Answer To: Module assessment Assignment 1. Organisational Behaviour This will consist of an individual...
Preeti answered on Apr 18 2021
Running Head: ORGANISATION BEHAVIOUR
“Through the process of perception we select stimuli from the environment, make sense of them, and create meaning from them”: Discussing this Statement in the context of organisational behaviour and workplace relationships
Introduction
The underlying assignment is based on discussing a statement, ‘Through the process of perception, we select stimuli from the environment, making sense and creating meanings from them’. This statement is closely related and associated with the human behaviour in the organisation; it is a multidisciplinary field requires leaders to understand individual, group and organisational processes by seeking and studying behaviour. Every organisation works with a group of people in the form of teams, who together, brings multitude of talent and skills for accomplishing defined targets and goals. The study of individual behaviour and group dynamics becomes more challenging when situational and environmental factors interact and influences expected behaviour of the individual in the organisation (Travers, 2020).
No two individuals are found as behaving in the same manner in any work situation, this is the ability of manager or leader to understand human behaviour in order to lead and guide it accordingly. It is worth mentioning that human factor is contributory to overall productivity and performance of the organisation, therefore, this study and understanding is of crucial importance in the organisation behaviour.
Organisation behaviour
It is directly related with the understanding, prediction, control and regulation of human behaviour in organisations. There is application of knowledge as how people act and behave within organisation, and, searching for ways leading them to act more effectively. The study of human behaviour, either in isolation or in group, is necessary to gain overall understanding of how organisation acts, function and behave. The study of organisation behaviour is incomplete without studying people’s behaviour, act and functions. Perception is one such factor that affect and shapes individual behaviour in the organisation. It helps in answering several questions, as why people behave and act in a particular way, why some group individuals are more effective than others, and, why a particular organisation performs better as compared to other organisations (Galavan, Murray and Markides, 2018).
Elements of Perceptual Process:
Perception is simply understood as a process allowing individuals to organise and interpret sensory impressions for deriving meaning to the environment clues and instructions. This cognitive process of attending, organising, interpreting and responding to stimuli acts differently among individuals due to difference in thinking styles, beliefs, feelings and objectives, led every individual to act, behave, and deriving meaning for the same thing, differently. There are two features of perception in organisation behaviour, firstly, it is an intellectual process through which an individual selects, gathers and organises data from the environment, and derive meaning from it. Secondly, it is cognitive and psychological process shaped by the people’s actions, feelings and thoughts formed and triggered in according to the perception of their surroundings (Cantero-Gomez, 2019).
The above said statement, ‘Through the process of perception, we select stimuli from the environment, making sense and creating meanings from them’, is understood with the help of three step perceptual process:
1) Perceptual inputs: Simply stated, individual comes across various information in the form of objects, events, people, etc, in the environment. All these factors provide stimuli to the individual, and, sensation takes place while individual interacts and deals with these stimuli, sensation takes place and perception process starts (Pir, 2019).
2) Perceptual Mechanism: In this, there are three elements-selections of stimuli, organisation of stimuli and interpretation of stimuli. In an organisation, there are several forms of stimuli exist in the environment. An individual can receive stimuli from both internal and external factor exist in the environment. These stimuli are also arranged in some special form or manner in order to derive some meaning and purpose. This process of arranging stimuli is the major determinant factor of how an individual collects and organises information from both internal and external environment. For making and deriving sense and meaning, individual is asked to arrange and organise stimuli in several forms.
Figure Ground is one such form of collecting information where decisions are made in light of the background of the matter, for example, good performance and improved relations with the superiors is considered as the focus for promotional decisions in some organisation. On the other hand, this phenomenon works in opposite manner in other organisations where performance is taken as the background for making promotional decisions (Galavan, Murray and Markides, 2018). Perceptual grouping is another form of organising stimuli where information is grouped into recognisable patterns, and allows individuals to perceive things in a manner as they want to perceive and interpret. The individual can eliminate less important information and concentrating on the required ones. It decreases work load and allow individuals to understand and interpret things in better manner. As individual collects and gathers stimuli from the environment, it is analysed whether this is complete or incomplete information. This gap is fulfilled by the individual as per his knowledge and experience. Lastly, interpretation of stimuli is done on the basis of thinking styles, state of mind, objectives, and beliefs.
3) Perceptual output: Specific action, attitudes, opinions, and impressions about the stimuli are the final stage. Accordingly, individual might perceive product or service as good, or satisfactory, or other things and aspects about the firm (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson, 2016).
