Perception

1. Perception biasness

Perception enables managers to have a good understanding of the people they are interviewing or undertaking an evaluation. There is a problem to perception. One problem is that there are sometimes that the perceiver may have a bias when evaluating someone. The perceiver may have a generalization fallacy or use one person to rate the others in the group.  There are different types of perception biasness. The perception biasness will depend on the perceiver and how they take the interviewee.

1.1 Primacy effects

The first type of perception bias is primacy effect where the perceiver judges the target in the first minutes of contact. By looking at the target, they get a perception of the target which, in moist cases is biased. In a job interview, a perceiver will take the interviewee and rate him basing on the initial contacts; this is biasness because the interviewee could have not divulged some information. In most cases, the perceiver rates the target wrongly.

1.2 Contrasts effects

 The second type of biasness in perception is contrasts effects where a target distorts the perception of the perceiver so that the perceiver takes the group in which the target resides to be the same level with the target. It could be that the target is in a group which is performing highly than the target. It comes by basing the performance of one person to the rest for the group.

1.3 Halo effects

 The third bias is that of halo effect where the target is judged basing on the initial performance. In this judgment, the perceiver will fail to realize some weaknesses, which might have dropped up during the process. Because the perceiver had high ratings for the target, they tend to rate the target using these ratings. Because of this the target will not get the coaching that is required.

1.4  Similar-to-me effects

In this form, the managers tend to give more credit and positive remarks for targets, which possess the same traits like them. Those who are not similar to them tend to get negative effects. It is a problem to women who are trying to climb the corporate ladder. There is need to eradicate this because women tend to give attention to the people which are not similar to them. This should not be encouraged at all (Daft, 2003).

1.5  Harshness, leniency, and average tendency biases

In this case, some perceivers are overly harsh while others are overly lenient. In such situations, the targets under an overly harsh perceiver may get very low recommendations even if they are better or good performers while those under lenient perceivers may get good ratings even if they are poor performers. It is problematic because it is hard to rate targets under different perceivers.

1.6  Knowledge of predictor bias

In this case, the requirements and the issues that will be used to rate the performance of the target will be based on various issues like past experience and education background. If some interviewee had good performance in some test, the manager uses this to predict the performance of the interviewee.

1. Attributions

This is the reasons that are attributed to a certain given behavior. If an interviewee takes a certain behavior in the interview,  the managers will try to figure out why the interviewee behaved that way. Bias may be seen here as the managers may have inaccurate attributions to the behavior. There are external and internal attributions. Internal attributions refer to the factors that come as a result of the character of the person. On the other hand, external attributions may be caused by external factors that the target has no control over. There are three types of attributions, which include the fundamental attribution error. This is where the attribution is caused by factors, which the person has o control over. The other attribution bias is the actor-observer effect. In this attribution error, a colleague may try to get an attribution for a person in whom they are working together and will try to give reasons why they are behaving that way. The third attribution t is the self-serving attribution where someone will take credit for success they get and shy away from blame in cases where they fail (Ivancevich & Matteson, 2006).

Top management and diversity

The top management has better control over diversity and they therefore have a better way of implementing it. They therefore have the opportunity to promote good working relationship with the staff without any form of animosity. There are different tools and approaches at their disposal that can be used to promote diversity. These include, role-playing, training and self awareness activities. There is also the use of mentorship where the experienced staff member trains the novices.

Sexual harassment

It has been reported that sexual harassment takes place in hostile environment and affects the morale of employees greatly. This vice is evident in workplaces which have sexual pictures displayed in places of work. This aspect of sexual harassment must be dealt with by management so that employees work in a free environment. The management can approach this issue through the implementation of sexual harassment policies in the workplace (Ivancevich & Matteson, 2006).

Chapter Five

Employee creativity

It has been widely said that employee creativity is attributed to many factors. These factors include individual differences, task-relevant knowledge and intrinsic motivation. They all contribute to creativity without regard to whether employees work together or individually. Individual differences are because of the fact that people are different. People are creative if they are open to experience. These are measured in the ability of someone to take risks, the number of interests that these people have, and the originality of the individual. The individual traits that are likely to lead to creativity include locus of control and self-esteem. Task-relevant knowledge involves the issue that the individual has the required knowledge and expertise to work on the task. They contribute to creativity. Intrinsic motivation is where someone is interested in the work they are doing (Daft, 2003).

Learning organization

There is the need to instill learning within an organization; the management has a mandate to bring a learning environment to the employees. They also should make sure that knowledge is shared and affected for better working in the organization. There should be learning in groups and teams. Learning is permanent and comes out of experience and practice. There are desires that should be cultivated by the management. The management should ensure that the staff get what they want.