Analyzing the Behaviour of Two Individuals

Based on their Attitudes, Personality, Perception &

Motivation
1.

Introduction
Why Individual Differences Are Important?
It is important for managers to know the individual differences among the employees
as:

Individual differences have a direct effect on behavior

People who perceive things differently behave differently

People with different attitudes respond differently to directives

People with different personalities interact differently with bosses, coworkers,

subordinates, and customers

Also, Individual differences help to explain:

Why some people embrace change and others are fearful of it
Why some employees will be productive only if they are closely supervised,
while others will be productive if they are not
Why some workers learn new tasks more effectively than others
Different people are attracted to different careers and organizations as a function of
their own:
Abilities
Interests
Personalities
Organizations select employees based on the needs that they have.
1. Skills and abilities.
2. Individual attributes such as values and personality.
The Basis for Understanding Work Behaviour :
1

To understand individual differences, a manager must:

Observe and recognize the differences
And
Study relationships between variables that influence bahaviour
Individual Differences Influencing Work Behaviour such as productivity,
creativity and performance :
Hereditary and Diversity Factors
Personality
Ability and Skills
Perception
Attitudes

2.

Chapter Two

Mr. D & Miss K

For this assignment, I selected two individuals from my Organization and gathered
necessary data through observation, through questionnaire and by questioning and
interviewing them. In this report, I mentioned them as Mr. D and Miss. K as I do not
like to expose them to the public.
I select them because they have some individual similarities as well as many
differences.
Extroverts vs. Introverts
2

Extroverts are directed towards the objective world whereas Introverts are directed
towards the subjective world.
The first difference between Mr. D and Miss. K is their personalities. Obviously, Mr.
D is a good humoured and sociable person. Mr. D is open and always talkative. He is
extroverted and is interested in what is happening around him. He often joins
community programmes, social activities, welfare trips and get-togethers. He can
easily make new friends and adapt to new groups. He makes everyone like him by his
way of talking with courtesy and humour. He always tells yarns to make others smile.
He always helps everyone around him who faced with difficulties.
Mr. D says what he thinks in wherever possible. He is interested in new people, and
he can easily break unwanted relations.
On contrast, Miss K is a quiet and thoughtful person. She is interested in her own
thoughts and feelings. She is not close and, so she does not have many friends as Mr.
D.
Miss K often have difficulties in making new contacts where as Mr. D is always like
many social contacts and relationships. Both have Face Book and Twitter accounts in
social media websites. More often Miss K chats with them, laughs for their yarns chat
window, and reads gossips they share with her, but not spend time to contact them
over the phone and have friendly verbal chats.
Mr. D likes to compare his own opinions with the opinions of others whereas Miss K
always sting in her own opinions. She does not like her to criticize her opinions by
others. Sometimes she says that she knew this would be a weakness of hers.
Mr. D likes to take action and initiatives. On the other hand, Miss K does not like to
take initiatives. She always follows rules and regulations when and where necessary.
Moreover, Miss K does not like unexpected visits and therefore does not make them,
and she can work well alone and she succeeds doing so.
According to a famous American businessperson, "There are three types of people in
this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those
who wonder what happened." I think, Mr. D is a type one and an extrovert person.

Heredity determines Personality:

3

Personality is defined as the sum total of beliefs, behaviors, attitudes and values that
distinguishes an individual. Each of us has unique personalities, which distinguish us
from the others. Even twins who look alike and are reared in the same environment
differ in personalities. A number of factors determine a persons personality. These
include environment and genetics. Our personality is the product of the interaction of
these two factors.
The personality of an individual is mix of both inherited factors and learning and
environmental factors but heredity plays a bigger role in determining those traits,
which affect our personality and our perception and how we perceive things and
learn them.
I have seen some important features, which my models have acquired from their
ancestors, which is called heredity.
Miss K and Mr. D are the sister and brother in the same family; but they are not very
similar with the appearances. There is a considerable difference in their physical
structure as well as their work place behavior. ; Mr. D is a 5 feet and 9 inches tall boy
as his grandfather where as his sister Miss. K is only 5 feet tall, just like her
grandmother.