Perception in Organisation Behaviour/Workplace relationship
Workplace environment are said to be a strong stimulus for influencing behaviour as it is attended, organised and interpreted for arrive at certain conclusions and adjusting behavioural patterns. The process of accepting information and stimuli doesn’t make any sense until and unless it is evaluated and interpreted by the mental processing system. The gathered stimuli is attended, gathered, recognised and translated into meaningful information, which, in turn, motivates individual to act and perform job responsibilities. For example, when organisation are motivated by the firm’s decisions and strategies of fulfilling their physical and mental needs, they perceive the organisation in right perspective and participate optimally in fulfilling job roles and responsibilities (Horodecka and Vozna, 2016).
The manner, as how perception is formed by stimuli, later on, attended, recognised, translated, and converted into desired behaviour and performance, is illustrated with the help of underlying diagram:
All these components are elaborated below:
As and when individual gets any message from external and internal environment of the firm, it is translated into action and behaviour, as described:
Stimuli: There are external and internal sources of stimuli having greater impact on individual’s mind-set and interpretation process. Physical work environment, socio-cultural environment and other factors create strong influence on employee’s perception. All these stimulating factors give specific information about the situation and creates platform for individual’s action and behaviour.
Attention: Stimuli received by people is attended and interpreted by the personnel, not all the stimuli are attended, and some are reacted while others are ignored. The selection of stimuli that are paid attention by the individual depends on the selection capacity and intensity of stimuli. This process depends on the nature and education level of employees, for example, educated and professional class personnel are concerned with any kind of information received regarding bonus announcement, high productivity, training and motivation (Kutsar, Ghose and Kutsar, 2014).
The role of leaders is to search and select appropriate type of stimuli in order to appeal and motivate employees to the maximum level. Leaders are always expected to draw attention of employees’ in order to exert proper behaviour from them. It is necessary that leaders should be aware of all those factors, in order to gain employees’ attention. The sensory and neural mechanisms are affected during the attention process, and, employees are involved in the process of understanding stimuli. It is necessary to take employees to the attention stage for making them behaving in a systematic and required manner (Sparks and Repede, 2016).
Recognition: In this phase, employees recognised whether stimuli are worth realising and important for developing desired behaviour. Incoming stimuli and inputs are recognised before, it get converted into behaviour. Perception works in two stage-receiving stimuli, translating it into action, and recognising it. The recognition process depends on mental acceptability and understanding on the part of employees. For example, if an employee perceives something danger and risky, immediate action is recommended to handle the danger and risks.
Translation: On the basis of evaluation, stimuli get converted into action and behaviour. This process is highly mental as employees consider and evaluate various processes for translating message into action. The assistance of leaders for translating stimuli into action is also worth appreciable on the part of employees. At a workplace, bonus announcement is recognised as stimulus for improving workers’ productivity. This announcement should be translated into appropriate behaviour, means employees should be motivated by the management for working hard and high productivity. In this translation period, psychological mechanism, sensory and mental organs of employees get affected, which, in turn, influence perception and decide the manner of interpreting stimuli (Dixit and Nanda, 2011).
Behaviour: It can be said as the outcome of the cognitive process, response to the stimuli and sensory inputs. Behaviour is not developed or formed by the reality, but, as a result of the perception process, learning and interpreting environmental factors at the workplace. For example, employees can perceive supervisor’s behaviour as rude or polite depends on tone of voice, body movements, etc. All these actions, reactions and behaviour create a kind perception in employees’ mind that might results in overt or covert behaviour. Overt behaviour is noticed in terms of physical activities performed by employees, while covert behaviour is noticed in the form of mental evaluation and self-esteem. In all, perception is reflected in the employee’s behaviour in different forms of action, motivation, and assessment (Dobni, 2010).
Performance and Satisfaction: Desirable behaviour developed by employee leads to higher performance, and could become a source of motivation to other employees. And, in long run, high performance enhances the level of satisfaction. When people feel delighted that the firm meets and fulfils their expectation, it results in satisfaction and vice-versa. In light of this, it is emphasised that factors influencing employees’ perception process and mould or adjust their behaviour towards the corporate objectives and self-satisfaction, should be carefully measured and evaluated. Employees confront several stimuli every-day, measure and evaluate it in their minds, interpret and develop behaviour as per their understanding. All stimuli are not attended by employees, as they recognise and attend few stimuli such as internal environment, organisation structures, social systems, and, nature and characteristics of...