Rationale Work Attitude and Self Management Assignment Sample

Attitudes, Personaity and Behaviour

Table of Contents

Rationale Work Attitude and Self Management in Work..

Introduction:

A) Psychological Contract:

B) Terminal and Instrumental Values:

C) Locus of Control:

Conclusion:

References:

Introduction to Rationale Work Attitude and Self Management

When we talk about career development, several factors come into our mind which may hamper one’s development or may escalate towards development. These factors are skills, intelligence, and training of the employee (Ajzen, 2005). Yet no one has focused on the impact of rationale work attitude on shaping one’s career development and leading towards job satisfaction. We all have an attitude and these attitudes define how we act and live in a personal and organizational environment. The research aims to make a thorough analysis of psychological contract and how it affects the work behavior of an individual, Instrumental and Terminal Values, and how this value leads towards job satisfaction, Locus of control, and how it defines one’s attitude towards problem-solving. The paper focuses on how these attitudes affect one’s work and how influencing them will generate favorable results towards organizational development and employee job satisfaction.

Psychological Contract

A psychological contract can be defined as the number of expectations and promises exchanged between the employee and the manager. These are set of unwritten rules and expectations as opposed to formally drafted employee contracts. As stated by Denise Rousseau, the psychological contract includes mutual trust and respect towards both the parties, the common ground for the development of individual and promises. It grows within the individual over a while through communication, rewards, common sense, and/ negative feedback. (Rousseau, Tomprou, & Montes, 2013) Managing expectations is crucial in an organization to avoid any misunderstanding or over expectation from the employer which may arise through his/her words or actions. 

Identification of a psychological contract is necessary as it helps the managers and organizations to establish a sound framework between employee- organization relationship. If these sets of expectations are identified and understood by human resource managers than it can lead to the establishment of equality and support from an employee within an organization. Identification of psychological contract also helps human resource managers in drafting the job specification by assessing the response collected from the interviewee regarding a certain situation that may not relate to the official employment contract. (Neill & Adya, 2007)These contracts may differ according to the organization, departments and with whom employees are working, yet it is the job of the human resource manager to be aware of the working conditions of the employees, set expectations, and agreements with the managers.

For example, in my previous ABC workplace working as a line-manager, our office has always allowed us to take a half-day or leave early on Saturdays to enjoy the weekend or to take time for personal work. Though this tradition has not been mentioned in a formal employment contract yet it has been understood between managers and employees and it has been followed by everyone over a while. Following the joining of the incipient senior management team, the team feared that the senior management team will revoke our perpetuated tradition, we all wished to formally include this Saturday night tradition inscribing into formal code with terms and conditions of employment included.

The management team felt that officially writing it down would lead to a decrease in the company's productivity as the employee might exploit this to their advantage, the management team held an informal meeting with us stating the issue of how our demand will impact our company and why we need to protect our jobs. However, the managers indicated that on the first and third of Saturday of every month, they should encourage us to take a half-day, and overperforming during a certain task may get them free leave during the weekend or they can get bonuses depending on their preference.

By not only acknowledging our old practice by managers but renegotiating it by new and better ones, managers successfully shaped a new psychological contract that was healthy and accepted by all parties. Although at some point in time I have experienced a breach of contract when I requested leave on Friday due to personal work but was denied because of leave on the next day even though I assured the managers that I can work on Saturday full day. There are a few things which I expected from managers such as financial benefits, recognition, a friendly and healthy environment, growth opportunities, and training and development for my job.

But few issues such as an unfriendly environment, favoritism, and inability to provide a platform to share ideas, brought clashes into my psychological contract which bring imbalance during the start of my career. The imbalance into my professional life brought negative feedbacks from managers, growth in efficiency and decreased motivation, and high absenteeism into work. Though joining of a new senior management team not only bring changes in our working conditions but it helped in growing our confidence and developing a new better psychological contract.

Terminal and Instrumental Values

The terminal and instrumental value system was developed by Milton Rokeach who states that there is a certain set of values that shapes an individual’s mode of behavior and its desire to achieve. Every individual brings its values into the organization. These values form the face of the organization (Tuulik, Õunapuu, Kuime, & Titov, 2016). Rokeach has offered 36 terminal and instrumental values which can be arranged based on one’s need and priority. Terminal value can be defined as the objective of an individual which she/he wants to achieve shortly it defines the end-state of the existence of the individual. Whereas instrumental values can be defined as a mode of behavior of an individual while achieving those set objectives. It defines methods one opts for achieving those objectives. (Rokeach, 2008)

Below I have arranged a set of 36 value according to my needs and importance:

The above set of values are organized concurring to my need, where the top half comprises of values which I have to be accomplished within a period and the bottom halves are one which I possess or I wish to attain after accomplishing the starting ones. Concurring to Rokeach, value once being possessed becomes a portion of a framework of practices and these instrumental values act as an activity arranges for understanding issues and in choice making prepare within the over table, terminal values are positioned parallelly towards the instrumental values to set a guiding path for how to achieve these destinations or values. For the case, my highest need is to accomplish happiness and it can be accomplished by being wide mindedness. It implies that I ought to acknowledge the suppositions states of mind and convictions of others, and ought to not be bothered by it. To realize inner harmony my activity plan would be self- control. It can be characterized as dodging to think over and over around a certain thought and activities and have clear control over what I do. By posting these values based on my needs and priority, I can access what I need to seek in an organization before joining and how I will be able to accomplish work fulfillment amid the introductory time.

