REACTION PAPER
4. EMOTIONS & MOODS
The study of emotions has been a relatively small part of the field of organizational
behavior. The scientific management movement focused on the rational workplace, believing
that rationality and emotion were mutually exclusive. In addition, there was a belief that
emotions had only negative impacts on performance. While moods are the feelings which are
less intense than emotion and is not directed towards anything.
In an organization, emotions and moods must not practice in order to come up with
productive works. But human as we are, no one is perfect but it can be practiced and learned.
Negative emotions at work can be formed by work overload, lack of rewards, and social
relations which appear to be the most stressful work-related factors. Stress is the problem of
each person feeling it. Negative emotions can be caused by poor leadership, lack of guidance,
lack of support and backup. Employees' lack of confidence in their abilities to deal with work
demands, and their lack of confidence in coworkers can also create prolonged negative stress.
Showing stress reveals weakness, therefore, employees suppress their negative emotions at
work and home. Negative emotions can be seen as a disease in the workplace.
People in an organization experience positive and negative emotions at work. Based on
experience in our workplace, as an accounting staff in a real estate/developer company, we
handle receivables every now and then. We sometimes feel negative towards the client especially
when they will pay their monthly amortization during lunch break or when it’s 6:00PM beyond
(dismissal time). But in a positive view, though deep inside we honestly feel somewhat negative
towards them, we give them our sweetest smiles. We just keep this negative feeling within
ourselves and show to them that we’re positive towards this kind of situation. At the end of the
day, we’re just thankful because we are surrounded by positive attitudes in our organization.
Being able to not only control your emotions, but gauge the emotions of those around
you and effectively influence them is imperative to success in the workplace. Toxicity in the
workplace is a regular occurrence and an occupational hazard. That is why the success of many
projects, and the organization itself, depends on the success of handlers, the people (usually
managers) whose interventions either assuage individuals’ pain from toxicity or eliminate it
completely. One can conclude that the ability to effectively deal with emotions and emotional
information in the workplace assists employees in managing occupational stress and maintaining
psychological well-being. This indicates that stress reduction and health protection could be
achieved not only by decreasing work demands (stressors), but also by increasing the personal
resources of employees, including emotional intelligence.
5. PERSONALITY AND BEHAVIOR
Personality is the combination of characteristics or qualities that forms a person's unique
identity. It signifies the role which a person plays in public. Every individual has a unique, personal
and major determinant of his behavior that defines his/her personality. Personality trait is
basically influenced by two major features: Inherited Characteristics and Learned Characteristics.
Inherited characteristics means the features an individual acquires from their parents or
forefathers, in other words the gifted features an individual possesses by birth is considered as
inherited characteristics. Nobody learns everything by birth. First, our school is our home, then
our society, followed by educational institutes. The characteristics an individual acquires by
observing, practicing, and learning from others and the surroundings is known as learned
characteristics.
Personality traits are the enduring features that define an individual’s behavior. A
personality trait is a unique feature in an individual. Psychologists resolved that there are five
major personality traits and every individual can be categorized into at least one of them. These
five personality traits are: Extrovert, Neurotic, Open, Agreeable, and Conscientious. There are
also major personality attributes that includes: Locus of control, Machiavellianism, Self-esteem,
Self-monitoring and Risk taking.
The importance of personality and how it complements an organization, varies by role
and industry. For managers and business leaders, having the ability to motivate and encourage
your colleagues while also understanding their shortcomings, is critical to an organization's
success. For employers, having the ability to communicate effectively with staff and remain
flexible toward change is imperative to driving an organization forward. In both instances, a
manager's ability to build and sustain relationships with colleagues is integral to the
organization's success. More often than not, personality dictates how you're able to build and
sustain such relationships, and is thus an important element to any organization.
The key toward understanding how important personality is to your organization is to
step back and analyze how you interact with your work. Do you frequently find yourself working
with others to accomplish a task? Do you work in a cubicle with little to no interaction with
colleagues? Consider the effect your personality has in your line of work, and then examine how
your personality either advances or impedes you from accomplishing your goals. If you find that
personality does indeed play an important role in your organization, consider how your skill sets
have helped you build and sustain relationships with your colleagues. It may seem daunting at
first, but taking the time to understand how your personality affects those around you is the most
important step toward understanding the importance of personality in your organization.
In our workplace, personality and behavior were studied and focused esp. that we deal
with the clients every day. It is important for us to be positive because it is one way to keep the
clients keep in touch and loyal to our company. It is also a training ground for us to behave not
only in our organization in dealing with the clients but also in preparation in dealing with the
people that we may encounter even outside in our workplace.
6. PERCEPTION AND DECISION MAKING
Perception is a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory
impressions in order to give meaning to their environment. It is important in an organization
because people’s behavior is based on their perception of what reality is, not on reality itself. The
factors that influence perception are factors that shape and can distort perception: Perceiver,
target, situation, when an individual looks at a target and attempts to interpret what he or she
sees, that interpretation is heavily influenced by personal characteristics of the individual
perceiver, the more relevant personal characteristics affecting perception of the perceiver are
attitudes, motives, interests, past experiences, and expectations, Characteristics of the target can
also affect what is being perceived. This would include attractiveness, gregariousness, and our
tendency to group similar things together. For example, members of a group with clearly
distinguishable features or color are often perceived as alike in other, unrelated characteristics
as well and the context in which we see objects or events also influences our attention. This could
include time, heat, light, or other situational factors.
In an organization, there’s what we call Person Perception, which means making
judgment about others. Normally, judgment occurs when there’s assumptions happen. There are
people have beliefs, motives or intentions. We can’t deny the fact that this really happens in
every organization, whether it is big or small.
The link between perception and individual decision making are individuals in
organizations make decisions; they make choices from among two or more alternatives. Decision-
making occurs as a reaction to a problem. Every decision requires interpretation and evaluation
of information.
In an organization, decisions be made by the following: The optimizing decision maker is
rational. He or she makes consistent, value-maximizing choices within specified constraints.
Defining the problem, Identify the decision criteria important to solving the problem. Decisions
are actually made in organizations when decision makers are faced with a simple problem having
few alternative courses of action, and when the cost of searching out and evaluating alternatives
is low, the rational model is fairly accurate. Common biases and errors in decision making are
decision makers allow systematic biases and errors to creep into their judgments, overconfidence
bias, anchoring bias, confirmation bias, availability bias, and among the like.
