Page 163 - DMGT402_MANAGEMENT_PRACTICES_AND_ORGANIZATIONAL_BEHAVIOUR

Management Practices and Organisational Behaviour

Notes The impact of psychoanalytic approach on organisational behaviour: Some areas where the
psychoanalytic approach has made an impact on organisational behaviour include the following:
1. Organisation Development technique: OD techniques such as Transactional Analysis -
(example - attempts to improve interpersonal communication skills and eliminate "game
playing".) and group/team development rely to some degree on psychoanalytic thought.

2. Leadership and Power: The attention given to authority and dominance in psychoanalytic
approaches is reflected in the study of leadership and power in organisational behaviour.
3. Employee Dissatisfaction: Employee behaviours such as daydreaming, forgetting, apathy,
rationalization and even absenteeism, tardiness, sabotage and alcoholism/drug abuse
can be analyzed in psychoanalytic terms.

4. Creative Behaviour: Bringing out the creative talent in employees to some degree is based
on psychoanalytic thought. For example, certain stages of the creative process are
unconscious in nature.
The above shows that Freud's ideas have proved to be very far-reaching and long lasting.
However, the psychoanalytic elements are largely hypothetical constructs and are not
measurable, observable items susceptible to scientific analysis and verification. The id, ego, and
superego are primarily a "black box" explanation of human beings. That is why most modern
behavioural scientists reject the psychoanalytical approach as the total explanation of human
personality and behaviours.

Case Study Studying Cognitive Strategies for Managing a
Situation

hen students make the transition from high school to college, they face imposing
and perhaps threatening tasks. For most, academic success is both important
Wand anxiety-provoking, and so it offers an opportunity to see how personality
affects the way individuals meet this challenge. In addressing this question, Nancy Cantor
and her colleagues (1987) studied students in the Honors College at the University of
Michigan and discovered that successful students did not all follow the same path to
academic success.

Each student filled out two lengthy questionnaires during freshman year, the first in early
July and the second in January, after the new semester had started. They were also
interviewed in depth and took part in an “experience-sampling” study. At random times
during the day, a pager would beep, and they would jot down a description of whatever
they were doing on an activity report sheet.
The students adopted two distinctly different cognitive strategies for tackling their academic
requirements, each reflecting different aspects of personality. Although the strategies had
little in common, both groups of students did equally well during their first semester.
Some students adopted a defensive, almost pessimistic, strategy. Despite their history of
academic success, they began college with low expectations. Just before they began a task
– a term paper, a new assignment, a mid-term exam – they felt anxious and out of control.
Yet their uneasiness motivated them to plan their actions so comprehensively that instead
of failing, they succeeded. Their approach could be summed up as “I go into academic
situations expecting the worst, even though I know I’ll probably do OK.”

Contd...

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