THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MANAGING
YOUR PROFESSIONAL SCHEDULE
As a real estate professional you have an important task of keeping your clients satisfied. One
of the key factors in keeping your clients satisfied requires you to be available to your client
when they are available. After all, they've chosen you to work for them. (I know, I should be
nicknamed "Captain Obvious"!) However, there is a fine line that can be crossed, and that's
the line between your personal and professional life. When that line is crossed, it can
eventually cause small sparks that lead to a fire in the relationship between you and your
clients down the road.
It's important to clarify your professional schedule with your clients, immediately. Let them
know exactly when you are available for receiving and returning phone calls, emails, text
messages and appointments. Breaking your own rules can lead to the following:
1. If you communicate with a client outside of the schedule you initially gave them (or didn't
give them for that matter), they may expect you to be available at all times. People become
comfortable with routines. If even once you communicate business with a client outside of
your set schedule, it can set the expectation that it's acceptable for them to continue that and
builds a routine for them. When routines are broken, people often become frustrated and
discouraged.
2. If clients make a special request for time outside of your set schedule, clarify with them that
although you normally don't make appointments during that time, you would be happy to do
so in this particular circumstance. Although it may sound a bit harsh at first, if you word it the
right way, your clients will respect your time and know that you are going above and beyond
your duties.
3. Giving clients "optional times" to meet, similar to as a Dr's office would do, gives them the
feeling you are busy; aka successful. This can be a struggle to manage. If your schedule is
perceived to be TOO full, they may think you aren't giving them enough attention and you are
spreading yourself too thin among other clients.
3. Telling clients your schedule is "wide-open", gives them the perception you may be
desperate, have no other clients to deal with and you are at their beck and call. Maybe your
schedule isn't so full right now, but remember, you need to make yourself time to do some
prospecting and listing presentations as well! Imagine if you were to drive past two
restaurants every day; although never have been to either. Every day Restaurant A is packed
with cars; whereas Restaurant B never has more than 2 cars in the parking lot. You feel like
stopping for a nice meal on your way home from work one day. Are you going to choose
Restaurant A or Restaurant B? Restaurant A; you might have to wait a while, but obviously
people like it a lot more than Restaurant B! This also goes back to rule #2. It may cause
clients to expect you to return their correspondence much faster, since you obviously have
nothing else to do.
4. Feel free to tell your clients you may be checking emails while on vacation, but also tell
them you may not get back to them until you return. As your clients are your business, you do
have to work at a time that fits for them, but that doesn't mean ALL the time. It can burn you
out and give you a negative perception on your job, ultimately driving your will to work into
the ground. After all, that's why you're on vacation! You know those "Out of the Office
Notifications", they work a charm :) Be sure to tell your clients ahead of time you will not be
available, but you have found a person to fill your shoes while you are out.
5. Don't pack your schedule so full that you don't have a minute to spare. Let's face it, things
happen and get in the way or take longer than expected. Give yourself some time between
appointments. It's better to have a few extra minutes in a day than show up a half hour late to
an appointment! Make yourself block off a couple of hours here and there that you DON'T
make public to your clients but that you still consider work hours. It gives you time to catch
up if you have gotten a bit behind in paperwork; the fun stuff that can sometimes lead into all
hours of the night. If you have an unexpected client emergency, this is a great time to help
them out without interrupting something else.
Everyone has a personal life. Keeping it real with your clients can only lead to gaining their
respect for you managing such a demanding, yet efficient schedule.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MANAGING
FOR INNOVATION
There are many reasons why new knowledge and innovation techniques fail to take hold in
organizations.
Similarly, a continued failure to employ psychological techniques to implementation will
create a continued cynicism about new implementations and reinforce feelings of initiative
fatigue.
Truth in jest
Jokes can contain deep insights into organizational reality. There are two old jokes about
consultants that offer deep insights into the hidden psychology of managing knowledge for
innovation.
The first joke is in the form of a question: How many consultants does it take to change a
lightbulb? The answer is that the number of consultants is irrelevant - the key point is that the
light-bulb must itself want to change!
The second joke is about the nature of consulting in organizations. It's often said that
consultants are paid to look at your watch and tell you the time. This apparently cynical
truism hides something much more profound: that the questions the consultant uses to gather
data within organizations, with which they are to make recommendations about the future,
actually trigger a thought-process that generates "emergent knowledge" (see sidebox, below)
within individuals, so that the content of the consultant's report becomes recognizable and
understandable to their customers by the time it arrives, which explains its apparent lack of
novelty.
Similarly, our knowledge will lose its freshness or novelty, become over-ripe or obsolete, and
will need replacement by something apparently fresher. It's better for us to control customer
expectations by managing the decay of value and the timing of novelty than to be surprised.
Put simply this means that if we want to gain the maximum return on investment in the form
of knowledge needed to drive innovation, we have to create a hunger in our customers for a
new type of knowledge and deliver it to them at the right time and in the right form so that it's
easily recognizable as the answer.
Timing and recognition are key and we must understand:
* our evolving context in a dynamic environment;
* the reality of that situation;
* where we are in terms of our ability to innovate and the productivity of the knowledge upon
which that ability is based; and
* the possibility that as our context changes we may have to redefine our purpose.
Not invented here (NIH)
While we talk about the social phenomenon of not invented here syndrome(NIH) in groups
and organizations, it's often with an air of despair, as if we were discussing the rain: a natural
phenomenon that we just have to accept and work through. In my days as remedial TQM
consultant I was often sent into organizations after the first two implementations of a system
had failed and was tasked with making it work. In these situations the system in question was
usually and officially claimed to be a success but actually nothing was happening. It became
clear that NIH was always the key issue that was ignored.
Similarly, when implementing lean production techniques in automotive and aerospace plants,
there was a reappearance of the traditional 70 percent failure rate in implementation, and the
tendency for the new knowledge to stick only on the third implementation. Why?
Variations of NIH behaviors
There are several distinct problems involved with trying to work with highly-educated
technical experts in knowledge-intense situations and these are often categorized as NIH
behaviors. The following describes four forms of NIH and methods for overcoming using
psychological techniques.
NIH-1
When experts will not Mow a problem to be expressed in a language or form that is outside
the language of their particular expertise or experience.
NIH-I leads to the intellectual catch 22 of audience alienation through the language of the
solution. This is because the language of the solution or the name given to the technique quite
literally comes from "another place." It's alien by virtue of the fact that in order for the
solution to exist, the problem that it was connected with had to be acknowledged and
understood, and a solution developed from that particular context.
It's this "otherness" around the language of the solution that means that a solution from
another context or business sector can take up to three implementations before it sticks. Hence
the difficulty of transferring good or what appears to be "best practice" from one organization
into another even when it's an obvious life-saver.
There are at least three approaches to consider:
1. a fast "invented-here" partial solution;
2. the linguistic torpedo; and
3. solution value deconstruction.
Solutions
1. Invented here: A fast "invented here" partial solution that often works is to facilitate a team
from a recipient organization into building a prototype solution to the problem, and only
afterwards exposing them to the generic solution that you already had in your back pocket. It
does seem as though experts cannot visualize, recognize or understand a solution until they've
gone through the pain of trying to invent it for themselves. The technique of a master at this
point is never to talk about KM (unless invited to do so), and to deliberately fail to give your
generic solution a name, so that they can name it for themselves and thus own it and act as
ambassadors when they begin to spread it around the organization.
2. The linguistic, torpedo: If you have the time and the patience, the second approach, the
"linguistic torpedo," can be applied. This involves packaging the solution by giving it a
snappy name that embodies its purpose, then deliberately positioning the solution at three key
meetings. At each meeting, you must mention the name you have given the solution at least
three times and briefly explain it once. The reason for this iteration is that people come to key
meetings to present and not to listen. You must be prepared, like the submariner, to wait for
the explosion and echo to come back to you in the form of a request to deliver or explain the
packaged knowledge or technique. This process can take between a year and 18 months in a
global corporation
3. Solution value deconstruction: This third approach involves deconstructing your solution in
terms of the forms of value that it enables and constructing a diagnostic where you invite your
audience to weight and score an unspecified solution in terms of a list of value criteria. By
offering a baseline weighted score threshold, you arouse their interest (forcing them to focus
on the potential value of the unspecified solution) and invite their participation at an
introductory event that will satisfy the interest that you have aroused.
Knowing when to use structured conversation
Trying to work across technical boundaries involves leaders in attempting to work in the
midst of a linguistic war between specialists. In the absence of a shared, overarching metalanguage for framing problems, the leader needs to consider creating a shared space in which
this linguistic conflict can be overcome. This is where applying techniques that support
structured conversations to bring emergent knowledge out into the open - for example,
moving from the K (know) in KUBD to the B (believe) and hence closer to the D (do) in the
KUBD continuum - can be a big help.
