Various Psychological Factors and Theories Affecting Organizational Success
The determinants of organizational success are more than just the usual factors such as the availability of capital and limited competition. Psychological factors also play a curial role in this aspect. Employees are a critical part of any organization. Their respective behaviors and level of work performance largely influences the general performance of a business (Barakat, 2015). There are several elements that affect the way employees execute their mandates. Psychological components affect the personal well-being of employees. This in turn influences their behavioral trait and their general work performance.
These factors include memory, context, intelligence and personality.
This study will focus on the individual’s memory, context, intelligence and personality trait as the major psychological factors that influence the way people behave and execute their duties at work. The study will also apply the ideologies of various theories developed for the purpose of answering the same question as this study. Personality theories with specific emphasis on type and trait theories will be analyzed in relation to the study question.
The essence of this study is based on the significance of employees in the running of a business firm. Employees need to be at their best both in terms of behavior and work performance.
Memory is an important component of human psychology. In the case of a work environment, an individual’s working memory is the first thing that should come in mind. People achieve different levels of work performance because of they have different working memory capacities (Chi and Pan, 2012). There are two factors that need to be considered in this case; the amount of information that can be stored in a person’s working memory and the ease at which it is lost especially in the event of a distraction.
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The effects that these two will have on behavior and job performance is dependent on the type of job. A person whose job is based on routine is more fortunate that his or her colleague whose job involves dealing with new ideas every day (Harrington and Lee, 2015). Routine-based jobs do not require a large memory capacity and hence their yielders may not suffer much from frequent bouts of memory loss. Individuals whose jobs involve learning new things everyday on the other hand suffer considerable damage from memory loss.
The human brain has several systems. The systems tasked with the responsibility for holding information in the working memory are usually in conflict with those responsible for controlling an individual’s ability to focus. A productive employee is the kind that can remember what he or she is focusing on. This overlap is especially evident in the case when individuals are presented with challenging tasks. Those with low memory capacity will tend to spend most of their working time daydreaming and off the task (Kwok, Cheng and Wong, 2015). On the other hand, the individuals with high memory capacities tend to focus more on the task regardless of whether it is complicated or not.
An effective worker is the one who can remember instructions clearly. The ability to recall instructions issued by the management is something all employees can certainly depend on. Human beings use their working memories to remember instructions. Employees not only have to keep their personal plans in mind but they should also be able to remember the instructions that they are supposed to work on.
Personality type is also an important psychological factor. Personality types are different from personality traits since they are presented in different degrees. Having this in mind, there are two major theories relating to individuals’ personalities. These are trait theory and type theory. Type theory espouses that there are two types of personalities; introverts and extroverts. Trait theories view introversion and extroversion as segments of a continuous dimension which involves a large number of people in between (Reimann, 2017). Experts caution against using the concepts conveyed in personality theories exclusively to determine the kind of personality of an individual.
Instead, they advise that these should be used as an approach to how individuals perceive different personalities. As such, personality theories should be treated as models. This perception allows individuals to treat introversion and extroversion as the building blocks for psychological orientations (Cha, Park and Lee, 2014). This connection is related to two components of psychological functions which are perceiving functions and judging functions.
Individuals who fall under the first function tend to rely on sensing and intuition. Their character is defined by their trust on solid, sensory-integrated facts. They do not believe in imagined occurrences and abstract concepts. Those who fall under judging functions on the other hand rely on their intelligence and emotions (Lee, Shin and Baek, 2017). However, this brings their judgment at the confusion of whether to make their decisions based on logic or emotions. Primarily, most people use emotions but obviously logic is the most viable option.
The idiographic and nomothetic views are better used to assess the concepts of personality theories. Ideographic view makes the assumption that every individual has a special psychological built and that some personality features are carried by only one individual. This brings the realization that in accordance to this view, comparing one person’s personality to that of another’s is practically impossible.
Nomothetic view on the other hand applies the ideologies of comparability among persons to explain how people with different personality traits interact with their environment (Saithong-in and Ussahawanitchakit, 2016). In order to understand this view one has to be able to perceive features as possessing similar psychological interpretations to every person.
It is important to consider the relationship between nature and nurture with respect to personality theories. Nature in this case implies the concepts of biology and genetics while nurture refers to the human environment and an individual’s upbringing (Hur et al, 2015). This perception is important since it facilitates a person’s understanding of personality theories. Trait theories for instance postulate that a person’ personality is genetically inherited. The Bandura’s Social Learning Theory which is a constituent of state theories avers that nurture and the environment are all that determine the type of personality a person will have (Gong, 2012). Most of the other theories espouse about the relationship between innate instincts and parental influences.
In the past few years, IQ has been a pervasive tool for allocating scarce resources in the UK and beyond. In China today, blue chip companies continue to use IQ to recruit new employees (Yang and Hwang, 2014). Applicants who pass the IQ tests are given the top priority. This new trend started coming up after several studies confirmed that individuals with high IQ demonstrate better job performance.
