Work and Organizational Psychology - Essay Example

Question Teamwork has become one of the core values of modern successful organizations, because this kind of work not only improves personal performances of employees in a company but also increases efficiency of an organization in general. The very first thing which is important in construction of effective teamwork in organization is developed leadership skills of team’s supervisors. Researches show that efficient leadership and supervising is the most important factor not only in creation of consolidated team within a company’s collective but also a passport to success, to personal satisfaction of each employee (Griffin et.al. 2001). Supervisor support usually encourages employees to work harder and more effective. The point is that workers want to feel themselves exceptional and strive to see that their work is important and gives some evident results. If a supervisor gives the support to one’s subordinate workers and gives credit to the outcomes of their work, the employees realize that they are on the right path and aim to please their boss more and more. Oppositely, when a worker doesn’t get enough support from one’s supervisor, he starts thinking that there is something wrong with his work and the one falls into disenchantment with himself and his job. Also, teamwork comforts employees on their workplaces, which definitely improves their emotional conditions. When people feel that they are significant and they are able of contributing into some team work, they try harder to serve for common good. The reason for this is that workers who feel that they belong to some group where they are needed and accepted, they strive not only to impress others in the group but also feel grateful for the working atmosphere they have, so they try to maintain it by increasing their working efficiency (Griffin et.al. 2001). Furthermore, if a supervisor applies his leadership skills in efficient way, he will be able to manage the relationships of positive competition among his workers. Such kind of competition makes employees compete, which raises their personal results, however it doesn’t lead to the hostile competitiveness which ruins professional relationships and increases possibility of workers’ failures. The positive competition gathers people in teams and makes their work interesting by reducing routine and boredom inside the teams. Moreover, teamwork evokes creativity and improves people’s ability to find new working ideas. Many job positions require creative skills from their candidates and when applying for a job people usually do their best to demonstrate such skills. However, when they start working in a collective where teamwork is on a low level, their creative abilities get lost because they are maintained neither by positive competition nor by supervisor’s support. Thus effectiveness of such employee gets reduced and he feels like his skills and abilities are not needed. Providing a collective with an efficient leader is the best way to construct a qualitative teamwork on a workplace. Teamwork not only encourages workers and makes them try harder to be personally successful but also increases general performance of a company. Question 2 The fact that satisfaction is a significant required part of any job is quite obvious if to consider the issue subjectively. It means that each person wants to be satisfied with the work one does, because one spends a lot of time on a workplace and wants to spend this time with pleasure. However, the concept of work satisfaction consists of many different aspects, including positive social environment and working activities that make a person love the job one does. With general job satisfaction a worker becomes committed and dedicated to one’s job, which improves his working results and increases his loyalty to the company he works for. Social environment on a workplace plays one of the most important roles in making employees’ conditions of work satisfactory. Psychological researches reveal that emotions create work motivation in employees, which in turn makes them either try hard doing their job or decline any working activities (Barsade & Gibson 2007). When a motivated person faces with complicated issue, one is willing to overcome the difficulties for several reasons. First of all, such a motivated person is satisfied with the people one works with and the teamwork one has, so he will strive to fight with difficulties in order to increase common prosperity and not let his team down. Secondly, a motivated worker identifies oneself with the company, so the company’s success is being his own success as well and one does his best to defeat the problems that stand in the way to his (and his company’s) prosperity. The activities that a person conducts on one’s workplace also play important role in one’s satisfaction and effectiveness. It is crucial for everyone to be involved into activities that wont be considered as a kind of burden for the worker. Thus employers must accurately pick those people who are able to manage the working responsibilities of the job they apply for. A supervisor must support his workers and propose them the kinds of activities they are capable of doing and which they are good at. Otherwise if a person is forced to do the job one is not competent in, his self efficacy decreases. According to Bandura’s Social cognitive theory self efficacy is person’s realization of one’s capability to accomplish a task. The efficacy decreases when a worker doesn’t believe he can succeed in the activity and declines taking risk or doing one’s best to accomplish the job task. This lowers the worker’s performance in his job and leads to failures or unwillingness to work at all. When a person does what one knows he is capable of doing, his work efficacy raises and such worker becomes useful and efficient for his company. So there are a few factors that might influence workers’ satisfaction of their jobs. The first one is comfort social atmosphere on a workplace, which should be maintained by a good supervisor; the second one is the kind of tasking that is appropriate for each and every worker, which means competent division of labor inside a collective. These factors improve workers’ dedication to their company and efficiency in working activities. Question 3 That fact that lots of workers suffer from occupational stress has lead to searching of measures that would prevent workers from being unhappy and depressed about their work. The reasons