However, this study shows significant relationship between heredity factors and
personalities. Although the two individuals described in this chapter are working in
completely different environments, there are similarities in their work attitudes and
behavior. Both of them like to have their attendance regularly. Miss K is an executive
in the management field while Mr. D is an Engineer. They work after office hours
with no additional payment. Both are loyal to their organization as well as their
superiors. Both have interests in learning more, so they are following post-graduate
courses in universities. Their parents also were well-educated managerial level
government servants.
They had amazing similarities in various tastes and preferences. This particular study
showed that although the environment is a major determinant and factor of
personality, the heredity factors turned out to have a more significant impact on the
studied same family members.
4

Apart from that, researchers have found that genetics account for about 50% of the
personality differences and more than 30% of the variation in occupational and
leisure interests. However, it is also equally important to understand that an
individuals personality evolves gradually over a certain span of time. As I mentioned
earlier that physical factors change over time, environmental factors, social circles
and situations also change. So, personality is something that does not really settle in
and thats what makes people so unpredictable and hard to manage.

Values.
Values refer to stable life goals that people have, reflecting what is most important to
them. Values are established throughout ones life because of the accumulating life
experiences and tend to be relatively stable. The values that are important to people
tend to affect the types of decisions they make, how they perceive their environment,
and their actual behaviors.
Values influence behavior and attitudes. Sources of values are Parents, Friends,
Teachers, Role models, External reference groups.

Mr. D possesses many of the Terminal Values mentioned above while Miss K is to be
considered as a person with more Instrumental Values.

Perception
Our behavior is not only a function of our personality, values, and preferences but
also of the situation. We interpret our environment, formulate responses and act
accordingly. Perception may be defined as the process with which individuals detect
and interpret environmental stimuli.

I think, both Mr. D and Miss K have a similar visual perception. I frequently note that
visual perception of them goes beyond the physical information available to them.

Social Perception
How we perceive other people in our environment is also shaped by our values,
emotions, feelings, and personality. Moreover, how we perceive others will shape our
behavior, which in turn will shape the behavior of the person we are interacting with.
Sometimes, both Mr. D and Miss K is bias towards some beliefs, and their perception
seems to be more stereotypes.

Self-Perception
Human beings are prone to errors and biases when perceiving themselves. Moreover,
the type of bias people have depends on their personality. Many people suffer
from self-enhancement bias. This is the tendency to overestimate our performance
and capabilities and see ourselves in a more positive light than others see us.
At the same time, other people have the opposing extreme, which may be labeled
as self-effacement bias. This is the tendency for people to underestimate their
performance, undervalue capabilities, and see events in a way that puts them in a
more negative light.
According to my observations and experience, Mr. D over estimates his talents,
performances and capabilities. Miss K is a normal character. Neither she
overestimates or underestimates herself.

Attitude
Attitude is a mental state of readiness learned and organized through experience. It is
exerting a specific response to people, objects, and situations with which it is related.
Attitudes are determinates of behavior because they are linked with perception,
personality, feelings, and motivation.
Peoples expressed attitudes often do not predict their behaviors.
When do attitudes predict behavior?
6

 When social influences on our attitudes are minimized.

When the attitude is specifically relevant to the observed behavior.
The stronger an attitude is the more likely it will predict behavior.
Miss K is a hardworking person at her targeted tasks. She has positive job attitude
whereas her brother does not have. She is more productive than her same brother is.
Sometimes Mr. D thinks his job is boring and tedious. Moreover, he rejected overloaded work and long work hours even though he is paid more for additional work.
He thinks opportunity cost of his usage time on hard work. But he likes to take risks.
Miss Ks behavior can be expressed as the Organizational Citizenship Behaviour as
she likes to stay and work there for long. She performs beyond the expectations. She
volunteers for extra work, respect to her superiors, and like to avoid unnecessary
conflicts.

Job Satisfaction & Motivation:

Job satisfaction can affect a person's level of commitment to the organization,
absenteeism, and job turnover. If people are satisfied with the work they are doing, it
feels less like work, thus motivating a more positive attitude and higher levels of
passion.
Individuals who are committed to their job will likely be more willing to work longer
hours or take on additional responsibilities without an increase in pay.
Satisfaction can be improved through effective management strategies. Managers are
responsible for understanding what motivates employee satisfaction and creating a
positive work environment conducive to it.
When observing behavior of Miss K and Mr. D, I found that in some instances both
are very much satisfied and in some occurrences both are unsatisfied. They are
satisfied with their company culture, good image, superiors, and coworkers of the
company while they are not satisfied with their benefits, decisions taken by top
management on various issues, and political agendas so on.

Conclusion:
7

According to the above comparison and contrasting, it is obvious that the both
individuals have a combination of some sort of accepted organizational behavior.

References:
https://www.boundless.com/management/
https://www.scribd.com
google books & google docs
Lecturers Notes