PERSONALITY, PERCEPTION, ATTRIBUTION, ATTITUDES AND VALUES WITHIN THE ORGANISATIONS

There are some characteristics in each person, that makes us unique and defined us as human beings; The personality, perception, attributions, attitudes and values are build every day of our lives according to those characteristics. Although is a process that begins since we are borne, can be modified or transformed while we are raised and grow, even when you think you stop evolving yourself, every decision you take in specific time and situations, can dictate a new behavior never before existing or at least not explore.

PERSONALITY

It can be defined, as a set of characteristics that a person has as part of its life, which allows him/her to interact with others and within situations. This set of characteristics can be inherited or can be the result of adaptation in the environment.

There are a big number of theories, expose by different personalities, that explains types, styles or ways to classified people's personalities.

• Gordon Allport (Trait Theory)

Defines personality as a trait approach in which people has differences that makes them unique from other individuals, those differences can be seen as ¨Traits¨ and can be compare to one and other and varies according to the bond one person has with the other in analysis.

The Trait Theory has different approaches and has been modified and studied by many other psychologists, but there are five ¨traits¨ that outstand among the many existing.

* Extraversion: Defines weather a person is sociable, expressive, communicative or if is reserved, introversive.

* Agreeableness: Related to the social behavior with others, whether a person is kind, warm, trust in others, or if that person likes to adopt always an antagonistic role.

* Conscientiousness: A person that always thinks on everything and everyone, the main task is the pursued of goals. People can be seen as hardworking or unreliable.

* Emotional Stability: Is related with the mood, the state of anxiety and excitement of a person that can be link with calmness or insecurities.

* Openness to experience: Depends on the person open or close minded that allows them whether to be creative and show interest for things or having narrow interest.

• Sigmund Freud (Psychodynamic Theory)

He explained the human behavior and its characteristics, as flows of energy in the brain, where the unconscious plays the most important role in defining the mental, emotional and motivational state of an individual.

• Carl Rogers (Humanistic Theory)

He said that the personality and behavior of a person is defined by themselves, by the perspective of each person about life. The person self-regards and self-actualized and redefines itself according to its needs.

In the organisations, people's personalities interact and influence one to other, sometimes in positive ways and some others in negative ways. That is why is so important for an organisation to have very clear the type of person and profile that they want to have working in the organisation. Is obvious that it is very difficult to have control over the characteristics that each member have, but identifying the most influential ones can avoid confrontations and uncomfortable situations.

* Locus of control: People can think that they have the ability to control what happens to them or on the contrary can think that everything in their lives is determined by external forces, like destiny. Depending on how the person feels about the control of his/her life, is the level of job satisfaction, motivation and performance among others.

* Self-esteem: This is link to the value that a person gives to herself, it allows that person to have positive or negative thoughs about his aspect or actions, it also allows them to accept or reject strengths and weaknesses and has its own points of view.

* Self-efficacy: A person measures the capacity, abilities or skills that have to accomplish specific tasks. The awareness of prior experiences, behavior models or even the persuasion from other people can help that person to define its productive ability within a group.

* Self-monitoring: One person behaves according to specific situations, in order for that person to be able to choose how to behave, they need to pay attention to others, care about processes, read the environment and be consistent along the situations.

Image:Two face picture, took from;http://yourpsychology.co.uk/images/split-personality.jpg

PERCEPTION

It is how people perceive things, objects, situations and other people's actions and opinions. This characteristic of the human being allows us to understand in our own way the environment. For this characteristic is essential the senses: touch, smell, hearing, vision and taste, because the combination of them is what generates particular ideas or opinions in regards someone or something.

When people interact, they takes roles in the communication; one person is going to be the perceiver and the other the target, being in this position is very important to take into account and know interpret the message, because aspects such us: The mood, attitudes and knowledge, physical appearance, verbal and non verbal communication, the intentions, stereotypes and judgments can interfere in either way, positive or negative.

Image: Two people's perception about a glass of water, took from;http://www.directionservice.org/cadre/images/Image32.gif

ATTRIBUTION

People can attribute what happens in specific situations either to the person (Which means involving people's personalities) or to the situation in which that person is being part of. Basically what we can infer by this term, is that helps determined what or whom causes certain behavior.