RESEARCH AND STUDY METHODS
OBSERVATION
Observation is either an activity of a living being (such as a human), consisting of receiving
knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific
instruments. The term may also refer to any datum collected during this activity.
The scientific method
The scientific method requires observations of nature to formulate and test hypotheses. It
consists of these steps:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Asking a question about a natural phenomenon
Making observations of the phenomenon
Hypothesizing an explanation for the phenomenon
Predicting a logical consequence of the hypothesis
Testing the prediction in a controlled experiment, a natural experiment, an
observational study, or a field experiment
6. Creating a conclusion with data gathered in the experiment
"Observer" personality trait
People with "Observer" personalities are motivated by the desire to understand the facts about
the world around them. Believing they are only worth what they contribute, Observers have
learned to withdraw themselves, to watch with keen eyes, and to speak only when they think
they can shake the world with their observations. Sometimes they do just that. However, some
Observers are known to withdraw completely from the world, becoming reclusive hermits and
fending off social contacts with abrasive cynicism. Observers generally fear incompetency
and uselessness; they want to be capable and knowledgeable above all else.
Observational learning
Observational learning (also known as: vicarious learning or social learning or modeling
or monkey see, monkey do) is learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and,
in the case of imitation learning, replicating novel behavior executed by others. It is most
associated with the work of psychologist Albert Bandura, who implemented some of the
seminal studies in the area and initiated social learning theory. It involves the process of
learning to copy or model the action of another through observing another doing it. Further
research has been used to show a connection between observational learning and both
classical and operant conditioning. [1]
There are 4 key processes of observational learning. 1.) Attention: To learn through
observation, you must pay attention to another person's behavior and its consequences. 2.)
Retention: Store a mental representation of what you have witnessed in your memory. 3.)
Reproduction: Enacting a modeled response depends on your ability to reproduce the
response by converting your stored mental images into overt behavior. 4.) Motivation:
Finally, you are unlikely to reproduce an observed response unless you are motivated to do so.
Your motivation depends on whether you get benefits from responding that action. [2]
Many mistake observational learning with imitation. The two terms are different in the sense
that observational learning leads to a change in behavior due to observing a model. This does
not mean that the behavior exhibited by the model is duplicated. It could mean that the
observer would do the opposite of the model behavior because he or she has learned the
consequence of that particular behavior. Consider the case of learning what NOT to do. In
such a case, there is observational learning without imitation.
Although observational learning can take place at any stage in life, it is thought to be
particularly important during childhood, particularly as authority becomes important. The best
role models are those a year or two older for observational learning. Because of this, social
learning theory has influenced debates on the effect of television violence and parental role
models. Bandura's Bobo doll experiment is widely cited in psychology as a demonstration of
observational learning and demonstrated that children are more likely to engage in violent
play with a life size rebounding doll after watching an adult do the same. However, it may be
that children will only reproduce a model's behavior if it has been reinforced. This may be the
problem with television because it was found, by Otto Larson and his coworkers (1968), that
56% of the time children's television characters achieve their goals through violent acts.
Observational learning allows for learning without any change in behavior and has therefore
been used as an argument against strict behaviorism which argued that behavior change must
occur for new behaviors to be acquired. Bandura noted that "social imitation may hasten or
short-cut the acquisition of new behaviors without the necessity of reinforcing successive
approximations as suggested by Skinner (1953)."[3]
It is possible to treat observational learning as merely a variation of operant training.
According to this view, first proposed by Neal Miller and John Dollard, the changes in an
observer's behavior are due to the consequences of the observer's behavior, not those of the
model. "[4]"
As an interesting aside, there are a number of variables which have confounded the study of
observational learning in animals. One of these is the Venus effect in which animals are
sexually stimulated by the model and this interferes with the ability to observe behavior
thereby limiting the ability to make associations based on the behavior of the model. (See
Warden and Jackson 1935)
Managing People
By Using Positive Motivation
Managing people has as much to do with basic motivational principles as it does with
understanding the technical requirements of a job. Many managers understand their jobs, but
they do not understand their employees. Understanding people requires understanding the
behavioral principles that motivate behavior. Rather than using ineffective methods that
produce negative outcomes, organizational psychologists use management strategies that are
based on positive motivational principles. There are several operant behavioral principles that
have been proven to be effective in motivating behavior. Ask for and reward small
achievements of new behavior. Rather than requesting too much at first, divide the overall
task into manageable components. For example, if an employee’s office is a mess, start first
by asking that the desk be cleaned up.
Ask for active, not passive, behavior. Ask for positive rather than negative actions. In other
words, request the presence of a specific desired behavior rather than the absence of an
undesired behavior. Say "Do this" rather than "Don’t do that" when you describe what you
want done.
Ask for work before play. Apply the Premack principle and don’t reverse the order.
Behavioral psychologists have demonstrated that high frequency behaviors (e.g., play) can be
used as natural reinforcers of low frequency behaviors (e.g., work) if the high frequency
behaviors are made contingent on the low frequency behaviors. In other words, do your least
rewarding work first and the most rewarding work last. In other words, first work and then
play.
Use immediate rewards. As soon as possible after your employee accomplishes the task,
praise the person for it. Don’t delay praise, but deliver it immediately. Professional animal
trainers reward target behaviors within a second or two of their occurrence. Professional
managers should learn to praise immediately and without delay.
Reward often at first and then less often in the future. At first, reinforce nearly every
action that is in the desired direction, no matter how small it is. This will keep the new
behavior going as you reward progressively less often in the future. As the behavior becomes
more established, reward less frequently. Psychologists refer to this principle as "stretching"
the reinforcement interval, which results in the behavior eventually being more permanent
performance and more resistant to extinction.
Reward specifically. Don’t reward general obedience or an employee’s good intentions.
Pinpoint your goals and ask for and reward specific jobs completed. For example, if your
employee is fairly productive all day, don’t reward him by saying "You were great today." Do
say, "You were great in completing 12 reports today."
Reward high-quality performance. Keep your standards realistically high and achievable
for the task you want your employee to accomplish. Let the person know exactly what you
want done. For example, if your employee does manage to meet a deadline on which you’ve
both agreed but he or she has made a number of errors, call the errors to his attention and let
him redo the work. However, following the primary principal of using immediate reward, do
reward the person partially for that portion of the performance that is acceptable.
Keep your agreement with your employee clear and simple. For example, it is better to say
"Please hand in a legible report" rather than "Don’t hand in sloppy work." Describe
specifically what behavior you expect. For example, say to your coworker, "If you move the
chairs, I’ll clear the tables" rather than saying, "If you help me organize, I’ll help you around
the office."
Be consistent in your interactions. Once you and your employee agree on a plan, stick to it.
Don’t stop your plan unless there is a very special reason to do so. For example, if you and
your employee agree that he’ll print out 12 reports before leaving for the day, don’t stop him
after 10 reports because you’re feeling guilty about his working so hard that day.
Always be fair and honest. Never use gimmicks or manipulation. Your employee should feel
that the reward you offer is worth his efforts. Never withhold a reward if it is justly deserved.
Transfer the initiative as soon as you can. As soon as it is practical, shift the responsibility
for the new behavior over to your employee. Ultimately, what you’re after is your employee’s
own self-management. When this is done, it will be easier for you and it will help your
employee grow in both career and self-confidence.
Forget about punishment. Behavioral psychologists have demonstrated that punishment can
decrease target behaviors if the punishment is applied immediately, severely, and consistently.
However, punishment can also reduce behavior in general, and punishment is never an
effective means of establishing behavior. Rather than punishing what is wrong, catch the
person doing right and then reinforce the behavior.
Employee Motivation: Theory and practice
The job of a manager in the workplace is to get things done through employees. To do this the
manager should be able to motivate employees. But that's easier said than done! Motivation
practice and theory are difficult subjects, touching on several disciplines.
In spite of enormous research, basic as well as applied, the subject of motivation is not clearly
understood and more often than not poorly practiced. To understand motivation one must
understand human nature itself. And there lies the problem!
Human nature can be very simple, yet very complex too. An understanding and appreciation
of this is a prerequisite to effective employee motivation in the workplace and therefore
effective management and leadership.
These articles on motivation theory and practice concentrate on various theories regarding
human nature in general and motivation in particular. Included are articles on the practical
aspects of motivation in the workplace and the research that has been undertaken in this field,
notably by Douglas McGregor (theory y), Frederick Herzberg (two factor motivation hygiene
theory,) Abraham Maslow (theory z, hierarchy of needs), Elton Mayo (Hawthorne
Experiments) Chris Argyris Rensis Likert and David McClelland (achievement motivation.)
Why study and apply employee motivation principles?
Quite apart from the benefit and moral value of an altruistic approach to treating colleagues as
human beings and respecting human dignity in all its forms, research and observations show
that well motivated employees are more productive and creative. The inverse also holds true.
