Individual Behavior- BIOGRAPHICAL CHARACTERISTICS

BIOGRAPHICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Biographical characteristics are readily available to managers. They include data that are contained in almost every employee's personal files. The biographical characteristics are:

1. Age: The relationship between age and job performance is likely to be an issue of increasing importance during the next decade. Evidence indicates that, a number of positive qualities that order older workers bring to their job specifically experience, judgment, a strong work ethic and commitment to quality. But older workers are also perceived as locking flexibility and as being resistant to new technology.
2. Gender: Psychological studies have found that, women are more willing to conform to authority and those men are more aggressive and more likely than women to have expectations of success. Generally, there is no significant difference in job productivity between men and women. Similarly, there is no evidence indicating that an employee's gender affects job satisfaction.
3. Marital Status: There are not enough studies to draw any conclusion about the effect of marital status on job productivity. But research consistently indicates that married have fewer absences, undergo fewer turnovers and are more satisfied with the job than are their unmarried coworkers. Marriage imposes increased responsibility that may make a steady job more valuable and important.
4. Tenure: The last biographical characteristic is tenure. Extensive reviews of the seniority‑productivity relationship have been conducted. If we define seniority as time on a particular job, we can say that, the most recent evidence demonstrates a positive relationship between seniority and job productivity. So tenure, expressed as work experience appears to be a good predictor of employee productivity.

 

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Ability:

Ability refers to an individual's capacity to perform the various tasks in a job. It is a current assessment of what one can do. An individual's overall abilities are essentially made up of two sets of factors:

• Intellectual abilities: Intellectual abilities are those needed to perform mental activities. Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests are designed to ascertain one's general intellectual abilities.

• Physical abilities: Physical abilities gain importance for successfully doing less skilled and more standardized jobs. For example, jobs in which success demands stamina, manual dexterity (skill), strength or similar talents require management to identify an employee's physical capabilities.

 

DEFINITION OF LEARNING

Any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience is learning. We can say that changes in behavior indicate that learning has taken place and that learning is a change in behavior. This definition has several components:

a) Learning involves change. Change may be good or bad from an organizational point of view.

b) The change must be relatively permanent.

c) This definition is concerned with behavior. Learning takes place when there is a change in action.

d) Some form of experience is necessary for learning. Experience may be acquired directly through observation or practice or it may be acquired indirectly, as through reading.

 

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THEORIES OF LEARNING

There are three theories of learning that have been offered to explain the process by which we acquire patterns of behavior. These are classical conditioning, operant conditioning and social learning.

 

Classical Conditioning Theory of Learning

Classical conditioning has been conducted in the early 1900s by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov.

This theory can be summarized in such a way that learning a condition response involves building up an association between a condition stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus. When the stimuli, one compelling and other neutral, are paired, the neutral become a conditioned stimulus, and hence, takes on the properties of the unconditioned stimulus.

Classical conditioning is passive. Something happens and we response in a specific way. It is elicited in response to a specific, identifiable event. As such it can explain simple reflexive behavior. But most behavior – particularly the complex behavior of individual in organizations – is emitted rather than elicited. That is it’s a voluntary rather than reflexive. For example, employees choose to arrive at work on time, ask their boss for help with problems, or ‘goof of’ when no one is watching.

 

Operant Conditioning Theory of Learning

Operant conditioning argues that behavior is the function of its consequences. People learn to behave to get something they want or to avoid something they do not want. Operant behavior means voluntary or learned behavior in contrast to reflexive or unlearned behavior. The tendency to repeat such behavior is influenced by the reinforcement or lack of reinforcement brought about by the consequences of the behavior. Therefore, reinforcement strengthens a behavior and increases the likelihood that it will be repeated.

People will most likely engage in desired behaviors if they are positively reinforced for doing so; that rewards are most effective if they immediately follow the desired response; and the behaviors that are not rewarded, or are punished, are less likely to be repeated.

Operant conditioning is seen everywhere. Assume that your boss tells you that if you will work overtime during the next three week busy season, you will be compensated for it at your next performance appraisal. However, when performance appraisal comes you find that you are given no positive reinforcement for your overtime work. The next time your boss asks you to work overtime, what will you do? You’ll probably decline! Your behavior can be explained by operant conditioning: if a behavior fails to be positively reinforced, the probability that the behavior will be repeated decline.

 

Social Learning Theory

Individual can learn by observing what happens to other people and just by being told about something, as well as direct experience. Our learning comes from watching models – parents, teachers, peers, motion picture and television performers, bosses and so forth. This view that we learn through both observation and direct experience is called social learning theory.

Social learning is an extension of operant conditioning – that is, it assume that the behavior is a function of consequences – it also acknowledges the existence of observational learning and the importance of perception in learning.

 

MEANING OF SHAPING

When we attempt to mold individual by guiding their learning in graduated steps, we are shaping behavior. Consider the situation in which an employee’s behavior is significantly different from that sought by management. If management rewarded the individual only when he or she showed desirable responses, there might be very little reinforcement taking place. In such a case, shaping offers a logical approach towards achieving the desired behavior.

We shape behavior by systematically reinforcing each successive step that moves the individual closer to the desired response. If an employee who has chronically been a half-hour late for work comes in only 20 minutes late we can reinforce that improvement

 

METHODS OF SHAPING BEHAVIOR

There are four ways in which to shape behavior. These are discussed in the following:

1. Positive reinforcement: Following a response with something pleasant is called positive reinforcement. An employee, for example, may find that when high-quality work is done, the supervisor gives a reward of recognition.
2. Negative reinforcement: Following response by the termination or withdrawal of something unpleasant is called negative reinforcement. For example, a teacher ask a question to his student and he don’t know the answer, looking through his lecture notes is likely to preclude (prohibit) him being called on.  
3. Punishment: Punishment is causing an unpleasant condition in an attempt to eliminate an undesirable behavior. Giving an employee a two-day payment deduction from salary for showing up late in coming office is an example of punishment.
4. Extinction: Eliminating any reinforcement that is maintaining a behavior is called extinction. Extinction is the withholding of significant positive consequences that were previously provided for a desirable behavior. When the behavior is not reinforced, it tends to be gradually extinguished.