SBenegaL

Category: Attitude

  • Work Values in a Cultural Context

    In the last byte, we looked at values that are important in a work place. In today’s byte, we look at values in a cultural context.

    With increasing globalization the diversity of workplace is increasing more than ever. Doing business in a global market place often gets the managers in an encounter of a clash of values amongst different cultures. Cultures could differ in terms of the understanding of value, or the perceived value of individual’s contributions to work. Values also affect the individual’s view of what constitutes authority.

    Managers in this global context would need to

    1. Learn more about and recognize the values of other people.
    2. Avoid prejudging the business customs of others as immoral or corrupt.
    3. Find legitimate ways to operate within other’s ethical points of view – do not demand them to operate within your value system
    4. Avoid rationalizing “borderline” actions with excuses
    5. Refuse to do business when stakeholder violate or compromise laws or fundamental organizational values
    6. Conduct relationships as openly and aboveboard as possible.
    As business grow global, questions involving values become even more complex.

    Last but not the least; values are important since they provide guidance for behavior. This makes it extremely related to the question of ethics.

  • Changing the Attitude of People

    Continuing from the last byte where we discussed the relation between job satisfaction and its influence on organizational commitment, we today begin a discussion on understanding how attitude of people could change.


    Attitude could change through the process of persuasion. Managers who work with employees many a times are pressed with the need to change the attitude of their employees. Given this, in today’s world it is essential for managers to really skilled in the art of persuasion. The days when employees could simply be told what is to be done and then control them are counted if not gone.


    Persuasion is a process through with one individual (source) tries to change the attitude of another person (target).


    To understand the process of persuasion, we would need to look at the 3 components that would be involved in the process:
    1. The source
    2. The target
    3. The Message
    Let us begin with understanding the “Source Characteristics” in this blog and then carry the remaining over to the next one.


    It is human nature to believe in people who are considered experts in a field. If a scientist talks about a new sub atomic particle, it would be more acceptable to the general public; than an individual like me – with little science to back my claim of the discovery of a new sub atomic particle. Clearly Expertise is a major factor that would affect persuasion.


    Trust is another important characteristic of an individual that plays a role in persuasion. It is easily seen, when we consider the fact that we are willing to change our attitude when one of our loved ones we are more open to change when our parents or siblings point a requirement to change in attitude, compared to a completely unknown individual. This is also aligned with the other aspect of these loved ones – the attractiveness we have with the person. The more attracted we are to the source; we are more open to change in attitude.


    In short, expertise, trust and attractiveness are major influences of the source. Managers would need to focus on developing these characteristics to be more effective in persuasion.

  • Attitude and Behavior Relationship – 2

    In the last byte, we looked at the components that help us understand the relation between attitude and the behavior that follows. In today’s blog we continue to understand when this prediction of the behavior is possible.

    In a working environment like Bangalore there are people who come from all parts of the country. Let us assume for the time being that you come from a part of the country where there is a negative attitude held in the society towards women and the prevailing attitude is that women wouldn’t be in positions of power. If as a new employee an organization, you are supposed to report to a female supervisor; the inconsistency in the behavior with your attitude and cultural belief becomes clearly visible. Thus we see that the social context is an important provider of information that would define the outcome of the relation between acceptable attitudes and behavior.

    We have already learnt about self-monitoring in an earlier byte. The people who are low self-monitors relay on their internal states to make decision about behavior, while the high self-monitors are extremely responsive to the situational cues. Given the versatile nature of the people who are high self-monitors, there would be a lower degree of predictability of behavior from the attitude that is held, compared to those who are low self-monitors.

    Timing of the measurement also affects attitude-behavior correspondence. If the time is shorter between the attitude measurement and the observed behavior, the relationship would be stronger. This is exactly the benefit that the surveys before the actual voting reap on.

  • Attitude – Behavior Relationship – 1

    In the last blog, we looked at the way an attitude gets formed. In today’s blog we look at the possibility of understanding if we can have a relation between the attitude we carry and the behavior show.