The schematic below indicates the potential contribution the practical application of the
principles this paper has on reducing work content in the organization.
Motivation is the key to performance improvement
There is an old saying you can take a horse to the water but you cannot force it to drink; it will
drink only if it's thirsty - so with people. They will do what they want to do or otherwise
motivated to do. Whether it is to excel on the workshop floor or in the 'ivory tower' they must
be motivated or driven to it, either by themselves or through external stimulus.
Are they born with the self-motivation or drive? Yes and no. If no, they can be motivated, for
motivation is a skill which can and must be learnt. This is essential for any business to survive
and succeed.
Performance is considered to be a function of ability and motivation, thus:

Job performance =f(ability)(motivation)
Ability in turn depends on education, experience and training and its improvement is a slow
and long process. On the other hand motivation can be improved quickly. There are many
options and an uninitiated manager may not even know where to start. As a guideline, there
are broadly seven strategies for motivation.







Positive reinforcement / high expectations
Effective discipline and punishment
Treating people fairly
Satisfying employees needs
Setting work related goals
Restructuring jobs
Base rewards on job performance
These are the basic strategies, though the mix in the final 'recipe' will vary from workplace
situation to situation. Essentially, there is a gap between an individuals actual state and some
desired state and the manager tries to reduce this gap.
Motivation is, in effect, a means to reduce and manipulate this gap. It is inducing others in a
specific way towards goals specifically stated by the motivator. Naturally, these goals as also
the motivation system must conform to the corporate policy of the organization. The
motivational system must be tailored to the situation and to the organization.
In one of the most elaborate studies on employee motivation, involving 31,000 men and
13,000 women, the Minneapolis Gas Company sought to determine what their potential
employees desire most from a job. This study was carried out during a 20 year period from
1945 to 1965 and was quite revealing. The ratings for the various factors differed only slightly
between men and women, but both groups considered security as the highest rated factor. The
next three factors were;



advancement
type of work
company - proud to work for
Surprisingly, factors such as pay, benefits and working conditions were given a low rating by
both groups. So after all, and contrary to common belief, money is not the prime motivator.
(Though this should not be regarded as a signal to reward employees poorly or unfairly.)
Frederick Herzberg - Hygiene / Motivation Theory
This is based on analysis of the interviews of 200 engineers and accountants in the Pittsburgh
area in the USA. According to this theory, people work first and foremost in their own selfenlightened interest, for they are truly happy and mentally healthy through work
accomplishment. Peoples needs are of two types:
Animal Needs (hygiene factors)




Supervision
Interpersonal relations
Working conditions
Salary
Human Needs (motivators)




Recognition
Work
Responsibility
Advancement
Unsatisfactory hygiene factors can act as de-motivators, but if satisfactory, their motivational
effect is limited. The psychology of motivation is quite complex and Herzberg has exploded
several myths about motivators such as:





shorter working week;
increasing wages;
fringe benefits;
sensitivity / human relations training;
communication.
As typical examples, saying 'please' to shop-floor workers does not motivate them to work
hard, and telling them about the performance of the company may even antagonize them
more. Herzberg regards these also as hygiene factors, which, if satisfactory, satisfy animal
needs but not human needs.
Chris Argyris
According to Argyris, organization needs to be redesigned for a fuller utilization of the most
precious resource, the workers, in particular their psychological energy. The pyramidal
structure will be relegated to the background, and decisions will be taken by small groups
rather than by a single boss. Satisfaction in work will be more valued than material rewards.
Work should be restructured in order to enable individuals to develop to the fullest extent. At
the same time work will become more meaningful and challenging through self-motivation.
Rensis Likert
Likert identified four different styles of management:




exploitative-authoritative;
benevolent-authoritative;
consultative;
participative.
The participative system was found to be the most effective in that it satisfies the whole range
of human needs. Major decisions are taken by groups themselves and this results in achieving
high targets and excellent productivity. There is complete trust within the group and the sense
of participation leads to a high degree of motivation.
Fred Luthans
Luthans advocates the so-called 'contingency approach' on the basis that certain practices
work better than others for certain people and certain jobs. As an example, rigid, clearly
defined jobs, authoritative leadership and tight controls lead in some cases to high
productivity and satisfaction among workers. In some other cases just the opposite seems to
work. It is necessary, therefore, to adapt the leadership style to the particular group of workers
and the specific job in hand.
Victor Vroom
Vroom's 'expectancy theory' is an extension of the 'contingency approach'. The leadership
style should be 'tailored' to the particular situation and to the particular group. In some cases it
appears best for the boss to decide and in others the group arrives at a consensus. An
individual should also be rewarded with what he or she perceives as important rather than
what the manager perceives. For example, one individual may value a salary increase,
whereas another may, instead, value promotion. This theory contributes an insight into the
study of employee motivation by explaining how individual goals influence individual
performance.
We have discussed above only a selection of the motivation theories and thoughts of the
various proponents of the human behavior school of management. Not included here are,
among others, the thoughts of:






Seebohm Rowntree - labor participation in management;
Elton Mayo - the Hawthorne Experiments;
Kurt Lewin - group dynamics; force field theory;
David McClelland - achievement motivation;
George Humans - the human group;
William Whyte - the organization man.
What does it all add up to? Back to 'square one'? Yes, indeed, the overall picture is certainly
confusing. This is not surprising, for the human nature and human mind defy a clear-cut
model, mathematical or otherwise.
In some of the theories and thoughts presented, however, one can see some 'glimpses' of the
person and how, perhaps, he or she could be motivated. This is rewarding in itself. But, as
noted earlier, practice has been ahead of theory in this field, so let us now move to the
practical side of management of human behavior and motivation in the workplace.
ASPECTS AND THEORIES OF
MANAGING
The following material on being a manager primarily takes the perspective of the manager in
a large bureaucracy. In these the manager has a number of direct “reports”, people who report
to the manager and usually for whom performance evaluations are done. The concepts apply
also to the manager of an organization in its early life cycle stages where the manager acts as
more of an entrepreneur.
How Do I See the World? This question deals with the person’s relationship to the
environment. Reflecting even more basic assumptions about the relationship of humanity to
nature, this question addresses whether people view the relationship as one of dominance,
submission, harmony, or finding an appropriate niche. For example, in Canada and the United
States the dominant culture has seen the natural environment as something to conquer and
exploit. This outlook is beginning to change, however, as exemplified by the Green
movement.
Cultural Dimensions
There are five cultural dimensions that help us understand how societal cultures differ from
one another.
1.
Power Distance
2.
Individualism/Collectivism
3.
Masculinity/Femininity
4.
Uncertainty Avoidance
5.
Long-term Versus Short-term Orientation
Power Distance. Power distance is the extent to which the less powerful members of society
accept that power is distributed unequally and accept the orders of those in power. The
People’s Republic of China (PRC) would be high in power distance, Canada and the United
States, low.
Individualism/Collectivism. In individualistic cultures people tend to look out for
themselves and their family, they prefer to act as individuals. In collectivistic cultures people
look out for each other; they prefer to act as members of groups. Canada is more
individualistic; the PRC and Japan are more collectivistic. However, Canada may be seen as
more collectivistic than the United States, as evidenced by Canada’s relatively greater
emphasis on commonly available medical care and the predominance of public institutions of
higher learning (rather than a mix of public and private).
Masculinity/Femininity. Masculine cultures value success, money and material possessions,
assertiveness, and competition. Feminine cultures value caring for others, warm personal
relationships, solidarity with others and quality of life. The United States and Canada are high
on masculinity, whereas Iceland is more feminine.
Uncertainty Avoidance. This is the extent to which people in the society want to avoid
situations where they are not certain what action is required. People in high uncertainty
avoidance cultures prefer structured over unstructured situations. Cultures high in uncertainty
avoidance tend to have strict laws and punishments and a feeling of “What is different is
dangerous.” Saudi Arabia and Singapore have high uncertainty avoidance, Canada and the
U.S. are moderate, and Denmark is low on this variable.
Long-term Versus Short-term Orientation. Cultures with a long-term orientation value
future-oriented behaviours such as persistence and saving money. Short-term orientation
cultures have values oriented more towards the past and the present such as respect for
tradition and the fulfilling of social obligations.
Organizations that have members from cultures that are very high or low on these dimensions
have specific advantages.
1.
Those from small power-distance cultures are likely to accept responsibility, while those
from large power-distance cultures are likely to be more disciplined.
2.
Those from high collectivism cultures tend to show employee commitment, while
members of high individualism cultures can be mobile, allowing the hiring of experts away
from other organizations.
3.
Those from cultures high in femininity are able to provide personal services and custommade products, while those in masculine cultures may excel in mass production and heavy
industry.
4.
