Download Perception and impression management

5. HRM - Organizational behaviour - Perception and Impression Management
Perception is a process by which an individual gives meaning to the environment. It
involves organising and interpreting various stimuli into a psychological experience.
Perception helps individuals select, organise, store, and interpret stimuli into a meaningful and
coherent picture of the world. Because each person gives her own meaning to stimuli,
different individuals “see” the same thing in different ways. The way an employee sees a
situation often has such much greater meaning for understanding behaviour than does the
situation itself.
The Perceptual Proces
The person´s perceptual process:
Organizing and translating
Reality in work
organisation
Stimuli (eg. the
organisation´s
reward systém, the
style of persuasion
used by a
supervisor
Factors
influencing
perception
Observation
of the
stimuli
-
Stereotyping
Selectivity
Self-concept
Situation
Needs
Emotions
Outcomes
Evaluation
and
interpretation
of reality
A response
behavior
Attitudes
formed
Because perception involves acquiring specific knowledge about objects or events at any
particular moment, it occurs whenever stimuli activate the senses. Because perception
involves cognition /poznávání/, it includes the interpretation of objects, symbols, and people
in the light of pertinent experiences. In other words, perception involves receiving stimuli,
organizing them, and translating or interpreting the organized stimuli to influence
behaviour and form attitudes.
Each person selects various cues that influence his perceptions of people, objects, and
symbols. Because of these factors and their potential imbalance, people often misperceive
another person, group, or object. To a considerable extent, people interpret the behaviour of
others in the context of the setting in which they find themselves.
The following organizational examples point out how perception influences behavior:
A manager believes that an employee is given opportunities to use his judgement about how
to do the job, while the employee feels that he has absolutely no freedom to make judgements.
A subordinate’s response to a supervisor’s request is based on what she thought she heard the
supervisor say, not on what was actually requested.
The manager considers the product sold to be of high quality, but the customer making a
complaint feels that it´s poorly made.
An employee is viewed by one colleague as a hard worker who gives good effort and by
another colleague as a poor worker who expends no effort.
Managers must recognise that perceptual differences exist. It was proven that the
perceptions of superiors and subordinates concerning amounts and types of recognition that
subordinates received for good performance. Both supervisors and subordinates were asked
how often superiors provided them rewards for good work.
Perceptual Gap between Supervisors and Subordinates
Type of Recognition
Privileges
More responsibility
Sincere and though praise
Training for better jobs
More interesting work
Supervisors´ perceptions
of frequency (%)
52
82
80
64
51
Subordinates´ perceptions
of frequency (%)
14
13
14
9
5
The study illustrates how marked differences may exist between superiors´ and subordinates´
perception of the same events.
Impression Management
The three component model of social psychological process involved in impression
management is shown to illustrate the points in the process which the variables are most likely
to influence.
Social context
Personal context
Interactions gone awry
personality
self-awareness
Impression monitoring:
aware of others’ impressions
Current image
others control outcomes
social constraints
desired identities
self-concept
Impression motivation:
Wants to influence other´s impressions
target values
current image
potential image
outcome value
self-concept
desired identity
Impression construction:
choose impressions to manage
Effective strategies of ingratiation /zalíbení se/ - using impression management (goal is to
be liked)
Opinion conformity
Based on power differentials, typically imitation of attitudes and behaviour by a subordinate.
Successful opinion conformity is based on mixing disagreement with agreement. Yielding:
expressing initial disagreement and gradually changing to agreement.
Favour-doing
norm or reciprocity is a universal rule social behaviour. Ingratiator may often seek liking
rather than exchange of gifts, leading to behaviour which cannot be readily reciprocated, to
trigger a feeling of indebtedness.
Flattery and compliments
Making compliments credible, through effective timing so that delivery of it should not be
linked with desired goal. Frequency: should be used sparingly. Discernment: indiscriminate
/nekritický/ use is likely to fail, best way is to mix it with criticism.
The integrator’s dilemma: the greater the person’s need to engage in ingratiation, the more
likely it is that ingratiation attempts will be detected and fail. Three components are:
 motivational – the incentive value
 cognitive – the subjective probability of success
 ethical – perceived legitimacy
To resolve the dilemma, factors associated with successful ingratiation are:
 avoidance of blatant /očividný/ ingratiation by adopting a complicating strategy
 disclosure of obstacles to successful performance
 reducing salience of power differentials (by making ingratiation when power differentials
are not salient)
As another source of info about perception you can use Joan Harveys´ materials
“Perception”.
More about impression management you can find in Joan Harveys´ materials “Attribution
Theory and Impression Management”, pg 3-5 or in HRM question n. 19
If there is anything unclear, try to ask me:-) (Milena 71 91 01 65) Good luck!!!