    It is extremely difficult to predict by knowing one’s attitude what that person’s behavior would be, given this, a lot of the research has been focused on understanding when attitude could predict a behavior and when it wouldn’t. To get a strong grasp of this, we could look at 5 components

    1. Attitude Specificity
    2. Attitude Relevance
    3. Timing of Measurement
    4. Personality Factors
    5. Social Constraints

    As individuals, we have both specific and general attitudes. For example if I am against “black money laundering” (this is a general attitude) and I support Baba Ramdev in his agitation (a specific attitude) but I don’t attend the rallies etc. Since I do not join the rallies, my attitude could be seen as having little relation with my behavior. However, if I were to choose between a contestant who promises to get back the “black money” and one who doesn’t, it would be easier to predict that I would definitely vote for the first candidate and not the second. Thus, we can conclude – greater the attitude specificity, the stronger its link to behavior.

    Let’s consider another situation – Temporarily assume we are undergraduate students, the finance minister decided to reduce the tax slabs of the first 2 lakhs from being tax free to 1.5 lakh only to be tax free. We invariably would just not give this issue a lot of importance. However if we were in the working class, this decision of the government would immediately catch our attention and would become an item of discussion! Thus, we can conclude that the relevance of the subject is another important factor that could help us define a relation between attitude and behavior.

    We shall discuss the other components in the next blog.

  • Looking at an entrepreneur as a farmer!

    Many aspire to be entrepreneurs and start firms that eventually become part of their “identity”, i.e. an entrepreneur acts as if there is no distinction between the firm and the individual running the firm. You might have possibly guess where I am heading to in this blog…So just hang on…
    While an entrepreneur is the one who grows and manages the firm/enterprise, it is very important for an entrepreneur to be able to distinguish oneself from the firm. 
    As an analogy, we could look at the entrepreneur as a farmer who passionately tills the soil, sows the seed, takes sufficient care to see the crop grow and finally harvests the crop. An interesting question to ask here – what would happen if the farmer begins to think that the crop he grown and (s)he is one? Yes, you may not be willing to harvest what you have grown!
    A sense of attachment to the firm, with the ability to detachment is a key to being able to act in the best interest and with the right spirit. It is the attachment, which is the passion aspect of an entrepreneur, helps put in all the energy and enthusiasm one holds towards the hopeful dream into action; but the detachment enables one takes an arms length view of the venture at hand and decide with potentially the best interest what is to be done.
    The key, thus is really to look at the process of venture creation and growth with a “farmers” mindset than being the crop itself!!! What say?
    There are interesting extensions of this attempt of being able to equate the firm one sets up to plants; I would love to explore this aspect over the next few blogs. Stay tuned is your are interested in thinking about this.

  • Choosing your first employee – Attitude over Aptitude

    The first employee of any start up plays a crucial role. It is in fact a process by which the culture of the organization begins. Navigating this challenge is not easy for start-ups!
    Co-Founders typically are seen to be friends or colleagues and it is very often the employee whom they hire that turns out to be the first external person joining the team. While it is possible that the employee might not really be a complete outsider, but someone in what I could call as the latent network (one which we do not access frequently in the course of our work) and pull him into the active network (that which we access very often).
    As someone who has helped a few start ups in their hiring, and seen many others make their choices, I find there are two broad requirements that emerge out as the most required in my opinion:
    1. Willing to push and attempt to think beyond what he/she already knows
    2. Hungry to work hard if need be
    In addition to this, possessing the knowledge and the skill would only add up to the person as positive points.  But the real deal breaker would be hiring a person who is not willing to think knowing his/her limits and having no enthusiasm to learn if it takes. Simply put, I am looking at the right attitude fit before I look at the aptitude fit.
    Knowledge and expertise of an individual could come with a well defined self-image; the start-up founders would need to know, to what extent these would be beneficial for the company and at what level it would be detrimental to the company’s prospects!
    If the employee is one who would take up additional responsibility beyond what is expected of him and executes this it would be an added positives, the founders however should be willing to give this freedom to the employee to explore and work with them.