Faculty of Technology Management

MBA (Technology Management)

Semester-I

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
STUDY OF EXECUTIVE PERSONALITY

SUBMITTED TO:

Dr. D.M.Pestonjee

PREPARED BY: - SIDDARTH TATER(AM3111)

CEPT UNIVERSITY
Kasturbhai Lalbhai Campus,University Road, Navrangpura,Ahmedabad 380 009. Gujarat

Telephones : 079 26302470 / 26302740 Fax : 079 26302075

Email : fam@cept.ac.in, Web Site : http://www.cept.ac.in

ABSTRACT
Stress is often described as the result of demands exceeding resources. This is particularly evident in professional careers where managers balance work, family, and significant travel in addition to their existing repertoire. In my report I have conducted survey on four students and one executive manager. Students are aspiring executives or the future executives go through similar situation in educational organization. Executives today have to deal with various types of Role Stress which in turn has a negative impact on their Role Efficacy. This report gives brief idea about the types of role stress faced by executives, and also their coping ability with respect to role efficacy. It also examines how the different kinds of stress faced by the executives affect their role efficacy and the impact of role efficacy on role stress. It appears that executives use Role Stress to increase their Role Efficacy and Role Efficacy leads to optimization of Role Stress. Now-a-days executives seem to be inundated with Role Stress which in turn has a negative impact on their Role Efficacy. If Executives become aware of means to enhance the various facets of Role Efficacy, they will be able to cope with Role Stress and use Role Stress as Eustress. Understanding the sources of stress within your organization and managing those impacts is an important responsibility for any work. This approach will demonstrate that you have a caring culture. An effective strategy to manage stress will reduce absenteeism and improve productivity. It's a fact of life that there are now increased levels of competition and ever higher expectations placed on employees. Being able to identify and eliminate hazards that can affect performance, such as stress, is important and litigation of such stress enhances performance and productivity.

STRESS MANAGEMENT AND ROLE EFFICACY

Everyone is different, with unique perceptions and reactions to events. There is no single level of stress that is optimal for all people. Some are more sensitive owing to experiences in childhood, the influence of teachers, parents and religion etc. Most of the stress we experience is self-generated. How we perceive life - whether an event makes us feel threatened or stimulated, encouraged or discouraged, happy or sad - depends to a large extent on how we perceive ourselves.Modern life is full of stress. As organizations become more complex, the potential for Stress increases. Stress is an inevitable consequence of socio-economic complexity and, to some extent, its stimulant as well. There is no escape from stress in modern life; there s need to find ways of using stress productively, and reducing dysfunctional stress. Modern society is organizational in nature. But presently organizational behavior has become a separate field of study and Indian organizations have also started thinking on the pattern of Multi National Corporations which are successfully running their business in India. Organizational Behavior is basically an interdisciplinary approach. OB focuses attention on people with humanistic point of view. It studies human behavior at individual level, group level and organizational level. It has become very important for management to understand behavior related problems of people working in the organizations for achieving the predetermined goals. The issues which are gaining importance these days are if the people are under organizational/occupational role stress, if the quality of work life is as per their requirements, if they are satisfied with their jobs and if managerially they are successful or not. The level of these two behavioral issues, Organizational Role Stress Job Satisfaction will vary from person to person, group to group and organization to organization.

1. Role stress
Stress is experienced in organizational roles as problems are encountered in role performance. The nature of role stress was investigated by measuring ten role stressors on executives of an Indian public sector industry, and the sample was partitioned in four ways as lower, middle, and higher age; junior, middle, and senior management levels; low, middle, and high qualification levels; and R&D, quality, production, and miscellaneous functions. Rank ordering of mean scores of the ten role stressors for the company as a whole and within each group revealed that the first ranking role stressor is uniform, but the second to the tenth ranking role stressors are not uniform across the groups and in the company as a whole. Comparisons with t-test on means performed for each role stressor (and the total role stress), for each pair of groups, under each type of grouping have also revealed significant differences in role stress experienced across the groups formed within the company. By demonstrating heterogeneity of

role stress experience in the company, the study helps better appreciation of differences in problems faced by the employees across the company.

