Personality
Personality is a concept that we use continuously in our
day-to-day routine, when dealing with people. We talk about people as having a good
personality or a bad personality or arrogant and aggressive personality.
Personality can be reflected in a person’s temperament and is a key factor
influencing individual behaviour in organizations. Often the wrong type of
personality of a superior proves disastrous in terms of worker unrest and
protests.
Salvatore
Maddi has defined personality as:
“Personality
is a stable set of characteristics and tendencies that determine those
commonalities and differences in the psychological behaviour (thoughts,
feelings and actions) of people 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.”
There
are several aspects of this definition that need to be considered. The first aspect is - relative stability of
characteristics. These characteristics account for “consistent patterns” of
behaviour.
The
second aspect is the “commonalities and differences” in the behaviour of
people. We are interested in
understanding as to what an individual has in common with others as well as
what sets that individual apart from others.
Every person is in certain aspects,
·
Like
all other people
·
Like
some other people
·
Like
no other person
Personality Types
There
are two types of individual personality Type A and Type B. A person exhibiting
Type A behaviour is generally restless, impatient with a desire for quick
achievement and perfectionism. Type B is
much more easy going relaxed about time pressure, less competitive and more
philosophical in nature. Some of the
characteristics of Type A personality are given below.
·
Is
restless, so that he always moves, walks and eats rapidly.
·
Is
impatient with the pace of things, dislikes waiting and is impatient with those
who are not impatient.
·
Does
several things at once.
·
Tries
to schedule more and more in less and less time, irrespective of whether
everything is done or not.
·
Usually
does not complete one thing before starting on another.
·
Uses
nervous gestures such as clenched fist and banging on table.
·
Does
not have time to relax and enjoy life.
Type
B behaviour is just the opposite and is more relaxed, sociable and has a
balanced outlook on life.
Type A behaviour profile tends to be obsessive and
managers with such behaviour are hard driving, detailed-oriented people with
high performance standards.
Personality
traits related to job performance
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Emotional
stability
- Openness
to experience.
Factors Contributing to Personality
According to Maier, “knowledge, skill and language are
obviously acquired and represent important modifications of behaviour. Learned modifications in behaviour are not
passed on to children, they must be acquired by them through their own personal
experience.”
The
probable consensus is that heredity and environment jointly affect personality
development. The full potential of a
person may or may not be achieved due to environmental constraints and
requirements, but the potential for development, both physically and
psychologically is determined by the complex set of genes.
The
factors affecting personality development are illustrated as follows:
- Heredity
- Culture
- Family
- Environment
- Personality
- Social
- Situational
Personality Dimensions
Some
of the more important dimensions of personality that are closely linked with
interpersonal and organizational behaviour are discussed as follows:
Authoritarianism:
Authoritarianism
refers to blind acceptance of authority.
Authoritarian people believe in obedience and respect for
authority. Because of their beliefs in
hierarchical order, they make good followers; work better under directive
supervision and more productive within authoritarian organizational structure.
A
closely related term to authoritarians is “dogmatism” which refers to the
rigidity of a person’s beliefs.
Bureaucratic
Personality:
A
bureaucratic person respects for authority is not total and blind, but is based
upon respect for organizational rules and regulations. A bureaucratic person
values subordination, rules, conformity, orderly processes in the organization
and impersonal and formal relationships.
Machiavellianism:
Machiavellianism
is a term associated with Niccolo Machiavelli, a sixteenth century author who
identified personality profiles of noble men. This personality merges in
manipulating others for purely personal gains, to gain and keep control of
others. People who are Machiavellian
types have high self-confidence and high self-esteem. They are cool and
calculating and have no hesitation in using others or taking advantages of
others in order to serve their own goals.
Problem
Solving Style:
Individuals
have their own style of making decisions and this style reflects their
personality in certain ways. Some people
are very through, meticulous and detail oriented. Others are impulsive and become easily swayed
by what seems to be obvious.
The
problem solving style has two dimensions.
One is the information gathering and the second dimension is evaluation
of data and taking of decisions. Further, there are two styles involved in
information gathering. One is known as
Sensation and the second style known as intuitive style,
The
evaluation style also has two dimensions.
One style involves more emphasis on feeling while the other involves
more emphasis on thinking.
When
the two dimensions of information gathering and the two dimensions of
evaluation are combined, it results in four problem-solving styles. These are:
1. Sensation-feeling style.
These people are dependable, friendly, social and approach facts with human
concerns. They are pragmatic, methodical and like jobs that involve human
contact and public relations. Some
suitable areas of jobs include teaching customer relations, social workers, and
sales people.
2. Sensation-thinking style.
They are practical, logical, decisive, and sensitive to details they
also prefer bureaucratic type organizations. They are not highly skilled in
interpersonal relations and are more suited to such technical jobs as those of
production, accounting, engineering and computer programming.
3. Intuition-feeling style.
These people are enthusiastic, people oriented, charismatic and helpful.
Some of the professions suitable for this style are public relations,
advertising, politics and personnel.
4. Intuition-thinking style.
These people are creative, energetic, ingenious, and like jobs that are
challenging in terms of design and analysis such as system design, law,
research and development, top management and so on.
Locus of Control
Locus
of control is the extent to which the individuals believes that:
·
They
control their own lives, or
·
External
forces control their lives, which are beyond their control.
A
person with a strong “internal locus of control” believes that he controls
events concerning his own life and that his internal traits determine what
happens in given situation. A person
with a strong “external locus of control” feels that outside forces are
affecting the events in his life and he is at the mercy of destiny, chance or
other people. He believes that “whatever
will be, will be” and everything happens by the will of God.
Introvert and Extrovert Personalities
Introvert
persons are basically shy, they prefer to be alone and have difficulty in
communicating. Extroverts are outgoing,
objective, and aggressive they also relate well with people.
Self-esteem
Self-esteem
is the degree of respect a person has for himself. Self-esteem is a measure of
self-confidence and respect for one’s abilities and motivation. It is also a
higher level need in Maslow’s model of hierarchical needs. Self-esteem is
positively related to assertiveness, independence and creativity.
The socialization
process
a) Organizational socialization – values,
norms, behavior pattern
- Provide
a challenging job
- Provide
relevant training
- Provide
timely and consistent feedback
- Select a
good first supervisor to be in charge of socialization
- Design a
relaxed orientation program
- Place
new recruits in work groups with high morals
b) Characteristics of organizational
socialization of employees
·
Change
of attitude, values and behaviour.
·
Continuity
of socialization over time.
·
Adjustment
to new jobs, work groups and organizational practices.
·
Mutual
influence between new recruits and managers.
·
Criticality
of early socialization period.
Propositions – Chris Argyris
- There is
lack of congruency between the needs of healthy individuals and the
demands of the formal organization.
- The
resultant of this disturbance are frustration, failure, short – time
perspective and conflict.
- Under
certain conditions the degree of frustration, failure, short – time
perspective and conflict will tend to increase.
- The
nature of the formal principles of the organization cause the subordinate,
at any given level, to experience competition, rivalry, inter –
subordinate hostility and to develop a focus toward the parts rather than
the whole.
- The
employee adaptive behaviour maintains self – integration and impedes
integration with the formal organization.
- The
adaptive behaviour of the employees has a cumulative effect, feedback into
the organization and reinforces itself.
- Certain
management reactions tend to increase the antagonisms underlying the
adaptive behaviour.
- Other
management actions can decrease the degree of incongruence between the
individual and formal organization.
- Job or
role enlargement and employee – centred leadership will not tend to work
to the extent that the adaptive behaviour (propositions III, IV, V and VI)
has embedded in organizational culture and the self – concept of the
individual.
- The
difficulties involved in proposition IX may be minimized by the use of
reality oriented leadership.
Personality Theories
There
are several theories but the more prominent among them are: (i) type, (ii)
trait, (iii)
psychoanalytic, (iv) social learning and (v) humanistic.
Type Theories
Type
theories place personalities into clearly identifiable categories. Kretschmer
and Sheldon are credited with this classification. In type theories relationship was sought to
be established between features of face or body and personality. Thus, a short, plumb person (endomorph) was
said to be sociable, relaxed, and even tempered; a tall, thin person
(ectomorph) was characterized as restrained, self conscious, and fond of
solitude; a heavy set muscular individual (mesomorph) was described as noisy,
callous, and found of physical activity.
Although a person’s physique may have some influence on personality, the
relationship is much more subtle than this sort of classification implies. Thus classification of personalities on body
basis is subjective.
The
second basis to type personalities is psychological factors. Carl Jung, divided all personalities into introverts
and extroverts. These terms
are normally associated with an individual’s sociability and interpersonal
orientation. Extroverts are gregarious,
sociable individuals, while introverts are shy, quiet and retiring.
Trait Theories
Trait
theorists assume that a personality can be described by its position on a
number of continuous dimensions or scales, each of which represents a
trait. Thus, we could rate an individual
on a scale of intelligence, emotional stability, aggressiveness, creativeness,
or any of a number of other dimensions.
Psychologists
working in an area of trait theory are concerned with (a) determining the basic
traits that provide a meaningful description of personality, and (b) finding
some way to measure them. Psychoanalytic
theory is based on the in-depth study of individual personalities.
Social Learning Theory
There
are two ways of learning : Learning through reinforcement – direct
experience and learning by observing others, also called vicarious
learning. For social learning theorists
reinforcement is not always necessary for learning. They believe that since an individual can
make use of complex symbolic processes to code and store his observations in
memory, he can learn by observing the actions of others and by noting the
consequences of those actions.
Some
of the person variables that determine what an individual will do in a
particular situation include the following :
- Competencies
- Cognitive
strategies
- Outcome
expectations
- Subjective
value outcome
- Self
regulatory systems and plans
The Humanistic Approach
The
humanistic approach to the study of personality includes number of theories,
although different in some respects, share a common emphasis on man’s potential
for self direction and freedom of choice. Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow are
credited with the humanistic theory of personality.
Rogers’ Self Theory
Roger’s
approach to personality is described as phenomenological. For Rogers, behaviour is utterly dependent
upon how one perceives the world – that is, behaviour is the result of
immediate events as they are actually perceived and interpreted by the
individual. Such an approach to personality
emphasizes the self and its characteristics.
Indeed, this theory is often, referred to as self theory of personality
because the best vantage point for understanding behaviour is from the internal
frame of reference of the individual himself.
Maslow’s Self-Actualization Theory
Abraham
Maslow is regarded as the spiritual father of humanism in American
psychology. Humanistic psychology of
Maslow radically differs from psychoanalytic and learning or behaviouristic
theories. Humanistic psychology of
Maslow, on the other hand, postulates man as a self-actualizer. By self-actualization Maslow meant the
development of full individually, with all parts of the personality in harmony.
Existential
philosophy is concerned with man as an individual and each person alone is
responsible for his own existence. This
drive of man, which is inherent in him, is called self-actualization.
*
Also refer to “Personality Theories – Ziegler” for Freud’s Personality theory
Perception
“If
everyone perceived everything the same way, things would be a lot simpler”
-Moorhead & Griffin
In its simple sense perception is understood as the act of
seeing what is there to be seen. But the
perceiver, the object, and the environment influence what is seen. The meaning of perception will be complete
when all the three aspects are stressed.
A few definitions of perception are given below:
“Perception can be defined as a process by
which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to
give meaning to their environments.”
“Perception includes all those processes
by which an individual receives information about his environment – seeing,
hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling.
The study of these perceptional processes shows that their functioning
is affected by three classes of variables – the objects or events being
perceived, the environment in which perception occurs, and the individuals
doing the perceiving.”
Perceptual Process
Perception,
as revealed by the definitions, is composed of six processes, viz., receiving,
selecting, organizing, interpreting, checking, and reacting to stimuli. These processes are influenced by the
perceived and the situation.
Process of Receiving Stimuli
The
human organism is structured with five sensory organs, viz., vision, hearing,
smell, touch and tasting. There is the
sixth sense about which much is speculated and nothing is known. We receive stimuli through the organs.
Secondary organs receive not only physical objects; they receive events or objects
that have been repressed. We may not be able to report the existence of certain
stimuli but our behaviour reveals that we are often subject to their
influence. Similarly, stimuli need not
be external to us. They may be inside
also.
Process of Selecting Stimuli
Myriad
of stimuli seemingly clamour for our attention at any given time. We need to filter or screen out most of them
so that we may deal with the important or relevant ones. Two sets of factors govern the selection of
stimuli: external and internal.
External Factors Influencing Selection
The
external factors influencing selection are:
Nature:
By nature we mean, whether the object is visual or auditory, and whether
it involves pictures, people or animals.
Location:
The best location of a visual stimulus for attracting attention is
directly in the front of the eyes in the center of a page. When this location is not possible in a
newspaper or a magazine, a position in the upper portion of a page in more
favourable than one in the lower portions, and the left hand side receives more
attention than the right hand side.
Intensity: Stimuli of higher intensity are
perceived more than the objects with low intensity. A loud noise, strong odour, or bright light
will be noticed more than a soft sound, weak odour, or dim light.
Size: Generally objects of larger size
attract more attention than the smaller ones.
The maintenance engineering staff may pay more attention to a big
machine than to a small one, even though the smaller one costs as much and as
important to the operation.
Contrast:
The contrast principle states that external stimuli which stand out
against the background, or which are not what people are expecting, will
receive their attention.
Movement:
The principle of motion states that a moving object receives more
attention than an object that is standing still.
Repetition:
The repetition principle states that a repeated external stimulus is
more attention drawing than a single one.
Novelty
and Familiarity: The novelty and familiarity principle states
that either a novel or a familiar external situation can serve as an attention
getter. New objects in familiar settings
or familiar objects in new setting will draw the attention of the
perceiver.
Internal Factors Influencing Selection
Internal
factors influencing selection of stimuli include learning, psychological needs,
age differences, interests, ambivalence, and paranoid perception. These factors relate to oneself.
Learning:
Learning, a cognitive factor, has considerable influence on
perception. It creates expectancy in
people. People tend to perceive what
they want to perceive.
Psychological
Needs: Needs play a significant role in perceptual
selectivity. Unreal things often look
real because of deprived needs.
Age Difference: Older senior executives complain about the
inability of the new young to take tough decisions concerning terminating or
resigning people and paying attention to details and paper work. The young managers in turn complain about the
“old guards” resisting change and using paper and rules as ends in
themselves. Different perceptions of old
and young executives are due to their age differences perceptions.
Interest: The interests of the perceiver
unconsciously influence perception. An
architect will notice many details of buildings that he passes only once. It
has been argued that, in their influence on perception, interests cannot be
distinguished from needs. That is, the person with a particular interest has a
need to involve himself in activities pertaining to it. Yet there is some value in conceiving the two
as distinct. Once they have been
satisfied, most needs no longer influence perception. But if the person has a special interest, his
perception is likely to be selective at any time.
Ambivalence:
Another factor in perceptual selection is ambivalence or mixed feelings
about a situation.
Paranoid Perception: When the person’s perception is so selective
that he can find little common ground for communication with others, he is
likely to be paranoid.
The Organizing Process
The
perceptual selection related to the discussion of external and Internal factors
which helped gain the perceiver’s attention.
This aspect of forming bits of information into meaningful wholes is
called the perceptual organization.
There are three dimensions to the perceptual organization, viz., figure
ground, perceptual grouping, and perceptual constancy.
Figure Ground:
Figure ground is considered to be the most basic form of perceptual
organization. The figure ground
principle states that the relationship of a target to its background influences
perception. In other words, according to
the principle, perceived objects stand out as separable from their general
background.
Perceptual Grouping: The principles of grouping first defined by
gestalt psychologists include similarity, proximity, closure, and continuity.
Perceptual Constancy: A more subtle part of
perceptual organization is constancy, our ability to perceive certain
characteristics of an object as remaining constant, despite variations in the
stimuli that provide us with our information. Such constancy amidst changing
stimuli is indispensable if we are to adjust to our world. There are several aspects of constancy such
as shape, size, colour.
The Process of Interpreting
After
the data have been received and organized, the perceiver interprets or assigns
meaning to the information. In fact,
perception is said to have taken place only after the data have been
interpreted. Several factors contribute
towards what has been interpreted. More important amongst them are
Perceptual Set
Previously
held beliefs about objects influence an individual’s perceptions of similar
objects. This is called perceptual set.
Attribution
Attribution
refers to the process by which the individual assigns causes to the behaviour
he conceives. There are critics who
argue that perceptual distortion occurs because of attribution. As too much
credit or blame for behaviour is placed on persons rather than on environment.
Factors
such as status, intentions, and consequences influence the attribution process.
