Final Reflective Report

Student: 961****
 Final Reflective Report 2010

Introduction:

In this report the reader will find my past experiences linked with the current organisational
behaviour theories. I will be introducing the reader to three key organisational behaviour
issues, the impact it has on individuals, and the team work, most importantly to the end result.

Analysis:

Communication – The transference and understanding of meaning (S.P.Robbins, 2003,

P284). Perfect communication, if there was such a thing, would exist when a thought or idea
was transmitted so that the mental picture perceived by the receiver was exactly the same as
that envisioned by the sender.

Information Richness of Communication Channels is (See Exhibit 1) the amount of

information that can be transmitted during a communication episode. It is very important to
use the correct method of communication channels, if you want to get the end result.
Scenario: “A group member sent me a draft of the poster presentation. Every second word
was spelt wrong and showed no respect for grammar or the actual case study. I replied back
with: Brilliant, please consider the following”. “I got a reply saying “Who do you think you
are, a teacher?” I did not use the right channel of communication, that comment should have
been discussed in person. The above illustrates the communication channel I chose was
clearly wrong, and the recipient’s attitude and motivation thereafter was affected. That
particular person I emailed did not connect to what I meant. I could have communicated my
point clearly if we had agreed to meet up, because face to face communication allows both
the sender and the receiver to communicate not only verbally, but the body language for
someone who can understand it, speaks for itself. The things which we do not say are
sometime more important. Hence: my body language, voice and facial expression would have
clarified that I was just trying to be helpful and going directly to the point, I was not trying to
create authority over that person. (Continues on appendix)

Attitude – evaluation statements or judgements concerning objects, people or events

(S.P.Robbins, 2003, P284). There are thousands of attitudes, but I will investigate only one of
them which I believe fits my experience and I can reflect upon, which is Job satisfaction.

Measuring job satisfaction is a complex summation, as there are different issues that make
people have a positive or a negative attitude toward their job. Working condition, people in

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the group, communication method used in the group and leadership issues, all of these need
to be taken into account before we conclude that we have a proactive team with a can do
attitude. According to David Knights (2007, p. 50-60) There are two widely used method to
gather this information, summation of job facets which is more complicated as it takes all the
above into consideration and single global rating, simply asks all things considered, how
satisfied are you with you group or job? You would think that asking specific questions and
adding up the rating at the end, would give a better evaluation than single global rating, but
According to J.Wanous et al. Journal of Applied Psychology, April 1997, pp. 247-52. “The
research, however does not support this intuition, this is one of the rare instances that
simplicity seems to work as well as complexity”. I should have used single global rating to
gather the information about, poster group presentation, simply finding out how happy is
everyone with their particular task, but on the other hand the response error would have been
high, because not a single person complained that they did not understand their chosen OB
issue. According to Stephen P. Robbins, “happy workers aren’t necessary productive
worker”, I can verify this because C. Ostroff. Journal of Applied Psychology, December
2002, pp. 245-48. “States that productivity is likely to lead to positive attitude and job
satisfaction”. This to me does make absolute sense, and I believe that I know where our
poster group presentation went wrong; we only split the work in three ways and we though
that everyone would have a positive attitude. We should have at least completed one key OB
issue as a complete group, that would have built our confidence and attitudes would have
hopefully start to change, from simply wanting to pass the course, to aiming higher. As we
would have already produced a quality piece of work, in turn; this motivates everyone in the
group, and its sets an acceptance benchmark that we could all aspire to individually or
collectively.

Motivation – The cognitive, decision making process through which goal directed behaviour
is initiated, energized, directed and maintained (D.Buchanan and A. Huczynski 2004, P244).
Motivated individuals stay with a task long enough to achieve their goals.

According to David Buchanan et al. (2004), that inexperienced manager often labels
employees who lack motivation as lazy. I must admit, I actually though that Prab was being
lazy! While I am reflecting on my group experience and reading around what motivates
individuals, Prab probably was not being lazy at all, but she simply was not motivated to do
any work by the deadline. (S.P.Robbins, 2003, P155) states “The change in motivation can be

