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)