This week's task was to visit some of our classmate's blogs. It was really interesting to see what the others did. Some I had to laugh about so much, others I was wondering about and again others were just nicely done. A lot of varieties. So here are the blogs I left comments on:

http://julianaespinosalopez.blogspot.com
http://miragemblue.blogspot.com
http://knowledgeinabun.blogspot.com
http://organizations-and-cultures.blogspot.com
http://marialeredondo.blogspot.com

Maybe you want to take a look too...

Personality, perception, attitudes, attribution and values

Summary

Personality is a relatively stable set of characteristics that influence an individual´s behavior and is shaped by hereditary and environmental determinants.

How a person evaluates him- or herself can be examined by different concepts. First the self concept with self efficacy, - esteem and - monitoring. Second the positive/ negative affect which indicates if a person's tendency towards themselfes and the surrounding is more positive or negative. And third the locus of control. This is parted into the internal and external locus of control. It is about a person's belief if the person controls its life and happenings itself or if everything is happening because of external control, eg. other people or destiny. Furthermore there are different personality theories existing as for example the Big5 and the Integrative approach.

Perception is based on a person's view about the world by using its five senses. There is a perciever and a target. Social perception is the process of interpreting information about another person. Perceptions are most of the times also culturally determined. Sometimes perceptions can be inaccurate impressions because of stereo typing, first impression error, projection, selective perception or the Pygmalion effect (which will be explained in more detail later).

Attitudes are defined as positive or negative evaluations, feelings and tendencies that individuals harbor towards objects or concepts. They are learned from role models and formed within a cultural context. At work it could be for example the attitude towards a perceived opportunity for success.

Attribution is about how individuals pinpoint the causes of our own behaviour and that of others. One's performance within an organization is affected by an internal source of responsibility and an external source. But there are biases existing. For instance the Fundamental attribution error which is the tendency to make attributions to internal causes when focusing on someone else’s behaviour and the Self serving which means the attribution of one’s success to internal causes and one’s failures to external causes.

Values are defined as ideas, beliefs, and customs to which people are emotionally attached. Relating them to business, they affect people´s work ethic and desire for material possessions. So to say, values reflect one's judgment and helps sort out what is important in life. Therefore Maslow created the so called B-values.

The Pygmalion effect in a real case

First of all the Pygmalion effect is a phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform. According to Goethe "treat a man as he is he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be."

The Pygmalion effect was described by J. Sterling Livingston in the September/October, 1988 Harvard Business Review. Livingston said about a supervisor, "If he is unskilled, he leaves scars on the careers of the young men (and women), cuts deeply into their self-esteem and distorts their image of themselves as human beings. But if he is skillful and has high expectations of his subordinates, their self-confidence will grow, their capabilities will develop and their productivity will be high." 

Other examples can be found in terms of school, sport, etc. If people have high expectations about somebody, this person will see even more an incentive in performing good and to give the best as he can. It is somehow related with motivation. 

References:

   Takao Inamori, Farhad Analoui, "Beyond Pygmalion effect: the role of managerial perception", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 29 Iss: 4, pp.306 – 321.

   Gregorio Martín-de-Castro, José Emilio Navas-López, Pedro López-Sáez, Elsa Alama-Salazar, (2006) "Organizational Capital as Competitive Advantage of the Firm", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 7 Iss: 3, pp.324 – 337

 http://humanresources.about.com/od/managementtips/a/mgmtsecret.htm

 http://inwiki.pabo-inholland.nl/_media/pygmalion_effect.jpg?w=&h=&cache=cache
 https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhleW3Qe-yMOQQdfgOFadhlMhyjzd0olk2Wx32EOMTql59I7yD8a8NcreCqJ_nz0e1opwqYP3yTMnmFAtNdoQ7LyKbdjHEnanOFJfd6XvG78U7J-74JaBCNhAmmJo4vZ3HVLC6j4zRmZprL/s400/ATT00001.jpg
 http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/images/2008/10/16/perception.jpg
 http://www.valueindesign.com/images/values_circle.gif

Organizational behavior and culture

Summary

Organizational Behavior is the individual behavior as well as group dynamics in organizations. Studies about that field are primarly concerned about psychological, interpersonal and behavioral dynamics in organizations. But there are also other organizational variables important, eg. jobs, communications, organizational structure, Leader's philosophy, values, visions and goals, organizational culture, etc..

You may also understand that behavior is a function of all- the organization as its whole, the persons as individuals and the surrounding environment. A complete understanding of organizational behavior requires an understanding of both human behavior and organizational context where behavior is enacted.