Stereotyping
Stereotyping is the tendency for a person’s perceptions of
another to be influenced by the social group to which the others belong. In perceiving another, a person is likely to
categories the other according to some silent characteristic such as sex, race,
religion, nationality, occupation, or organizational affiliation. The
individual’s experiences with others in the category in which he has placed
them lead him to believe that they have certain traits in common. Thus, he is ready to perceive the other as
possessing the same trait.
Halo Effect
The halo effect refers to the tendency of perceiving
people in terms of good and bad, and ascribing all good qualities to one who is
liked and all bad qualities to another who is disliked.
Perceptual Context
The context in which an object is placed influences
perception. The visual stimuli by
themselves are meaningless. Only when
the doodles are placed in a verbal context do they take on meaning and value to
the perceiver.
Perceptual Defence
According
to the principle of perceptual defence, an individual is likely to put a
defence when confronted with conflicting, unacceptable or threatening
stimuli. The defence mechanisms put up
by the perceiver may assume any of the four forms: outright denial,
modification of the data received, change in perception but refusal to change,
and change in perception itself.
Implicit Personality Theory
In
judging and making inferences about others, an individual’s perceptions are
influenced by his belief that certain human traits are associated, with one
another.
Projection
Under
certain conditions, people tend to see in another person traits that they
themselves posses. That is, they project
their own feelings, tendencies, or motives into their judgement of others. This may be particularly true regarding
undesirable traits, which the perceiver possesses but fails to recognize
himself.
The Process of Checking
After
data have been received and interpreted, the perceiver tends to check whether
his interpretations are right or wrong.
One way of checking is for the person himself to indulge in
introspection. He will put a series of
questions to himself and the answers will confirm whether his perception about
an individual or object is correct or not.
Another way is to check the veracity about the interpretation with
others.
The Process of Reacting
The
last phase in perception is the reaction.
The perceiver shall indulge in some action in relation to his
perception. The action depends on whether the perception is favorable or
unfavorable. The action is positive when
the perception is favourable. It is
negative when the perception is unfavourable.
Factors Influencing Perception
The
perceiver, the perceived and situation are some of the factors that influence
perception.
Characteristics of the Perceiver
A
perceiver needs to have, past experience, habits, personality, values, and
attitudes, which may influence the perception process. He should be someone
with a strong need for ego satisfaction.
Characteristics of the Perceived
The
physical attributes, appearance, and behaviour of persons in the situation also
influence how a situation is perceived.
We tend to notice the physical attributes of a person in terms of age,
sex, height, and weight.
Characteristics of the Situation
The
physical, social and organizational settings of the situation or event in
question can influence perceptions.
Perception and Organizational Behaviour
In
an interview for the selection of a candidate, the interviewers’ judgement
about the suitability or otherwise of a candidate depends on how his behaviour
is perceived by them. A rejected
applicant might feel that he was wronged by the interview though he deserved
selection. But the fact is that
interviewers generally form an early impression that becomes quickly
entrenched. If the inadequacies of the candidate are exposed early, they weigh
against him in the final selection
Specific
applications in organization
- Employment
interview
- Performance
expectations
- Performance
evaluation
- Employee
effort
- Employee
loyalty
Managing the Perception Process
·
Have
a high level of self-awareness.
·
Seek
information from various sources to confirm or disconfirm personal impressions
of a decision situation.
·
Be
empathetic – that is, be able to see a situation, as others perceive it.
·
Influence
of perceptions of other people when they are drawing incorrect or incomplete
impressions of events in the work setting.
·
Avoid
common perceptual distortions that biased in our view of people and situations.
·
Avoid
inappropriate attributions.
Reasons
why a person misperceives – Zalkind and Costello
- You are
influenced by cues below your own threshold i.e., the cues you don’t know
you perceived
- You
respond to irrelevant cues to arrive at a judgment.
- You are
influenced by emotional factors, i.e., what is liked is perceived as
correct.
- You
weigh perceptual evidence heavily if it comes from respectable sources.
- You are
not able to identify all factors, i.e., not realizing how much weight is
given to a single item.
Learning
“ You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help
him discover it within himself.”
-
Galileo
Learning can be defined as a “relatively permanent change
in behaviour or potential behaviour as a result of direct or indirect
experience”. There are two primary
elements in this definition that must both be present in order to identify the
process of learning. First is the element
that the change must be relatively permanent. This means that after “learning”
our behaviour must be different, either better or worse as compared to our
behaviour prior to this experience of learning.
The
second aspect of the definition is that this change must occur due to some kind
of experience or practice. This learning
is not caused by biological maturation.
Theories of Learning
There
are four general approaches to learning – classical conditioning, operant
conditioning, cognitive learning and social learning.
Classical Conditioning
The
most well known experiments on classical conditioning were undoubtedly
conducted by I.P. Pavlov with dogs, and he established a Stimulus-Response
(S-R) connection. This means that certain responses can be predicted which
continuously result from certain induced stimuli.
Classical
conditioning introduces a simple cause-and-effect relationship between one
stimulus and one response. It also makes
the response reflexive or involuntary after the stimulus-response relationship
has been established. This leaves no ground for making choices, which
differentiates human beings from dogs. Under certain situations classical
conditioning does explain human behaviour.
Operant Conditioning
Operant
conditioning induces a voluntary change in behaviour and learning occurs as a
“consequence” of such change. It is also known as reinforcement theory and it
suggests that behaviour is a function of its consequences. It is based upon the premise that behaviour
or job performance is not a function of inner thoughts, feelings, emotions or
perceptions but is keyed to the nature of the outcome of such behaviour. This relationship is built around two
principles. First, that behaviour which
results in positive rewards tends to be repeated and behaviour with negative
consequences tends not to be repeated.
Second, based upon such consequences, the behavior can be predicted and
controlled. Hence, certain types of
consequences can be used to increase the occurrence of a desired behaviour and
other types of consequences can be used to decrease the occurrence of undesired
behaviour.
From
an organizational point of view, any stimulus from the work environment will
elicit a response.
Cognitive Learning
Learning
is considered as the outcome of deliberate thinking about the problem or
situation both intuitively and based upon known facts and responding in an
objective and goal oriented manner.
Cognition, in fact, is the act of knowing an item of information and
this knowledge affects the behaviour of the person so that the information
provides cognitive cues towards the expected goal.
Social Learning
It
is recognized that learning does not take place only because of environmental
stimuli (classical and operant conditioning) or of individual determinism
(cognitive approach) but is a blend of both views. It also emphasizes that people acquire new
behaviour by observing or imitating others in a social setting. In addition learning can also be gained by
discipline and self-control and an inner desire to acquire knowledge or skills
irrespective of the external rewards or consequences. This process of self-control is also
partially a reflection of societal and cultural influences on the development
and growth of human beings.
Transfer of Learning
Berelson
and Steiner suggested that learning can be transferred from one situation to
another and the extent of such transfer is a function of the extent of
similarity in the stimulus or response.
If a person experiences a similar situation that he dealt with before,
then some of his previous experience would be transferred to the new situation
and his learning time in the new situation would be considerably decreased.
There
are two concepts that help in explaining the transfer of learning. These are as follows:
Generalization
No
two situations are exactly alike.
However, responses to certain situations can be applied to similar but
different situations. Because of the
principle of generalization, the individual can adjust to new learning situations
more smoothly because of the previous learning experiences.
Discrimination
While
generalization is a reaction to “similarities” of stimuli or responses,
discrimination is the ability to differentiate between relatively similar
stimuli where generalization would yield negative consequences.
Principle of Reinforcement
Reinforcement
is the process by which certain types of behaviours are strengthened. Thus a “reinforcer” is any stimulus that
causes certain behaviour to be repeated or inhibited. Some reinforcers work by their application to
a situation, while other reinforcers work by their removal from the
situation. Thus these reinforcers work
as behaviour modifiers.
Positive Reinforcement
A
positive reinforcement is a reward for a desired behaviour. The reward should be sufficiently powerful
and durable so that it increases the probability of occurrence of desirable
behaviour. Money is probably the most
powerful reinforcement for positive behaviour, since money can be used for a
number of other resources too.
Negative Reinforcement
Also
known as “escape conditioning” or “avoidance learning”, it is also a method of
strengthening desired behaviour.
However, unlike the positive reinforcement where an employee works hard
to gain financial and other rewards, under avoidance conditioning, the employee
works hard to avoid repercussion, reprimand and other negative aspects of the
organizational environment.
Extinction
This
type of reinforcement is applied to reduce undesirable ‘behaviour, especially
when such behaviours were previously rewarded.
This means that if rewards were removed from behaviours that were
previously reinforced, then such behaviours would become less frequent and
eventually die out. The method involved
is a suitable form of punishment in the form of withholding the positive
enforcement or simply ignoring the undesirable behaviour.
Punishment
Punishment
is the most controversial method of behaviour modification and involves
delivering an unpleasant consequence contingent upon the occurrence of an
undesirable behaviour. The punishment process is similar to the extinction
process in that both have the effect of decreasing and eliminating the
undesirable behaviour, but technically there is a difference. In the extinction process, we withhold
rewards for behaviour that has previously been rewarded because the behaviour
was not undesirable previously. The
punishment process, on the other hand consists of “application” of an
undesirable consequence or “withdrawal” of a desirable consequence for an
undesirable behaviour, which has never been associated with the reward before.
Schedule of Reinforcement
While
it is necessary to know as to which type of reinforcement would be most
effective in a given situation, it is equally important to examine the various
ways or “schedules” of administering these techniques of reinforcement. The various ways by which the reinforcement
can be administered can be categorized into two groups. These are continuous and partial
reinforcement schedules.
Continuous Schedule
A
continuous schedule is the one in which the desirable behaviour is reinforced
every time it occurs and the reinforcement is immediate. This results in fast acquisition of the
desired response and the learning is rapid.
However the behaviour learned by continuous reinforcement strategy tends
not to persist for which such reinforcement is applied less frequently.
Partial Reinforcement Schedule
A
partial reinforcement schedule rewards desirable behaviour at specific
intervals. It is believed that
“behaviour tends to be persistent when it is learned under conditions of
partial and delayed reinforcement. There
are four kinds of partial reinforcement schedules. There are:
1. Fixed Interval Schedule
In
this type of schedule, a response is reinforced at fixed intervals of time.
2. Variable Interval Schedule
In
this type of schedule, the reinforcement is administered at random times that
cannot be predicted by the employee.
3. Fixed-ratio Schedules
In
a fixed-ratio schedule, the reinforcement is administered only upon the
completion of a given number of desirable responses.
4. Variable-ratio Schedule
It
is similar to fixed-ratio schedule except that the number of responses required
before reinforcement is determined, are not fixed but vary from situation to
situation.
Limitations of Behaviour Modification
While
in general, some of the behavioural modification techniques, as discussed
previously are effective in eliciting desirable behaviours from employees in
work situations, there are some limitations that make these techniques
ineffective in certain situations.
1) Behaviour modification is an overall
structure and ignores individual differences.,
2) Behaviour modification programs assume
that extrinsic rewards are the key factors in behaviour modification and they
ignore the fact that employees can be intrinsically motivated.
3) Behaviour modification is that it
ignores prevailing work-group norms. It
is important for the management to recognize the power of work-group norms.
The
simple rules of leaning are:
1. The capacities of learners are important
in determining what can be learned and how long will it take to learn it.
2. The order of presentation of materials
to be learned is very important.
3. Showing errors is how to do something
can lead to increase in learning.
4. The rate of forgetting tends to be very
rapid immediately after learning.
5. Repetition of identical materials is
often as effective in getting things remembered as repeating the same story but
with variations.
6. Knowledge of results leads to increase
in learning.
7. Learning is aided by active practice
rather than passive reception
8. A passage is more easily learned and
accepted if it does not interfere with earlier habits.
9. The mere repetition of a situation does
not necessarily lead to learning. Two things are necessary – “belongingness”
and “satisfaction”.
10. Learning something new can interfere
with the remembering of something learned earlier.
Values, Attitudes and Interest
“When you prevent me from doing anything I want to do,
that is persecution; but when I prevent you from doing anything you want to do,
that is law, order and morals.”
- George Bernard Shaw
Values
Is capital punishment right or wrong? The answer to this question is value
laden. Some might argue, for example,
that capital punishment is right because it is an appropriate retribution for
crimes like murder or treason. However,
others may argue, just as strongly, that no government has the right to take
anyone’s life.
Values
represent basic convictions that “a specific mode of conduct or end-state of
existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode
of conduct or end-state of existence.”
They contain a moral flavor in that they carry an individual’s ideas as
to what is right, good, or desirable.
Value systems represent a prioritizing of individual values in relation
to their relative importance. In other
words, we all have a set of values that form a value system. This system is identified by the relative
importance we assign to such values as freedom, pleasure, self-respect,
honesty, obedience, equality, and so forth.
We all have values and, as you will see, what we think is important
influences our attitudes and our behaviour.
Importance of Values
Values
are important to the study of organizational behaviour because they lay the
foundation for the understanding of attitudes, perceptions, personality, and
motivations. Individuals enter an
organization with preconceived notions of what “ought” and what “ought not” to
be. Of course, these notions are not
value-free. On the contrary, they contain interpretations of right and
wrong. Further, they imply that certain
behaviours or outcomes are preferred over others.
Types of Values
The
most important early work in categorizing values was done by All-port and his
associates. They identified six types of
values:
1. Theoretical – Places high importance on
the discovery of truth through a critical and rational approach.
2. Economic – Emphasizes the usefulness and
practicality of the situation.
3. Aesthetic – It places the highest value
on form and harmony.
4. Social – Here the highest value is given
to the love of people.
5. Political – It places emphasis on
acquisition of power and influence.
6. Religious – It is concerned with the
unity of experience and understanding of the cosmos as a whole.
More
recent research suggests that there is a hierarchy of levels that are
descriptive of personal values and life-styles. One such study identified seven
levels.
Level
1. Reactive.
These individuals are unaware of themselves or others as human beings
and react to basic physiological needs. This is most descriptive of newborn
babies.
Level
2. Tribalistic. These individuals are characterized by
high dependence. They are strongly influenced by tradition and the power
exerted by authority figures.
Level
3. Egocentrism. These persons believe in rugged
individualism. They are aggressive and selfish.
They respond primarily to power.
Level
4. Conformity.
These individuals have a low tolerance for ambiguity, have difficulty in
accepting people whose values differ from their own, and desire that others
accept their values.
Level
5. Manipulative.
These individuals are characterized by striving to achieve their goals
by manipulating things and people. They
are materialistic and actively seek higher status and recognition.
Level
6. Sociocentric.
These individuals are characterized by striving to achieve their goals
by manipulating things and people. They
are materialistic and actively seek higher status and recognition.
Level
7. Existential.
These individuals have a high tolerance for ambiguity and people with
differing values. They are outspoken on
inflexible systems, restrictive policies, status symbols, and arbitrary use of
authority.
Attitudes
Attitudes
are evaluative statements – either favourable or unfavourable – concerning
objects, people, or events. They reflect
how one feels about something. When I
say “I like my job,” I am expressing my attitude about work.
Attitudes
are not the same as values. Values are
the broader and more encompassing concept.
So attitudes are more specific than values. Values also contain a moral flavor of
rightness or desirability. The statement
that “discrimination is bad” reflects one’s values. “I favor the implementation of an affirmative
action program to recruit and develop women for managerial positions in our
organization” is an attitude.
Source of Attitudes
Attitudes,
like values, are acquired from parents, teachers, and peer group members. In
our early years, we begin modeling our attitudes after those we admire, respect
or may be even fear. We observe the way family and friends behave and we shape
our attitudes and behaviour to align with theirs. People imitate the attitudes of popular individuals
or those they admire and respect. In organizations, attitudes are important
because they affect job behaviour.
Type of Attitudes
But
OB focuses our attention on a very limited number of job-related
attitudes. These job-related attitudes
tap positive or negative evaluations that employees hold about aspects of their
work environment. Typically, there are
three primary attitudes that are of concerned to us i.e. job satisfaction, job
involvement, and organizational commitment.
Job
satisfaction refers to
an individual’s general attitudes toward his or her job. A person with a high level of job
satisfaction holds positive attitudes toward the job, while a person who is
dissatisfied with his or her job holds negative attitudes about the job. When
people speak of employee attitudes, more often then they mean job
satisfaction. In fact, the two are
frequently used interchangeably.
The
term “job involvement” states that job involvement measures the degree
to which a person identifies with his job, actively participates in it, and
considers his performance important to his self-worth.
Organizational
commitment expresses an
individual’s orientation toward the organization by tapping his or her loyalty
to, identification with, and involvement in the organization. Individuals who express high commitment see
their identity as closely attached to that of the organizations.
Attitudes and Consistency
People
seek consistency among their attitudes and between their attitudes and
behaviour. This means that individuals
seek to reconcile divergent attitudes and align their attitudes and behaviour
so they appear rational and consistent.
When there is an inconsistency, forces are initiated to return the
individual to an equilibrium state where attitudes and behaviour are again
consistent.
Changing attitudes: Some basic techniques
a) Persuasive messages: Hearing
sometimes is believing
i) Comunicator’s Characteristics
·
Attractiveness
·
Style
·
Credibility
ii) Content of persuasive message
·
Receiver’s
characteristics
·
Intelligence
· Self – esteem/ confidence
iii) Enhance persuasion
·
Build
personal attractiveness
·
Enhance
credibility
·
Use
social pressure
·
Design
appeal with care
·
Repetition
can always help
b) Dissonance: when attitude
and behaviour don’t match
c) Providing new information
d) Use of fear
e) Influence of family, friends
and peers
f) Barriers to changing attitudes
Interest
Conflict
Part
of my job is to keep the five guys who hate me away from the five guys who are
undecided.
-
Casey
Stengel
We
define conflict to be a process in which an effort is purposely made by A to
offset the efforts of B by some form of blocking that will result in
frustrating B in attaining his goals or furthering his interests.
Conflict:
An Inevitable Product of Change
In its simplest term, conflict is no more than
a by – product of growth, change, or innovation. And like change itself, it’s
practically inevitable. But it’s also something that, when handled correctly
can actually promote better communication, guarantee achieving desired results,
and improve employee morale and productivity.
Conflict
can be defined as: “Conflict is a set
of divergent behaviours, aims, or methods.”
Types
Of Conflict
Intra-individual
Conflict
Within every individual there are
·
A number of competing needs and
roles,
·
A variety of ways that drives
and roles can be expressed,
·
Many types of barriers that can occur between the
drive and the goal, and
·
Both positive
and negative aspects
attached to desired
goals.
Conflict
due to Frustration
Frustration occurs when a
motivated drive is blocked before a person reaches a desired goal. The barrier
may be overt (outward, or physical) or covert (inward, or mental –
sociopsychological). Traditionally, psychologists felt that frustration always
led to the defense mechanism of aggression. Frustration may lead to any of the
defense mechanism used by the human organism. Although there are many such
mechanism, they can be grouped according to four broad categories: aggression,
withdrawal, fixation and compromise. The frustration model can be useful in the
analysis not only of behaviour in general but also the specific aspects of on –
the – job behaviour.
Goal
Conflict
Another common source of conflict for an
individual is a goal that has both positive and negative features, or two or
more competing goals. For ease of analysis, three separate types of goal conflict
are generally identified:
· Approach –
approach conflict, where the individual is motivated to approach two or more
positive but mutually exclusive goals.
· Approach –
avoidance conflict, where the individual is motivated to approach a goal and at
the same time is motivated to avoid it.
· Avoidance –
avoidance conflict, where the individual is motivated to avoid two or more
negative but mutually exclusive goals.
Interpersonal
Conflict
Sources of interpersonal
conflict
- Personal difference
- Information deficiency
- Role incompatibility
- Environmental stress
Strategies for
Interpersonal Conflict Resolution
Lose – lose. In a lose – lose approach to conflict
resolution, both parties lose. One of the more common approaches is to
compromise or take the middle ground in a dispute. A second approach is to pay
off one of the parties in the conflict. A third is to use an outside third
party or arbitrator. And finally the fourth type would be parties involved in
conflict resolve to bureaucratic rules or existing regulations to resolve the
conflict.
Win
– lose. In the win –
lose strategy one party in a conflict situation attempts to marshal its force
to win, and the other party loses.
Win
– win. In the win
– win strategy of conflict resolution energies and creativity are aimed at
solving the problems rather than beating the other party. Here the needs of
both parties in the conflict situation are met, and both parties receive
rewarding outcomes.
Intergroup behaviour and conflict
Antecedents to intergroup
conflict. Several antecedent
conditions have been
identified for explaining
intergroup conflict.
1.
Competition for resources
2.
Task interdependence
3.
Jurisdictional ambiguity
4.
Status struggles.
Features of Conflict
· Conflict is inevitable
· Conflict is neither good / bad
· Conflict is not always caused by trouble
makers
· Conflict is part of change
· Conflict is sometime desirable
When to Stimulate Conflict
· When you have “Yes” men around you
· When individuals are afraid to admit ignorance
· When team members create an impression of peace
· When individuals display too much concern
· When individuals believe in popularity
· When individuals lack new ideas
· When individuals offer resistance to change
Five Ways to Sense Conflict
· Be
Visionary: Visualize how your actions or those of others will cause, or are
causing, conflict. Ask yourself who, what, when, where, how, and why questions
to determine potential, as well as present, sources of conflict.
- Give
Feedback: The
amount, accuracy, and timeliness of information that you can provide to an
individual will help you to understand that person’s point of view. Sharing your thoughts and feelings
first, in a non-threatening way, often encourages others to tell you what
is on their minds.
- Get
Feedback: Take the
time to find out what your associates are thinking and feeling. Do not wait until the last moment to
discover that trouble is upon you.
Probe for more information by asking questions such as: How so; In what; Why; and Can you tell
me more?
- Define
Expectations: Meet
on a weekly basis with your associates to determine priorities for the
upcoming week. Any major
discrepancies between your expectations will alert you to potential
conflict.
- Review
Performance Regularly:
When supervisors and employees communicate openly about how they are (or
are not) working together, they reduce serious conflict and build stronger
working relationships.
Ways of Resolving Conflict
· Clarify reporting Relationship
· Eliminate communication gap /
misunderstanding
· Restructure the organization
· Introduce new blood/ new thinking
· Create Competition
Benefits of Dealing with Conflict
Benefits
to Individual
Stronger
relationships: You
will be able to build stronger relationships as a result of being comfortable
expressing your true thoughts. Fewer mind games will be played resulting in a
less stressful day.
Increased
self-respect: You will
be able to feel good about yourself and will learn not to take criticism
personally.
Personal
development and growth:
When you break down some of your own invisible barriers and
become more assertive in resolving or preventing conflict, you will learn more
and gain support from others.
Benefits
to Your Organization
Improved efficiency
& effectiveness:
Employees will be able to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively
by focusing their efforts where they will produce the greatest results.
Creative
thinking: By
encouraging people to make, share, and learn from their mistakes, the
organization will reap the benefits of creative thinking.
Synergy
or teamwork: Managers and
associates will be able to focus on serving their customers and each other.
Causes of Conflict
For a variety of reasons, many people have difficulty
sensing or finding the causes of conflict.
Many factors contribute to the difficulty in identifying the correct
cause of a conflict:
·
Personality
·
Perceptions
·
Exclusive
Goals
·
Deliberate
Behaviour
·
Scarce
Resources
·
Status
·
Power
·
Rewards
·
Membership
·
Decision
Making
The Five Steps to
Successful Conflict Management
Step One: Take
Responsibility for Dealing with Conflict
Step Two:
Uncover, Define, and Discuss the Real Problem
Step Three: Ask
Questions and Listen!
Step Four: Set
Goals and Create an Action Plan
Step Five: Follow Up
Methods for Dealing with Conflict - Win
/ Win
·
Be
indirect; only hint at the problem
·
Find
something outside yourself on which to blame situation
·
Use
sarcasm in talking about the situation with others
·
Seek
a specific scapegoat
·
Make
efforts to smooth over tension / live with situation, even if negative
·
Blow
up; let off steam; let people know just exactly how you feel
·
Hide
your feelings, only reveal them later to friends or confidants in private
·
Attempt
to seek clarification & information about the situation
·
Sublimate
your feelings, put energy & attention in unrelated activities/ interests
·
Spend
time listening & gathering additional info. by talking with those involved
·
Back
down under pressure rather than dealing with conflict
·
Make
an active attempt to compromise
·
Complain
to others about unfairness of the situation
·
Make
an effort to seek creative alternatives to the situation
Basic Skills to Resolve Conflict
Intellectual Skills
·
Analytical
·
Learning
Ability
·
Judgement
·
Planning
·
Organising
·
Perception
·
Conceptualizing
·
Objectivity
·
Flexibility
Emotional Skills
·
Honesty
·
Persistence
·
Ambition
·
Self-discipline
·
Result-orientation
·
Fast
pace
·
Initiative
·
Enthusiasm
·
Assertiveness
Interpersonal Skills
·
Persuasiveness
·
Gregariousness
·
Listening
·
Communication
·
Writing
·
Sensitivity
Managerial Skills
·
Gives
guidance
· Motivates
· Delegates
· Selects competent people
· Terminates incompetent associates
· Expects Professionalism
·
Resignation.
·
Withdrawal.
·
Appeasement.
·
Defusion.
·
Confrontation.
·
Arbitration.
·
Compromise.
·
Negotiation.
Role of
Training and Development
Training is concerned with the acquisition or
development of knowledge, skills, techniques, attitudes and experiences, which
enable an individual to make his most effective contribution to the combined
efforts of the team of which he is a member.
The objective of training is to prepare the individual to carry out his
present job satisfactorily, or to prepare him for greater responsibility.
The
fundamental aim of training is to help the organization achieve its purpose by
adding value to its key resource - the people it employs. Training means investing in people to enable
them to perform better and to empower them to make the best use of their
natural abilities. The particular objectives
of training are to:
·
Develop
the competences of employees and improve their performance;
·
Enable
people to grow within the organization in order that, as far as possible, its
future needs for human resources can be met from within;
·
Reduce
the learning time for employees starting in new jobs, transfers or promotions,
and ensure that they become fully competent as quickly and economically as
possible.
Benefits
of Training
Effective
training can:
·
Improve
individual, team and corporate performance in terms of output, quality, speed
and overall productivity;
·
Attract
high-quality employees by offering them learning and development opportunities;
·
Increase
employees’ levels of competence and enhance their skills thus enabling them to
obtain more job satisfaction, gain higher rewards and progress within the
organization;
·
Increase
the commitment of employees by encouraging them to identify with the mission
and objectives of the organization;
·
Help
to manage transformation by understanding the basis of change and provide
people with the knowledge and skills they need, to adjust to new situations;
·
Facilitate
to develop a positive culture in the organization, one, for example, that is
orientated towards performance improvement;
·
Provide
higher levels of service to customers.
Areas of Training - Knowledge, Skill and
Attitude
Knowledge can be imparted. Trainees are helped to learn, to understand
and to remember facts, information and principles.
Skill is a physical act or action. Examples are shorthand writing, operating an
adding machine, playing a trumpet.
Attitudes can be changed to some extent, however
not all attitudes can be altered. It has to be decided whether the attitude is
based upon superstition, fear, prejudice, ignorance or whether it is the
product of the social group to which the individual belongs. If “undesirable” attitudes based upon
ignorance need to be changed then there is a reasonable hope of achieving this
in an industrial training situation. In
case of attitudes based upon the other elements outlined above, the situation
is much more complex.
Technique usually involves application in a
dynamic situation of both knowledge and skill.
It is a way of behaviour or thinking.
Driving a car, commanding troops in battle, salesmanship, are examples
of techniques.
Experience differs from the four previous items
that is it cannot be taught in a classroom.
It is the result of practicing use of knowledge, skills and techniques
over a period of time and often in a number of different situations. One of the training officer’s many tasks is
to “arrange” the experience of trainees on an organised basis. Frequently this is achieved by means of job
rotation and sometimes by exchanges between companies.
Relationship between
Knowledge and Skill. When
the training material is being put in the order in which it will be presented
to the trainees, account must be taken of the relationship between knowledge
and skill. The trainee is given
knowledge to enable him to do his job.
As soon as possible after he acquires the necessary knowledge he should
have the opportunity to put it to practical use. Practicing the job skill will help him to
remember what he has learned. Thus, a manager learning the skill of selection
interviewing needs to practice as soon as he has acquired sufficient knowledge. This will reinforce what he has learned.
Training
needs
The Determination of Training Needs with an
Enterprise
There is a great difference between the way in which
training needs would be determined in a perfect world and an ideal company, and
the way in which it is often done in the normal working circumstances.
Let us consider an example - on one hand, there is a
progressive company with highly organized central personnel and training
departments, and a plan for integrated manpower development. At the other extreme, there is a company
where the personnel and training responsibilities are not very clearly defined,
and where the function, if it can be identified at all, is one of a number of
general responsibilities carried out by an official whose main responsibility
is something quite different.
In the first type of company, the determination of
training needs is something, which is constantly being carried out and reviewed
as circumstances, policies, markets, and company objectives change. In the second type of company, the training
is much less likely to be planned ‘globally’ for the company as a whole. The initiative is often left to one
particular department manager who happens to realize the potential benefits of
training and is keen to do something about it. He may nominate one member of
his staff as training officer and activities may be launched which are related
only to the specific needs of that particular department at that particular
time. They may even conflict with the
needs of the organization as a whole.
At the one extreme, training needs are carefully analyzed
and reviewed and, the other displays a piecemeal haphazard approach, unplanned,
unsystematic, and often unrelated to the needs of the company. In between these two extremes there are all
the permutations and combinations.
The approach of each company will vary from that of other
companies and so it should, but fundamentally there are a number of common
basic steps:
·
Take an inventory: The present manpower
should be taken stock of both quantitatively and qualitatively. Information related to manpower will be
available in the personnel department, i.e., information about qualifications
and previous experience and training already given by the company. Information about how effective the people
are in their present job and about their promotion ability should also be
included.
·
Forecasts of future requirements: Normal ‘wastage’ through retirement,
transfers, resignations, etc. and the possible effects of changes in the
company’s policies and objectives, e.g. expansion, re-organization,
contraction, etc. should be considered here.
·
To decide where one is going to find the
people: Some of the people can be
found within the organization unless there is a well-planned scheme for
‘spotting’ talent. It is in this third
step that the results of steps one and two are combined. Step two forecasts all future requirements
but in particular it highlights key jobs, which will need to be filled during
the review period. Step one has
mentioned what type of people organization has and what their potential
is. The two can be then matched by
allocating people to ‘target’ jobs. If
it is unlikely to fill all vacancies from within the organization then sources
outside the company can be tapped.
·
Decide what one is going to do to develop the
manpower: Both those who are there
and those who are going to be recruited in order to help them to be fully
effective in their present posts and to prepare them for their ‘target’
jobs’. In practice it is a good idea to
prepare people wherever possible for two target jobs. This is because some personnel development
programs are quite lengthy and in the meantime company objectives – and
therefore organizations may change. The
‘two-target-job’ approach ensures greater flexibility.
This, in a nutshell, is the raison d’etre of the training
officer’s job. The training needs, both
short term and long term, will be spotlighted by the development program. The training officer’s task will be to advise
on what is to be done within the company to meet these training needs and also
what use, if any, is to be made of ‘external’ facilities offered by training
institutions, consultants, technical and commercial colleges, universities,
etc. In order to do this, the training
officer needs to keep himself well informed about the work of these
organizations and its quality.
The Training and Consultancy Cycle
There
is a marked difference between the knowledge of a management technique and the
ability to use it properly in a practical management situation. This ability can be defined as a management
skill. Knowledge of the technique can be
acquired through theoretical study and through simulation exercises in the
classroom or laboratory. But the
essential skills in practical use and application of the technique cannot be
acquired in the same way as the theory.
Acquisition of these skills involves identification of practical
situations to which the technique can be applied; the adaptation of the
technique to the requirements of these situations; co-ordination of the efforts
of those people concerned with introduction of the technique, and the
overcoming of diverse obstacles. Such
skills are only developed and refined through practice and first-hand
experience. The aptitudes and efforts
of the individuals concerned as well as opportunities provided by the
environment greatly influence the process of acquiring management skills.
The
first activity in which the managers, or young people trained for future jobs
participate, are training courses.
The
next activity in the development cycle is guided practical application of the
new techniques and concepts. In some
cases, this is done during the training program concerned, which consists thus
of two major phases: the first, phase of classroom or laboratory training is
followed by a phase during which the participants work as individuals or in
groups on practical projects. In other
cases, the formal training program does not include this second phase. But it is almost invariably followed by a
follow-up period, which is very similar in objectives and scope. Before the end of the course, each
participant is assisted in selecting a practical problem-solving task in which
he will apply, in the conditions of his own enterprise, what he has learned in
the course. The professional training
staff keeps in touch with the participants and work with them in their
enterprise enough to ensure that each participant does, in fact, produce
practical results. It is considered that
this approach is the only way to ensure that participants receive adequate
training in, and exposure to, practical management skills. Further, top management is unlikely to
accept any alternative approach to training which excludes the practical
application of new techniques.
At
the end of this practical in-plant application phase (whether part of a general
course or follow-up phase after the completion of a course) participants return
to the training center for a few more days, so that each can present to the
group the description of the problem he tackled, the methods used to solve it
and the obtained or expected results.
Through such “evaluation seminars” everyone has a further opportunity to
learn about additional practical applications.
Strategic Training System (Planned training)
Planned
training, as defined by Kenney and Reid (1994), is a ‘deliberate intervention
aimed at achieving the learning necessary for improved job performance’ the
process of planned training consists of the following steps (as shown in the
figure below):
·
Identify
and define training needs –
This involves analysis of corporate, team, occupational and individual needs to
acquire new skills or knowledge or to improve existing competencies. The analysis covers problems to be solved as
well as future demands. Decisions are
made at this stage on the extent to which training is the best and the most
cost-effective way to solve the problem.
·
Define
the learning required –
It is necessary to specify as clearly as possible what skills and knowledge
have to be learnt, what competences need to be developed and what attitudes
need to be changed.
·
Define
the objectives of training –
Learning objectives are set, which define not only what has to be learnt but
also what learners must be able to do after their training program.
·
Plan
training programs –
These must be developed to meet the needs and objectives by using the right
combination of training techniques and locations.
·
Decide
who provides the training –
The extent to which training is provided from within or outside the organization
needs to be decided. At the same time,
the division of responsibility between the training department, managers or
team leaders and individuals has to be determined.
·
Implement
the training – Ensure
that the most appropriate methods are used to enable trainees to acquire the
skills, knowledge, level of competence and attitudes they need.
·
Evaluate
training – The
effectiveness of training is monitored during programs and, subsequently, the
impact of training is assessed to determine the extent to which learning
objectives have been achieved.
·
Amend
and extend training as necessary – Decide,
on the basis of evaluation, the extent to which the planned training program
needs to be improved and how any residual learning requirements should be
satisfied.
Training needs analysis – Areas and Methods
Methods of analyzing training needs
The
four methods of training needs analysis are:
·
Analysis
of business and human resource plans
·
Job
analysis
·
Analysis
of performance reviews
·
Training
surveys
Business and Human Resource Plans
The training strategy of an organization should largely be
determined by its business and HR strategies and plans from which flow human
resource plans. The plans should
indicate in fairly general terms the types of skills and competences that may
be required in the future and the number of people with those skills and
competencies who will be needed. These
broad indicators have to be translated into more specific plans which cover,
for example, the outputs from training programs of people with particular
skills or a combination of skills (multi-skilling).
Management Development. Management development on the other hand is a systematic
process of growth and development by which the managers develop their abilities
to manage. So it is the result of not
only participation in formal courses of instruction but also of actual job
experience. It is concerned with
improving the performance of the managers by giving them opportunities for
growth and development.
Management
development in an organization contributes to business success by enabling the
managers to meet its present and future needs.
It improves their performance, gives them development opportunities, and
provides for management succession. Professional
development processes may be anticipatory (so that managers can contribute to
long-term objectives), reactive (intended to resolve or pre-empt performance
difficulties) or motivational (geared to individual career aspirations).
Objectives of Management
Development
·
Ensures
that managers understand what is expected of them.
·
Agrees
with the objectives against which their performance will be measured and the
level of competence required in their roles.
·
Identifies
managers with potential, encourages them to prepare and implement personal
development plans.
·
Makes
certain that they receive the required development, training and experience to
be equipped to face more demanding responsibilities within their own locations
and elsewhere in the organization.
·
Provides
for management succession, creating a system to keep this under review.
·
Improves
the performance of the managers.
·
Increases
morale of members of the management group.
·
Enhances
versatility of the management group.
·
Keeps
executives abreast with the changes and developments in their respective
fields.
·
Creates
successors who can take over in case of contingencies.
·
Improves
thought process and analytical ability.
·
Broadens
the outlook of the executive regarding his role, position and responsibilities.
·
Understands
the conceptual issues relating to economic, social, and technical areas.
·
Understands
the problems of human relations and improves human relation skills.
·
Stimulates
creative thinking.
Role
of the Organization. The
role of the company in management development is to establish the program and
the development opportunities for its present and potential managers. Just exposing the employees to lectures, case
studies, readings, job rotation, assignments and the like does not guarantee
that they will learn. What is more
important is the effort of the individuals.
Each individual has to contribute to his development, as others can only
create opportunities. The saying “We can
take the horse to the water but we cannot make it drink” cannot be forgotten
here.
Interpersonal Relationship
Interpersonal
skills
Every individual possesses the need and ability to
relate to people. However, sometimes
when we meet people we are unable to relate to them, and handle the situation
ourselves. Just as the ability to paint can be improved through experience with
brushes and oils, the ability to relate or respond to people can be improved
through practicing the art of interpersonal relationships. Interpersonal relationship is concerned with
people getting along well together. It is a way of understanding individual
behaviour, which includes physical and psychological differences, personal
problems and attitudes. It enables an individual to be aware of his feelings,
understand the way he relates to others and thus establish successful
interpersonal relationships.
Enhancing interpersonal competence is one of the
essential aspects of Self Development. To improve the interpersonal skills at
workplace following guidelines can be practiced:
|
When you open a
discussion
|
Begin with general reference to topic(s)
|
|
While making a
decision if you feel impulsive to reject, ignore, or disagree
|
Clarify by seeking
additional information about what/ why
Confirm by stating your
understanding of what/ why
|
|
When you want
someone to change performance and have confirmed understanding
|
Constructively Criticize
Give balanced
feedback:
·
Specify merits
·
Specify concerns
·
Explore ideas
|
|
When difference
exists and you’re willing and able to consider alternatives
When you’re
unwilling/unable to consider alternatives or unable to reach mutually
acceptable decision
|
Manage the Difference
Define the
difference:
·
State/ confirm what’s important and
why
Discuss the
difference:
·
Explore ideas
Terminate the
discussion:
·
Acknowledge other person’s right to
differ
·
Explain decision
|
|
When you invite a
suggestion
|
Give a reaction
|
|
When you make a
suggestion
|
Invite a reaction
|
|
When you use /
build on ideas of others
|
Acknowledge
connection
|
|
When you need to be
innovative or imaginative
|
Temporarily alter
restrictions
|
|
When you want to
give feedback for performance that meets or exceed expectations
|
Credit
·
Give specific examples
·
Mention personal qualities
·
Mention resulting benefits
|
|
When you close a
discussion
|
Summarize agreements
and action steps
|
Enhancement of Interpersonal Skills
Communicate effectively: Communication is a two-way operation that involves
sending and receiving signals. Empowered communicators learn to receive signals
so they can be proactive rather than reactive to what they send. When
communicating, step into the shoes of the other person. Read body language,
tone of voice, statements, and silences.
Investigate the employee's motivation and fear.
Ask open-ended questions: Remember,
your goal is to get enough information so you can work with the person to
resolve problems and increase productivity. A yes/no (or closed) question will
only give you a yes or no answer. A question that begins with "why"
puts people on the defensive. Think about how you react when asked questions
such as, "Why were you late? Why do you act like that? " Who, what,
where, and how questions involve the other person. "What leads you to make
that decision? How can we work together on solving this problem? Who else is
affected when you're late? When do you think you can start working towards this
new goal?" It takes practice to self-edit and reframe your questioning
techniques because we are conditioned to accuse and assume, not to accumulate
information.
Listen intensely and avoid solving other's
problems: So often our good intentions prompt us to provide solutions to people's
problems when they don't actually want advice, but instead simply want to be
heard. Comments such as, "That must be painful for you. You sound angry.
It seems like you're feeling frustrated," might seem weak and even
ineffectual if you are used to communicating directly and giving orders. But
the up-front investment is worth the results generated by this kind of
listening. Once people feel genuinely heard, they will entrust you with more
information, which is what you want because it gives you control.
Frame responses using the I-language technique: Essentially
you are taking responsibility for your feelings. You are not blaming the
employee for his or her actions, but you are pointing out how his or her
behaviour affects your feelings. To begin, comment on observable factual
behaviours and state the consequences.
Here's an example: "When you give me your
reports at the last minute (fact), I feel frustrated because I must rush and
wonder if I'm not catching errors and I end up barking at you (give
consequences that matter to them.) I wish you would give me more lead time (ask
for behaviour change) so that we'll both be less stressed (state the benefits).
What do you think?" (the script should be onscreen with accompanying
comments in parentheses)
Match your words to your body language: If you're
honest, your body language will confirm it. If you're feeling angry and denying
it, your tone of voice might give you away. Be honest, then do a body check to
make sure your words match your nonverbal gestures. Otherwise, you won't be
taken seriously.
Enhanced
interpersonal skills through communication: Transactional Analysis
A ‘transaction’ is a communication or
interaction, verbal or nonverbal. Any
interpersonal transaction implies interaction between the minds, or mental
states, of individuals involved in the transaction. There are different mental states that a
person experiences, or passes through, during any interaction. These are classified into three ‘ego states,’
namely the super ego, the ego and the id, or the parent, adult, and child,
respectively. Each ego state represents
a particular state of mind, intention, or mood.
The ‘adult’ state is an information-giving or receiving one where no
opinions or emotions are transacted. The
‘child’ state is the emotional one, like that of a child. The ‘parent’ tends to be judgmental and punishing
with frequent use of words such as ‘should’, ‘ought’ and ‘mustn’t.’ Each one of
us, however old we may, still have elements of our ‘childhood’ within us. Finally, you have strong imprints in your
mind, called a ‘script’ as in terms of TA, which are experiences and
interactions with parents, including kind, caring, and nurturing ones, as well
as judgmental, controlling and critical ones.
The relevance of TA, in the context of
managing negative emotions, is that the ego state from which you are likely to
operate depends, to a great extent, upon the ‘life position’ you have adopted. In broad terms, there are four possible life
positions that you can adopt, while interacting with another person:
1. “I’m OK, you’re OK” - confident: This is
a constructive, healthy position, which indicates a basic acceptance of
oneself, and a basic acceptance of others.
2. “I’m OK, you’re not OK” – archaic:
People operating from this life position blame and accuse others, and refuse to
see their own problems and weaknesses.
3. “I’m not OK, you’re OK” – superior:
People operating from this life position blame and accuse themselves, and
consider others as better.
4. I’m not OK, you’re not OK” – hopeless:
In this position the sense of not-OKness becomes all-pervading; they see no
hope in themselves nor in others; life loses all interest and meaning for them
and they can become hurtful to themselves and others.
Transactional Analysis has been used in
analyzing interpersonal skills. It provides an insight in analyzing
interactions with others in terms of ego states being expressed.
Stress Management
Definition of Stress
R.S. Lazarus and S. Folkman define stress as resulting from an imbalance
between demands and resources.
The word stress is derived from the
Latin word ‘stringere’ meaning to ‘draw tight’ and was used to describe
hardships or affliction. Unfortunately,
the lifestyle, in which we live today, does not allow us to react physically to
the problems, which we face. When faced with stress our basic
instinct is to flee or fight. Realistically, we can do neither.
Other definitions of stress include:
· “The
reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed
upon them. It arises when they worry that they cannot cope.” (Health and Safety
Executive)
· “Stress
occurs where demands made on individuals do not match the resources available
or meet the individual’s needs and motivation.
Stress will be the result if the workload is too large for the number of
workers and time available. Equally, a boring or repetitive task which does not
use the potential skills and experience of some individuals will cause them
stress.”
· “That
which arises when the pressures placed upon an individual exceed the perceived
capacity of that individual to cope.”
From the
definitions above one can observe that the essential ingredients of work related
stress might
be seen as:
· a
personal experience
· caused
by pressure or demands
· impact
upon an individual’s ability to cope or his/her perception of such ability
Ideally, we need to be aware of what
stress agents affect us, learn appropriate stress management techniques and
consciously apply them. Symptoms of stress manifest themselves in many ways.
Recognizing these warning signs and consciously applying coping mechanisms is
one key to combating the problem. Stress can affect the overall performance of
individuals and for some people will result in serious ill health, both mental
and physical.
Stress occurs
when there is a mismatch between what the individual wants, and is capable of
doing, and what their environment offers and demands of them. It is important
to bear in mind that everyone’s environment will be different and will include
factors such as where they live, where they work, what their work consists of,
their families, their friends, their life-style, their beliefs, their
education, their attitudes to life, their expectations of themselves and
others.
There are a number of other factors that
play a significant role in determining what is stressful for one person and not for another. As individuals we all
have different life experiences, conditioning, genetic inheritance, states of
health and, most importantly, personality types, which make our reaction to
stressful situations different! What one
person may view as stressful another might not.
This does not make either person better or worse than the other.
What is stress?
There are many
myths about stress. Some people think it means an individual is weak and unable
to cope and that it only happens to ‘high fliers’. Others think it is an illness. Many individuals are confused, as they
believe that pressure and stress are one and the same. They are not. Stress
will result from an inappropriate level of pressure, whether real or perceived.
We all need challenges, but if we are to perform at maximum potential they must
be both realistic and achievable. In reality stress can and will affect each
and every one of us both directly and indirectly.
According to
doctors and researchers, it is not what happens to us but how we react to what
happens to us that causes our stress. They say that, “Stress is your body’s
biochemical reaction to how you live your life. Stress can develop into
distress and disease through your personal adaptation to internal and external
environments.”
Some concepts of
stress in physiological terms are:
· Excitement
- emotional reaction which elevates cognitive and physiological activity
levels.
· Stimuli
- Demands upon the system for physical or cognitive productivity.
· Eustress
- Positive exhilarating challenging experiences of success followed by higher
expectations.
· Distress
- Disappointment, failure, threat, embarrassment and other negative experiences
· Stress
- General concept describing a "load" on the system, usually
external, with humans it is internal.
· Stressor
- a specific problem, issue, challenge, personal conflict (External/internal)
· Stress
Reaction - an individual response to a given stressor (physiological,
behavioural, emotional, cognitive, signs and symptoms)
· Strain
- the prolonged impact of the stressor on the system (overload), fatigue,
precursor to illness
Causes of Stress
Consider, for example, an office where there are ten staff members. We
may find four of them quite stressed, four of them may be enjoying the
challenge and two of them really don’t care at all what’s going on. As far as
they are concerned, they want to be made redundant. Some people are under
pressure and seem to be thriving on it and others who are suffering a lot of
stress.
So, why is it that some people are stressed and some people aren’t
stressed? When you listen to people, so often they give you an old-fashioned
view of stress. They will say ‘My boss makes me depressed’. It is something out
there causing stress and they respond in some kind of way.
This old-fashioned view of stress is sometimes called the
‘stimulus/response’ model, basically an old engineering model of stress -
literally you squeeze something and it suffers strain. What’s important is the
person’s perception. The idea is that it’s not so much the situation but what
we bring to the situation, our mental attitude and our appraisal of it, that is
largely the problem.
Shakespeare noted in Hamlet, ‘Why, then ‘tis none to you; for there is
nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so’.
Major types of
stressors:
· Psychological:
Attitude, personality, self-esteem
· Physical:
Environment, nutrition, drugs/chemicals
· Role: Role
conflict/ambiguity, multiple roles
· Sociological:
Political, economic, cultural background
· Physical
Illness/Residual Disability: Birth defect/chronic illness
· Biomechanical
Stressors: Job site design flaw (i.e. carpal tunnel syndrome,
repetitive motion)
· Self-generated
stressors: unnecessary worry
Stages of Stress
1. Overload
and Burnout at Work (Stress Arousal Stage)
2. Overload
and Burnout (Stress Resistance Stage)
3. Overload
and Burnout (Severe Exhaustion Stage)
Stress Lifecycle
This is
also known as the ‘inverted U’ curve of performance under stress.
The
symptoms of stress are believed to stem from our primitive ‘fight or flight’
response to perceived dangers. This response produces surges of chemical
reactions in the blood stream which can cause psychological problems such as
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or Cumulative Stress Disorder for example.
We are
not, for example, able to punch our boss when he or she is acting
aggressively. As such actions are all
forms of behaviour that are not tolerated in today’s society. It is believed
that it is this denial of our primitive responses which causes the strains on
our body and leads to stress related disease and sickness, as the adrenaline
which runs through our body and prepares us for our basic responses has no
outlet.
Psychologist
Cooper argues that “our thought patterns regarding ourselves and the situations
we are in trigger events within two branches of our central nervous system, the
‘sympathetic’ and the ‘parasympathetic’”.
In short, the ‘sympathetic’ reaction is where the body, ‘revs up’ the
adrenaline and other hormones in the blood stream in response to a perceived
danger and the ‘parasympathetic’ is where the body ‘revs down’ and unwinds
itself. The ‘rev up’ activity is designed to improve performance in the body
however, as Cooper puts it “if the stress that launches this activity continues
unabated, the human body begins to weaken as it is bombarded by stimulation and
stress related chemicals”.
Symptoms of Stress
Physical signs
and symptoms of stress
· Coronary thrombosis: heart attack
· Migraine
· Depression
· Hay fever and allergies
· Hyperthyroidism: overactive thyroid gland
· Asthma
· Diabetes mellitus
· Skin Disorders
· Peptic ulcers
· Tuberculosis
· Constipation
· Rheumatoid Arthritis
· Indigestion
Emotional signs
and symptoms of stress
· Irritability,
Angry outbursts, Hostility
· Depression
· Restlessness,
Anxiousness
· Diminished
initiative
· Feelings
of unreality or over alertness
· Reduction
of personal involvement with others, lack of interest
· Being
critical of others
· Self-deprecation,
reduced self-esteem
· Decreased
perception of positive experience opportunities
· Changes
in eating habits and weakened positive emotional response reflexes
Cognitive/perceptual
signs and symptoms of stress
· Forgetfulness
· Preoccupation
· Blocking,
blurred vision
· Errors
in judging distance
· Diminished
or exaggerated fantasy life
· Reduced
creativity, diminished productivity
· Lack
of concentration, lack of attention to detail
· Decreased
psychomotor reactivity and coordination
· Disorganization
of thought
· Negative
self-esteem, diminished sense of meaning in life
· Lack
of control/need for too much control, negative self-statements and negative
evaluation of experiences
Behavioural
signs and symptoms of stress
· Increased
smoking
· Aggressive
behaviours (such as rash driving), increased alcohol or drug use
· Carelessness
· Under-eating/
over-eating
· Withdrawal,
listlessness
· Accident-proneness
· Nervous
laughter
· Compulsive
behaviour and impatience
Burnout
Individuals most likely to experience Burnout possess
the following characteristics or attitudes:
· Having
very high ideals
· Always
getting impatient/annoyed with others
· Feeling
only your ideas are right
· Blaming
yourself
· Having
a tendency to always blame others
· Feeling
like you have to do every job for yourself
· Feeling
equally upset with minor hassles, etc. vs. something more serious
· Feeling
you have more and more to do and less and less time to do it in
· Accepting
social obligations that you know you will not have time for later
· Spending
more time and energy on trivial tasks while avoiding the more difficult ones.
Stress at Work
Offering
support to staff who are, or are likely to be, affected by stress and pressures
can be extremely beneficial. The need for support for those who have
experienced very traumatic events cannot be over emphasised. It has now been recognised that excessive work pressures can be caused
[or made worse] by poor work design, poor management and unsatisfactory working
conditions. The individual employee’s perception of their working
conditions must also be taken into account.
Stress at the work place can be classified under the following
categories:
Policies
· Unfair,
arbitrary performance reviews
· Pay
inequities
· Inflexible
rules
· Rotating
work shifts
· Ambiguous
procedures
· Frequent
relocation
· Unrealistic
job descriptions
Structures
· Centralisation;
lack of participation in decision making
· Little
opportunity for advancement
· A
great amount of formalisation
· High
degree of specialization
· Interdependence
of departments
· Line-staff
conflicts
Physical Conditions
· Crowding
and lack of privacy
· Excessive
noise, heat, or cold
· Presence
of toxic chemicals or radiation
· Air
pollution
· Safety
hazards
· Inadequate
lighting
Processes
· Poor
communication
· Poor/inadequate
feedback about performance
· Ambiguous/conflicting
goals
· Inaccurate/
vague measurement of performance
· Unfair
control systems
· Inadequate
information
How stress can affect an
organization
· Increased
complaints from clients
· Staff
will become less committed
· Accidents
may occur
· Staff
turnover may increase
· Absenteeism
can increase
· Reduction
in performance by the workforce
· Compensation
claims for stress related illness
Methods to Cope
with Stress at Work
Stress is not just a buzzword of the decade. There is substance behind the description. It can be both positive and negative but when negative, can have very serious effects on the emotional and physical lives of the individual. It is not surprising therefore that an increasing number of people are demanding to know what they can do to reduce the negative effects stress can have on their lives. Many want instant results.
There are
times when it is necessary to reassess perspectives, move boundaries, challenge
behavioural patterns, and develop self-confidence to help us face times of
adversity. And these could well be the times when it will prove invaluable to
have someone who will listen objectively, offer empathic support, and give us
the opportunity to develop our own effective coping resources. But this
catalyst will not materialize out of thin air - it has to be sought.
Even those
who have family, friends or caring colleagues around them invariably find they
can receive more help from a totally objective, neutral person. There is less
inhibition to open up to someone who is in no way involved in your life, and
there is probably less embarrassment than talking to someone who knows us well.
Individual Coping Strategies
Some specific techniques that individuals can use to eliminate or more
effectively manage inevitable, prolonged stress include the following:
- Exercise
- Relaxation.
- Behavioural
Self – Control
- Cognitive
therapy.
- Networking.
Organizational
Coping Strategies
Organizational
coping strategies are designed by management to eliminate or control
organizational-level stressors in order to prevent or reduce job stress for
individual employees.
1.
Create
a Supportive Organizational climate.
2.
Enrich
the Design of Tasks.
3.
Reduce
Conflict and Clarify Organizational Roles.
4.
Plan
and Develop Career Paths and Provide Counselling.
Stress is part of everyday life. Everyone needs to face challenge in
order to get as much out of life as they can. The danger is that some
challenges are more difficult than others to handle or overcome. If these
challenges are not dealt with, they can cause high levels of negative stress -
or ‘distress’ as it is known. There are some general guidelines one should follow in
identifying and managing pressures and stress at work.
Make a plan:
· Learn
to recognise your own personal stress warning signals, such as headaches,
stomach pains, muscle tension, etc, that mean ordinary pressure is turning into
stress and you need to deal with it.
· Keep
a “stress diary” for a month. This should contain a calendar of each day with
four columns exploring: the incident or what happened to produce the stress;
the people involved in the stress incident; what you did and what you should
have done.
· The
stress diary should reveal a trend in the type of event that causes you trouble
at work. It may be that you don’t prepare well for meetings, or that your
relationship with your boss is bad or that you feel you’re not getting anywhere
in your career or that you are working exhaustingly long hours. Each of these
requires different solutions.
· Make
a plan to deal with the problems that tend to cause you stress reactions. Talk
it through with a trusted work colleague, spouse, friend or counsellor.
· Once
you have a plan of action and you implement it, you need to ensure that it is
working. Use your confidant to help you review progress and assess the success
or otherwise of your approach. If this isn’t working, modify the plan and try
again.
Take time:
·
Using time effectively
is critical to good stress management at work.
· Make
a “to do” list and prioritise tasks.
· Set
realistic deadlines for delivery of each of these objectives. Break up the
various tasks into smaller units, with time deadlines for each.
· Don’t
juggle paper: read it, act on it, file it or bin it.
· Once
a decision is reached, forget it. Don’t waste time thinking about whether it is
a good decision or not.
· Stick
to one task at a time and finish it.
· Decide
on what time of day is good for you and use it for important tasks; use your
“low point” time for routine or less important tasks.
· Prioritise
phone calls, letters, emails deal with the most important ones first.
· Keep
meetings short and to the point, and keep to deadlines on appointments you make
with other people; manage meeting times if you are in a position to do so.
Tips for Effective Stress Management
· Take 40 deep slow breaths each day (Spread evenly
throughout your day not all at once at the end of the day). You can benefit
from associating the deep breaths with some common work occurrence such as the
telephone ringing or clock watching.
· Use regular relaxation periods for work breaks. Try
fifteen to twenty minute periods of (hopefully) undisturbed time away from
phone and/or family. Commit to using this for four to six weeks to begin to see
the benefits.
· Get regular exercise. Aerobic activities such as
walking, jogging, swimming, biking, etc. for 20 minutes 3 times per week is
minimum.
· Eat sensibly. Avoid caffeine. Do not cope with stress
by using alcohol or drugs. If you are stressed out, caffeine is like throwing
gasoline on a fire to put it out!
· Get focused on new directions and regular planning.
Give yourself positive options if you feel trapped. Plan for growth in all
aspects of your life not just work and finance (family/relationships, spiritual
interests, creativity, vacations, hobbies, etc.)
· Use and develop your humour! Positive attitudes really
help! Difficulties, when viewed as opportunities for growth and proving your
abilities, are less harmful. But do not bury your anger, fear or sadness.
· Protect yourself from negative co-workers and
relationships! Do not get caught up in other people negative thinking or let
them rip off your peace of mind and positive energy. Take good care of
yourself!!
· Get back in control! If you cannot control all the
people and situations that happen around you.... at least you can control the
way you respond!
· Give sincere compliments freely and smile! Be positive
and let it shine on all that surround you. It will come back many times more.
· Learn to really listen! It is the best communication
technique that you can develop!
Basic nature of
Lateral Thinking
“The Corporations that will survive, & thrive in
the future, are those that foster creativity today.”
Since most
people believe that traditional vertical thinking is the only possible form of
effective thinking, it is useful to indicate the nature of lateral thinking by
showing how it differs from vertical thinking. Some of the most outstanding
points of difference are indicated below.
So used are we to the habits of vertical thinking that some of these
points of difference may seem sacrilegious. It may also seem that in some cases
there is contradiction for the sake of contradiction. And yet in the context of the behaviour of a
self-maximizing memory system lateral thinking not only makes good sense but is
also necessary.
· Vertical
thinking is selective, lateral thinking is generative.
· Rightness
is what matters in vertical thinking.
Richness is what matters in lateral thinking.
· Vertical
thinking selects a pathway by excluding other pathways. Lateral thinking does not select but seeks to
open up other pathways.
· With
vertical thinking one selects the most promising approach to a problem, the best
way of looking at a situation. With
lateral thinking one generates as many alternative approaches as one can.
· With
vertical thinking one may look for different approaches until one finds a
promising one. With lateral thinking one
goes on generating as many approaches as one can even after one has found a
promising one.
· With
vertical thinking one is trying to select the best approach but with lateral
thinking one is generating different approaches for the sake of generating
them.
· With
vertical thinking one moves in a clearly defined direction towards the solution
of a problem. One uses some definite
approach or some definite technique.
With lateral thinking one moves for the sake of moving. One does not have to be moving towards
something, one may be moving away from something. It is the movement or change that
matters. With lateral thinking one does
not move in order to follow a direction but in order to generate one.
· With
vertical thinking one designs an experiment to show some effect. With lateral thinking one designs an
experiment in order to provide an opportunity to change one’s ideas.
· With
vertical thinking one must always be moving usefully in some direction. With
lateral thinking one may play around without any purpose or direction. One may play around with experiments, with
models, with notation, with ideas.
· The
vertical thinker says: ‘I know what I am
looking for.’ The lateral thinker
says: ‘I am looking but I won’t know
what I am looking for until I have found it’.
· Vertical
thinking is analytical, lateral thinking is provocative
· Vertical
thinking is sequential, lateral thinking can make jumps
With vertical
thinking one moves forward one step at a time.
Each step arises directly from the preceding step to which it is firmly
connected. Once one has reached a conclusion the soundness of that conclusion
is proved by the soundness of the steps by which it has been reached. With
lateral thinking the steps do not have to be sequential. One may jump ahead to a new point and then
fill in the gap afterwards.
In the diagram
below, vertical thinking proceeds steadily from A to B to C to D. With lateral thinking one may reach D via G
and then having got there may work back to A.
Vertical Thinking
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
|
|||||||
 |
|||||||
A B C D
Lateral Thinking
G
 |
A
B C D
· With
vertical thinking one has to be correct at every step, with lateral thinking
one does not have to be.
The
very essence of vertical thinking is that one must be right at each step. This is absolutely fundamental to the nature
of vertical thinking. Logical thinking
and mathematics would not function at all without this necessity. In lateral thinking however one does not have
to be right at each step provided the conclusion is right. It is like building a bridge. The parts do not have to be self-supporting
at every stage but when the last part is fitted into place the bridge suddenly
becomes self-supporting.
· With
vertical thinking one uses the negative in order to block off certain
pathways. With lateral thinking there is
no negative.
· With
vertical thinking one concentrates and excludes what is irrelevant, with
lateral thinking one welcomes chance intrusions.
· Vertical
thinking is selection by exclusion. One
works within a frame of reference and throws out what is not relevant. With lateral thinking one realizes that a
pattern cannot be restructured from within itself but only as the result of
some outside influence. So one welcomes
outside influences for their provocative action. The more irrelevant such influences are the
more chance there is of altering the established pattern. To look only for things that are relevant
means perpetuating the current pattern.
· With
vertical thinking categories, classifications and labels are fixed, with
lateral thinking they are not. With
vertical thinking categories, classifications and labels are useful only if
they are consistent, for vertical thinking depends on identifying something as
a member of some class or excluding it from that class. If something is given a label or put into a
class it is supposed to stay there. With
lateral thinking labels may change as something is looked at, now in one way
and now in another. Classifications and
categories are not fixed pigeonholes to aid identification but signposts to
help movement. With lateral thinking the
labels are not permanently attached but are used for temporary convenience.
· Vertical
thinking depends heavily on the rigidity of definitions just as mathematics
does on the unalterable meaning of a symbol once this has been allocated. Just as a sudden change of meaning is the
basis of humour so an equal fluidity of meaning is useful for the stimulation
of lateral thinking.
· Vertical
thinking follows the most likely paths; lateral thinking explores the least
likely. Lateral thinking can be
deliberately perverse. With lateral
thinking one tries to look at the least obvious approaches rather than the most
likely ones. It is the willingness to
explore the least likely pathways that are important for often there can be no
other reason for exploring such pathways.
With vertical thinking one moves ahead along the widest pathway which is
pointing in the right direction.
· Vertical
thinking is a finite process; lateral thinking is a probabilistic one. With vertical thinking one expects to come up
with an answer. If one uses a
mathematical technique an answer is guaranteed.
With lateral thinking there may not be any answer at all. Lateral thinking increases the chances for
restructuring of the patterns, for an insight solution. But this may not come about. Vertical thinking promises at least a minimum
solution. Lateral thinking increases the chances of a maximum solution but
makes no promises.
· If
there were some black balls in a bag and just one white ball the chances of
picking out that white ball would be low.
If you went on adding white balls to the bag your chances of picking out
a white ball would increase all the time.
Yet at no time could you be absolutely certain of picking out a white
ball. Lateral thinking increases the
chances of bringing about insight restructuring, and the better one is at
lateral thinking the better are the chances.
Lateral thinking is as definite a procedure as putting more white balls
into the bag but the outcome is still probabilistic. Yet the pay off from a new idea or an insight
restructuring of an old idea can be so huge that it is worth trying lateral
thinking for there is nothing to be lost.
Where vertical thinking has come up against a blank wall one would have
to use lateral thinking even if the chances of success were very low.
Challenging
assumptions – Collective Creativity
Organizations
can foster creativity by providing a supportive environment / culture for its
sustenance and growth. Most human
beings are potentially creative in the areas of their strong interest. Their creative potential can be brought out
and amplified, through the use of systematic techniques for creative idea
generation, in group settings. Groups
composed of motivated persons are more effective in generating creative
approaches and solutions to ill-defined or poorly structured problems than
individuals.
Use of
creativity processes in and by groups, has the following advantages for
organizations :
· Groups
bring together a diversity of experience, skills, and knowledge, not possessed
by a single person.
· Groups
are better equipped than individuals, to detect, avoid, and eliminate, errors
and mistakes.
· Mutual
learning and stimulation by members in a group produce a synergistic effect in
their collective striving to resolve a problem situation.
· A
group solution usually produces a greater degree of acceptance than the
solution by a single person.
· If
group members are also involved in implementing their suggestions/ solutions,
they will be more productive and effective in implementing the same.
Impact of Creative
Groups on the Organization
Dynamics of creative groups or teams generate
concurrent change and development in:
· People, providing them with a sense of
meaning, purpose, challenge, achievement, and growth, in their work situations.
· Technology in terms of
operational problems of quality, productivity, and innovation, while building
on improvements.
· Organizational processes and structure in terms of open
communication, participation, cooperation, and mutual development.
· Organization’s financial position in terms of cost reduction, loss prevention, value added
to products / services and increased sales revenue
These changes gradually, and in a cumulative
manner, build up an organization’s culture.
The latter, in turn, serves to sustain, and strengthen, the
organization’s creativity utilization program, and facilitates the work of
creative groups / teams. The
relationship between creative groups, and organization culture, is mutually
supportive.
Blocks to Creative
Development
1. Fear of failure. We are afraid to try out new solutions or
express what might seem strange solutions or opinions, lest we fail. We are self-diffident.
2. Fear of criticism. We are afraid of what others will say, our
elders, parents, teachers and even our peers.
Adolescents are especially vulnerable to fear of criticism and may be
afraid of producing something new, something different from their peers, lest
others smile laugh at them.
3. Distrusting one’s creative
potential. Many people
think that only very intelligent people or geniuses are creative, and that
ordinary folk like them are not. But as
was said above everyone has creative potential.
4. Too soon judgmental. Another block to creativity may be that we
allow our judgment too soon to discard our creative process in producing something
new.
5. Want of perseverance. We give up too soon in trying to find new
ideas, or in solving problems, because we are so used to convergent thinking
that we want a current solution as soon as possible. We do not have the patience to try for newer
ideas in solving problems. Sometimes in
solving a puzzle or a problem we give up too soon, saying to ourselves that it
is too difficult, that it is impossible to solve. If we persevered in trying to solve it, we
would eventually get the solution.
6. Passivity. We shirk the
mental effort required to be creative, to think divergently, to solve problems,
to work out a puzzle, to find expressive words for a poem, etc. We get into a groove and do not like to get
out of it.
7. Poor observation. We fail to observe the various details of an
object or of a problem; we do not try to see new aspects of the object or
problem.
The Cultivation
of Creativity
The importance
of creativity as a competitive resource lies in the enhancement of
organizations’ ability to resolve their complex and difficult problems,
existing and emerging, effectively. The
starting point in this process is the definition of problems. The following questions help formulate a
meaningful definition of a given problem:
· What
is the problem? What is it that makes
this a problem? Are some objectives or
goals not being realised? Are there some
bad symptoms of malfunctioning that need to be eliminated?
· Why
are the objectives not being realised?
Why are undesirable symptoms present?
How and whence have they emerged?
· What
are the explicit and implicit constraints present in the problem situation?
· What
are the major gaps in knowledge and information that are impeding the
problem-solving effort? Do the areas of
ignorance relate to the nature of the problem, the procedure for solving, or
the character of the solution?
In order to
develop a creative approach to problems and ways of coping with them
innovatively, organization personnel need to cultivate certain basic thinking
skills. These skills are vital for
gaining insights and formulating solutions to a wide spectrum of problems. These essential skills are:
Convergent Thinking
Convergent
thinking consists of those abilities, which enable one to reach a right
solution to problems that mostly have one right solution.
The mechanisms
of convergent thinking are Classification and/or Categorization, Analysis,
Synthesis, Optimisation.
Divergent Thinking
Divergent thinking involves approaches or perspective that may be
uncommon or unusual, resulting in novel solutions. Divergent thinking directs one’s thinking
away from the narrow confines or limits of a given problem. It is characterised by an absence of
judgmental or logically evaluative yes - no, correct or incorrect response
processes. It proceeds in terms of
open-ended exploratory queries.
The mechanisms
of divergent thinking are: A) Defining problem, Searching for solution,
Redefinition or Restating the problem, Imaging unconventional solutions,
Raising questions stimulating divergent thinking, Using analogies. B) Recording
the ideas
Making Forced Relationships
Making forced
relationships stimulates new insights towards problem solving. It is a creative process to connect two or
more apparently different or disparate ideas, concepts, elements or entities.
Recognising Positive Potential in a Problem
The ability to
find the positive potential in a problem is a mark of creative openness,
receptivity, and flexibility. It may
sensitize a person to new opportunities and useful courses of actions, which
may compensate for the negative aspects or enable a person to make the best of
a bad situation.
Dissecting Ideas
Dissecting an
idea implies developing a list of what is useful and relevant, and then
identifying what is missing. The list of
what is useful may be prepared by using insights from convergent and divergent
thinking or by making forced relationships.
The identification of what is missing is attempted in terms of “How to...” statements.
Visualising Future Solution State (s)
Visualising future solution state means envisioning solutions to the
problem. It includes creating a vision
of what a solution might look like. For
this, existing components or elements are taken and are manipulated into
something new in order to solve a problem.
It calls for developing a clear and detailed picture of the future with
a successful solution being implemented.
Creativity
Techniques
Brainstorming
This technique
developed by Osborn uses four basic rules to guide a group session :
· In
the initial phase when the members of a brainstorming group generate ideas, no
critique of ideas is permitted.
· Members
are encouraged to produce ideas in natural manner as they occur to them without
any apparent concern about their validity or appropriateness.
· The
orientation is towards generating a profusion of ideas.
· Combining
ideas and improving on ideas are preferred techniques for obtaining better
ideas.
Reverse Brainstorming
It is a
variation of the brainstorming technique.
The group here is asked to focus on as many things wrong with a product,
process, system, or service, as they can.
The focus may then shift towards rectifying the deficiencies.
Nominal Group Technique
This technique
consists of the following steps :
1.
Silent generation of ideas by participants in writing.
2.
Round-robin recording of ideas from each member, and
their display on a flip chart. No
discussion of ideas is permitted at this stage.
3.
Serial discussion of each of the ideas recorded in
step (2) in terms of its perceived importance, clarity, basis, and logic. Comments by members are brief, impersonal,
and voluntary.
4.
Preliminary vote on the importance of the recorded
ideas. Members may pick only a certain
fixed number of ideas, considered ‘best’ by them, for voting.
5.
Counting of all the vote tallies and noting the ideas
with the highest score/votes.
6.
If there is no clear best voted idea, or if there are
inconsistencies in voting, the ideas concerned are further discussed to clarify
their meaning and logic.
7.
Final vote on the ideas is taken at the end of the
discussion.
Genetic Learning Approach
This
technique or rather an approach towards the generation of creative ideas / insights draws on the
theory of biological evolution. It tries
to mimic the evolutionary process in its quest for new / novel and adaptively
robust creative concepts, ideas, insights, and perspectives.
TKJ Technique
It is a group
problem-solving technique developed by Kabayashi and Kawakita (1917). The technique consists of the following
stages:
1.
A set of facts is generated by participants. These facts have to satisfy three conditions
:
a)
They should be relevant to the problem in hand;
b) They
should be objectively verifiable; and
c)
They should be important.
2.
Sets of related facts are formed out of separately
generated facts. Each set is given a
name that all participants agree reflects its essence. This “fact essence” must satisfy the
following conditions :
a)
It can be verified by using the facts from which it
was generated;
b) It
should not be too general; and
c)
It should not be a simple aggregation of the facts
making up the subset.
3.
This compacting process is repeated, forming sets of
the sets and formulating their essences, until one set and its essence are
obtained. The final set should encompass
all the facts, and fact essences, previously formulated.
4.
The solution process is similar to that used in
compacting the facts, but it starts with the suggested solutions to the
previously defined problem. The
individually proposed solutions are required to involve concrete actions that
can be carried out in the near future.
They are combined until one set is obtained whose essence encompasses
all the previously generated solutions.
Induced Dissociation
This technique
consists of looking at, or staring at a product or object, while trying to keep
the mind in a blank state. The purpose
here is to obtain a new and unusual view of the product / object.
Checklist Technique
It consists of a
checklist of questions, ideas, and concepts to be applied in questioning an
existing product.
Attribute Listing
This technique
involves a listing of all the meaningful attributes of a procedure, process, or
product, and then focusing on ways of improving or upgrading any or all of
them.
Synectics
It is an
approach and a procedure developed by Gordon who defines it as “the joining
together of different and apparently irrelevant elements” to resolve a paradox
or a problem. It requires a team of
highly trained people from different fields to collectively work on a
problem. The team uses analogy and
metaphor for two tasks: 1) making the strange familiar, 2) making the familiar
strange.
Morphological Method
It was developed
by Zwicky during his work in the field of jet engines.
Steps of the method are:
- The problem must be explicitly formulated and
defined.
- All parameters that may enter into the solution
must be identified and characterised.
- A multi-dimensional matrix containing all
parameters identified in step (2) must be constructed. This matrix will contain all possible
solutions. For each parameter, its
known forms / states / alternates are listed.
- All solutions should be examined for their
feasibility, and analysed and evaluated, with respect to the purposes to
be achieved.
- The best solutions identified in step (4) should
be analysed, possibly in an additional morphological study, according to
their feasibility, and the resources and means available.
Delphi Method
In this
technique, developed by Helmer, a panel of experts is constituted to deal with
a specific issue / question - such as what new developments will take place in
a given field. These experts are kept
apart so that their judgments will not be influenced by social pressure or by
other aspects of small group behaviour.
Dialectical Approach
This approach
proceeds by forming two research teams.
Both the teams are given the same data regarding a problem. These teams deliberately produce conflicting
solutions to the given problem. The two
solutions represent ‘thesis’ and ‘anti-thesis’.
A confrontation between the two teams, and their respective solutions,
brings out their implicit assumptions. A
creative synthesis of the opposing proposals, and their viewpoints, is then
sought to be achieved.
Reformulation of
the problem is the first step towards evolving a synthesis. A new solution based on assumptions drawn
from both the ‘thesis’ and ‘anti-thesis’, is devised. The dialectical approach essentially shows
that the same data can be interpreted in different ways depending on the assumptions
made.
Six Thinking Hats
The
Six Thinking Hats Method
Each of the
thinking hats has a colour - White, Red, Black, Yellow, Green, and Blue.
The colour
provides the name for the hat. It is
important that the thinker would visualise and imagine the hats as actual
hats. For this to happen colour is
important. Remembering the function of
each hat is easy if one remembers the colour and the associations. The function of the hat then follows.
The six thinking
hats method is designed to switch thinking away from the normal argument style
to a mapmaking style. This makes
thinking a two-stage process. The first
stage is to make the map. The second
stage is to choose a route on the map.
If the map is good enough, the best route will often become
obvious. As in the colour printing analogy,
each of the six hats puts one type of thinking on to the map.
The purpose of
the six thinking hats is to unscramble thinking so that a thinker is able to
use one thinking mode at time - instead of trying to do everything at
once. The best analogy is that of colour
printing. Each colour is printed
separately and in the end they all come together. It is the very artificiality of the hats,
which is their greatest value. They
provide a formality and a convenience for requesting a certain type of thinking
either of oneself or of others. They
establish rules for the game of thinking.
Anyone playing the game will be aware of these rules.
The more the
hats are used, the more they will become part of the thinking culture. Everyone in an organization should learn the
basic idiom so that it can become part of the culture. This makes focused thinking much more
powerful. Instead of wasting time in
argument or drifting discussion, there will be a brisk and disciplined
approach.
The
Purpose of Six Thinking Hats
· Value
of role playing
· Value
of attention directing
· Value
of convenience
· Value
of possible basis in brain chemistry
· Value
of rules of the game
White Hat Thinking is :
· being
neutral and objective
· talking
about facts and figures
· imitating
the computer
· being
away from interpretations and opinions
· focusing
on question to answer
· obtaining
information
· two -
tier system of information -
· first
tier - checked and proven facts
· second
tier - facts believed to be true but not fully checked
· a
spectrum of “likelihood” ranging from
always true - never true
· a
discipline and a direction
Red Hat Thinking is :
· getting
insight of “This is how I feel about the matter”.
· acknowledgment
of emotions and feelings as an important part of thinking.
· making
feelings visible
· becoming
part of the thinking “Map” and also part of the value system
· switching
in and out of the “Feeling” mode
· exploring
the feelings of others by asking for a “red hat view”
· ruling
out the possibility of justifying the feelings or to provide a logical basis
for them
· two
broad types of feelings - ordinary emotions - ranging from strong emotions to subtle ones, complex judgment, to- not
visibly justified types of feelings
Black Hat Thinking is :
· pointing
out what is wrong, incorrect and in error
· understanding
“why something will not work”
· analysing
possible risks and dangers
· pointing
out faults in designing
· an
objective attempt to put the negative elements on to the map
· showing
the errors in the thinking procedure and method itself
· judging
an idea against the past to see “How well it fits what is known”
· projecting
an idea into the future to see “what might fail or go wrong”
· asking
“negative questions”
Yellow Hat Thinking is :
· positive
and constructive
· symbol
of sunshine, brightness and optimism
· positive
assessment
· covering
of positive spectrum ranging from “logical and practical” at one end to
“dreams, visions and hopes” at the other end
· probing
and exploring for value and benefit
· striving
to find logical support for value and benefit
· seeking
to put forward soundly based optimism
· generating
concrete proposals and suggestions
· dealing
with operacy and with “making things happen”
· aiming
towards effectiveness
· speculative
and opportunity seeking
Green Hat Thinking is :
· creative
thinking
· using
the idioms (one’s language) of creative thinking
· mechanism
for both “thinker” and “listener”
· symbol
of fertility, growth and the value of seeds
· the
search for alternatives
· going
beyond the known and the obvious and the satisfactory
· taking
creative pause for alternative ideas
· replacing
idiom of judgement by idiom of movement
· moving
forward an idea in order to reach a new idea
· getting
provocated to come out of usual patterns of thinking
· involving
oneself in lateral thinking
· generating
new concepts and perceptions
Blue Hat Thinking is :
· organising
the thinking itself
· inviting
other thinking hats
· defining
the subjects towards which the thinking is to be directed
· setting
the focus
· defining
the problems and shaping the questions
· determining
the thinking tasks
· assuming
responsibility for summaries, overviews and conclusions
· monitoring
the thinking and ensuring that the rules of the game are observed
· stopping
argument
· insisting
on the “map” type of thinking
· enforcing
the discipline
· setting
up of a step-by-step sequence of thinking operations
·
receiving
comments and suggestions
Thinking
Languages
When you get
stuck on a problem, try approaching the problem in a different “language.”
· Visually.
Using images, pictures, diagrams, drawings, illustrations, sketches,
blueprints, two dimensions, three dimensions.
· Verbally. Using
words, text, talking, writing, descriptions, manuals and instructions.
· Numerically. Using numbers,
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, equations, formulas, algebra.
· Logically. Using
reasoning, analysis, rationale, judgment, induction, deduction, controlled
testing, evidence.
· Sequentially. Using
time, events, intervals, duration, cycles, progressions, outlines, rhythms.
· Spatially. Using
models, structure, movement, action, distance, layout, geometry.
· Conceptually. Using
symbols, theories, metaphors, analogies, philosophy.
· Intuitively. Using
hunches, speculation, instincts, gut feelings, impressions perceptions,
impulses
· Emotionally. Using
sentiments, feelings, passion, opinions, psychology, human factors, confidence,
determination, hope.
Conceptual
Framework – Human Resource Management
In
recent times, particularly with liberalization of the Indian economy and its
gradual integration with the world economy, the Human Resources (HR) function
in India has finally achieved the importance that it has in the developed
world. Perhaps, due to the abundant
manpower available and relatively low cost, this did not merit due consideration
earlier. But now it is realized that
with equal opportunities to acquire technology, finance, systems, the cutting
edge of an organization will be its Human Resources. That is, the difference between one company
and another in the market place, other things being equal, will be the quality,
skill, attitudes and commitment of the Human Resources, which will either see
the company achieve good results – profits – or, decline – losses.
Human
Resource Development is incorporated in organizations to cope with the
corporate cultural change. It is important to continually examine the culture
through a variety of feedback mechanisms, mapping out the culture, assessing
where the organization is, where it wants to go and carefully identifying
strategies for change.
Thus,
HRD is a continuous process, which matches organizational needs for achievement
of goals and the individual’s needs for a career development. It enables individuals to gain their best
human potential by attaining a total all round development. HRD promotes dignity of employment of every
employee in an organization, and provides opportunities for teamwork, personal
development and career development.
Hence a well-planned HRD system must be a part of human resource
management of every organization.
strategic deployment of highly committed
and skilled workforce, suing an array of cultural, structural and personnel
techniques.
Evolution
of the HRD Function
HR management tries to focus on “people” in the
workplace, the need to understand their contribution to the organization’s
purpose. Consequently, there is now an emphasis
on trying to build on HR systems and processes. The evolution of the HRD
Function went through the following phases:
The Initial Phase: This was characterized by a labor welfare
approach. The feature of this approach was that the function was basically
concerned with maintaining records of employees – such as attendance records,
leave of different sorts – Casual / Earned / Sick / Extraordinary / Study Leave
and so on and this date was fed to calculate the wages. Besides the basic wage, other wage components
like PF were also recorded. Records were
also maintained for PF loans and other retirement benefits and implementation
of safety measures as per the Factories Act.
In addition there was some amount of monitoring and providing
information to the employee, the accounts department and for the concerned
department head.
With the advent of trade unions, dealing with
the union was an add-on function. This
involved receiving the charter of demands from union leaders and interpreting
it.
Fire Fighting: In this phase, the function was frequently,
“dousing fires” i.e. resolving conflicts and keeping the wheels of production
moving (union demands, dissatisfaction etc.). Management was preoccupied with
keeping the engines of production moving at all times, and so work stoppages
and discord was an aberration to be speedily got over with, so that the
‘fundamental’ business of production was not held up. The major policy decisions and negotiating
was done by top management and the Personnel Management and Industrial
Relations (PMIR) function that played a supportive/informative role – more
preoccupied with backroom discussions and negotiations.