For the case, from the over table, the upper parts were my most extreme need before joining any organization, subsequently, I looked for work that offers representative fulfillment, wellbeing benefits, security, adaptability, and career improvement. Consequently advertising these fundamental necessities I was able to put my most extreme exertion in progressing my proficiency in the organization. After prioritizing the list of values that are vital to me, I discover Amazon as an able fit for myself. Amazon works towards economical advancement, positive work environment, differences and consideration, ideal wage installment, and improvement programs to its representatives for encouraging development.

Locus of Control

Locus of Control is a concept developed by Julian B. Rotter in 1954, which alludes belief of an individual and how much control they have over the situations and expectations which regulates their behaviour and actions. Individual’s locus can be categorised into two categories, that is internal locus and external locus. Internal locus can be defined as one’s beliefs that he/she has innate control over their actions and behaviour and are unaffected by others. Whereas external locus can be defined as one’s belief that he/she has minimum or no control over its own action and its affected/ influenced by external environment (Lefcourt, 2014)

For example, a scholar with internal locus of control believes that effort made for appearing in the exam and its success/ failure depends upon his/ger own ability to work hard for preparation. Whereas a scholar with external locus of control believes that their success or failure depends upon the luck, circumstance and other’s perception towards the scholar. Individuals who identifies internal locus of control within themselves during early stage tends to keep constant check on their actions and decisions whether it may lead to bad/ good result whereas individuals who identifies themselves with external locus of control tends to always look around their surroundings as a part of good/ bad result.

Job satisfaction is an intricate component and it can be influenced by numerous internal and external factors. With increased research in locus of control, there has been renewed interest in relationship between job satisfaction, self-esteem, self-efficacy and locus of control. Job satisfaction can be termed as an emotional response which can be positive or negative, an individual experience during his/her tenure within the organization. It includes comparison of expected outcomes with actual outcomes of one’s tenure during his/her job. Self-efficacy can be described as individual’s belief into his/ her skills and actions to carry out the task or to behave in a situation. Self-esteem can be defined as individual’s ability to evaluate one’s own worth while performing the task. (Rothmann, 2001)

Individual who possess internal locus of control tend to have boost in self-efficacy as they believe into his/her ability to perform task and can corelate one’s previous success with the current situation. Whereas individual who posse’s external locus of control tends to doubt on one’s ability to perform task and relay on external force which drives his/her behaviour or action which results into low self-efficacy. Individual with internal locus of control tend to have higher amount of self-esteem as he/she tends to believe in one self while performing the task as opposed to person with external locus of control who posses low amount of self-esteem as he/she tends to doubt on one’s capabilities to perform the task. (Rothmann, 2001) The locus of control, self-esteem and self-efficacy are closely interrelated as higher self-esteem and self- efficacy and internal locus of control leads to higher chances of job satisfaction as compared to individual possessing low self-esteem and self-efficacy and external locus of control, which leads towards lower job satisfaction.

To find out if I posses internal locus of control or external locus of control, I undertake a test in which I scored 30 points out of 44. It states I truly believes in my own action and behaviour and always focused on activities which may improve my skills, knowledge and abilities. My locus of control may vary according to situation and I tend to always try to control the situation rather than blaming the external forces and manager them effectively.

Conclusion on Rationale Work Attitude and Self Management

Career development is an important factor in one’s professional life as it leads to increased job satisfaction. Through this detailed research, I get to learn about impact of psychological contracts, terminal and instrumental values and locus of control into my behaviour and how I will able to access them and channel them towards improving my job satisfaction while working in an organization.

References for Rationale Work Attitude and Self Management

Ajzen, I. (2005). Attitudes, Personaity and Behaviour. Berkshaire: Open university Press.

Lefcourt, H. M. (2014). Locus of Control: Current Trends in Theory & Research. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Neill, B. S., & Adya, M. (2007). Knowledge sharing and the psychological contract: Managing knowledge workers across different stages of employment. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 411-436.

Rokeach, M. (2008). Understanding Human Values. New York: Free Press.

Rothmann, S. (2001). Sense of coherence, locus of control, self-efficacy and job satisfaction. South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences (SAJEMS), 41-65.

Rousseau, D. M., Tomprou, M., & Montes, S. D. (2013). Encyclopedia of Management Theory. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Tuulik, K., Õunapuu, T., Kuime, K., & Titov, E. (2016). Rokeach’s instrumental and terminal values. International Journal of Organizational Leadership, 151-161.

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