组织行为学：感知的意义

组织行为学：感知的意义

Implications for managers

Individuals behave in a given manner based not on the way their external environment actually is but, rather, on what they see or believe it to be.

An organization may spend millions of dollars to create a pleasant work environment for its employees. However, in spite of these expenditures, if an employee believes his job is lousy, that employee will behave accordingly.

It is the employee’s perception of a situation职员对某种形势的感知that becomes the basis on which he behaves.

The employee who perceives his supervisor as a hurdle reducer and an aid to help him do a better job and the employee who sees the same supervisor as “big brother, closely monitoring every motion, to ensure that I keep working” will differ in their behavioral responses to their supervisor.

The difference has nothing to do with the reality of the supervisor’s actions; the difference in employee behavior is due to different perceptions.

The evidence suggests that what individuals perceive form their work situation will influence their productivity more than will the situation itself.

Whether a job is actually interesting or challenging is irrelevant. What a manager successfully plans and organizes the work of his subordinates and actually helps them structure their work more effectively and efficiently is far less important than how subordinates perceive his efforts.

Similarly, issues like fair pay for work performed, the validity of performance appraisals, and the adequacy of working conditions are not judged by employees in a way that assures common perceptions, nor can we be assured that individuals will interpret conditions about their jobs in a favorable light. Therefore, to be able to influence productivity, it is necessary to assess how workers perceive their jobs. Absenteeism, turnover, and job satisfaction are reactions to the individual’s perceptions. Dissatisfaction with working conditions or the belief that there is lack of

promotion opportunities in the organization are judgments based on attempts to make some meaning out of one’s job. The employee’s conclusion that a job is good or bad is an interpretation.

Managers must spend time understanding how each individual interprets reality and, where there is a significant difference between what is seen and what exists, try to eliminate the distortions. Failure to deal with the differences when individuals perceive the job in negative terms will result in increased absenteeism and turnover and lower job satisfaction. 【distortion[??????????]扭曲,曲解__ turnover [ ??????◆??]人员更新】

个体决策Individual decision making

Individuals in organizations make decisions. That is, they make choices from among two or more alternatives. Top managers, for instance, determine their organization’s goals, what products to offer. Individuals should behave in order to maximize some outcome. We call this the optimizing model of decision making.

OPTIMIZING DECISION-MAKING MODEL

Individual think and reason before they act. It is because of this that an understanding of how people make decisions can be helpful for explaining and predicting their behavior. The below outlines the six steps an individual should follow, either explicitly or implicitly, when making a decision.

(1)Ascertain the need for a decision

(2)Identify the decision criteria

(3)Allocate weights to the criteria

(4)Develop the alternatives

(5)Evaluate the alternatives

(6)Select the best alternative

CURRENT ISSUES IN DECISION MAKING

We conclude here by reviewing 3 current issues in decision making: improving ethical decision-making, how decision making styles vary in different countries, and the tendency for people to continue to commit resources to a previous decision in spite of

evidence that the original decision was a mistake.

IMPROVING ETHICAL DECISION MAKING

No contemporary discussion of decision making would be complete without inclusion of ethics, because ethical considerations should be an important criterion in organizational decision making.

Employment interviews are complex decision activities. The interviewer finds himself inundated[ ????????]淹没with information. Research indicates that interviewers respond by simplifying the process. Most interviewers’ decisions change very little after the first four or five minutes of the interview. In a half-hour interview, the decision maker tends to make a decision about the suitability [ ?????????●???]合适of the candidate in the first few minutes and then uses the rest of the interview time to select information that supports the early decision. In so doing, interviewers reduce the probability of identifying the highest performing candidate. They bias their decision toward individuals who make favorable first impressions.

What can we say regarding ethics? For individuals already employed, manager can influence only the employee’s work environment. So managers should overtly seek to convey high ethical standards to employees through the actions the managers take. By what managers say, do, reward, punish, and overlook, they set the ethical tone for their employees. When hiring new employees, managers have an opportunity to weed out ethically undesirable applicants; the selection process—for instance, interviews, tests, and background checks—should be viewed as an opportunity to learn about an individual’s level of moral development and locus of control. This then can be used to identify individuals whose ethical standards might be in conflict with those of the organization or who are particularly vulnerable[ ??●????????●]易受攻击的to negative external influences.