2. Role space
Organization culture refers to a group of mutually interacting people with negotiated, shared values, understandings, norms, ideals, way of life, and way of looking at the world and their place in it. It is the relationships between one s own self and the various roles one takes on; it has three main variables: self, the role under question, and the other roles one occupies. Any conflicts among these are referred to as role space conflict or stress. Self-Role Distance, IntraRole Conflict, Role Stagnation, Inter-Role Distance and Role irrelevance are the contributors of role space stress. The role set consists of people who have varying expectations from the role an individual is performing. Its dimensions are Role Ambiguity, Role Expectation Conflict, Role Overload, Role Erosion, and Resource Inadequacy, Personal Inadequacy, Role Isolation, Result Inadequacy, Role Inadequacy and Challenge stress. Various types of Role space Conflicts are:

1) Inter role distance:(IRD)

When an individual occupies more than one role there are bound to be conflicts. For example : A lady boss often faces conflict between her organizational role & familial role.

2) Role Stagnation:(RS)
An individual as he grows in the organization, he also grows in the role that he occupies, his role starts stagnating, needs to take up new role and perform effectively which he feels insecure.

3) Role Expectation Conflict:(REC)

Stress experienced due to conflicting expectation from the boss, subordinate, peers or clients.

4) Role Erosion:(RE)
When occupant feel that the functions he would like to perform are being done by some other role. Subjective feeling that some important expectations that one has from a role are shared by others.

5) Role Overload :(RO)

Role overload occurs when too much is expected and the person feels burdened.

6) Personal Inadequacy :(PI)

When a role occupant feels that he doesn't have enough knowledge, skills or training to undertake a role effectively, he may experience stress.

7) Self-Role Distance :(SRD)

Stress arising out of the conflict between the self-concept and the expectations from the role. for example: Introvert required to accept the job of salesman.

8) Resource Inadequacy :(RIN)

Stress experienced by a role occupant when resource required by role occupant are not available. Resource may include information, material, capital or facilities.

9) Role Ambiguity :(RA)

When an individual is not aware or clear about various expectations that people have from his role. May be due to lack of information or lack of understanding. May be in relation to activities, responsibilities, priorities and norms.

3. Role Efficacy
Role efficacy means the potential effectiveness of an individual occupying a particular position in an organization. People with high role efficacy seem to experience less role stress and workrelated tension. They rely on their own strengths to cope with problems, use more focused behavior, interact with people and the environment, persist in solving problems (mostly by themselves), and show commitment to their work. A participatory environment provides staff higher satisfaction and contributes to role efficacy. An environment characterized by control seems to lower role efficacy. The Ten Aspects of Role Efficacy Role efficacy has ten aspects. These aspects can be classified into three groups or dimensions, namely, role making, role centering and role linking. 1. Role making is an active attitude towards the role, i.e. defining and making the role one likes to take on. 2. Role centering is concerned with increasing the power of the role, making it more important. 3. Role linking is concerned with extending the relationship of the role with other roles and groups. The three dimensions have been further sub-divided into the ten aspects of role efficacy as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Ten aspects of role efficacy

3.1.Role Making a) Self-role integration

All people have strengths, experience, technical expertise, special skills, and some unique contributions to make. The roles that people play should provide an opportunity to utilize these skills and strengths to ensure a high level of role efficacy. When their role provides them with greater opportunity for using their special strengths, their role efficacy is likely to be higher. If there is a gap between people and their roles, role efficacy is likely to be low.

b) Proactivity
People respond to expectations of others in fulfilling their role at work. When that person is also expected to take the initiative in starting some activity, the efficacy will be higher. Reactive behavior(responding to the expectations of others) helps a person to be effective to some extent; proactive behaviour (taking the initiative rather than only responding to others expectations) contributes much more to efficacy. If people like to take the initiative, but have no opportunity to do so in their present role in the organization, their efficacy will be low.

c) Creativity
Any opportunity to be creative and try new and unusual ways of solving problems is important to increasing efficacy. If people perceive that they have to perform only routine tasks, it becomes counterproductive in terms of their role efficacy. If they feel that the role does not allow any time or opportunity to be creative, their efficacy is bound to be low. Managers need to appreciate and use new ideas given by their staff.

d) Confrontation
Confronting problems and finding relevant solutions contributes to efficacy. When people facing interpersonal problems sit down, talk about them and search for solutions, their efficacy is likely to be higher compared to situations where they either deny having such problems or refer them to their higher officers.

