Interview Summaries
The first interview
The first interview involves a senior administrative assistant at Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Her duties include provision of administrative support to numerous employees and contractors, setting up and monitoring operational expenses, supervising and mentoring an external IT organization, and providing multiple assistance at senior levels within the IT departments.
Beverly Petronzino has 15 years full-time experience since he graduated from high school level. She takes care of three back up temporary administrators who are usually hired after every six months and other support administrators handling contracting staff and their regular needs.
This takes place on a regular basis. She had worked in several health care establishments in the past 11 years before her first employment as a contractor in this company. She assumed this position for a period of six consecutive years before she could be hired as a full-time employee.
She believes that a good supervisor should possess excellent leadership skills, good interpersonal relationship and also have the ability to adapt to change. She thinks that nature presents a true image of an individual compared to credentials. Hence, the former criteria should be considered in the hiring process.
The most difficult supervisory role involves mixing of professional and personal relationships. In a recent case, one of her administrators made a negative personal remark that led to confrontations. She advices those who are non-managers to set up goals and refrain from fear of approaching and engaging in team efforts.
The second interview
The second interview involves Jane M. Coppola, who is a Logistics Vice President at Elie Tahari Ltd. This company deals in designing of fashion clothing for both men and women.
Her duties include supervision, domestic transportation in terms of selection of carriers, rate negotiations, ship preference and custom related matters. She is also mandated to work closely with production factories for updates on when problems might occur and how to deal with any eventualities.
She oversees the performance of a logistics director, domestic import specialist, international import specialist and junior import coordinators. She got employed as secretary in Electronics Company where after six years, having attended a 12 month secretarial program at Berkeley. She was later promoted to an assistant director of imports and in another six years, she rose in rank to the position of a director of imports.
She believes that a good supervisor should have respect for juniors, be patient and a good listener as well. She wishes to have known how to handle people in situations that required judgment of “wrong and bad” before she had become a leader.
The most difficult responsibility was the termination of 15 employees when the company wanted cutbacks where she felt like not posing to employee expectation and hence had let them down. She gives advice to non-supervisors to learn more from their teams.
The third interview
The third interview has been done on Cal Hackworth, who is a talent agent in an entertainment industry in New York Office. His duties include managing more than 45 “below the line” clients in different fields such as television, media, hair/make up artists, designers, among others, as well as assisting the CEO in managing “above the line” employees such as directors, producers and writers.
He directs a receptionist, accountant and interns. Cal has a one-year experience on agent training and an internship from the company having graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Cal believes that a supervisor should be organized, have a good character and possess effective communication. He wishes to have known his job description and the company he was committed to.
One of his most difficult situations involves supervisor disorganization whereby all roles are delegated to him and sometimes fails in his work due to this. He advices non-supervisors to express what they feel at all times to enable their supervisors take them into consideration.
Organizational behavior
The concept of organizational behavior has been clearly brought out in the interview. Organization behavior is a term used to denote how people in an organization act. Individuals in the interview have been asked questions from personal perspective, group perspective, and the interviews reflect on the organization they are working as well as behaviors, attitudes and attributes that brings success.
Organizational behavior encompasses application of specific knowledge by management and workers in an organization to generate a holistic outlook internally and externally as noted in the interviews. Griffin and Moorhead attempt to describe the term organizational behavior in terms of how organizations and employees relate to each other in achieving the set objectives and goals.
Organizational behavior is a collective term that reflects an organization’s mode of operation. The interview has reflected this through diverse questions that have been asked, which relate to operations of organizations. Through understanding organization behavior, employees and co-workers are able to generate the necessary harmony that assists them to work with others in the organization.
Griffin and Moorhead (2012) point out that organization behavior acts as a major guide on procedures and systems to be followed in accomplishing variant duties.
It is at this point that the complexity theory emphasizes on the need to view organizations as independent units but under strong dynamism from the internal and external forces. It is, therefore important to underscore that organizational behavior is very dynamic depending on the affects of the constituent aspects such as motivation, beliefs, and values that constitute it.