Those in weak uncertainty-avoidance cultures are good at innovating, while those in
strong uncertainty-avoidance cultures are better at precision manufacturing.
5.
Those from long-term orientation cultures tend to excel at planning and activities where
returns are high but delayed, while those from short-term oriented cultures can succeed in
quickly changing environments.
Personality
Personality is a stable set of tendencies and characteristics that determine those commonalities
and differences in people’s psychological behaviour (thoughts, feelings, and actions) that have
continuity in time and that may not be easily understood as the sole result of the social and
biological pressures of the moment.
Gender
A foundation of an individual’s personality is gender. Gender is more than a person’s
biological sex. It is the sex role taught in a particular culture. One study found that 27 of 33
world cultures sampled attempted to get more nurturance out of girls than boys and none
attempted the reverse. Another finding was that 70 of 82 cultures gave boys more training in
self-reliance than girls and none attempted the reverse. A study of children in six cultures
(U.S.A., Mexico, Kenya, India, Japan, Philippines) found that boys were more aggressive
than girls within each culture. This is the genetic influence. However, they also found that the
girls of some cultures were more aggressive than the boys other cultures. This is the
cultural/environment influence. Gender differences in aggression have been found to be stable
over time and that men are more aggressive than women.
Parents treat boys and girls differently. In North America it has been found that both parents
encouraged sex-typed activities, though these differences decreased as the child grows up.
Boys in Western countries received more physical punishment than did girls. Significantly,
fathers treated boys and girls more differently than did mothers. Fathers were more involved
with sons and provided support with activities, whereas mothers supported both sons and
daughters emotionally.
Theory X/Theory Y
The Theory X/Theory Y approach of Douglas McGregor can serve to categorize how people
think about the basic motivations of others. Some managers take the point of view that others
value work for its own sake and do not have to be monitored closely. This is the humanistic
Theory Y view. Other managers might take the Theory X perspective that people basically
don’t want to work, and that employees have to be watched continually to make sure they
keep to their jobs.
Theory X/Y has been used as a tool to understand the attitudes and actions of managers. It can
also be used in organizational training to sensitize managers to their basic theory of
personality in the hopes of moving all managers to the more humanistic Theory Y outlook.
This approach, however, may be culturally constrained. Theory X/Y relies on the cultural
value of individualism, which may hold in North America but is less true for the peoples of
East Asia.
Trait Theory
This approach to understanding personality focuses on observable personality characteristics
or traits. After years of research, a model of personality as composed of five main factors has
emerged. The five broad personality traits are as follows.
1.
Extroversion/Introversion. Extroverts are oriented toward the outer world of other
people and activities. Introverts are oriented toward the inner world of their own thoughts and
feelings.
2.
Friendliness/Hostility. Friendly people are open to interaction with others and expect
positive results. Hostile people look for and expect confrontation.
3.
Conscientiousness. A conscientious person is responsible, performing actions that were
agreed to.
4.
Neuroticism/Emotional Stability. An emotionally stable person has a firm grasp on the
reality of situations. Such an individual reacts in a steady way, not riding a roller coaster of
emotions.
5.
Intellect. This factor is composed of inquiring intellect, openness to new feelings and
thoughts, cultural and creative interests. It has also been thought of as creativity.
Influences on Personality
Four main influences on an individual’s personality are genetic/biological, social, cultural,
and situational factors.
The study of genetic effects on personality is accomplished by assessing identical twins that
are brought up by different families. One such study found that identical twins reared apart
are about as similar as identical twins reared together on multiple measures of personality and
temperament, occupational and leisure-time interests, and social attitudes. Heredity therefore
has an effect on an individual’s personality.
Culture and social class affects personality via group membership and socialization
experiences. The family has an effect on a person’s personality, but members of one family
will often be dissimilar. Siblings will be unalike because of differences in genetic makeup and
birth order, the age of the child when an event occurs (for example, a death in the family or
divorce), the child’s gender, the child’s physical appearance (attractive children are often
favoured), and experiences that are unique to the individual.
Situational influences on personality include temporary body conditions such as fatigue and
ingested chemicals. Examples of chemicals consumed are the caffeine in coffee, nicotine in
cigarettes, mood altering drugs such as stimulants and depressants, and performance-altering
drugs such as steroids.
Personality Traits and Behaviour
Both personality traits and the situation interact to affect behaviour.
1.
In relevant situations traits can influence behaviour. In a threatening situation a person
who is anxious is liable to fidget, break into a cold sweat, or run from the scene.
2.
A person’s traits can change the situation. An individual who is aggressive can act in a
way that causes conflict with others. The aggressive employee in a performance review may
make statements to the manager that inflame the situation and cause the manager to react with
defensiveness or aggression.
3.
People with different traits will choose different situations. Those who are introverted,
for example, will often choose to be in a quiet place like a library instead of a noisy place like
a party.
4.
Traits can change with persistent exposure to a situation. Going to college and living in
the student environment has been found to change a person to be less conservative.
5.
Personality traits are more easily expressed in some situations than others. It is easier to
be yourself at a picnic than at a funeral. The picnic has fewer rules about how to behave than
does the funeral. Extroverts and introverts would act similarly at a funeral but would be
expected to act quite differently at a picnic.
Attitudes
Beliefs are what an individual accepts to be true without questioning. Beliefs that endure over
time are called values. Feelings are sentiments or the emotional component of beliefs. Beliefs
plus feelings make up an individual’s attitudes. For example, a belief accepted without
questioning can be that managers should make the decisions. This becomes over time a value,
that a good manager is one who makes the decisions that are required. A related feeling could
be that “this manager makes me uneasy because he keeps asking me what I would do”. The
resulting attitude might then be “I don’t like working for my manager”.
The primary purpose of attitudes is knowledge of how to act with respect to another person or
object. Attitudes are important in organizations because they affect behaviour. Three parts of
work attitudes are the affective – what the person feels about work; the cognitive – what the
person thinks about work; and the intentional – what actions the person is planning to do at
work.
Job satisfaction is affected by both the work environment and by the worker’s individual
characteristics. It has been estimated that the individual’s personality accounts for between
10% and 30% of his/her job satisfaction, that 40% to 60% of the variance in job satisfaction is
caused by situational factors, and that the interaction between personality and the situation
accounts for between 10% and 20%.
One situational factor that affects job satisfaction has been found to be wage inequality and
dispersion. The greater the dispersion of wages, in general, the lower is satisfaction with those
wages.
When an individual is faced with an inconsistency between two thoughts or between a
thought and an action, such dissonance would have to be resolved. A person might take any of
the following actions.
1.
Forget about the inconsistency or ignore it as unimportant. Dissonant acts are likely to
induce cognitive change only when they relate to the person’s self-concept.
2.
Seek information that makes actions and attitudes seem more consistent. This
information is useful to rationalize away the dissonance. A consumer who purchases a new
and expensive CD player might have conflicting thoughts about enjoying the player but
missing the money. Information about the quality and features of the CD player might then be
scrutinized to reduce the dissonance about the purchase.
3.
Distort or change the perception of the situation and actions taken. Memory will be
adjusted to reduce the inconsistency between thought and action.
4.
Separate actions and attitudes in the mind. By compartmentalizing them, inconsistencies
can be avoided.
5.
Change the attitude about the event. The worker might come to believe that the job is
more interesting than previously thought. In this case performing the behaviour has caused a
change in attitude.
6.
Leave the situation. This method of reducing cognitive dissonance is likely when
dissonance has built up over time and leaving is relatively easy. It may also be used when an
attitude-behaviour inconsistency is too large to reduce by the other methods.
Cognitive dissonance is useful in understanding what a person thinks about work and the
courses of action that a particular person might follow.
Because job dissatisfaction often leads to thoughts of quitting and the intention to quit, these
feelings about work have important organizational consequences.
Managerial Roles
The competing values model of organizational effectiveness has two underlying dimensions.
They are the degree of emphasis the organization places on flexibility or control and the
organization’s internal or external orientation. Managers in organizations using these four
different models of what it is to be effective will be asked to take on different roles.
Internal Process. There are two managerial roles within the internal process model. The
coordinator role is most like that of the classical manager. Competencies are planning,
organizing, and controlling. The manager is dependable, reliable, and maintains structure. In
the monitor role the manager is a technical expert and receives, evaluates, and reacts to
information about internal organizational processes.
Rational Goal Model. The director and producer roles of the rational goal model focus on the
manager’s attempts to maximize organizational output. These roles are especially important
when the manager is dealing with subordinates and is attempting to motivate their behaviour
toward the accomplishment of organizational goals. The director sets goals and delegates
tasks in the attempt to best organize and guide the work. The producer manager is more likely
to be actively involved in the organization’s work while attempting to motivate employees to
produce more output in less time.
