of the life every individual learns from the environment he lives in and the persons he interacts with.

 

Emotions

There are so many terms, which are interrelated. Therefore, we need to clarify these terms: affect, emotions, and moods.

Affect is a generic term that covers a broad range of feelings that people experience. It’s an umbrella concept that encompasses both emotions and moods. Emotions are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something. Finally, moods are feelings that tend to be less intense than emotions and that lack a contextual stimulus. Emotions are reactions to an object, not a trait. They are object specific. You show your emotions when you are happy about something, angry with someone, afraid of something. Moods, on the other hand, aren't directed at an object. Emotions can turn into moods when you lose focus on the contextual object. So when a work colleague criticizes you for the way you spoke to a client, you might become angry with him. That is, you show emotion (anger) toward a specific object (your colleague). But later in the day, you might find yourself just generally dispirited. You can't attribute this feeling to any single event; you're just not your normal, upbeat self. This affective state describes a mood. A related term that is gaining increasing importance in organizational behavior is emotional labour. Every employee expends physical and mental labour when they put their bodies and cognitive capabilities, respectively, into their job. But most jobs also require emotional labour. This is when an employee expresses organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions. The concept of emotional labour originally developed in relation to service jobs. Airline flight attendants, for instance, are expected to be cheerful, funeral counselors sad, and doctors emotionally neutral. But today the concept of emotional labor seems relevant to almost every job. You’re expected, for example, to be courteous and not hostile in interactions with co-workers. And leaders are expected to draw on emotional labour to II charge the troops. Almost every great speech, for instance, contains a strong emotional component that stirs feelings in others. As we proceed in the ensuing paragraph, you'll see that it's because of the increasing importance of emotional labour as a key component of effective job performance that an understanding of emotion has gained heightened relevance within the field of organisational behaviour.

Learning Theories

In an organization, employees have to learn and practice productive work behaviours. The manager’s task is to provide sufficient learning experiences to employees in an environment that will facilitate learning process and promote desired behaviours. Training prepares employees to meet the challenges of the job, for which incentives are to be provided to learn and practice right behaviours. The following are the important theories of learning.

 

Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning is the process by which individuals learn to link the information from a neutral stimulus to  a  stimulus that causes  a response. This response may not be under an individual’s conscious control. Pavlov, in his experiments, hanged some meat in front of dogs. This meat is unconditioned stimulus or unlearned stimulus. The dogs responded to this stimulus by salivating. This kind of response was instinctive or unconditioned. Afterwards Pavlov started to ring a bell at the same time when meat was offered. Ringing the bell without offer of meat was not connected to any responses. However, by ringing the bell every time when meat was offered, Pavlov established a relationship between the two stimuli that is the bell and the meat. With the continuation of the process, the ringing of the bell alone acted like a stimulus to evoke the response of salivating even without presentation of meat. As a result, the bell became a conditioned stimulus leading to conditioned response.

 

Operant Conditioning

B.F.  Skinner coined the term operant conditioning to refer to a process by which individuals learn voluntary behaviour. Voluntary behaviours are called operant because they operate or have some influence on the environment. Learning occurs from the consequences of behaviour, and many employee work behaviours are operant behaviours. As a matter of fact, most behaviours in everyday life are forms of operant behaviour. Managers are interested in operant behaviours because they can influence the results of such behaviours. On the basis of the direct relationship between the consequences and behaviour, the management can identify the relationship and try to modify the behaviour. That is how the behaviour can be controlled by manipulating its consequences. Two principles guide this relationship.

·    The behaviour that results in positive rewards is likely to be repeated and behaviour with negative consequences is likely to be extinguished.

·         Based on such consequences, the behaviour can be predicted and controlled.

 

Therefore, some consequences can be used to increase the recurrence of desired behaviour and some other consequences can be used to decrease the recurrence of undesired behaviour.