3.2.Role Centering e) Centrality

All employees want to feel that their role is important. If people feel that the role they occupy is central to the programme, their role efficacy is likely to be high. If people feel that their roles are minor, their potential effectiveness will be low. This is true for all persons and not only for those at the lowest level.

e) Influence
The more influence and power people have in their roles, the higher their efficacy is likely to be. Influence and power at work come about from personal competence, position in the work place, leadership style, the ability to gain the respect of others and handle threats and bullying. One factor that makes roles in the public sector or in civil services more effective is the opportunity to influence a large section of the community. Health care providers have more influence because they treat people who are sick and are therefore, often highly respected by the community.

f) Personal growth
Another factor, which contributes to role efficacy, is the perception that the position provides the individual with an opportunity to grow and develop. There are several instances of people leaving one position and becoming very effective in another. This happens primarily because they have greater opportunity to grow in the second position, due to the role they play in that position. If people feel that they are stagnating in a position without any opportunity to grow, they are likely to have a low role efficacy.

3.3.Role linking g) Inter-role Linkage

Linking one s role with that of others in the programme increases efficacy. If there is an exchange of ideas, discussions, greater communication, and an effort to understand problems and devise solutions etc., the efficacy of the various roles involved is likely to be high. The feeling of role isolation (that a person works without any linkage with other roles) reduces role efficacy.

h) Helping Relationship
There are two kinds of helping relationships - feeling free to ask for help and expecting that help will be available when it is needed, as well as willingness to give help and respond to the needs of others. The opportunity for staff to receive and give help increases their role efficacy. If there is a feeling that no help is available when asked for, or that the other person is hostile, role efficacy will be low. Staff must be made to understand that helping is a two-way interchange.

i) Super-ordination
When people performing a particular role feel that what they do is likely to be of value to a larger group, their efficacy is likely to be high. Super-ordination is working to serve large causes or groups, usually with some collaboration. One major motivating factor for health personnel, especially those working at the grass roots level is the feeling that their contribution to people they deal with, is likely to help larger sections of the community and society.

4. Self Rating Anxiety Scale

It is a 20-item self-report assessment device which includes measures of state and trait anxiety. Answering the statements a person should indicate how much each statement applies to him or her. Each question is scored on a Likert-type scale of 1-4, based on these replies: 1 - A little of the time, 2 - Some of the time, 3 - Good part of the time, 4 - Most of the time. Overall assessment is done by total score. The total scores range from 20-80.
   

20-44 Normal Range 45-59 Mild to Moderate Anxiety Levels 60-74 Marked to Severe Anxiety Levels 75-80 Extreme Anxiety Levels

5. Loneliness
Loneliness is defined as a lack of desired social connection and social support. It is often associated with feelings of isolation, worthlessness, and sadness. Loneliness is not necessarily the state of being alone. One can be utterly lonely in a room full of people who don t seem to notice, in a college dorm with no special friend, in a marriage with no understanding. Loneliness

is not the peaceful solitude we cherish. It is the pain of being without meaningful connection, a feeling of emptiness that entraps us in fears, longing and negative perceptions about ourselves and others. Higher the score, more lonely the person is.

6. Behavior Type
Behavior type A refers to ambitious, aggressive, business-like, controlling, highly competitive, impatient, preoccupied with his or her status, time-conscious, and tightly-wound. People with Type A personalities are often high-achieving "workaholics" who multi-task, push themselves with deadlines, and hate both delays and ambivalence. Behavior type B refers to a behavioral style which is characterized by low levels of competitiveness, time urgency and anger or hostility. The Personal feedback form results are as follows
ORS No. Name
(Out of 200)

Role Efficacy 76.67% 68.33% 65% 48.33% 41.66%

How Lonely You are

(out of 80)

Self Rating Anxiety Scale

(out of 80)

Self Analysis Questionnaire

(Out of 60)

Type of Behavior

1 2 3 4 5

Sanket Agarwal Abhishek Kumar Shantanu Bansal Utkarsh Kumar Shivam Tiwari

102 91 100 81 89

35 43 37 23 37

44 30 41 34 44

Form 1 | Form 2 40 23 19 31 35 21 20 36 37 26

B+ B+ B+ AA-