Major Assignment

An Assignment on Organizational Behavior

A solution to Question Answer

Saurav Agrawal

LC00016000041

Semester-VI

Nepal Business College

Author Note

This assignment is based on solving the question answer given by Mr. Mohan B. Basnet who is
faculty head of organizational behavior BBA-2633.

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 Major Assignment

What causes people to have different perceptions of the same situation? Can people be
mistaken in their perceptions? Elaborate in detail with relevant examples.

Ans. Perception is an intellectual process of transforming sensory stimuli to meaningful

information. It is the process of interpreting something that we see or hear in our mind and use it
later to judge and give a verdict on a situation, person, group etc.

It can be divided into six types −

 Of sound − The ability to receive sound by identifying vibrations.

 Of speech − The competence of interpreting and understanding the sounds of language

heard.

 Touch − Identifying objects through patterns of its surface by touching it.

 Taste − The ability to receive flavor of substances by tasting it through sensory organs
known as taste buds.

 Other senses − They approve perception through body, like balance, acceleration, pain,
time, sensation felt in throat and lungs etc.

 Of the social world − It permits people to understand other individuals and groups of
their social world. Example − Priya goes to a restaurant and likes their customer service,
so she will perceive that it is a good place to hang out and will recommend it to her
friends, who may or may not like it. Priya’s perception about the restaurant is good.

Perceptual Process

Perceptual processes are the different stages of perception we go through. The different stages
are −

 Receiving

 Selecting

 Organizing

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 Interpreting

Receiving

Receiving is the first and most important stage in the process of perception. It is the initial stage
in which a person collects all information and receives the information through the sense organs.

Selecting

Selecting is the second stage in the process. Here a person doesn’t receive the data randomly but
selectively. A person selects some information out of all in accordance with his interest or needs.
The selection of data is dominated by various external and internal factors.

 External factors − the factors that influence the perception of an individual externally
are intensity, size, contrast, movement, repetition, familiarity, and novelty.

 Internal factors − the factors that influence the perception of an individual internally are
psychological requirements, learning, background, experience, self-acceptance, and
interest.

Organizing

Keeping things in order or say in a synchronized way is organizing. In order to make sense of the
data received, it is important to organize them.

We can organize the data by −

 Grouping them on the basis of their similarity, proximity, closure, continuity.

 Establishing a figure ground is the basic process in perception. Here by figure we mean
what is kept as main focus and by ground we mean background stimuli, which are not
given attention.

 Perceptual constancy that is the tendency to stabilize perception so that contextual

changes don’t affect them.

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Interpreting

Finally, we have the process of interpreting which means forming an idea about a particular
object depending upon the need or interest. Interpretation means that the information we have
sensed and organized is finally given a meaning by turning it into something that can be
categorized. It includes stereotyping, halo effect etc.

Importance of Perception in OB

We need to understand what the role of perception in an organization is. It is very important in
establishing different role of perceptions like −

 Understanding the tasks to be performed.

 Understanding associated importance of tasks allotted.

 Understanding preferred behavior to complete respective tasks.

 Clarifying role perceptions.

For example, every member in a group has to be clear regarding the role allotted to them.
Programmer writes the code, tester checks it, etc.

People’s perceptions and attributions influence how they behave in their organization. Perception
describes the way people filter, organize and interpret sensory information. Attribution explains
how people act, determining how people react to the actions of others as well. Accurate
perception allows employees to interpret what they see and hear in the workplace effectively to
make decisions, complete tasks and act in ethical manner. Faulty perceptions lead to problems in
the organization, such as stereotyping, that lead people to erroneously make assumptions.

Explaining Behavior

People tend to evaluate other people on their ability, effort or personality. They also attribute
luck or the difficulty of task to a success or failure. The attributions people make for their own
behavior also influence their performance in the organization. For example, successful workers
who succeed at tasks after completing training exercises usually increase their confidence levels.
Those who fail may consider themselves unlucky or blame others. People’s perceptions and

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judgment of another person’s action depend on if reactions occur consistently or inconsistently.

Recognizing that people have cultural beliefs, motives and intentions helps explain behavior and
helps rectify non-productive situations.

Handling Attributions

People commonly attribute success to skill, luck or chance. People tend to react to situations
based on what they think caused the event. Just as perceptions can be faulty, attributions can be
inaccurate as well. Organizations can ensure people attribute actions more effectively by
providing diversity training. This helps prevent a hostile work environment for people from
different cultures. By training people to make more accurate attributions, daily operations run
more smoothly. This helps reduce faulty attributions, such as managers who attribute exceptional
performance to chance as they resist assigning more challenging work to qualified individuals
they view as lucky.

Managing Perceptions

When people in organizations find themselves in unfamiliar, ambiguous situations, they tend to
have difficulty coping. Effective business professionals handle objections to their ideas by
clearly stating the benefits of their position to all parties. By presenting a compelling case for
their ideas, these people get approval for their proposed strategy even if opposed by apathy or
confrontation. By actively recognizing people’s perceptions and attributions, effective leaders
build justifications for their approach and get support when needed.

Minimizing Bias

Minimizing biases that distort attribution can help foster effective team work. Using tips,
techniques, tools and resources available from websites such as the Cultural Navigator site,
organizations can reduce the rate at which people selectively interpret events based on their
experience, background and attitudes. Edward Thorndike, an American psychologist, observed
that perception of one trait is influenced by other traits. Known as the halo effect, this bias causes
people to judge people they find attractive as smart. Providing training to managers to make
more accurate perceptions helps them conduct more effective employment interviews,
performance reviews and daily management tasks.

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Example

If someone close to you, friend A, gave you $10 and someone else, friend B, gave you $20, some
people may start questioning their friendship with the friend A.

However you realize that your friend A only had $10, and friend B had $100 to give away.

Sometimes we do not understand what other people are going through or have gone through. We
may not know everyone else's situation. We can be easy to judge on the basis of how we feel and
how others have treated us previously. But we have to remember every situation is different and
to be open minded and mostly, to be grateful.

Look at these two arrows. Which horizontal line is the longest?

They are exactly the same size. However the top one looks longer than the bottom one. It is on
optical illusion tricking us into assigning a different meaning to what we see. We fill in a lot of
blanks with our minds. If we have incomplete perceptions, which we practically always do to a
certain extent, our minds fill in the rest. The meaning of something will change when we look at
it differently. We can look at anything differently and it will have a different meaning. There is
no fixed meaning to anything. We can always change perspectives and change meanings.

Conclusion

Everything that we sense, what we hear, see, smell etc. is perceived. Some people will pay more
attention to all of these, while others will just zone in on a few things they think are important.
That is one of the way's people's perceptions differ, the actual amount of information they take
in.

References

http://open.lib.umn.edu/organizationalbehavior/chapter/3-4-perception/