Attitude
Organizational citizenship behavior and awareness
From the interviews, it is evident that employees play a key role in facilitating organizational citizenship behavior and thus generate new demand ideals as central subsets of their cultural basements.
Effective application of organization citizenship behavior remains the most effective method of maintaining intrinsic employees’ commitment to their work, relationship with others, cooperation with the management and contribution towards organizations missions’ achievements for higher profitability and sustainability.
The concept of organizational citizenship behavior is applicable in this context in the sense that the interviewees have inculcated and harmonized entities in their organization through citizenship behaviors. Under this consideration, the employees have felt empowered to view, analyze and propose possible areas of improvement.
Griffin and Moorhead (2012) found out that there is a tendency by different employees to move beyond the expectations of their organizations when they act as the drivers of the change process. Therefore, the management of an organization is expected to further harmonize and support diverse views from employees, especially those which are in tandem with the organization objectivity.
However, they call for great caution when applying this model to avoid deviation from the main organization’s mission. Besides, emotions affect cognitive process by directly impacting on an individual’s attention, openness and locus of control presented to them with reference to change demands and strategic application.
In addition, it also impacts on the reasoning and judgmental capacities that dictate people’s ability to determine what to venture into or not
Perception
From the interview, it is evident that the level of expectation by an employee dictates how he or she view various aspects related to tasks assigned to him.
The concept of perception is applicable in the interview as Griffin and Moorhead (2012) point out that what an individual understands self-perception as an interplay of various factors that dictate his or her ability to generate responses towards different issues and work-related roles. Perception is the process through which an individual assimilates understanding of the information gathered through the sensory systems.
A contrast is created in the sense that though most of the lower-level employees and workers expectations may be limited to their duties, higher-level managers may have higher perceptions as they are entrusted with formulation of strategies to achieve the established organization objectives.
In addition, perception is also influenced by cognitive bias and the type of responsibilities that are held by an individual. As indicated from the interviews, the levels of experience and learning enable an individual to view an organization from a different perspective compared to others and therefore generate different perceptions.
Majority of the people in authority and with responsibilities as noted in the interviews perceive various aspects differently from their juniors because they have to gather more leading knowledge and focus much ahead to be able to offer the necessary leadership.
However, this notion has come under vast criticism as democratic management and emergent leaders become vital icons in generating effective perceptions to develop their respective organizations.
Personality
Personality is a concept that has been noted in the interview as a factor that enhances performance of a worker as well as organizational behavior.
It is applicable in the sense that the relationship between personality and behavior has been brought out in the interview to indicate the delicate interplay in determining the affects of change in an organization. The relationship between emotions and behavior has been brought out in the interview to indicate the delicate interplay in determining the affects of change in an organization.
While affection reaction is presented to be more object-focused with variant intensities that lasts only for a short period of time, emotions are presented to be less intense with high diffusivity that reflects an individual’s life. Emotions, as the article proceeds to indicate, are generated through a generic process that is strongly affected by the immediate events that determines an individual’s perceptions.
Besides, personality affect cognitive process by directly impacting on an individual’s attention, openness and locus of control presented to them with reference to change demands and strategic application.
In addition, it also impacts on the reasoning and judgmental capacities that dictate people’s ability to determine what to venture into or not. Moreover, it impacts on the analytical and creativity orientation of an individual which is very critical in workers and employees commitment and decision making.
Conclusion
To sum up, this paper concludes by reiterating that organizational behavior has several elements of importance which include perceptions held at the workplace, workplace diversity as well as groups and group dynamics.
This is based on the need to build effective internal relations that anchor the workers’ positive coexistence and generates the necessary management interlink for effective coordination. These factors are essential in providing the necessary oversight at all levels of an organization.
Reference
Griffin, R. W. & Moorhead, G. (2012). Organizational behavior-managing people and organizations. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.