Organizational Behavior (Stephen Robbins)

OB IS FOR EVERYONE

Who do you tend to blame
when someone makes a
mistake? Ever wonder why?

Have you ever misjudged a

person? Do you know why?

Are people born with their

personalities?

Do you think it is better to

be a Type A or a Type B

personality?

Ever wonder why the
grocery clerk is always
smiling?

1 What is perception?

any employees at the Canadian Human

Rights Commission (CHRC) cheered in May

2001 when a commissioned report revealed

widespread dissatisfaction in their workplace.^1 Ordinarily

an exposé of on-the-job problems is not something to

cheer about, but the CHRC workers were grateful their

concerns were finally being made public.

Much to the employees’ dismay, however, senior

managers at CHRC suggested that the workplace prob-

lems were only a matter of employee “perception,” not

objective reality. Michelle Falardeau-Ramsay, who was

chief commissioner at the time, even said, “It’s a report

that is based on perceptions and perceptions can

become facts at one point.”^2 The employees were left

to wonder whether they and their managers were actu-

ally part of the same workplace.

All of our behaviour is somewhat shaped by our

perceptions, personalities, emotions, and experiences.

In this chapter, we consider the role that perception

plays in affecting the way we see the world and the

people around us. We also consider how personality

characteristics affect our attitudes toward people and

situations. We then consider how emotions shape many

of our work-related behaviours.

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PERCEPTION DEFINED

Perceptionis the process by which individuals select, organize, and interpret their sen-
sory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment. However, what we per-
ceive can be substantially different from objective reality. We often disagree about what
is real. As we have seen, employees and senior management at the Canadian Human
Rights Commission had very different views of their workplace conditions. Michelle
Falardeau-Ramsay, the chief commissioner, even said it was all a matter of “perception.”
Why is perception important in the study of organizational behaviour (OB)? Simply
because people’s behaviour is based on their perception of what reality is, not on real-
ity itself. The world as it is perceived is the world that is behaviourally important. Paul Godfrey,
CEO of Toronto-based Sun Media Corporation, notes that “a lot of things in life are

perceptionThe process by which

individuals select, organize, and

interpret their sensory impressions

in order to give meaning to their

environment.

Canadian Human Rights

Commission (CHRC)

http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca