Organizational Behaviour

Suppose you are Manager of Human Resource Company in an XY Company. You have noticed that a supervisor has given perfect score to one of his subordinate. You know that Subordinate might deserve those score. Also you know that there might be some type of perceptual biases involved in scoring. Name two types of perceptual biases that may be involved in this case and explain. THE FIRST PERCEPTUAL BIAS THAT THE HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGER IS MAKING IS THE SIMILAR-TO-ME EFFECT. THIS RESULTS WHEN THE PERSON PERCIEVES AN INDIVIDUAL THAT IS SIMILAR TO THEM MORE FAVOURABLE THAN TO PATRONS WHO ARE NOT AS SIMILAR. THIS MAY BE DUE TO REASONS SUCH AS WORK HABITS AND VALUES, THE BELIEF THAT THINGS SHOULD BE DONE IS A SIMILAR FASHION, AND DEMOGRAPHICS, SUCH AS THE PERSONS AGE, GENDER, AND RACE. THIS BIAS HAS BEEN HEAVILY STUDIED IN THE PAST BY PULAKOS AND WEXLEY (1983) WHERE IT WAS DISCOVERED THAT SURVEYED SUPERVISORS GAVE HIGHER SCORES TO THOSE WHO CHOOSE STRONGLY AGREED/ AGREED TO THOSE WORKERS WHO WERE MORE SIMILAR TO THEM. THE SECOND PERCEPTUAL ERROR THAT THE MANAGER MAY BE MAKING IS THE HALO EFFECT, WHICH OFTEN OCCRUS DURING PERFORMANCE APPRASIALS. THIS OCCURS WHEN A FORMER IMPRESSION, NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE, TAINTS EVERYTHING THE APPRAISER OBSERVES THE PERSON DOES. IN OTHER WORDS, IT IS THE TENDENCY FOR OUR OVERALL IMPRESSIONS OF OTHERS TO AFFECT OBJECTIVE EVALUATIONS OF THEIR SPECIFIC TRAITS; PERCEIVING HIGH CORRELATIONS BETWEEN CHARACTERISTICS THAT MAY BE UNRELATED. Does the person with high score on conscientiousness perform better at job as compare to person with low score on conscientiousness? Why or why not? No CONSCIENTOUSNESS IS THE DIMENSION OF THE BIG FIVE THAT RANGES FROM CAREFUL, THOROUGH, AND RESPONSIBLE, TO IRRESPONSIBLE, DISORGANIZED, AND UNSCRUPULOUS. IT DESCRIBES THE TENDENCY TO SHOW SELF-DISCIPLINE AND STRIVE FOR COMPETENCE AND ACHIEVEMENT AND SHOWS A STRONG ASSOCIATION WITH TASK PERFORMANCE – JOB PROFICIENCY, TRAINING PROFICIENCY, PERSONNEL DATA. HOWEVER, RESEARCH SHOWS THAT CONSCIENTIOUSNESS CAN ALSO LEAD TO FEWER TASKS GETTING DONE AND/OR TO TAKING LONGER TO COMPLETE A GIVEN SET OF TASKS. THEREFORE, THERE ARE NO “GOOD” OR “BAD” INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES; IT’S ALL ABOUT “FIT”. IF SOMEONE HAS HIGH CONSCIENTOUSNESS, IT WILL INCREASE JOB PERFORMANCE IF ONE WERE A MASTER CARPENTER AND DECREASE JOB PERFORMANCE IF ONE WERE A RELIEF WORKER. GENERALLY, THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONSCIENTIOUSNESS AND JOB PERFORMANCE GO FROM NONEXISTENT TO VERY STRONG DEPENDING ON THE LEVEL OF SOCIAL SKILLS. SOCIAL SKILLS SOFTEN THE IMPACT OF THE HIGHLY METHODICAL AND TASK-ORIENTED BEHAVIOR OF CONSCIENTIOUS PEOPLE. Conscientiousness which is part of the Big Five personality traits (neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, and extraversion) is a dimension which ranges from being careful, thorough, and responsible to being irresponsible, scrupulous, and disorganized. Conscientiousness is the tendency to show self-discipline and at the same time, striving for competence and achievement. The relationship between conscientiousness and task performance or job performance has been shown to be nonexistent at one end to having a strong correlation on the other end, depending on the amount of social skill. For instance, one study depicted a strong association between high conscientiousness and task performance – job proficiency, training proficiency, and personnel data. Other studies have shown that high conscientiousness yields less tasks getting done or tasks getting done over a long duration of time. Therefore, this suggests that there are no good or bad individual differences, it is all about fit. High conscientiousness may be a good trait for a master carpenter while it would not be a good trait for a relief worker, and vice versa. Social skills, as previously mention, also softens the highly methodical task oriented behavior of conscientiousness people.