Federico Pérez Mazzilli

201425875

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR FINAL ESSAY

During the organizational behaviour course, we reviewed and learned about several
issues regarding individual and group behavior, specially focused in the work
environment that a typical company can have, and that is the kind of environment
that us, students, will be facing in the future during our professional live. Most of
these topics that we learned about during the semester are important topics to know
about because represent common issues and problematics that every company in
the world has to deal with. Following with this order of ideas, every CEO or manager
of a company has to know about these kind of situations and how to deal with them
because it is important to learn about how you should manage every specific
situation or problem, even more when you are in charge of a company and its
workers in terms of productivity, motivation, decision making and human resources.
The main objective of this essay is to underline the importance of some of the
theories that we reviewed during the semester, and to provide some examples and
personal experiences of this kind of situations, specially in the colombian
environment, that might help to understand and analyze critically the theories that
we learned about.
Probably the most important section of the course is the one regarding Business
Ethics and Ethics in the Workplace. In this topic it is important to say that we learned
about several approaches or theories that try to understand and analyze ethical
dilemmas such as Utilitarianism (What is good in the greater good), Kantian
Ethics(Actions evaluated by its morality, not necessarily its consequences),
Justice(fairness), Ethics of Right(Human rights), Categorical Imperative, egoism,
legalism, and virtue. There are so many theories about ethics and its dilemmas
because it is impossibly to use only one of them to guide and understand our
behaviour, and also it is important to know that human actions depend on the context
and so does the ethics in business practices. Knowing about ethics and using
theories and models to know what is right or wrong and to help making ethical
decisions when there is a dilemma, especially in a country like Colombia, when there
is corruption everywhere in the workplace, in business and in politics, and people
seem to have very less ethics and morality because they continue doing it regardless
of the public shame or the colombian justice system. In the colombian environment
there are many examples of lack of ethics, such as “Proceso 8000”, when a
presidential candidate, Ernesto Samper was financed by narcos money, and it didn't
matter to the candidate because the end (becoming president) justified the
means(utilitarianism); another might be the Odebrecht scandal that involved a
Brazilian multinational company that paid bribes to public servants in order to win
millionaire contracts and biddings (Utilitarianism).
It is important to emphasize that every different person has different approaches for
solving ethical dilemmas, so the different existing theories might be more suited for
a certain kind of person and not for others, and the context in which the situation
takes place and develops it is crucial to understanding the way in which humans deal
with ethical dilemmas. Also it is crucial to underline that there is a break between law
and ethics, because in business ethics there are situations in which there is no
consensus of what is right and what is wrong (“Grey area of business”), but in law
there is a certainty about how people are required to behave, and it is easier to judge
if someone is guilty or not about something.
Another different topic that was studied and reviewed during the semester is
regarding diversity and its consequences in business and in the workplace. Now a
days it is very important to talk about diversity and to embrace it because with current
globalization there are no more borders or boundaries to travel and to relocate in
different countries that are not your own. So actually it is really common that people
seek for opportunities, work and studies abroad. In this order of ideas it is important
to any professional worker that wants to become competitive and productive in his
job, to learn to work with different people, with people that comes from different
countries, with different cultures and languages.To explain why it is so important to
learn about working with people from differents countries of the world it is crucial to
mention that when there exist discrimination in the workplace and there is no good
feeling between co workers there are lots of conflicts, the productivity decreases,
there might be lots of psychological stress, there is less commitment with the
company and its goals, and in conclusion there is a lot of waste of human talent and
business resources. Additionally for any person that wants to become a valued
worker it is crucial to learn about managing diversity and dealing with it, because
many companies all over the world value diversity in its workers and are in a constant
seek of diversity in conforming work groups, examples of companies that are driven
by this ideal are Google, Proctor and Gamble or Mastercard.
Probably one of the most importants that we learned about during the course is the
topic about perception, and trying to understand how individuals interpret and
organize their sensory impressions and perceptions in order to give a meaning to
their environment. It is such an important topic because it is clear that our reality is
subjective, so each individual can have different perspectives about a single event,
and its perception might be affected by different facts, and it is important to learn that
there might be not only one absolute true regarding a single event, but you should
take into account other individuals point of view. Following this order of ideas, and
taking into account that there are certain biases regarding the analysis of situations,
individuals should know how to manage those biases in order to take good quality
decisions, because in a work environment such decisions can be crucial in terms of
productivity, in creating a good work environment,etc. There are lots of elements that
can create biases in a certain environment, such as overconfidence, selective
perception(Availability bias), framing effects or anchoring bias. This is why
individuals have to take into account this kind of biases and learn how to deal with
them in order to take better decisions. They can achieve it by focusing on the main
goals, searching for evidence and info regarding the situation, reframing or flipping
the problem point of view, and seeking outsiders in order to counter overconfidence
or overlooking important aspects. It is important to once again point out the
importance of managing perception in work environments because there are lots of
situations in which there are problems or conflicts in which it is important to take
good decisions and not being biased when the decisions are taken. Also it is
important that the decision making process is not taken lightly but it has to be a
analyzed and conscious process.
In terms of importance it is important also to point out that regarding the contents of
the topics viewed through the semester Communication has also a very important
position. As we mentioned early now a days it is important knowing how to handle
and how to work with people that comes from countries all over the world, and in
terms of communication and language it is equally important. Communication takes
a essential job because even if people are super smart and very productive in their
jobs it is important that they know how to communicate with others, especially with
fellow workers, so they can effectively transmit their message to the destinatary.
Probably language might be the biggest barrier when you are trying to communicate
with others, but it is essential to point out that it is not the only barrier to communicate,
because emotions, gender differences, or selective perceptions can also be
important barriers when trying to communicate with other people. In this order of
ideas surely the main barrier that i have faced in terms of communication is
language; in several working groups in the university i have had to work with people
from different countries, with the common characteristic that they didn't spoke
spanish fluently. This kind of situation caused several problems in terms of
communication in the working group and achieving the group goals, also adding that
we were expected to submit works and papers that were supposed to be written in
spanish. We had to learn to deal with this so that we could end the course with a
good grade, and we learned that we could use everybody`s ability in function for the
team, aswell that cooperate with each other to overcome this kind of obstacles.
Additionally, in terms of communication issues regarding language, in class we had
a workshop simulation in which in groups we were supposed to handle a
presentation. The main obstacle in the simulation was that not all the members
spoke the same language, which was clearly a major obstacle to reach the goal. The
group dynamic had to be similar than the dynamic that i mentioned earlier from my
personal experiences in workgroups, we had to overcome the situation and begin to
cooperate to each other in order to reach our goals, and so we did.
In conclusion, during the semester we reviewed several topics that are very
important to understand group and individual behaviour and decision making. This
kind of topics end up being crucial in knowing how to handle and how to manage
situations in groups and specially at work. Those reviewed before in this essay
represent the most important ones for me in terms of business and work
performance, because without them it is difficult to work with different people, to
make decisions, and to perform in a business environment. In the reflexioned that
caused writing this essay i became aware about the importance of the topics studied
in the Organizational Behaviour Course, specially because it deals with topics that
sometimes may be overlooked in business and in work dynamics but it is important
to knowing them and learn how to deal with them.