Open Systems Model. Managers operating in organizations with an open systems model of
effectiveness are more used to change and are more oriented to external relations with the
people and organizations that accept the organization’s product. The broker builds a base of
power inside and outside the organization and engages in a great deal of discussion and
negotiation with others. The innovator is more oriented to being flexible, thinking creatively,
and managing the constant change that is required in this type of organization.
Human Relations Model. Managers in organizations subscribing to the human relations
model are oriented towards the development of their people, as individuals and in teams. In
the mentor role the manager attempts to help subordinates develop as individuals, to
understand themselves and others, and to learn to communicate well with others. More highly
developed employees will be capable of greater flexibility as the organization and its
environment change. The facilitator role is more group oriented, with the manager acting as a
team builder, helping to manage conflict within and between groups, and helping the group to
make decisions.
These eight managerial roles are a useful starting point for understanding what managers do.
A particular manager may concentrate activities in only one of the eight roles. But the other
roles will also compete for attention because effectiveness cannot be fully described by only
one orientation. Therefore, someone who expects to be a manager will need to be competent
in all these roles, but to different degrees and at different times in different organizations.
The Nature Of Managerial Work
What is it like to be a manager? There are six defining characteristics of managerial work.
1.
The manager performs a great quantity of work at an unrelenting pace. Work hours are
long and constant. After office hours, managers read material related to work.
2.
Managerial activity is characterized by variety, fragmentation, and brevity. Many
unscheduled meetings, telephone calls, and reactions to the day’s crises produced a day
broken into a large number of activities of short duration.
3.
Managers prefer issues that are current and. They prefer to deal with issues in real time
and on the spot. They like to take action at the time they are confronted with the problem.
4.
The manager sits between the organization and a network of contacts. An important
activity of managers is to communicate with a wide variety of people outside the organization.
Clients, suppliers, peers, outside experts and officials of other organizations have to be
communicated with because they supply information relevant to the operation of the
organization.
5.
The manager has a strong preference for the verbal media of using the telephone and
having meetings over using the mail. Building and maintaining a personal relationship with
others both inside and outside the organization is crucial, and requires personal contact.
6.
Despite the preponderance of obligations, managers are able to control their own affairs.
The manager has to react to requests and communications and must attend meetings, but can
choose over the longer term how to spend his or her time.
The nature of the managerial job differs by culture and country. In Canada and the United
States, the manager is considered more of an equal by those lower in the organizational
hierarchy. The manager is therefore not expected to have all the knowledge required to make
all decisions, or indeed even to make all work decisions. In Japan the manager is more of a
parental figure to the group, is seen as more knowledgeable and in control, and takes a
personal interest in both the work and personal lives of employees. In Italy the manager is
expected to have the answers to the questions subordinates have about their work.
Managing the Individual
Motivation
The motivation of individuals at work is one of the most important jobs of a manager. What
makes someone come to work and apply effort towards getting the task accomplished? What
makes someone decide not to come to work? People work to better the world, be part of a
team, and achieve technical excellence.
Managers need to understand the different forces that act on an individual. Then the question
of how to exert influence on those forces may be addressed. At that point the manager can
attempt to influence the behaviour of organizational members so that it is directed towards
accomplishing the organization’s tasks.
Motivation can be defined as the attention paid, effort exerted, and persistence of behaviour.
A number of theories of human motivation have been proposed over the years. Motivation is a
useful device to think about why people do what they do.
Need Theories of Motivation
Maslow’s Hierarchy
In what is probably the most widely described theory of human motivation, Abraham Maslow
proposed that humans have a built-in set of five basic needs, and that these needs form a
hierarchy. He described the five needs (from lowest to highest) as physiological – the most
basic human need for air, food, and water; safety – the need to be safe from physical and
psychological harm; social – the need to be accepted, loved, and to belong to a social system;
esteem – the need for recognition and prestige given by others; and self-actualization – the
need to become the best that one is capable of becoming and to be self-fulfilled.
In this theory each lower need in the hierarchy must be satisfied before the next higher level
need takes effect. To use this model of human needs, a manager attempting to build a group at
work would want the esteem needs of group members to be dominant. The manager would
therefore have to make sure that physiological and safety needs were met. This would be done
by paying a living wage and providing a safe and secure work environment.
Maslow also proposed that when a lower-level need was not fulfilled, it would again be
activated. An individual at work who is concerned with the recognition of others has his or
her esteem needs activated. If this job were lost the person would be expected to revert back
to the physiological need to obtain food and would then be unconcerned with esteem.
This hierarchy is a useful though very broad way of understanding the behaviour of people.
There are certainly exceptions to the fixed movement up and down the hierarchy of needs. An
example is the starving artist who fulfills the self-actualization need but not physiological
needs. Also, more than one category of need could affect an individual’s behaviour at a given
time. People at work could, for instance, be concerned with social and esteem needs at the
same time.
In addition, it is clear that Maslow’s hierarchy relies on the Anglo-American cultural
emphasis on the individual. Other cultures may have different hierarchies of needs. For
example, in the People’s Republic of China the group is of great importance to the individual.
Belonging is therefore the primary need. It cannot, therefore, be assumed that people from all
the cultures of the world share the same basic built-in needs. Need hierarchies can be
expected to vary by culture depending on each culture’s values. The manager of
organizational members from different cultural backgrounds has to remember that everyone
does not share the same way of looking at and understanding a situation. Their needs may be
different even in the exact same work conditions.
McClelland’s Theory of Needs
A second theory of needs is by David McClelland. In this theory, individuals are thought to
vary in their drive to gratify six basic human needs. These are the needs for achievement,
power, affiliation, independence, esteem, and security. The need for achievement has been
extensively studied. The theory is that people will accomplish the most when they have a high
need for achievement. They will select goals that are medium in difficulty – goals that are
challenging but not impossible. Those low in need for achievement will select goals that are
either low in difficulty and therefore easy to accomplish or very high in difficulty. Failure to
achieve such extremely high goals would therefore be expected.
An interesting finding of McClelland’s work is that need for achievement varies among
nations. On a practical level, McClelland has proposed that the populace of entire nations
could be trained to be higher on need for achievement. Then, over time, these needs would
manifest themselves as people chose more difficult goals and worked to achieve them. The
economy of a whole region could be positively influenced in this way.
Process Theories of Motivation
Equity Theory
One way that people at work examine their situation is by comparing what they put into and
get out of the job to the inputs and outcomes of another. Inputs could be hours worked,
education, experience, etc. Outcomes could be money, status, job level, etc. This comparison
is shown in the form of a ratio.
Note that outcomes to inputs for the self is NOT set as equal to outcomes to inputs of the
other. Equity theory is activated when there is a difference in the two ratios.
Outcomesself/Inputsself :Outcomesother/Inputsother
If the ratio of self-inputs to outcomes is similar to the ratio of the comparison other’s inputs to
outcomes, equity (or harmony) is not disturbed. However, when inequity is perceived to exist
the individual perceiving the inequity is motivated to restore balance. Note that this is an
individual’s perception of inequality. Others could well see the same situation as being
equitable.
People can restore equity in many ways. If the self outcomes-to-inputs ratio is less than that of
the comparison other, the person could seek more outcomes (typically more pay); reduce
inputs into the job (work less hard, take longer breaks); attempt to reduce the other’s
outcomes (“If you can’t pay us the same, then pay my co-worker less”); decide that the other
really has more inputs that balance the equation (“She really works harder than I do”); decide
that the comparison is being made with the wrong person (change the comparison other in the
equity equation); or quit the job.
Employees often feel a strong need for equity. Managers seek to create a social situation
where inequity is not felt, at least by those employees the manager wishes to keep on the job.
What is important is the feeling of equity and not the absolute value of inputs or outcomes.
Even professional baseball players earning millions of dollars a year can genuinely feel
mistreated when comparisons with their peers show their situation to be inequitable.
Salaries and benefits in North America are often kept secret in order that the information
necessary to determine equity is not available to the individual. This pay secrecy is often not
possible, however, for government or union jobs where pay rates are known. In Japan and
Korea pay increases are not usually widely different for different members of a work group.
Keeping everyone at the same level earning about the same pay means that equity and
harmony are maintained. Slow promotion in these Far East cultures allows the truly superior
performers to be recognized over the long term. By then all members of the group have come
to the same conclusion that the inputs of these superior performers are indeed greater than the
inputs of others.
If the ratio of outcomes to inputs for the self turns out to be greater than that for the other,
working harder or changing the perceived level of self-inputs can resolve this overpayment
inequity. In an individualistic work culture, it does not usually take long for someone in
overpayment inequity to decide that the level of self-inputs is actually higher than previously
thought and for internal balance to be restored
Expectancy Theory
This motivation theory is one of cognitive choice. It proposes that each individual at work
examines his or her own personal work situation and makes a decision about how much effort
to exert in the pursuit of work success. The formula for this calculation is
Effort = E å I * V
In this formula, effort is the motivation of the worker to exert effort on the job. E is the
worker’s expectancy that effort will result in job performance. Expectancies are probabilities,
ranging from 0 to 1, that effort will result in performance.
