influence of perception on organizational behaviour

Influence of Perception on Organizational Behaviour

Abstract

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are"

Each of us has a schema, a collection of ideas, experiences, and associations that we bring to a situation, and as humans we have a tendency to open ourselves far more readily to input that fits in easily with what is already there. This means that information-gathering, an important part of the decision-making process, can be skewed in ways that harm the process. At the most primitive level, for example, I own a Yamaha R15 bike, and when I hit the road I see the same bike everywhere, causing me to believe that there are now more R15 bikes on the road. That is not going to affect very much, so it's not a problem. However, if I am a manager, and I have recently read an article on wastefulness in the production process, if I need to cut costs somewhere, that is likely to be my focus, possibly causing me to miss some more important aspect of cost-cutting. So, selective perception can harm the decision-making process, cutting us off from observing viable alternatives.

Perception is the process of interpreting the messages of our senses to provide order and meaning to the environment. Among the most important perceptions that influence organizational behaviour are the perceptions that organizational members have of each other.

Tirthankar Sutradhar1421427, M, CUIM

Receiving Stimuli

(External & Internal)

Receiving Stimuli

(External & Internal)

Selecting StimuliExternal factors: Nature,location, size, contrast,

movement, repetition, similarityInternal factors: Learning,

needs,age,Interest.

Selecting StimuliExternal factors: Nature,location, size, contrast,

movement, repetition, similarityInternal factors: Learning,

needs,age,Interest.

Perceptual Process

Organizing Perceptual Grouping(similarity, proximity,closure, continuity)

Organizing Perceptual Grouping(similarity, proximity,closure, continuity)

Interpreting Attribution ,Stereotyping,Halo Effect, Projection

Interpreting Attribution ,Stereotyping,Halo Effect, Projection

ResponseCovert: Attitudes,

Motivation,Feeling

Overt: Behavior

ResponseCovert: Attitudes,

Motivation,Feeling

Overt: Behavior

Why is this important? Behaviour in the workplace is based on people’s perception of the workplace. There are many factors that influence how something is perceived. For instance, factors pertaining to the perceiver can involve the person’s attitudes, motives, interests, experience and expectations. Factors associated with the context can involve time, work setting and social setting. Finally, factors related to the actual target can involve novelty, motion, sounds, size, background and proximity.

The processes of perception consist of various sub processes such as confrontation, registration, interpretation and feedback.

Though people are continuously exposed to numerous stimuli, they tend to select only a few of them. The principle of perceptual selectivity seeks to explain how, and why people select only a few stimuli out of the many stimuli they keep encountering at any given time. Perceptual selectivity is affected by various internal set factors and external attention factors. Some of the internal set factors are learning, motivation and personality. External attention factors include environmental influences like intensity, size, contrast, repetition, motion, novelty and familiarity.

Sometimes, different individuals may perceive the same thing differently. Differences may arise due to factors associated with the perceiver (attitudes, motives, expectations, etc.) or the situation (time, place, etc.) or the target (novelty, background, sounds, size, etc.

But what does this have to do with an Organization? Well, there are various ways that a person can perceive a situation in the work environment that can lead to problems. For example, the following can occur among employees in the workplace on a daily basis:

Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behaviour of others.

Self-serving bias: The tendency to attribute one’s own successes to internal factors and blame one’s own failures on external factors.

Selective perception: The tendency to selectively interpret what is seen based on one’s interests, background, experience and attitudes. In the business context, selective perception can often lead to unfair treatment of subordinates. For this reason, it is important to try to prevent those in a position of power in a given business from engaging in selective perception. A manager might perceive one worker as good and another as bad. The manager then only notices good things done by the first worker and only bad things done by the second. This is a reason why it is very important to make sure that managers are evaluating workers based on at least some sorts of objective measures rather than just subjective perceptions.

Projection: The tendency to attribute one’s own characteristics to other peopleExample: I do not like my new colleagues. But I have a value that says I should like everyone. So I project onto them that they do not like me. This allows me to avoid them and also to handle my own feelings of dislike.


Stereotyping and workforce Diversity: The tendency to judge someone on the basis of the perception of a group to which that person belongs.

Racial and Ethnic Stereotypes: Stereotypical views of other races and cultures are pervasive, persistent, frequently negative, and often self-contradictory. Stereotypical views that “African Americans can't handle pressure” or that “Asian Americans are technical wizards” have interfered with their opportunities for advancement to upper management positions.

Gender Stereotypes. Women are severely underrepresented in managerial and administrative jobs. Since males dominate business and many males have a false stereotype of women's executive capabilities, women have not been able to advance as easily as men to higher management levels. Women suffer from a stereotype that is detrimental to their hiring, development, promotion, and salaries.

Age Stereotypes: Knowing that a person falls into a certain age range, we have a tendency to make certain assumptions about the person’s physical, psychological, and intellectual capabilities. For example, older people tend to be perceived as having less capacity for performance than younger people. They are also viewed as being less productive and lacking the potential for development. As a result of these false stereotypes, many older people have experienced discrimination, and many have taken their complaints to human rights agencies.