So what is an organization? It is a social arrangement which pursues collective goals, controls its own performance and has a boundary seperating it from its environment. Types of organizations can vary from public to private, formal or informal, manuacturing, service, non-profit, religious, military, political and so on... Organizations are open systems composed of people, technology and structure comitted to a task. 

Organizational  behavior is based on scientific knowledge and applied practice. It involves the study of abstract ideas, such as valence and expectancy in motivation, as well as the study of concrete matters, such as observable behaviors. There are different theoretical frameworks existing, such as the behavioristic framework, the cognitive and the social learning appraoch. Systems interprete people-organization relationships in terms of the whole person, whole group, whole organization, and whole social surrounding. Its purpose is to build better relationships by achieving human objectives, organizational objectives and social objectives. Finally one can say, it is the understanding, prediction and management of human behavior in organizations. The outcome are performance of organization and individual, personal satisfaction, growth and development.

As Culture is one of the elements which can influence organizational behavior, it will be explained in the following more. The definition of Hofstede is: "Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another... Culture in this sense includes systems of values and values are among the building blocks of culture." This implies that culture is learned. Different  social groups have different cultures and therefore may respond to similar situations in different ways. Cultural groups can vary from national cultures, sub-cultures, industries and organizational cultures.

 

Concerning national culture, Hofstede came up with a model which basically compares value differences between countries. Therefore he uses four different categories.

At first, he mentioned the Power Distance which means „the distance between individuals at different levels of a hierarchy“. If power distances are low, hierarchical differences are less respected. So it would mean that subordinates are involved in decision processes.

The second dimension is named Uncertainty Avoidance. Here it is the matter of lack of knowledge between the cultures. It is about the extent to which a group or the individual is prepared to uncertain situations. The higher (lower) the level of uncertainty avoidance, the more the members are ready to take risks and feel opened to new inventions and technology.

The third dimension, Individualism vs. Collectivism is about the relationship between the individual and the groups to which he or she belongs. Individualists expect competition, group decision are seen as subordinated. Its importance in reference to negotiation lays in the reaction to other groups and individuals, weather are cooperative or not. Collectivists aim to keep harmony in their environment.

The last dimension, Masculinity vs. Femininity, refers to the old problem of gender roles. In masculine cultures the men should be the bosses in the company and the women care for the household. Men are seen as the strong gender that could fight conflicts out if necessary. In contrast to this, in feminine cultures, men and women are treated equally. They both are found in the highest ranks in all professions.

Organizational culture is the personality of the organization. Culture is comprised of the assumptions, values, norms and tangible signs of organization members and their behaviors.

References:

   Mead, Richard. 2004. International Management: Cross-Cultural Dimensions London: Blackwell Publishing. Chapter 1.

   Millman, Gregory J. . 2007. "Corporate Culture: more myth than reality? ." The Free Library 23:44-47. Millman, Gregory J. (2007, July 1).

   Nelson, D.L. & Quick, J.C. 2010. Organizational Behavior: Science, The Real World and You, South-Western College Publication, 7th edition. Chapter 1.

  http://www.youthcan.eu/conimages/Cultural-Diversity.jpg

Links to other interesting blogs

I checked on http://www.thebobs.com/ as well as I googled for the most interesting blogs in the world. It was actually a good way to see how other's blogs look like because this is my first blog ever.
So after my opinion, these were the most interesting blogs I found:

1) http://blog.ushahidi.com
"Ushahidi is a blog to go with an application which helps map disaster areas through mobile phones and social networking. Ushahidi, which means "testimony" in Swahili, was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. More recently, Ushahidi has played a crucial role in Haiti, where Haitians were able to use mobile phones to register their needs and location within just four days of the earthquake striking. The Ushahidi team is comprised of individuals with a wide span of experience ranging from human rights work to software development."

2) http://cajunlanguage.net/
"Jim is an American, born in Louisiana. His podcasts offer tutorials on how to learn Cajun French - a French dialect that is still spoken in the American South."

3) http://carta.info/
"Carta features multiple bloggers on topics like economics, politics and the digital realm. The writers cover prominent debates and issues in detail and with relevant background information."

Another link which is somehow similar to the third is http://www.businessinsider.com/ . This reminded me a bit of a newspaper even if it is not as formal.

So far, I also liked the idea of other blogs as they were described on http://www.thebobs.com/. But because they are in a language I am not speaking, I cannot really judge about them...