Case Study



Case Study

Discuss how Joe could address the importance of understanding how people form perceptions and make attributions about others with his employees.

Joe could address the importance of understanding how people form perceptions and make attributions about others with his employees, by keeping into consideration that, in most common cases, perceptions lead to the attitudes which people exhibit for someone. The process of perception is one by which people interpret and organize sensations, so as to produce a meaningful experience of the world in which they dwell. In simpler words, when people are confronted with a stimuli or a situation, they interpret the stimuli on the basis of their experiences, into something which sounds meaningful to them.

Nevertheless, these interpretations may differ from the reality. A prime reason behind this is because people vary in their thinking to a considerable extent. Their values, assumptions, goals, past experiences and their knowledge have a strong influence on their attention process. However, what an individual interprets or perceives may be substantially different from reality. As a consequence, people absorb only that part of the information which is presented to them and act accordingly. Moreover, this partial information combined with other mental processes lead to other distortions. Thus, it is important the Joe ensures that the information presented to his employees complete and does not have any loop-holes in between, which can lead to various differences in between him and his employees; ultimately, affecting the their performance as well as the organization's (Senge, 1990).

He must also understand the attribution theory. The attribution theory states that to attribute is to make and inference and to explain as to what has caused something to happen.

According to attribution theory, in repeated instances, people interpret likely causes of the behaviors of other people. In general, the presumed cause of observed behavior will be attributed to either a person's disposition or personality, or else to the situation in which the behavior occurs. Fundamental attribution error is a cognitive bias in which an observer makes incorrect causal attributions. In fundamental attribution error, the observer erroneously attributes an actor's behavior to the actor's psychological disposition, rather than external situation. For instance, if a stranger cuts in line ahead of you at the movies, you may conclude the action is intentional and decides that the person is rude, even though it may have occurred because the entrance signs were not clear to the person who cut in line.

Managers are susceptible to fundamental attribution error when judging employee performance, blaming an employee for poor performance that may actually be caused by circumstances beyond the employee's control. For example, attribution error occurs when a manager decides an employee who performs a task imperfectly is lazy or incompetent; rather than, recognizing that the employee needs training, clear incentives, or improved work equipment (Smith, et al, 2000).

To avoid making a faulty performance attribution requires the manager to understand both how the work context affects employee performance and how the employee perceives the work context and how it ...