Essay - Workforce Diversity - Organizational Culture - Assessment Answer

Marketing Case Study Assignment

Assignment Task

1)What are the effects of work-related stress, and how can it be reduced?

2) How do individual differences in personality affect motivation and performance in team dynamics?

3) Workforce diversity is one of many challenges that organizations face. What isworkforce diversity and what are its implications for organizational behaviour?

4) Use different theories to identify and evaluate the key factors that can influence the effectiveness of a group or team.

5) What is organizational culture? Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of having a ‘strong culture’.

6) What can studies on organizational justice tell us about how organizations should best be managed?

Introduction

Motivation and performance are two major parts of team dynamics. While individuals work in a team the motivation level and the performance of every individual gets different and this is due to their different personalities. Personality is a term that denotes an organisation of attitude, values, motives, attributes and behaviour. The personality of an individual is a combination of these aspects and this is something that makes every individual unique and different from others. The aim of this essay is to understand the individual differences and the effects of individual differences on performance and motivation in team dynamics. This will be done by analysing various concepts of personality and relating them to team dynamics and principles.

Personality and its determinants

There are a number of determinants of personality such as values, assumptions, learning, perception and attitudes. It shall be noted that these factors are different in every individual and due to that the personality of every individual is different. An individual’s behaviour is the outcome of the internal as well as external forces. There are a number of factors that make an individual behave differently. These factors are length of service, age, gender, marital status, biological developments, nervous systems, cognitive process and heredity. It shall be noted that it is very easy to motivate some employees while some employees do not get motivated even after much efforts. This is because of the differences in their personality and this difference changes their level of motivation as well.

Following is the description on individual differences and in personality and their effect on performance and motivation in team dynamics:

Values: Values are the set of ideas that an individual possess and this enables an individual to make a difference between the right and wrong. This is something for which an individual stands. The obedience, respect, freedom and quality are a part of value system of an individual. Rokeach value survey and cotemporary work cohorts are the two approaches useful in understanding value systems (Yao & Fan 2015). Furthermore the ethical behaviour and loyalty of an employee are dependent upon their value system.

Since every individual has different set of values their priorities will also be different. It shall be noted that when individuals would be working in a team some of them will believe that for them equality is more important while some of them will believe that freedom is more important. This will further affect their performance in team. Not only performance but their motivation will also get affected. For some of them the motivation will be good position in the team while for others it will be better working conditions. Hence, different value sets will affect motivation and performance in team dynamics.

Attitudes: Attitude is something that enables an individual to behave in a certain manner under a certain situation. There may be two major kinds of attitudes that the individual will have and these are positive attitude and negative attitude. Individuals with positive attitude will help the team to perform better while individuals with negative attitude will bring down the performance of the team. The force field analysis of Kurt Lewin suggests that attitudes of individuals affect motivation as well as the performance in team dynamics.

It is to be noted here that the individuals who have positive attitude can be dealt with positive reinforcement while they are working in a team. At the same time individuals with negative attitude are required to be dealt with negative reinforcement because of their non-functionality in team.

Perception: Perception is usually the result of seeing, feeling and hearing. Due to the difference in cognitive process an individual has a different perception towards performing in a team (Grint 2005). The perception of every individual is different and due to that their motivation level is also different and this further affects the manner in which they work in a team.

The concept of perception makes it clear that individual who perceive team dynamics as a positive aspect and give their contribution in team are beneficial for the performance of team while those with negative perception about team and team members will deteriorate the performance of team.

Personality: There are four major aspects that are determinants of a personality. These aspects are physical environment, heredity, experience and culture. The personality traits of an individual make a huge difference in the manner in which he/she behaves. There are many theories on personality and all of them suggest that personality makes a huge difference in performance and motivation of an employee (Liang, Shih & Chiang 2015).

Those individuals who have hard working personalities will be very beneficial for the team dynamics and they will be able to bring a positive change in the team. While there are some individuals who may not have much experience and they might not be interested in working equally in a team. This will again affect the performance negatively.

Learning: Learning is the most significant factor to consider when it comes to individual behaviour in an organisation. Learning is a term that is used to denote a change in behaviour of an individual. Learning can enable temporary as well as permanent change in the behaviour of an individual. The performance of an individual also depends upon the learning of an individual (Ulrich 2013).

Some individuals can learn quickly while some individuals take a lot of time to learn. This further has a huge impact on the working of team. This is how individual learning impacts motivation and performance in team dynamics.

In this way all the factors such as values, learning, attitude and perception described above have significant impact on the motivation and performance of individuals in team. These factors are something that a human resource manager needs to take with utmost care.

Team dynamics and individual differences

A team is made up of different types of individuals. As discussed above every individual had a different personality and due to that that their learning, values and perceptions are also different. There are advantages as well as disadvantages of stereotyping. The stereotyping enables individual to maintain a positive self-concept and this further leads to achieve social identity and homogenization. The disadvantage of stereotyping is that it can distort individual perception. It can be observed that the theory of attribution also has an effect over team dynamics. This also takes a manager into confusion as to how to motivate individuals(Fellenz, 2010). Initially organisations used to motivate all the individuals is a similar manner but gradually they started noting that some members of team are performing well while other are not performing at all. This gave rise to the fact that individual differences also affect the level of motivation of an employee and thus for effective performance of individuals in the teams it is important for organisation to motivate individuals as per their personality.

Every member of team is different and this is why this concept is known as team dynamics. The real problem comes when a human resource manager has to motivate individuals to perform better. As per a theory of motivation there are two types of personality that are Type A and Type B personality and both of these needs different kind of motivation. Similarly Theory X and Theory Y of motivation suggests that there are some individuals who are workaholic and initiates work and thus for them motivation is recognition(Bushe & R.J., 2009). While there are some people who are lethargic and do not like to do work and for them motivation is always monetary. In this manner it is required that individual’s personality shall be recognised and then as per the personality motivation techniques shall be used. This is how some individuals are more attracted towards monetary rewards while others want power and position. All these individual differences affect the motivation in team dynamics. If individuals are not motivated as per their personality then they will not perform as per the expected standards and this is how the performance will also get affected(Waal, 2014). There are instances when individual differences also lead to conflict among team members and this is again a potential reason why the performance of individuals get affected while working as a team.

Conclusion

This suggests that individual differences have a huge impact over team dynamics. It can’t be said that if all the individuals in team would be same then productivity will increase. As a matter of fact individual differences are very important for productivity of an organisation. There are many positive impacts of individual differences. This is why the negative impacts of individual differences shall be dealt with utmost care so that the productivity and performance of the team shall not get affected.