why people experience the kinds of stress are multiple. Among the most common reasons for occupational stress is intensity of working process, which means that there are too many activities and tasks a worker is supposed to deal with that one is not able to manage all the work and his failure rates increase, so such worker gets stressed and even falls into depression. Some people experience stress because of too long working day; thus workers get stressed and tired of their jobs and start hating them, which later might even lead to denial of visiting their workplaces. Another significant reason for the stress is hierarchical position of a worker on his workplace. If a worker feels that his position is low in the company, he considers himself as underrated, so he becomes less initiative, motivated, and efficient. However, there are a lot of methods concerning how to deal with employees’ stress in organizations. The very first one is adaption of demands to workers according to their abilities. As long as a worker deals with the tasks that he is capable of doing, his productivity is on a high level (Schuler 1982). When a worker gets a task he couldn’t manage to do, he becomes frustrated and loses his faith in own abilities and talents. In order to prevent a worker’s fall of efficacy, his supervisor should give him the tasks the worker could actually manage. Another measure that could prevent workers from stress and increase their efficacy is encouragement of workers’ initiative and creativity. The best way to provide workers with encouragement is establishment of a specific program of financial rewards (bonuses), so that each time a worker wants to deny doing any working activities, he would think of the bonuses he would get for keeping working. Another aspect of the measure is demonstration to workers their career opportunities; realizing that their job wouldn’t be wasted will add sense to the work they do and they won’t be stressed about spending a lot of time at work, giving so much energy to it. Researches show that one of the main principles that must be preserved in any organization in order to keep peaceful atmosphere in collective is delimitation of duties among employees (Schuler 1982). When a worker knows precisely what he is supposed to do, knowing this makes him feel ensured in his job and safe from failures. The point is that it is important for worker to make sure that his duties are in accordance with his abilities; when one’s duties are confirmed by manager, he can be sure that he will not get a job that he cant do, so he will not ever fail. Thus stress management in organization is an important thing not only in making employees more emotionally stable and capable of efficient work, but also in increasing of general efficacy of company. Question 4 There are multiple factors that influence people’s career choices during their working lives, because people constantly get new experience and learn and their career preferences might change. According to Donald Super’s career theory, a human being goes through different self-concept changes throughout the entire live. This means that a person changes one’s self-perception and understanding of one’s personality and life preferences according to the newest experience, learned skills and knowledge (Zimmer-Gembeck & Mortimer 2006). Thus, even during occupation of a certain job position, a person could later come to the conclusion that one has grown out of the job and change it into a new one. Even though people are get used to thinking that a career choice is supposed to be one for the rest of the life, still Super’s theory definitely makes sense, because it frequently happens that people change their career preferences after being occupied in certain job for many years. This happens because one day they realize that they’ve either learned everything they could learn in terms of the profession, or they just started loving some other activity. Concerning the problem of vocation in people’s career choices, Holland’s theory gives more detailed explanation of why people tend to be satisfied in some jobs more than in others. Holland claims that working environment should be compatible with a person’s personality and specific skills and talents (Zimmer-Gembeck & Mortimer 2006). Thus people who work according to their abilities and do what they like doing are more satisfied with their jobs than those who don’t have individual devotion to a profession. However, self-concept and career choice are also engaged with each other in the theory. It turns out that people chose the careers that let them express their self-concepts and develop their personal and professional qualities on the exact stage of their lives. It explains why a person might change one’s career choice after a long-term occupation of a certain job position. The point is that such thing as vocation in fact depends not only on a person’s natural talents and abilities, but also it depends on the skills that a person learns throughout the entire lifespan. Thus experience and knowledge determines human personality, because it has been widely thought that most people make their career choices since childhood because they a priori have some abilities which form their personalities and career preferences. However, with the change of inherent self-concept a person might also transform one’s understanding of who one is in professional aspect. The specific factors that might influence career decision during a person’s working life might be multiple, including personal development and environmental changes; moreover, even some accidental factors and external experience might turn human life upside down and reconstruct career preferences. One way or another, a person makes one’s choice according to the skills and career preferences that are compatible with one’s self-concept in this specific period of the lifespan. References Griffin, M.A., Patterson, M.G., and West, M.A., 2001, Job Satisfaction and Teamwork: The Role of Supervisor Support, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22(5), 537-550. Barsade, S.G. and Gibson, D.E., 2007, Why Does Affect Matter in Organizations?, Academy of Management Perspectives, 21(1), 36-59. Schuler, R.S., 1982, An Integrative Transactional Process Model of Stress in Organizations, Journal of Occupational Behaviour, 3(1), 5-19. Zimmer-Gembeck, M.J. and Mortimer, J.T., 2006, Adolescent Work, Vocational Development, and Education, Review of Educational Research, 76(4), 537-566. Read More