Such an approach is also referred to as the
maintenance role and the obverse is the development role. If the HR position is in the lower rung of
the management hierarchy, for example, in the production department or in a
labour welfare-oriented department, the HR person would be playing more of the
reactive role – if there is a problem, he reacts and the problem is sought to
be solved. Production should receive the first priority and all industrial
disputes should be settled. With the
emphasis on the current issues, aspects like long-term strategy, planning, etc.
are given low priority. The PMIR
function
was in the unenviable position of having to
douse fires all the time. The major
decisions were taken at the Factory Manager or the Managing Director
level. When the fire or strife erupted
the function got some attention, but when the fire was put out, it got no time
anymore.
Third Phase: This stage in the evolution of the function
came about due to the influence of a variety of factors: the increasing cost of human resources due to
the increased number of benefits, increased cost of living, higher expectations
and higher costs of scarce skilled manpower. The increased HR cost became more
pronounced in the service industry than in the manufacturing industry as the
Human Resource was the main input in the service sector. The other major
influence was that of the behavioral scientists and their contribution to
understanding the nature of human behavior at work focusing on issues like
leadership, work motivation, participation and factors influencing work
productivity. The third factor was the attempt to integrate the Trade
Unions/Workers with management’s vision of the enterprise, that survival and
prosperity was common to both. In fact the market was such that in many
products there was more of rationing distribution, due to either capacity or
input constraints.
Integrated HR Function
At the end of the Third Phase, organizations
soon began focusing on their human resources. Human Resource was in abundant
supply and not a very significant cost in the total operating cost, but working
in industry itself was a new experience for most people in the initial phase.
The PMIR function was thus playing a reactive maintenance role, because of a
combination of market, cost, supply and finance factors. But with a few corporations experimenting
with innovative approaches to combat the negative fall-out of the traditional
approaches to labour, they focused on the positive and the significant
contribution they could make to a congenial working environment and
consequently, smooth production, including changeover to new technology,
flexible manning and increased productivity.
The significant shift was that management now
began to take the initiative and introducing HR systems and procedures, rather
than reacting to a particular problem or a demand. HR issues of major policy initiatives e.g.
new products, new plants, and so on, were discussed taking to account the HR
implications, which hitherto was not the case.
Top managers reviewed and took stock of the situation. Finally, the HR position itself got upgraded
to come on par with the other functions in terms of status and salary.
Aims of Human Resource Management
·
Provide a range of services which support the
achievement of corporate objectives as part of the process of running the
organization;
·
Enable the organization to obtain and retain the
skilled, committed and well-motivated workforce it needs;
·
Enhance and develop the inherent capacities of
people - by providing learning and continuous development opportunities;
·
Create a climate in which productive and harmonious
relationships can be maintained between management and employees and in which
feelings of mutual trust can be developed;
·
Develop an environment in which teamwork and
flexibility can flourish;
·
Help the organization to balance and adapt to the
needs of its stakeholders (owners, government bodies or trustees, management,
employees, customers, suppliers and the public at large);
·
Ensure that people are valued and rewarded for what
they do and achieve;
·
Manage a diverse workforce, taking into account
individual and group differences in employment needs, work style and
aspirations; ensure equal opportunities;
·
Adopt an ethical approach to managing employees
which is based on concern for people, fairness and transparency;
·
Maintain and improve the physical and mental well being
of employees.
Attracting, retaining, developing and motivating
the right sort of employees and helping to develop an appropriate culture and
climate. A ‘resource-based’ strategic
approach is required which recognizes that the strategic capability of a firm
depends on its resource capability. The
aim is to match human resources to present and future business
requirements. The concern has to be
focused not only on the business needs for people but on the needs of the
people themselves.
Global HRD
Perspective
The growing importance of Human Resources is
widely recognized: more and more companies are putting enormous
efforts to improve the effectiveness of their Human Resources.
The traditional sources for competitiveness,
namely access to protected markets, technology and finance as well
as increasing profitability are not enough for success. Many writers think
that human factors, sometimes referred to as the soft skills such
as knowledge and behavior are becoming more significant and therefore the
new source for competitiveness is an effective personnel policy.
The fall of global economic capacity over last
few years was a major factor for companies around the world. The
consequences of the September 11th events in USA further strengthened the
process of financial decline. As the world economy slowed down the companies
had to handle the impacts caused by the decreased business opportunities.
The most important lesson of the past is that
it is vital to maintain a reasonable level of investment in
people in order to keep the services of the most talented key people. This
will be necessary to ensure success in any coming recovery.
On the operational level a question arises,
how should the employees and the company be managed most effectively during a
recession period? How can the human resources manage and effectively
develop in such an environment?
International
Human Resource Development Defined
International human resource development
is the process of employing and developing people in international
organizations, which operate in Europe or globally. It means working across national boundaries
to formulate and implement resourcing, development, career management and
remuneration strategies, policies and practices that can be applied to an
international workforce. This may
include parent country nationals working for long periods as expatriates or on
short-term assignment, local country nationals, or third country nationals who
work for the corporation in a local country but are not parent country
nationals (e.g. a German working in West Africa for a British-owned company).
The Challenge of International Human
Resource Development
International human resource development
is very demanding for four reasons. The
first is likely to be managing the complexity of the workforce mix. For example, wholly owned subsidiary
companies may employ both host and parent country people together with third
country nationals. This may create
problems with employment practices as well as remuneration. A joint venture or strategic alliance may
have an even more complex workforce consisting of expatriates of the joint
venture company, host country nationals, third country nationals and experts
from any of the partners who are ‘parachuted in’ to deal with special problems
or to provide consultancy services. Some
of the specific problems arising in joint ventures include divided loyalties
between the parent company and the joint venture consortium and the difficulties
managers may face when trying to be both sensitive to local conditions and
aware of the demands made by the consortium of their own parent company.
The second challenge is that of managing
diversity - between cultures, social system and legal requirement. International personnel managers are not in
the business of controlling uniformity - if they tried, they would fail.
The third challenge of managing people
globally is that of communications. Even
the most sophisticated electronic communication system may not be an adequate
substitute for face-to-face communication.
The final challenge is that of
resourcing international operations with people of the right caliber to deal
with much more complex problems that inevitably arise. It is necessary for businesses to remain
competitive with their employment offering in the market place, to attract and
retain high quality staff with worldwide capabilities.
Characteristics of International Human
Resource Development
It has been suggested by Torrington that
international HRD is not just about copying practices from the Americans,
Japanese, Germans and so on which will not necessarily translate
culturally. Neither is it simply a
matter of learning the culture of every country and suitably modifying
behaviour in each of them, which is an impossible task because of the robust
and subtle nature of national cultures.
International HRD is best defined by reference to the following 7c’s:
· Cosmopolitan - people tend to be either
members of a high-flying multilingual elite who are involved in high-level
coordination and are constantly on the move, or expatriates who may relocate
after periods of several years and can have significant problems on
repatriation;
· Culture - major differences in cultural
backgrounds;
· Compensation - special requirements for
the determination of the pay and benefits of expatriates and host country
nationals;
· Communication - maintaining good
communication between all parts of the organization, worldwide;
· Consultancy - greater need to bring in
expertise to deal with local needs;
· Competence - developing a wider range of
competences for people who have to work across political, cultural and
organizational boundaries;
· Coordination - devising formal and
informal methods of getting the different parts of the international business
to work closer together.
International
HRD is in many ways simply HRD on a larger scale, albeit more complex, more
varied and involving more coordination across national boundaries, certainly
the same basic techniques of recruitment and training may be used but these
have to be adapted to fit different cultures and local requirements.
Translating Strategic Concerns into
Specific HR Goals : Selected Examples |
|||||
 |
|||||
 |
|||||
 |
|||||
 |
|
||||
Role of an HRD Manager
What
is expected from the HR Professionals
The
Institute of Personnel and Development has stated that HR professionals:
·
Are
proficient in business management and deliver effective people strategies;
·
Are
committed to ethical standards;
·
Can
apply and adapt techniques for people management and development to fit the
needs of organizations and the people who work in them;
·
Are
skilled in management of change;
·
Are
personally committed to lifelong learning and Continuing Professional
Development.
The
focus is therefore on being business like, strategic and ethical, and
application of professional knowledge and skills, change management and
continuous development.
Activities
The
activities carried out by HR practitioners will vary widely according to the
needs of the organization, the job they carry out and their own
capabilities. In general, however, they
provide services, guidance and advice.
Service
Provision
The
aims are to provide effective services that meet the needs of the business, its
management and its employees and to administer them effectively.
Guidance
To
varying degrees, HR practitioners provide guidance to management. At the highest level, this will include
recommendations on HR strategies that have been developed by processes of
analysis and diagnosis to address strategic issues arising from business needs
and human, organizational or environmental factors. At all levels, guidance may be provided on HR
policies and procedures and the implications of employment legislation. In the
latter area, HR practitioners are concerned with compliance - ensuring that
legal requirements are met.
Providing
guidance in the above areas means taking on the roles of business partner,
strategist, innovator, interventionist, internal consultant and monitor.
Advice
HR
practitioners provide advice on such matters as job design, advertising for
staff, drawing up short-lists for selection, identifying methods of satisfying
training needs, the rates of pay to be offered to employees on recruitment or
promotion, health and safety requirements, employee relations issues (disputes,
grievances and communications) and handling people problems (discipline,
capability, absenteeism, time-keeping etc.).
Advice
will be given to managers and team leaders on the above issues but it will also
be provided to individuals. This may
deal with aspects of work and development such as the suitability of the
present job, developing competence and employability, self-managed learning and
career development. It may cover problems arising from work, such as physical
ailments, stress, incompatibility with managers or colleagues, bullying or
sexual harassment. It could extend to
personal problems that affect employees at work. These activities mean that the HR
practitioner can take on the roles of counselor and mentor as well as problem
solver.
Roles
The
main roles that can be played by HR executives are described below.
The
reactive/proactive roles
HR
practitioners can play a mainly reactive role.
They do what they are told or asked to do. They respond to requests for services or
advice. They provide the administrative
systems required by management. This is
referred to as the non-interventionary role in which HR people merely provide a
service to meet the demands of line managers.
But
at a more strategic level, HR specialists take on a proactive role, they act as
business partners, develop integrated HR strategies, intervene, innovate, act
as internal consultants and volunteer guidance on matters concerning upholding
core values, ethical principles and the achievement of consistency.
The
business partner role
HR
specialists as business partners, integrate their activities closely with top
management and ensure that they serve a long-term strategic purpose, and have
capacity to identify business opportunities, to see the broad picture and to
see how their HR role can help to achieve the company’s business objectives.
HR
practitioners in their role as business partners are aware of business
strategies and the opportunities and threats facing the organization. They are capable of analyzing organizational
strengths and weaknesses and diagnosing the issues facing the enterprise and
their human resource implications. They
know about the critical success factors that will create competitive advantage
and they can draw up a convincing business case for innovations that will add
value.
The
Strategist Role
As
strategists, HR practitioners address major long-term issues concerning the
management and development of people and the employment relationship. They are guided by the business plans of the
organization but they also contribute to the formulation of the business
plans. This is achieved by ensuring that
top managers focus on the human resource implications of their plans. HR strategists persuade top managers that
they must develop plans that make the best use of the core competences of the
organization’s human resources. They
emphasize that people are a strategic resource for the achievement of competitive
advantage.
The
Interventionist Role
To
intervene is to modify the course of events.
An intervention is an action or an event in itself that is intended to
achieve this purpose. HR practitioners
are well placed to observe and analyze what is happening in and to their
organizations. They can take a somewhat
detached, albeit empathetic, view on what is happening to organizational
process and their impact on people. The
role of HR specialists is to adopt an all-embracing, holistic approach to
understanding organizational issues and their effect on people.
Following
their analysis, HR professionals can produce a diagnosis of any problems and
their causes and formulate proposals on what should be done about them. Interventions can be concerned with
organizational processes such as interaction between departments and people,
team, work and structural change, for example delayering. It may be necessary to intervene with
proposals on job design, team building, training, communications before
introduction of new technology, a business process re-engineering exercise,
change in work methods such as just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing, or the launch
of total quality or improved customer service initiatives.
HR
practitioners can also intervene when they believe that existing people
management processes need to be improved or changed. They can observe problems of performance,
productivity, competence, motivation or commitment and intervene with ideas
about how these can be dealt with by, for example, performance management and
reward processes.
A
senior HR executive in Unilever, as reported by Armstrong, expressed the
following views about what he termed ‘selective intervention’: “You intervene
in different ways in different situations and it is an opportunistic business. You have to start with an overview of where
the pressure points are within an organization and where you can make a useful
intervention. But the opportunity to
intervene can come at the most unexpected times”.
But
intervention should not degenerate into interference. The interventionist role has to be handled
delicately. It is necessary first to
establish a good business case and then to take people along progressively,
helping them to understand the problem and its causes and involving them in
developing solutions which they will implement, with HR guidance and help as
required.
The
Innovation Role
A
proactive approach to HRM will mean that HR specialists will want to innovate -
to introduce new processes and procedures that they believe will increase
organizational effectiveness.
The
need for innovation should be established by processes of analysis and
diagnosis that identify the business need and the issues to be addressed. ‘Benchmarking’ can take place to identify
‘best practice’ as adopted by other organizations. But ‘best fit’ is more important than ‘best
practice’. In other words, the
innovation should meet the particular needs of the business, which are likely
to differ from those of the other ‘best practice’ organizations. It has to be demonstrable that the innovation
is appropriate, beneficial, and practical in the circumstances and can be
implemented without too much difficulty in the shape of opposition from those
affected by it or the unjustifiable use of resources - financial and the time
of those involved.
The
Internal Consultancy Role
As
internal consultants, HR practitioners’ function like external management
consultants, working alongside their colleagues - their clients - in analyzing
problems, diagnosing issues and proposing solutions. They will be concerned with the development
of HR processes or systems, for example performance management, personal
development planning or new pay structures, and in ‘process consulting’. The latter is concerned with process areas
such as organization, team building, objective setting, quality management,
customer service and, importantly, change management. Process consulting is the most challenging
field for internal consultants and they may seem to be more credible because of
their perceived expertise and independence.
The
Monitoring Role
As monitors of the application of HR policies
and procedures and the extent to which the organization’s values concerning
people are concerned, HR practitioners have a delicate, even a difficult, role
to play. They are not there to ‘police’
what line managers do but it is still necessary to ensure that the policies and
procedures are implemented with a reasonable degree of consistency. This role can mean that HR specialists can
act as ‘regulators’ who are ‘managers of discontent’ involved in formulating
and monitoring employment rules.
Although the tendency is to transfer more responsibility for HR matters
to line managers, they cannot be given total freedom. A balance has to be struck between freedom
and consistency or legal obligations.
HR
practitioners may also act as the guardians of the organization’s values
concerning people. They point out when
behaviour conflicts with those values or where proposed actions will be
inconsistent with them. In a sense,
their role requires them to act as the ‘conscience’ of management - a necessary
role but not an easy one to play.
The
monitoring role is particularly important with regard to employment
legislation. HR practitioners have to
ensure that polices are procedure comply with the legislation and that they are
implemented correctly by line managers.
Contribution
of the HR function
·
Increasing
employee skills and attitudes;
·
Promoting
positive attitudes and increasing motivation;
·
Providing
employees with expanded responsibilities so that they can make full use of
their skills and abilities.
There are seven dimensions that seem to characterize most
if not all of the systems producing high performance through people.
·
Employment
security.
·
Selective
hiring of new personnel.
·
Self-managed
teams and decentralized decision-making as the central principles or
organizational design.
·
Comparatively
high compensation contingent on organizational performance.
·
Extensive
training.
·
Reduced
status distinctions and barriers, including dress, language, office
arrangements and wage differentials between levels.
·
Extensive
sharing of financial and performance information throughout the organization.
HR
can contribute to the achievement of competitive advantage, added value, and to
total quality initiatives in several ways.
Contribution
to Added Value
Added
value is created by people. It is people
at various levels in the organization who create visions, define values and
missions, set goals, develop strategic plans, and implement those plans in
accordance with the underlying values.
Added value will be enhanced by anything that is done to obtain and
develop the right sort of people, to motivate and manage them effectively, to
gain and develop the right sort of people, to motivate and manage them
effectively, to gain their commitment to organizational values, to build and
maintain stable relationships with them, to develop the right sort of
organization structure, and to deploy them effectively and productively in that
structure.
Obtaining
Added Value
There
are four ways in which the HR function can take the lead and make the most of
its opportunity to add value:
·
By
facilitating change and by proposing strategies and program for developing a
more positive quality, customer-focused and performance-oriented culture, and
by playing a major part in their implementation.
·
By
making specific contributions in the areas of human resource planning
resourcing, training and development, performance management, reward and
employee relations;
·
By
ensuring that any HR initiatives in such fields as training and development are
treated as investment on which a proper return will be obtained which will
increase added value;
·
By
delivering cost-effective HR services, i.e. providing value for money.