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driven by situation”. Now I believe that this was true, as she did improve two days before we
were to present, so the situation she was in, changed her motivation, to achieve her goal
which was simply to pass. Prab did meet her goal – whereas Myself, Pavel and Sandeep did
not meet our goal, does this mean that we were not motivated to stay with out task long
enough to achieve our goal, I don’t think so. I believe it simply means we could not
performer well under pressure and could not work with people who do not share out work
ethic and motivation. Although Belbins team role question shows that myself and Pavel as
Shaper, which means we thrive under pressure, nevertheless Belbins team role does not take
into account all the external factors. Goal-Setting theory – (S.P.Robbins, 2003, P165) “is the
theory that specific and difficult goals, with feedback, lead to higher performance”. The
research suggests that working towards a goal is a major source of work motivation.
According to P.C. Earley et al. Journal of Applied Psychology (1987, pp157-189) “Goals tell
an employee what needs to be done and how much effort will need to be expended”. We had
clear targets to analyses three key OB issues, apply it to the case study, draw conclusion and
recommendation, but we never actually knew how long that will all take. Another major
factor is that, we never anticipated that we would not be communicating to each other and
refuse feedback from the group members. G.P.Latham et al, Academy of management journal
states; “feedback leads to higher performance than does nofeedback.” We were our own
worst enemies for not communicating and joining debates, accept feedback and forward them
within the group members until we had every last detail in the presentation.

Self-efficacy – (S.P.Robbins, 2003, P154-73) “refers to an individuals believe that he or she

is capable of performing a task”. The higher my self-efficacy the more confident I would be
in my ability to succeed. Prab, which could potentially have a low self-efficacy, did not
respond positively to feedback, whereas I, Pavel and Sandeep seem to respond well, or if we
disagreed with the feedback we would argue it through until we made our points, but Prab did
not participate in discussion or prove her points, whenever we made comments. Overall, I
believe that myself, Pavel and Sandeep were used to working in a group together and we
have an extravert personality, whereas Prab is an introvert. There is nothing wrong with being
who you are, but it does make working in a group difficult, if it is not managed properly and
the morale and self-efficacy does seem to be withdrawn, based on my observation from the
poster group.

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Summary:

Information in this day and age can be transmitted by using varieties of methods, but some methods
can jeopardise friendships, and team work. Certain channels communication should not be
overstretched, like I was pushing emails beyond its limits. From now on, I will think carefully to what
channels of communication I use based on, the recipients personality and the nature of my message
which I will be communicating.

The Goal-Setting theory simply addresses different outcome variables. Based on research that has
been carried out, it is clear that difficult goals lead to higher levels of individual productivity.
Therefore, if everyone in out poster group had set high targets, and with the right attitude and
dedication we would have performed better than we did. However the theory does not address for
other external factors, for example, individual satisfaction, private life and absenteeism.

Overall, the poster group presentation attitude was not right, as we had different objectives and
values. This did have a negative affect in our performance. No one in our group thought of gathering
some information well in advance about the individual attitudes. We all realised later on that there
were problems, but the truth is that happened because we had a negative attitude and no respect for
each other. Of course, we are all to be blamed as we did not even appoint a group leader to keep an
eye on everyone and attitude has a direct impact on behaviour.

Appendix:

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High channel richness

Information Richness of Communication Channels

Exhibit 1

According to; M.A. Campion et al. “Relationship between work team characteristics and
effectiveness” p.430. The research by Deborah Tannen suggests that communication between
men and women is different, as women talk to connect, whereas men hardly listen and start
offering solution. Nevertheless, I have learned that communication is a continual balancing
act and I should listen, instead of, offering solution like I did, although I will always fail I
believe, because changing my genetic traits is very difficult.

References: (I used them for information gathering and direct quotations.)

1. David Knight. Et al. (2007) Introducing Organisation Behaviour Management 1 st ed. London,
Thomson learning
2. Stephen P.Robbins (1993) Organizational Behavior 10th Ed. New Jersey , Prentice Hall
3. Derek Rollinson (2005) Organisational Behaviour Analysis AN INTEGRATED
APPROACH, 3rd ed. Essex, Pearson
4. M.A. Camption , E.M. Papper and G.J. Medsker , “relation between work team characteristics
and effectiveness”, Journal, 1998
5. J.Wanous, A.E. Reichers and M.J, Hudy, “Overall satisfaction: How good are single-items
measures. Journal of Applied Psychology, April 1997”
6. P.C. Earley et al. “Task Planning and energy expended: Exploring of how goals influence
performance,” Journal of Applied Psychology, February 1987”

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7. `David Buchanan et al. (2004) Organizational Behaviour An introductory text 5 th ed. Essex,
Pearson
8. Journal of organisational Behaviour and Human decision Processes, issues 2, 2003,
9. Class Notes
10. G.P.Lathan et al. “a review of research on the application of Goal setting in organizations”
Academy of management journal, December 1975,
11. C.Ostof “The relationship between satisfaction, attitude and performance: an Organisational
level analysis. Journal of applied psychology. ”

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