The å (capital sigma: the summation sign) indicates that effort is affected by a range of
possible work and non-work outcomes that might result from job performance. The decision
of how much effort to exert on a task depends on the consideration of several outcomes. It is
very important to recognize that it is the individual who decides what outcomes are related to
job performance and what valences and instrumentalities to assign to each of the outcomes.
Finally, examining the expectancy theory equation, it is clear that if expectancy is low, then
no matter what outcomes are considered and how high their valences, effort is predicted to be
low.
The instrumentality of job performance to a work or non-work outcome is I. Instrumentalities
can range from -1 to +1. They indicate the perceived connection in the mind of the individual
worker that performance will lead to a given outcome. An instrumentality of +1 would mean
that performance is certain to lead to the outcome. For example, a real estate agent selling a
house is certain to receive a commission. The instrumentality between these two events is
therefore +1. An instrumentality of -1 means that performance ensures another outcome is
certain not to occur. For example, when a contractor completes a building on time, a late
penalty will not be invoked. The instrumentality between on-time building completion and
late penalty is -1. Instrumentalities equal to or near zero mean that no connection is perceived
between job performance and outcomes. They in effect become zero in the expectancy
equation and do not affect the decision about work effort.
V is the valence or anticipated satisfaction of an outcome. Valences can be positive or
negative, small or large, and are attached to each outcome considered by the individual. When
expectancy theory is represented in equation form, valences are often defined to vary between
-10 and +10. This choice of units is arbitrary. Large anticipated satisfactions (high positive
valences) and large anticipated dissatisfactions (high negative valences) when multiplied by
associated instrumentalities and performance expectancy will have a large effect on the
motivation to exert effort on the job.
To use expectancy theory in an attempt to increase each individual worker’s motivation to
exert effort, a manager can focus on each of the theory’s components.
1.
The manager can aim to increase the worker’s expectancy that effort will result in
performance. Success on the job will increase E as will job-related training and the provision
of the tools needed to do the job. The individual at work needs to see that performance is
possible. Also, performance must be accurately perceived and measured for the individual
worker to maintain a high Effort àPerformance expectancy.
2.
The manager can find out what outcomes people consider important, whether they are
positively or negatively valued, and how they are affected by work performance. Perhaps
these outcomes and values can be re-evaluated based on the manager’s knowledge of the
experiences of other employees. For example, the chances of a promotion may be higher than
an employee thinks and the benefits of the promotion may be higher than anticipated by the
employee. Also, the manager may know of other outcomes resulting from work performance
that would be valued by the employee. Managers usually have at their disposal a variety of
rewards that go beyond those anticipated by the employee. These can be made available as
outcomes that will follow work performance.
3.
Finally, the manager can attempt to increase the valence of outcomes that are closely
tied to job performance and to increase the instrumentality of outcomes that have high valence
for the individual. Perhaps an employee can be convinced that the rewards available from
work have more value than previously thought.
Goal Setting
The theory of goal setting is fairly simple, although based on thousands of studies. The
following four “rules” of goal setting can be used to self-set goals or to help others with their
goals. As a manager of others it is important to make sure the person’s work goals follow
these rules and that feedback is given to the worker.
1.
Difficult goals will produce higher performance than easy goals.
2.
Specific difficult goals will produce higher performance than will no goals or “I’ll do
my best” kinds of goals.
3.
Goal setting with feedback on goal attainment will produce higher performance than
goal setting alone.
4.
Employee participation in goal setting will help to produce higher performance than no
participation when goals that are set participatively are higher than assigned goals.
Some organizations have instituted formal goal-setting procedures for use organization-wide.
These plans, called Management By Objectives (MBO), can be effective if the goals set are
specific and difficult, are accepted by organizational members, and feedback is provided
about goal accomplishment.
Individuals can use goal-setting principles to manage themselves. The interested reader might
like to try setting a specific and difficult goal and then charting progress toward it. The key is
to select a goal that is not too far in the future and to be very specific about exactly what the
goal is.
Reinforcement Theories
Classical Conditioning
The Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov demonstrated that the sound of a bell could make a dog
salivate. First, Pavlov rang the bell while food powder was placed in the mouth of the dog.
Then, after a series of these pairings of food and the bell, the dog learned to salivate (which,
of course, is the dog’s natural response to food) at the sound of the bell whether or not food
was actually present.
There are also occasions when classical conditioning is found in the workplace. The lunch
bell or factory whistle at quitting time can produce the conditioned responses of
salivating/eating or leaving the factory. The sound of a warning horn on a forklift truck, if
paired with the adrenaline released into the body to help avoid danger, can later produce the
adrenaline push even when danger is not present. If the air quality in an office building is poor
and gives people headaches, the act of going to the office can trigger the headache even
before the poor air quality has had an actual physical effect.
Operant Conditioning
The shaping of behaviour requires that target end behaviour is known and that the person
being shaped can exhibit successive approximations to that end behaviour. For example, a
salesperson may be taught how to deal with customers by working with a trainer. This
instructor has a predetermined image of the desired sales behaviour in mind. The trainer
rewards the trainee when a customer is served in a way that is closer to the ideal than was the
service to the previous customer. For shaping to be successful, the person being shaped must
be able to generate the target behaviour and must value the reward being offered to learn the
new behaviour.
In reinforcement theory, behaviour (the operant) by the subject is followed by a reward or a
punishment in order to make the behaviour more likely or less likely. The general and most
important principle of reinforcement theory is that people will do what they are rewarded for
doing and will avoid doing what they are punished for doing. Rewarded behaviour is more
likely to occur in the future.
A simple example is why a person goes to work. What is the reward for attendance? One
answer is usually the money paid for attendance. But some jobs are not paid positions. These
include volunteer work in a hospital or serving on the board of directors of a charity. Whether
a position is paid or unpaid, it may provide rewards such as membership in a work group,
doing interesting work, or providing learning and experience that will be valuable in a future
job. Without a reward for being a member of an organization or group, people simply stop
attending.
Each individual person decides on what is rewarding or punishing.
A great deal of research has been done by psychologists on how best to reinforce behaviour,
in terms of the amount and timing of rewards. A strong finding is that rewards and
punishments have their greatest effect when they closely follow behaviour. When the
separation between behaviour and outcomes is too long, the connection between behaviour
and stimulus can be lost.
Other work has shown that different schedules of reinforcement affect how quickly a
behaviour is learned and how long it takes before it disappears when it is no longer rewarded
(called extinction). Four reinforcement schedules are fixed interval, fixed ratio, variable
interval, and variable ratio.
An example of fixed interval is being paid once a month on the last day of the month. A fixed
interval schedule of reinforcement will reward a person for being present on the day the
reward is due.
An example of a fixed ratio reinforcement plan is being paid 50 cents for every unit produced.
The ratio in this case is fixed at 1:1. If a $10 bonus were paid to an employee for every tenth
customer who applies for a company credit card, the ratio would be fixed at 1:10. It would be
paid immediately after the tenth order. A fixed ratio schedule will motivate a person to work
hard when the reward is near (“Only three more orders to go!”) but not when the reward has
just been obtained.
A variable ratio schedule would allocate a reward on an average of once for every x times that
the behaviour being rewarded were to occur. For example, a salesperson could be paid a $10
bonus for every 25 customers contacted, but the bonus could be paid at any time, not just after
the 25th customer. It might be paid after the 10th and 40th customers. The average, however,
would be that for every 25 customers the bonus would be paid once. A good example of the
variable ratio reward schedule is that of a slot machine, which is programmed to pay jackpots
on a determined frequency but could pay a jackpot twice in succession. Think how effective
slot machines would be if they operated on a fixed ratio schedule!
A company could be concerned about employees being at work by 8 a.m. It could pay a $20
bonus to every employee at work by 8 a.m. on a given day. If this bonus were awarded on
average once in every five days it would be a variable interval reinforcement schedule. The
employees would, on average, receive the $20 bonus once for every five days they are at work
on time. But the $20 is paid on a variable schedule so that any employee might receive the
bonus the 7th and 10th time.
Variable interval and variable ratio reinforcement schedules make the behaviour more
constant because the person does not know which behaviour will be the one to be rewarded.
Organizations often provide reinforcements using what is called a token reinforcement plan.
In this plan a token (it could be a poker chip, a point, or any other symbolic item) is given
after the desired behaviour. Tokens are accumulated and then turned in for a product or
service that has value to the person being rewarded. For example, mental health organizations
often put patients on a token plan to control their behaviour. Patients then buy food,
magazines, etc. with the tokens. Airlines use these principles with their frequent flier plans.