The same extends to problem solving skills. The difference between them and their colleagues with relatively low IQs is that they are faster and more efficient at obtaining new knowledge and experience from their everyday operations. The same case applies to their behaviors. Individuals with high IQs are able to adapt efficiently to new behavioral patterns even in the most diverse of environments (Nguyen, Nguyen and Minh, 2014).
Several studies aver that the ability of a person to quickly and effectively learn from new knowledge and experiences alone does not exactly translate into better behavior and good job performance. These studies articulate that even individuals with relatively low IQs can be able to do this. As such, they propose that the distinguishing feature in this case should be ability to effectively apply what one has leant into novel circumstances in the workplace and in the general environment behavioral wise (Springer, 2011). In their studies, the researchers noticed that individuals who had such capabilities ended up being rewarded with higher earnings than their counterparts.
Not everyone agrees that high IQ automatically leads to better behavior and high job performance. Numerous studies prove that high IQ alone does not lead to better job performance. The level of job performance is enhanced by an integration of high IQ and sociological factors. This means that the job and behavioral performance of a person with high IQ will only increase if he or she is given access to a wide range of developmental resources (Pelit, Yüksel and Yalçin Arslantürk, 2011). These might include such factors as advanced classes and professional courses among other tools. The access to these resources not only translates to high performance but it also results in bridging the gap between high and low performing individuals.
In relating intelligence to behavioral and work performance, most researchers focus on conventional intelligence. What they forget is that there are other types of intelligence that as well affect a person’s behavior and work performance. Take the case of emotional intelligence for instance. In his book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman shows the relationship between emotional intelligence and work performance. High emotional intelligence translates to better behavioral and job performance.
According to Goleman, the effect of emotional intelligence is equally (if not more) important than conventional intelligence (Johari and Yahya, 2016). In his research, he postulates that 67% of all individuals’ characteristics connected to high job and behavioral performance are related to their emotional intelligence (Devonish, 2016). Emotional intelligence is a double edged sword. Even those decisions that individuals believe are rational have some emotional bearing. This is according to a study conducted by Multi-Health Systems.
The relationship between personality, behavior and job performance can be best illustrated using The Big Five Dimensions of personality. These capture the entire range of human personality. Openness to experience is the first dimension. It is the personality trait that results in art appreciation, variety, ideas and adventure. Secondly, a self-conscious employee will tend to be self-driven, have self-discipline and portray an organized behavior (Kim and Cho, 2016).
Extraversion is mostly linked to emotional intelligence and it dictates how individuals’ emotions affect their behavior and work performance. It encompasses the concepts of personal energy, the need for social stimulation and positive emotions. The fourth dimension is agreeableness. Individuals with this trait tend to be cooperative and compassionate in their work. Neuroticism is not such a good trait. Neurotic individuals tend to react first to anger, anxiety and other negative feelings (Siengthai and Pila-Ngarm, 2016). Emotional stability is the exact opposite of neuroticism.
Environmental factors largely affect the way human beings perceive the stimulus around them. This is what constitutes the context effect. It is an aspect of cognitive psychology. Context effects largely affect individuals’ daily operations. In essence, the mostly affected areas are memory capacity, object recognition, learning abilities and word recognition (Lohapan and Ussahawanitchakit, 2016). Positive context effects result in better job performance and organized behavior.
Memory capacity also influences behavior and job performance. This is especially the case for jobs that involve intellectual components. In such events, the way the employees perform is dependent on their intellectual capabilities. Memory capacity is one of the factors which dictate the level of a person’s intellect. Individuals who are able to retain a lot of information for longer periods of time have a bigger memory capacity (Roe and Bruwer, 2017). In most circumstances, these individuals tend to exhibit better job performance and controlled behavior when compared to their colleagues who have relatively low memory capacity.
Psychological factors affect the way people behavior as well as their job performance. In most organizations, this is a relatively new concept that has not been exploited to the extent it deserves. Organizational performance is a wide concept that involves several factors. This is why it is important to conduct extensive research on the factors that play a role in influencing individual behavior and work performance. So far, a lot of research exists on the knowledge of psychological factors. Organizations should take advantage of this. This study has accumulated a significant amount of research relating to the effects of psychological factors on behavioral and job performance.
In relation to intelligence, this study has found that individuals have diverse IQ levels. Several researchers aver that the higher an individual’s IQ the better his or her job performance. Other scholars postulate that IQ alone does not necessarily result in better job performance. They espouse that what results in high performance both behavior wise and in terms of job performance is the integration of high IQ with other factors such as numerous developmental resources. This study has also used The Big Five dimensions of personality to show the effect of personality on behavior and work performance. Context effect and memory are also crucial psychological factors.
Various Psychological Factors and Theories Affecting Organizational Success. (2023, May 16). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/various-psychological-factors-and-theories-affecting-organizational-success/