Takao Inamori, Farhad Analoui, "Beyond Pygmalion effect: the role of managerial perception", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 29 Iss: 4, pp.306 - 321

ATTITUDES AND VALUES

The attitudes refer to the human behavior towards something or someone, it is a characteristic that people is not borne with, instead it is develop within time and can change or be modified according to each situation. The Attitudes can be link to feelings, intentions or beliefs and normally represent the negative or positive opinion that an individual has towards things.

The values have a very personal background, they are more private and normally come from the families’ education. They can be either way instrumental (Depends on what you are trying to achieve) or terminal (Which represents what you want to achieve).

The organisation can also have common values as a group, those that will define and support the course of the business and will prevail under any circumstance, because they represent the essence of the company. Honesty, respect, responsibility, fairness, cooperation, among others are examples of values that people live with every day and share with others with the idea of pursuing a common well.

Gregorio Martín-de-Castro, José Emilio Navas-López, Pedro López-Sáez, Elsa Alama-Salazar, (2006) "Organizational capital as competitive advantage of the firm", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 7 Iss: 3, pp.324 - 337

THE PYGMALION EFFECT

"The Pygmalion effect is a type of self-fulfilling prophecy (SFP) in which raising manager expectations regarding subordinate performance boosts subordinate performance. Managers who are led to expect more of their subordinates lead them to greater achievement". (1)

The Pygmalion effect explains how powerful can be communicating to others the expectations you have about them, and how big could be the impact regarding motivation and the improvement in performance. This effect is commonly use in organisational environments, where the managers or higher positions, let their subordinates know as boss, about what he expects from them, in order to incentivize them to actually do things right or even better than expected.

¨This effect can be so powerful, that it can influence people's feelings, attitudes and behaviors by communicating explicitly or implicitly expectations about specific situations¨. (2)

In the international context of an organisation, this effect can be very engaging, because the performance and motivation are link to the personality and this one is related to the culture where people is part of, so the challenge is even bigger because the expectations are understood according to their environment. For example; lets think hypothetically. An American that has to manage Japanese and Chilean personnel can expect that these people can make their job quickly and effectively. Culturally, we know that Japanese people are very meticulous in their processes and they take their time in checking that everything is perfect, while the Chileans are not that perfectionist and although they do things right, time is something they cannot afford to lose, so they may tend to rush and that is why, sometimes processes are not done that effectively as the American would expect. The conclusion is that the American boss can expect and explicitly or implicitly say to their subordinates, what he would like to achieve from their performance but the results are going to be perceived differently because of the culture that every worker is influence by. The results may not be evaluate as negative or positive but they will certainly be seen as good or not good enough.

Last example, shows how important it is to have a very clear vision of the organisational culture of the group or company where we work in, and make sure that every member that belongs to it, knows and understands, but more important shares the organisation's believes and policies (Formal and Informal environment), in order for the organisation to be able to have not an uniform, because that would it be impossible but at a ¨same level¨ performance within the individuals, no matter his/her nationality, customs, believes and personality among other characteristics.

The Human resource department plays a key role within the organisations, because they are the ones that in certain way accept or reject the work force and also coordinate the entire processes link to the well being of the members and the proper environment where they develop in. Trust and responsibility are fundamentals elements to create the desire effect. A boss may expect a lot of things from their subordinates but if there is no consciousness among the members regarding certain values or organisational culture it is very difficult to accomplish the perfect Pygmalion effect.

(1) - (2) Leadership and expectations: Pygmalion effects and other self-fulfilling prophecies in organizations Original Research ArticleThe Leadership Quarterly, Volume 3, Issue 4, Winter 1992, Pages 271-305Dov Eden. (EBSCO)

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN ORGANIZATIONS

By this summary, I invite you to have an approach to some writers' opinions regarding its knowledge and analysis on topics such as; culture and behavior and its application in national and international organizational environments. Authors like Debra L. Nelson and James Campbell Quick and their book published on February 2008 called ¨Organizational Behavior:Science,The Real World and You¨ and Richard Mead and his book ¨International management:Cross-Cultural Dimensions¨ published on 2004, are some of the writers and texts that I will be referring to.