Here the tokens are points, which may be turned in later for air travel. However, like all token
reinforcement plans, when stopped the behaviour being rewarded will likely stop as well. This
is one dilemma faced by airlines over their frequent flier plans – once started they are hard to
stop.
When behaviour causes a negative stimulus to be removed, that stimulus is a negative
reinforcer. People at work can be motivated to act in a way that gets rid of an already existing
unpleasant condition.
Sometimes behaviour by an organizational member is not desired, but not rewarding it will
not lead to its extinction. In this case there is some other reward that is reinforcing the
undesired behaviour. Therefore, to stop the behaviour a punishment is applied. A punishment
is an outcome that is negatively valued by the person. For example, factory time clocks are
often programmed to print the time of worker arrival on the time card. When the employee is
late, the time is printed in red ink and the employee is docked 1/4 hour of pay (for example)
as a punishment. The red ink is the signal of the punishment. Punishment can be a good way
to stop the occurrence of an unwanted behaviour, but has some undesirable side effects. For
this reason punishment should only be used when the behaviour is one that must be
immediately stopped.
One side effect of punishment is that the person being punished can associate the negative
consequence with the punisher and may later react against the punisher, someone else, or the
company. This side effect is not to be taken lightly. Persons at work who learn to dislike
someone who punishes them may take their anger out on the supervisor, co-workers,
themselves, or even innocent bystanders.
Another punishment side effect is that the undesirable behaviour will tend to re-occur when
the punisher is absent or the person punished feels there is little chance of being caught. To
punish effectively, the manager must punish immediately after the undesired behaviour. The
desired behaviour must be made clear so that the employee knows what to do, not just what
not to do. Finally, it is the action that should be punished and not the person.
Modelling
People learn what to do, what works and what doesn’t work by watching others. This is called
modelling. It is a very important form of learning because mistakes do not have to be made
before they are corrected and effective behaviours do not have to be learned bit by bit over
time. People can learn effective behaviours all at once in great leaps by watching what others
do. They can see the whole behaviour all at once. When they learn vicariously by watching
others they do not receive the rewards or the punishments that the other may obtain.
The most crucial element in social learning is the role model. Managers can model effective
behaviour themselves. For instance, the manager of a life insurance agency could take a new
recruit on a series of sales calls to show how the selling is done. A police force could create
two-person teams of a junior and a senior officer so that the junior can learn by watching the
other. The rookie officer learns by doing and by watching. However, if the role model is
showing what the manager would consider to be the wrong way to act, social learning will not
be effective.
Reward Systems
Managers must understand the importance of rewards in the workplace, the many different
types of rewards, and how rewards are made.
There is a wide variety of possible work rewards. These include pay, promotion, the chance to
do interesting work, time off, learning opportunities, travel to conferences, etc.
Managers need to:
1.
Determine what is currently being rewarded
2.
Decide what work performance should be rewarded
3.
Develop a wide variety of rewards that can be awarded at the manager’s discretion – the
manager controls the reward
4.
Reward desired behaviour within the context of the social situation at work.
Managers in organizations will often create a reward system, especially for the allocation of
pay and benefits. These systems are a set of rules regarding how rewards are earned and paid.
An important point to remember when considering any system is that if one person can create
it, another can figure out how to beat it. Managers have to avoid being caught up in a cycle of
adding more rules to the system only to have someone else find the loophole to beat the
system, which necessitates the addition of still more rules and so on.
Some newer approaches to reward systems are cafeteria-style fringe benefits, all-salaried
teams, skill-based pay, and profit sharing.
The cafeteria-style fringe benefits approach gives employees a budget and allows them to
select the benefits they most want from a menu of possibilities. A young single person might
select extra vacation days, a parent of young children a dental plan, and an older worker
higher contributions to the company pension plan. While such choice of benefits might not
motivate job effort or performance, it could make the individual worker more satisfied, less
stressed, and therefore be more likely to attend work and stay in the job.
On all-salaried teams everyone is paid a salary instead of some members being on salary and
some paid on an hourly basis. The advantage here is that a greater sense of cohesion is created
along with the willingness to share tasks.
Employees on a skill-based pay plan are paid a base hourly rate and an additional amount per
hour for each job skill they have mastered, whether the skill is currently used or not. This plan
promotes flexibility, job rotation, and the constant upgrading of skills.
Finally, there are many different types of profit sharing plans that exist for allocating a portion
of company profits to its members. The purpose of these plans is to enhance the employee’s
identification with the company’s overall objective by providing the employee a stake in the
profits.
Job Design
Organizations divide their work to be done into tasks, and then combine tasks together into
jobs that can each be held by an individual. The way jobs are designed affects the individual
jobholder’s internal state and external behaviours of how he or she feels and acts. Managers in
organizations are therefore interested in job design as a means of increasing worker
satisfaction, motivation, and performance.
There are four main approaches to the design of jobs. The engineering approach is based on
work in industrial engineering and scientific management. Its aim is to simplify jobs so that it
becomes easy to find and train workers that can do those jobs. The efficiency of the work is
the goal of the engineering approach to job design. The person-machine fit approach is based
on how people process information and how their basic biology and physiology affect
perception and physical movement. Its aim is to improve the fit between person and task so
that the reliability of performance is enhanced and the person doing the job experiences less
fatigue and stress. The biological approach to job design deals with how people react to the
physical conditions experienced in the workplace. Its aim is to reduce the physical stress and
strain on the worker so that employee comfort is increased. The psychological approach to job
design examines how people think about their jobs, the meaning of the job, and why the job is
important. Its aims are to improve the worker’s job satisfaction, motivation to do the job,
involvement in the job, and job performance.
Each of these four approaches to job design focuses on a different outcome of work. Each has
its own costs and benefits. The manager in an organization could not attempt to use all four
approaches at the same time because their recommendations can conflict. For example, jobs
can be simplified and made easy for a worker to accomplish adequate and reliable
performance, but then these jobs are not likely to offer the depth and challenge that some
workers require.
Engineering
Scientific management, work simplification, and time and motion study are the sources of this
approach. The engineering method concentrates on the job itself, and not on the person doing
the job. It attempts to make the job easier to perform in order to obtain greater efficiency and
reliability, make it easier to find and train people to perform the job. Job content is reduced.
Any physical and psychological effects on the people doing the job are of secondary
importance. Workers are seen mechanistically, as interchangeable parts needed to do the
work.
Person-Machine Fit
This is the study of persons in their working environment and is concerned with the fit
between the person and the machine. Here the person is considered in the performance of the
work, but mostly in the sense of reducing errors that humans are likely to make. The attention
and concentration requirements of jobs are designed so that the job does not demand too much
of the worker’s physical and mental capabilities.
Common approaches are the design of parts that can be inserted only one way, machines that
can be operated only in the most efficient manner, and dials that can be easily read. When a
job is designed well in this way, the reliability of job performance should be enhanced. The
worker should make fewer mistakes and have fewer job-related accidents. Also, the individual
worker should experience less fatigue, stress, mental overload, and boredom on the job.
One important new area of equipment design is that of computer monitors and keyboards.
With many employees now sitting in front of video display terminals (VDTs) for long periods
of time, any radiation they emit is a health concern. Typing faster and faster on computer
keyboards while having few rest breaks is causing repetitive stress disorders such as carpal
tunnel syndrome and arm and wrist tendonitis. Several low-stress, flexible keyboards have
been designed that require far less finger muscle energy than conventional keyboards and can
be split and rotated so that the user’s hands are not in stressful positions.
Biological
This approach focuses on the physical comfort and well being of the person doing the job and
on the physical characteristics of the workplace. Job conditions concern where and how the
work is done and in what physical environment. Biological job design is concerned with
privacy, lighting, air quality, noise, and space.
Privacy. This characteristic concerns visual and speech privacy as well as the physical
accessibility of the office. Open-plan or landscaped offices are less private than traditional
enclosed offices. Their walls are usually room dividers that can be moved as necessary.
Offices are areas of the floor enclosed by dividers and usually do not have a door. The person
working in an open office can typically be easily seen and heard, and is readily accessible.
Open-plan workspaces may also be made up of workstations or carrels.
Lighting. Most people prefer natural light to artificial light. Natural light contains the full
spectrum of colours, and is perceived as warmer and brighter than artificial lighting.
Fluorescent lighting can flicker, hum, and cause headaches. Incandescent lights produce a
more yellow light than most fluorescents. They are useful for desks because the individual can
flexibly direct the light. This is an advantage because people at work like to be able to control
the amount of light in their workspace.
Artificial lights can also be concentrated in an array to make a bright panel that mimics the
intensity of natural outdoor light. Such a panel can be useful in controlling a form of
depression, called seasonal affective disorder, caused in some individuals by a lack of light.
Artificial light can also be used to help people working at night in offices or factories to
control their body clocks. The body can be fooled into switching night for day, which helps
the person to work more effectively at night.