Contribution
to Competitive Advantage
The
concept of sustainable competitive advantage arises when a firm creates value
for its customers, selects market in which it can excel and presents a moving
target to its competitors by continually improving its position. The key factors are innovation, quality, and
cost leadership, but all these depend on the quality of an organization’s human
resources. Sustainable competitive advantage stems from unique bundles of
resources which competitors cannot imitate.
Unique
talents among employees, including superior performance, productivity,
flexibility, innovation, and the ability to deliver high levels of personal
customer service, are ways in which people provide a critical ingredient in
developing an organization’s competitive position. People also provide the key to managing the
pivotal interdependencies across functional activities and the important external
relationships, it can be argued that one of the clear benefits arising from
competitive advantage based on the effective management of people is that such
an advantage is hard to imitate. An
organization’s HR strategies, policies and practices are a unique blend of
process, procedures, personalities, styles, capabilities and organizational
culture. One of the keys to competitive
advantage is the ability to differentiate what the business supplies to its
customers from what is supplied by its competitors. Such differentiation can be achieved by
having higher quality people than those competitors, by developing and
nurturing the intellectual capital possessed by the business and by functioning
as a ‘learning organization’.
The
HR Function’s Contribution to Quality Management
What
is quality management all about? Quality is achieved through people. It is not
a system or program which is lifted down from a consultant’s shelf, installed
by manufacturing or quality control, and then forgotten. It is not a fad, that will leave the people
concerned and bemused about the part they should play in quality management.
Quality
is a race without a finish in which everyone in the organization takes
part. It is a race against tough
competitors to achieve and sustain world-class standards of performance.
Quality differentiates companies from those competitors. The aim is to deliver customer satisfaction -
the only real measure of the quality of a product or service.
Total
quality empowers customers to define the service they want, measures the service
they get and provides performance feedback to suppliers. And meeting today’s
requirements is not enough. Business and
the people in them must be sufficiently flexible and adaptable to continue
meeting these requirements as they change and develop in the future.
The
HR Function’s Contribution
The
HR function is ideally placed to make a major contribution to total quality
improvement. Members of the function
have, or should have, non-substitutable expertise in the key aspects of making
quality management work through people.
They can bring to bear all their creativity in their role as internal
consultants and service providers in the fields of culture management, the
management of change, team building, communication, the management of learning,
approaches to gaining commitment and modifying behaviour.
There
are four separate roles for HR in quality management:
·
Hidden
persuader, in which HR operates at a strategic level, promoting the cause of
quality management with top management and advising them on how a total quality
culture can be developed and sustained.
The HR function may be much less visible to line managers in this role
but can play a significant part behind the scenes in generating new ideas and
developing total quality strategies.
·
Change
agent, in which HR function plays a major part in driving quality management
and managing the change processes required to develop a quality oriented
culture.
·
Facilitator,
providing hands-on support to line managers through such activities as training
or publishes its own targets and standards for providing quality services to
its internal customers, including how it can help in improving quality
standards generally.
How
the HR function can contribute
There
are two different spheres of influence in which HR can operate on total quality
matters. It can influence line managers
by facilitating and supporting the achievement of their quality
objectives. It can exert influence at
corporate level, in which case it will be concerned with overall philosophies
and strategies and the development of core values for quality and a
quality-oriented culture. At this level,
the function may be concerned with organizational development issues which
could include restructuring or re-engineering and an increased emphasis on
horizontal processes, teamwork, project management, flexibility and
empowerment. In each of these areas HR
should be aware of the quality implications so that it can alert top management
on what needs to be done to achieve continuous improvement.
Operating
strategically means that HR is ideally placed to advise on the development of
integrated quality management processes, which will include a ‘balanced
scorecard’ approach in which one of the four key organizational performance
measures is customer perspective - how do customers see us? (The others are financial perspective,
internal business perspective and innovation and learning perspective.) Performance management processes can then be
structured to ensure that the customer perspective measure is included as a key
factor in assessing results and agreeing personal and team development
plans. Competence profiles and
frame-works at all levels can incorporate quality as a major item.
Issues in
Human Resource Management
The
responses to the increased use of technology and to economic and competitive
pressures have significantly changed the nature of people management in the
1990s.
The
driving forces of competition are affecting the way in which people are
organized and managed as follows:
·
decentralization
and development of decision-making;
·
slimmer
and flatter organization structures;
·
total
quality and lean organization initiatives;
·
fewer
specialists directly employed;
·
the
development of a flexible workforce;
·
more
project-based and cross-functional initiatives and team working;
·
empowered
rather than command structures;
·
greater
self-management and responsibility for individuals and teams;
·
openness,
fairness and partnership in employment relations;
·
greater
need for managers to develop their interpersonal, team leadership and
motivational skills when carrying out their facilitating and coordinating
roles;
·
pressure
for everyone to become more customer-oriented;
·
emphasis
on continuous development to achieve competitive advantage through people.
·
emergence
of human resource management as a philosophy of managing people which
emphasized investment in training, the development of commitment,
communications and paying for performance.
The
Challenge to HRM
Environmental
and contextual changes present a number of competitive challenges to
organizations which mean that HR has to be involved in helping to build new
capabilities. These are set out below:
·
Globalization
requires organizations to move people, ideas, products and information around
the world to meet local needs. New and
important ingredients must be added to the mix when making strategy: volatile
political situations, contentious global trade issues, fluctuating exchange
rates and unfamiliar cultures.
·
Profitability
through growth – the drive for revenue growth means that companies must be
creative and innovative and this means encouraging the free flow of information
and shared learning among employees.
·
Technology
– the challenge is to make technology a viable, productive part of the work
setting.
·
Intellectual
capital – knowledge has become a direct competitive advantage for companies
selling ideas and relationships. The
challenge to organizations is to ensure that hey have the capability to find,
assimilate, compensate and retain the talented individuals they need who can
drive a global organization that is responsive to both its customers and ‘the
burgeoning opportunities of technology’.
·
Change,
change and more change – the greatest challenge companies face is adjusting to
– indeed, embracing – non-stop change.
They must be able to ‘learn rapidly and continuously, and take on new
strategic imperatives faster and more comfortably’.
HR
– Issues
Competitive
pressures are forcing companies to render cost effective products and services
with care and concern for the customer needs.
The cutting edge in providing this output and succeeding in the market
place are the employees of an organization.
The need is therefore, to have competent personnel, who are flexible
enough to respond to the changing demand of the organization and are integrated
and concerned with the mission and survival of the enterprise.
Today
the thrust is to have lean manpower organization, not merely due to the
increased costs, which is a significant concern, but operationally it is easier
to deploy, control and get output from a smaller, more skilled and flexible
workforce, where innovations in technology are changing the nature of work
itself. For instance, in the Japanese
auto industry production line, individual customer requirements are being
catered to, while in the US, a standard product is the order of the day, from
the standardized production lines (Fortune, September 21, 1992). The thrust today is to shed the extra flab -
manpower costs in the organized sector are significant, in the Indian context,
and move towards a skilled, flexibly deployable workforce, which can understand
and respond to the changing needs of the market place and customer wants.
The
worker is now getting organized in cross functional work teams and therefore,
teamwork and the ability to work in groups and adapt one’s skill and background
to others in the team is growing in importance.
Following
from the above point, is the concern for restructuring employee predisposition
to work. Overmanning and a lack of
industrial socialization led to a certain work culture, which was generally not
the most productive. Today the concern
all around is to compare India, with the Asian Tigers - South Korea, Thailand,
Singapore, China where the productivity figures are much higher.
Several
observations need to be made here.
First, besides labour efficiency, productivity is a function of many
factors, namely, capital invested, quality of machinery, technology, quality of
maintenance, etc. Second, due to the use
of outdated technology, the problem of low productivity is made worse with the
presence of overmanning in Indian industry.
Kaushal and Gosh (1993) estimated that the Indian industry has around
4.2 million surplus workers (Anujayesh Krishna and Monappa, A., 1994)
Due
to overmanning and technology upgradation many organizations are moving in a
‘Lean and Trim’ manning mode.
Additionally, we have had the concept of permanency of employment. Therefore, there is a need to argue about the
efficacy of the concept of security of permanent employment, without the
corresponding employee responsibility.
Union contracts are being redrawn to emphasizes this aspect.
Training
and workforce upgradation are being mounted on a more systematic and continuous
basis. The message seems to be getting
across - be productive or move out. The
benefit of life-long employment is not one way.
Unions have seen a number of unit closure or employees rendered surplus,
and paid off through VRS schemes. The
type of jobs and the skill required are changing, so are the numbers. Many with obsolete skills have to be retained
and relocated in new jobs.
The
HR function has gradually shifted its focus, from a narrow maintenance reactive
role, to a much wider canvas, integrating HR strategy with corporate strategy,
empowering employees, restructuring the organization, and so on. However, it needs to grow and keep pace
creatively with the changes and demands.
For the function to grow and keep up with the demands of the organization
and thereby ensure its survival and continued usefulness, the internal needs
have to be constantly identified in the light of the environmental changes and
pressures.
In
such a scenario, much depends on the attitude, interest and orientation of the
HR manager, to the function itself. If
he is enthusiastic and committed, he would be involved and market the function
internally to the beneficiaries, if not, he could very easily slip into a
maintenance role, whereby the tangible benefits of the function would not be
gainshared and consequently, whatever enthusiasm a line manager has towards the
function to help him solve problems, would wither away. A conformist would accept the given system
and at best make marginal changes while a committed manager, would be
emboldened to understand line managers and organization level problems and if
necessary come up with drastic remedies to move the organization in the desired
direction. Structural positioning,
status and leverage, is one important dimension for the function’s growth, but
the HR manager’s interest, enthusiasm, energy and zeal is another major
element, contributing to the success or failure of harnessing employee efforts
in attaining organization goals. To
achieve this goal, new areas and new dimensions need to be constantly explored
and worked with creatively.
The
creative contributions in a globally competitive situation, would encompass the
range of sub-systems from planning the numbers, types and skill of HR, ensuring
their availability on time, placed in the right job slots, ensuring their
continued enthusiasm to work and remain in the organization, nurture and
develop their special talents and skills, provide opportunities for their
career growth, review and realign compensation packages periodically and
finally help guide and implement a meaningful separation package, where
retraining, replacement, is not entirely possible within the organization. At the broader level arise issues like
realigning the organization structure, developing better communication and
information highways, a useful Human Resource Information System, which would
provide the database for information based personnel decision and personnel
maintenance administration.
The
other area for creative support is in helping the line managers implement and
operationalise HR system and programs to their advantage. They could be able to tap relevant labour
markets, suitable and appropriate short lists of candidates for jobs, helping
with proper placement, induction and training, equity in transfers, promotion,
salary and benefits decision, helping managers in dealing with people - filling
in performance appraisal, performance review and feedback forms, signaling
attitude and morale problems and initiating diagnostics; help in dealing with
trade unions at the shop floor level, building a database for both maintenance
aspects - leave, travel, medical, compensation, and development aspects, and
development aspects like appraisals, rewards, training, and realigning the
departmental structure and job roles, creating/deleting or merging job roles.
The
universe of the HR specialist is constantly expanding and the demand for
relevant and timely service is ever constant - it is up to the specialist to
respond appropriately.
Clearly
the HR functions as indicated have a significant role to play in enhancing
employee productivity to meet the challenge of the liberalized competitive
environment.
For Further Reading:
·
Armstrong
Michael, (1999) A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 7th
edition, Kogan Page
·
Monappa
Arun, (1997) Managing Human Resources, Macmillan India Ltd.
Everyone thinks of changing the world,
but no one thinks of changing himself.
- Leo Tolstoy
Self Development
Self Development is essential to reach and sustain peak
performance and become aware of one’s capabilities in order to achieve the
desired performance. A healthy
organization is one, which takes ample care and pains to develop its
employees. Organizations can provide a
facilitating and enabling atmosphere and resources to bring to fruition the
aspirations and ambitions of individuals.
The initiative for such an action lies with the individual.
“Self
Development” incorporates:
·
Increasing
skills to be more effective on the present job.
·
Increasing
promotion potential in the same organization, and also
·
Adding
value to the self, to facilitate inter organizational mobility, in case an
employee desires so.
Areas
of Self Development
An
individual needs to identify the areas for his Self Development. The crucial areas for Self Development can be
as follows:
·
Develop
an aspiration to attain higher competence and results, in other words,
inculcating values of ‘achievement orientation’. This requires definition of goals for the
self in consonance with the goals of the organization as well as the future
looking orientation.
·
Develop
initiative in the form of ‘anticipating’ instead of ‘confronting’ problems of
future. Many a time individuals do not
perceive their responsibility as identifying ‘new areas’, which need attention
as well as developing ‘new methods’ for solving these problems.
·
Environment
of business can threaten its safety and result in the redundancy of the present
operations. A significant proportion of
time and energy needs to be devoted towards visualizing and identifying any
threats from the competitive environment.
·
Quite
often individuals are completely unaware of the principles applicable in their
functional area. Even when they are
aware of the principles, they lack the abilities to apply such principles to
the particular situations, because they find it difficult to identify the
crucial and the changeable factors in the organization. It is such applicability of principles that
they have to develop.
·
Last,
but the most important quality is to be able to make effective decisions. Decision-making requires the ‘awareness of
the alternative courses of action’ along with their relative importance and
implications. It also requires the
awareness of and the ability to device ‘criteria’ for selecting between these
alternatives.
It
is such qualities that an individual needs to develop in him in order to be an
effective manager. It can be done
through the interaction between the employee and his colleagues, his boss and
through specific training programs and, most important of all, through
self-learning. In this direction, it
becomes very important for an individual to identify the “defense mechanisms”
that he uses to rationalize his present behaviour.
Self-Discipline
Personal
Effectiveness
Being
personally effective is one of the important aspects in Self Development. One
pre-condition for personal effectiveness is self-awareness. A person who understands himself is likely to
be more effective. Personal
effectiveness depends partly on self-understanding and partly on the use of
such understanding with care. Several
factors contribute to personal effectiveness:
·
Self-Disclosure: Willingness of a person to be open to
others and to share the relevant feelings, knowledge etc. with others.
·
Feedback: Through feedback that a person receives
from others, he may become aware of some strengths and some weaknesses, which
only others, who observe and are affected by his behaviour, may be able to
communicate.
·
Perceptiveness:
Perceptiveness would mean a person’s sensitivity to feelings of the
other person, and the situation in which both interact. It also means being sensitive to the cues,
which he may pick up to determine both the extent and the manner of
self-disclosure as well as feedback. It
is perceptiveness of the person in making both self-disclosure and feedback
effective in improving one’s behaviour.
A
combination of these makes for interpersonal effectiveness. This combined with high initiative and
action-orientation enhances personal and managerial effectiveness.
Self-Awareness
and Personal Effectiveness
An
‘Effective Person’ is one who has a high degree of self-awareness. Such self-awareness is characterized by a good
insight into one’s own strengths and weaknesses. In addition, effective individuals are
constantly searching for opportunities to test themselves in new situations,
gain more insights into their own personality, improve upon their strengths and
overcome their weaknesses.
Every
individual’s personality (attitudes, values, habits, abilities, competencies
etc.) can be considered as consisting of four parts in terms of his
self-awareness and awareness of others.
These include the following:
·
An
‘open’ or a ‘public’ personality which consists of those aspects that he is
aware of (known to him) and which others around him are aware of.
·
A
‘private’, or a ‘closed’ part (his knowledge, attitudes, habits, abilities,
competencies, weaknesses, strengths etc.) which only he is aware of and which
others are not aware of;
·
A
‘blind’ part which he is not aware of, but others are aware of and
·
A
‘dark’ or ‘hidden’ part which neither the individual nor others are aware of.
If
100 points have to be assigned to all the four parts together, for most people
the first three parts may get less than 10 points and the ‘dark’ or
‘unexplored’ part may get over 90 points.
This is because in our lifetime we do not get enough opportunities to discover
our own strengths, our potential and abilities.
Every choice we make in our education, profession, career etc. helps us
to explore and discover only a small part of our talent, at the same time
narrowing the scope or closing the doors to discover many other parts.
Self-awareness
means a better recognition of one’s Qualities, Strengths, Weaknesses and
Competencies etc. Such awareness leads
to better choices and better decision-making.
This is because an individual who is more aware of his strengths and
weakness can recognize and look for opportunities where his strengths can help
him achieve success and avoid (or at least be prepared to face) situations
where his weaknesses may create problems for him. If such self-awareness is to be high, ‘blind
spots’ need to be reduced and ‘dark parts’ need to be explored. Both these can be facilitated through high
initiative, activity level, risk-taking, self-disclosure, and openness to
feedback with interpersonal sensitivity.
No comments:
Post a Comment