We as human beings determine our behavior among others by the environment in which we develop ourselves every day, and this behavior is the one that allows us interact within and between the organizations by transmitting our beliefs as individuals and adapting them according to the organizational culture in which we are living in.

The idea of adapting ourselves, is to create proper group dynamics that would let us performed in specific circumstances, which require a balance between the internal and external perspectives that each others have and many times do not share with the immediate person we are interacting with. Factors like thoughts, feelings, experiences and needs are the ones that we must balanced according to the external events and changes in the environment so we can be able to develop ourselves in society.

The performance within a specific group of people is dictated by the formal and informal facts that constitute that group or organization; formal facts like the Policies, the objectives, the mission and vision in the organization and the products or services that are offered within the course of action of a group, need to be in compliance with informal facts like values, beliefs, feelings and attitudes of every member in the system, understanding by system all the groups and organizations involve in the environment that surrounds us where we work in. Once, that compliance is reached, the organizations are able to sized their performance as a group, to see if they were able to acomplish real advantages and influenced over the strategies and business among the industrie and even more important if they had a positive impact over the different forces of the environment.

Some of the challenges that the organizations face during the course of their business depend on the national and international environment they work in every day. Being both of same importance either of them represent the same risks when people do not know how to understand them. If it is truth that globalization involves multiculturalism it does not mean that you need to be in a different country or region to find it. The foreign investments, the multinational corporations, the expatriation assigments and the overseas expiriences are some of the examples that make national environments as international as it could be being in a different country or region from where you are originally from. Diversification is the key element to understand the challenges of the organizations and the people that makes part of them. If we are able to adapt to the changes that comes within a diversify environment we will find it easier to develop ourselves and interact with other human beings.

Image: Human puzzle, took from: http://www.corsonwolff.com/images/organizational_culture.jpg


DEALING WITH CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

CHILE

The following case is based on the studies of Pedro Hidalgo Campos, Enrique Manzur Mobarec, Sergio Olavarrieta Soto and Pablo Farias Nazel, extract out of ¨The national culture and its impact in the business: The Chilean case¨. From Estudios Gerenciales;2007, Vol.23 Issue 105, p57-67, 11p, 1 Chart (1).

As they quote Bianchi and Ostalés' (2004) studies (1.1) , they try to put into perspective why Home Depot, Royal Ahold, Carrefour and JC Penney, four multinational companies were unable to fit in the Chilean market, mostly due to cultural barriers.

The first mistake they made was putting foreign CEO's that did not understand the market, so they had problems understanding the suppliers and consumers needs that lead them to a total failure. Chile has a high level of uncertainty avoidance, which means that people, in this case companies, try to avoid taking risk decisions, and this characteristic makes them reject changes and redesign projects and processes within the organizations. Sometimes they even secretly use old processes, no matter how much the companies have invested in new ones, because they rather use something they know well, that processes that could affect the business because they do not feel familiar with them.

This was one of the main reasons why, this companies were not able to fit its market, because being manage by foreign people with the opposite level of uncertainty avoidance, trying to conquer the Chilean market with the idea of implementing new radical ways of doing business and of course having the 99% of employees from local backgrounds was very difficult for them to accomplish what they wanted to stablished in processes, because all the people involved in the organization (customers, employees, suppliers, banks, among others) were very closed minded to the ideas of these multinationals.

The national environment, in levels such as; the managerial, human resources, and marketing affects all individuals and organizations, for that reason is very important to incorporate all the different factors within a culture in the strategic planning in order to be able to succeed in the establishment of any company or group from an international environment that wants to enter into local markets different from they are originally. Studies are necessary before even consider the idea of entering a new market, mostly their cultural backgrounds that always defined a population.

(1)http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.eafit.edu.co/ehost/detail?vid=6&hid=112&sid=8ed0b2f5-1388-4374-b02aea9a01e5f698%40sessionmgr111&bdata=Jmxhbmc9ZXMmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl#db=bth&AN=31463618
(1.1)Bianchi, C., y Ostalé, E. (2004). Desafíos en la internacionalización de retailing: Errores de empresas internacionales en Chile, Trend Management, 6 (Edición Especial), 2-9.