Air Quality. Because many office towers are sealed, fresh air is supplied only through the
heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) system. Air temperatures are often not
controllable in individual offices, so that some employees feel too hot and others too cool to
work effectively.
The increasing numbers of computers, laser printers, photocopiers, and fax machines in an
office release more chemicals into the air and therefore a greater supply of fresh air is
required. When airflow is restricted, contaminants can build up in the air causing allergic
reactions among employees.
The sick building syndrome is when more than 20 percent of the people working in the
building complain of headaches, dizzy spells, sore throats, itchy eyes, nausea, skin irritations
or coughs, and when workers get better 12 to 24 hours after leaving the building.
To reduce the effects of poor office air quality the following prescriptions apply.
1.
The heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning system needs to be examined and cleaned,
especially to eliminate molds growing in the ventilation system. Molds and mildews on walls
and other surfaces must be cleaned.
2.
More fresh air needs to be drawn into the building. Fresh air intakes must be located
away from exhausted air and outdoor pollutants. Tobacco smoke needs to be reduced or
eliminated inside the building.
3.
Since paint, glue, and new cloth used in office screens and carpets all give off noxious
gases, these need to be cooked off when installed by heating the building to high levels and
venting the gases to the outside.
4.
The use of insecticides and volatile cleaners inside the building must be reduced.
Noise. Noise is increasing in offices along with higher numbers of office machines and
densities of people working in the office. Installing ceiling, wall, and floor coverings can
reduce noise. Another solution is to build walls and partitions that will shield workers from
ambient noise. An example of a white noise generator is a machine that projects sounds of
waves or rain. With such a generator operating in the office the conversations of others will be
heard but the words spoken will be harder to make out. Such conversations will therefore be
less distracting.
A more active and high-tech approach is active noise control. Here a microphone is placed
near the source of a repetitive noise, the sounds picked up are digitally analyzed and a speaker
generates an anti-noise. This anti-noise is made to be out of phase with the original noise so
that the two cancel each other out. Noise here is not masked or baffled, but eliminated. For
high-noise workplaces where hearing damage is a possibility, special anti-noise headphones
can be worn.
Space. The comfort, efficiency, and health of employees are key factors that are influenced by
the design of the worker’s physical space and equipment used. Uncomfortable furniture,
inappropriately sized work surfaces, sharp-cornered desks, and bookcases with the top shelves
out of reach are all symptoms of a poor physical support system. People differ widely in their
physical characteristics and equipment designed for the average person suits very few. The
trend towards a more diverse work force also increases the need for the careful design of
office furnishings and work equipment.
Psychological
In this approach to job design, the mental state of the worker is considered of primary
importance in the performance of the task.
Job Enlargement. This refers to the addition of tasks to a job. When tasks are given that add
variety to the work and help to break up the day, enlargement is a useful approach. However,
if the tasks added are seen by jobholders as more of the same, the enlarged job will not likely
increase the worker’s motivation to perform the work. An important aspect of job refers to the
number of people with whom the jobholder interacts, who these people are (clients, suppliers,
customers, etc.) and how long these interactions typically last. A worker who is in constant
contact with the general public and has a job high in number of relationships that last a short
time has an enlarged job that is likely to cause stress.
Job Enrichment. This approach builds motivational factors into a job, making the job more
complex and challenging. Enriched jobs are expected to increase the jobholder’s motivation to
perform, especially if the worker is seeking more of a challenge. Enriched jobs may have
increased authority, supervision, management, and decision-making responsibilities. The
more these elements exist in a job the higher is its vertical loading.
When a job is enriched to make it complex and enlarged, the job scope is high.
Job Rotation. Job rotation allows the movement of people between jobs. This can help to
reduce the boredom associated with performing any one job for a long period of time. In a
factory with a number of assembly jobs, personnel can be moved between the jobs on a fixed
rotation or on an as-requested basis. Rotation could occur at the end of a relatively long period
of time performing one job, a month for example, or could occur on a daily basis. Job rotation
is not limited to factory or service jobs. Professionals can be seconded from their home
organization to help another organization for a fixed amount of time. An executive might, for
instance, be given four months away from the home organization to work with the United
Way on its yearly campaign.
One benefit of job rotation is that it has a group cooperative emphasis. Personnel rotated
through jobs build personal relationships with others while learning what the others do in their
work. A bank management trainee could expect to rotate through a number of different
functional areas in bank branches and through branches of different sizes and serving different
clienteles before being assigned to head office.
The Job Characteristics Model. This model shows how the characteristics of a job are likely to
affect the performance of the jobholder. Jobs can be analyzed for motivating potential and
redesigned to be more motivating for jobholders.
Five core job dimensions are:
1.
Skill Variety – the number of skills necessary to do the job
2.
Task Identity – the degree to which the job is done start to finish by one worker
3.
Task Significance – the importance of the job to other people’s lives
4.
Autonomy – the freedom to do the job in the way the job holder wants
5.
Feedback – information about job performance comes from the job itself or from coworkers.
The Job Characteristics Model argues that these five core dimensions of a job affect the
psychological state of the individual worker. Psychological state in turn affects personal and
work outcomes. The outcomes considered in the model are internal work motivation, quality
of work performance, satisfaction with the work, and absenteeism and turnover. The basic
prediction of the model is that jobs that are higher on the five core job dimensions will create
positive psychological states that will then result in beneficial personal and work outcomes.
Specifically, the more skills that are required to do the job, the more the whole job is
performed by the same worker, and the more the performance of the job makes a difference to
other people’s lives, the more it is likely to be experienced as meaningful.
Autonomy is expected in the job characteristics model to lead to the psychological state of
experienced responsibility for outcomes of the work. The person at work who is free to make
choices regarding what to do and how to do it is also likely to feel responsible for the
decisions made. The emergency room physician decides how to treat patients and bears the
responsibility for what happens to them.
Feedback on the job performed will lead to knowledge of the actual results of the work
activities. Sometimes doctors prescribe medication to a patient and never find out what
difference the medicine made or even if the patient actually took it. In the emergency room,
medication is likely to be prescribed and administered; then the patient’s status is monitored.
Feedback from blood samples, blood pressure readings, etc., as well as the patient’s own
reports all provide knowledge of the results of actions taken by the emergency room
physician.
The Job Characteristics Model proposes that an aspect of the employee’s personality called
growth need strength affects the relationship between core job dimensions and work
outcomes. GNS is a person’s basic desire to better him or herself. An employee might have a
low growth need strength and not desire a motivating job. That employee would be quite
content to work in a job low on the five core job dimensions and to experience low
meaningfulness, low responsibility, and low knowledge of work results. A worker with high
GNS would find such a job non-motivating. Work outcomes are therefore not likely to be
high.
There are two other variables thought to affect the relationship between job characteristics and
performance. First, if an individual does not have the knowledge and skills required to do a
job then even a job high on the core dimensions is not likely to result in better work outcomes.
The job can be challenging, but a person who feels unable to effectively perform the job will
not feel challenged. The second factor is context satisfactions. If the context of work is
disagreeable then the individual worker will probably not be motivated by the job’s
characteristics. Motivating potential score (MPS) is defined as:
(Skill Variety + Task Identity + Task Significance)/3 * Autonomy * Feedback
Using seven-point scales where 1 is low and 7 is high; the maximum MPS is 73 or 343. The
average MPS for a variety of jobs has been determined to be 128.
If a job is determined to be low on MPS, an examination of the levels of the five factors may
identify one that is relatively low and therefore a candidate for change. It is important to
remember that MPS is a measure of the characteristics of the job itself, not of how any
particular person might perceive the dimensions of his or her job. Job redesign, then, is a
general concept. A more specific concept of motivation would be altering a job to better fit a
particular person, or modifying a person’s perceptions of a job so that it is seen as more
motivating.
Combining tasks to be performed is a way to increase both skill variety and task identity.
Building a bigger job out of smaller ones will require more skills and that the worker
performs a larger piece of the total work. Work units can be formed that follow natural work
clusters, thereby increasing task identity and task significance. This is because the formation
of natural work units allows the individual to see the whole job being done and the difference
it makes. Building up relationships with clients helps to increase skill variety, autonomy, and
feedback.
Vertical loading can also enrich a job so that the jobholder has more autonomy and
responsibility for work outcomes. A sales clerk at Mark’s Work Wearhouse, for instance,
could be given responsibility for ordering clothing for several product categories and tracking
sales and customer response to the product.
Opening feedback channels can increase the amount of feedback generated by a job. Clients
can be asked to report on their experiences. Comment cards are often used for this purpose.
Feedback can come from supervisors or from devices used to perform the work. For instance,
supermarket checkout scanners can be programmed to report on the number of items scanned
in a given period.
After the job has been designed, a job description is created, which is a summary of the tasks
and role behaviours for the particular job.