Nationality: For instance in workplace individualized as all Chinese are hard worker than other nationality.

Occupation: For example people perceive that all accountants are uninteresting. Or a new employee from a less renowned college is pre assumed to be less capable of handling the work.

Age: All young, fresh workers strong and unreliable brain storming, no old workers want to think new ideas.

Physical: It’s assumed that workplace all people with brown hair have a burning temperament, and all fat workers are lazy.

Education: For instance all new hired fresh graduates are smart in workplace.

Halo effect: The tendency to draw a general impression about an individual based on a single characteristic. It is a psychological phenomenon that allows a general opinion of something, or someone, to be gathered from one element.

Appraisals: One area where the halo effect is prevalent is in annual performance reviews. Some managers take a relaxed approach to reviews and assume that if an employee is proficient in some elements of the appraisal, then he is proficient in all of them. This can


work the other way, as well. An employee seen as ineffective in one or two aspects of his job can be given the general label of incompetent.

Promotions: Movies and books may present the theme of a hero who performs one spectacular task and is asked to rule as king of the people he saved. The problem is that the hero does not possess any of the leadership qualities or administrative skills needed to be an effective ruler. The same thing can happen in a corporate workplace. A sales professional is proficient at bringing in new accounts and generating revenue, so he is promoted to the position of vice president of sales. Unfortunately, he does not know the first thing about being a company executive.

Job Tasks: People build up a reputation in the workplace for being proficient at something when their actual area of expertise is much different. For example, if one of the accountants from the accounting pool becomes familiar with the accounting software, others ask for assistance in getting the software to work properly. It is then assumed that she knows a great deal about all the software titles in the company, and the halo effect in this situation could also get her labeled as a proficient in hardware repair as well.

Departmental Misconception: Incompetent employees in a department can, by use of the halo effect, drag down the reputation for the rest of the group. For example, if the payroll group in the accounting department consistently makes mistakes on employee paychecks, then the halo effect would allow the rest of the company to assume that no one in the accounting department can do their job properly.

The way a person perceives a job applicant during an interview can affect an organization. For example, interviewers may like one aspect of the interviewee, and then pursuant to the halo effect, assume the interviewee is entirely a good fit with the company because of that one characteristic. Or interviewers may learn they have one thing in common with the interviewee and project that they are similar to the interviewee in every way, making a good fit for the organization.

Alternatively, an employee may not get a promotion because an employer has formed a negative impression about the employee simply because that person belongs to a particular religious group. This is stereotyping and is clearly contrary to human rights legislation, but given human nature’s tendency to gather things and people into groups and make general impressions, it may happen more often than one might think.

As well, an employee may be considered to be disloyal or not putting enough effort into a project. These characteristics are subjectively judged based on an employer’s perceptions. For example, one supervisor may consider an employee to be loyal, while another supervisor may consider that same employee to be too conforming and insincere.

In terms of perceptions, research has shown that what employees perceive from their work situation influences their productivity most. Therefore, to influence productivity, it is necessary for employers to assess how workers perceive their jobs.


Likewise, absenteeism, turnover and job satisfaction have more to do with an employee’s perception of the job. Those individuals who perceive their jobs as negative are likely to have increased absenteeism, more frequent turnover and less job satisfaction. The only way to influence these variables is to understand how an employee subjectively perceives the workplace.

Consequently, perception influences decision-making within an organization. Take the example of an interview. Within the first few minutes of the interview, the interviewer has learned some information about the interviewee and has formed an impression based on various perceptions. The interviewer then decides whether the candidate is a good fit with the company. The remaining time in the interview is typically spent asking select information that supports the initial decision.

The key takeaway of the paper is that perception is how we make sense of our environment in response to environmental stimuli. While perceiving our surroundings, we go beyond the objective information available to us, and our perception is affected by our values, needs, and emotions. There are many biases that affect human perception of objects, self, and others. When perceiving the physical environment, we fill in gaps and extrapolate from the available information. We also contrast physical objects to their surroundings and may perceive something as bigger, smaller, slower, or faster than it really is. In self-perception, we may commit the self-enhancement or self-effacement bias, depending on our personality. We also overestimate how much we are like other people.

When perceiving others, stereotypes infect our behavior. Stereotypes may lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. Stereotypes are perpetuated because of our tendency to pay selective attention to aspects of the environment and ignore information inconsistent with our beliefs. When perceiving others, the attributions we make will determine how we respond to the situation. Understanding the perception process gives us clues to understand human behavior.

Though we are all human and have a background and a particular perspective on which we rely when perceiving things in the work setting, to conclude I will say that, it is important to be aware of the various factors that influence our perceptions, especially when making important decisions that affect the organization. Sometimes it is a good idea to have a few decision makers provide an opinion when making big decisions to ensure that various perceptions are considered before taking the plunge.


References

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