Image: Chilean flag on a kids face, took from,https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpsNy7MS_Eq-FHh6PSLWs01zOWtBjsp_tw3X8xN0iDnTW5J4p8ZBhlhT9tKQ7VmQPyks-n1FaYTl4EMTXr-2-C2ZJzYwrtcPwvpnm1MznzjsRFa6oKQnqVIue-htHVWR_DtlKRl3-BbhI/s400/boy-chile-flag.gif

PAKISTAN

¨The women in feminine countries have the same modest, caring values as the men; in the masculine countries they are somewhat assertive and competitive, but not as much as the men, so that these countries show a gap between men's values and women's values¨. (1)

"Globally, the number of women in managerial workforce is still a small proportion of the total number of managers. This is true for the developed world as well as the developing world. In Pakistan, although the absolute number of women joining the managerial ranks is rising, the percentage is not high. In 2003-04, the percentage of women in the occupational group—legislators, senior official and managers—was 1.4% of the female occupation statistics¨. (2)

Being Pakistan nearly over 50 points in masculinity, as one of the strongest dimensions of hofstede in this country, and taking into account the previous quotes regarding the role of the women in an organizational environment, we can think on multiple scenarios where we can conclude that in this country would it be very difficult for a women to develop her selves in a corporate environment of high positions such as CEO's, managers or directors of departments.

Imagine no matter if it’s a local women or a foreign one, being in a CEO position in Pakistan, where man represent more than 72% of the labor force and earned 42% more than a woman in the same position, and add to this that the society have been raised with the idea that women are meant to take care of the families and man are the ones that have to bring food to the table. When a population thinks so strong over family in such a traditional way it is very difficult to change the idea in the sense that a women is going to be able to succeed in such environment.

Unfortunately, as long as that thinking remains in their population, companies and organizations should consider very carefully the idea of putting women in such important positions. Obviously being a woman, I would love to see people's faces seeing a woman succeed in such conditions, but those are risks that nobody should take when the wealth of a company is in game along with the rest of the labor force that relied on the organization's incomes.

(1)http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_pakistan.shtml
(2)http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.eafit.edu.co/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=19&hid=112&sid=8ed0b2f5-1388-4374-b02a-ea9a01e5f698%40sessionmgr111
Image: Pakistan Flag on a kids face, took from;http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/6858706/2/istockphoto_6858706-pakistan-flag.jpg

¿DO YOU THINK THERE IS A CORPORATE CULTURE IN EVERY ORGANISATION?

It is impossible for a company to exist without a corporate culture, it is truth that within the organization there is a lot of diversity among the people that makes part of it, aspects such as; the gender, the race, the religion, the educational degree, the socio-economical level and so on. are some of the factors that turned the idea of corporate culture a quiet difficult task, but yet mandatory in order to exist.

People may be part of a company because they share their politics, values and beliefs and others because they have no option, but the certain thing here is, that weather people adapt or share the same culture they end up being developing there selves in a common culture, a culture where the group that makes part of it, needs to be in compliance and work for it.

The corporate culture can be modified but not what defines the organization, it is very important that managers take into consideration the personal ethics of each employee or memeber in the organization. This, with the idea of not compromise the personal beliefs over the corporate goals. If a company wants to have a proper environment, where people is efficient and gives more or at least a 100% in their tasks, it is very important that the foundations of the company are create it in the way every member feels satisfy and care.

The key element for a well defined corporate culture are the CEO's, managers and high positions, because being the leaders of the organizations are the ones that incorporate the ¨styles¨ for putting it in a way, of working in processes. If you analyzed a company and identified the patterns of the members in the organization, you will see how easier is to define the personality and beliefs of the members of high positions. That is why it is so important to know who represents us as organization, being them who permeate with their personal touch the culture as one organization.

(1)Reinforcing Ethical Decision Making through Corporate Culture, Al Y. S. Chen, Roby B. Sawyers and Paul F. Williams Page [855] of 855-865, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.eafit.edu.co/stable/25072949?&Search=yes&term=corporate&term=culture&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dcorporate%2Bculture%26wc%3Don%26x%3D10 26y 3D9&item=2&ttl=73735&returnArticleService=showFullText