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Management Practices and Organisational Behaviour

Notes infancy, other members of the immediate family – father, brothers, sisters and close
relatives or friends, then the social group: peers, school friends and members of the work
group – play influential roles.
Socialization process is especially relevant to organisational behaviour because the process
is not confined to early childhood, taking place rather throughout one's life. In particular,
evidence is accumulating that socialization may be one of the best explanations for why
employees behave the way they do in today's organisations.
5. Situational Factors: Human personality is also influenced by situational factors. The
effect of environment is quite strong. Knowledge, skill and language are obviously acquired
and represent important modifications of behaviour. An individual's personality, while
generally stable and consistent, does change in different situations. The varying demands
of different situations call forth different aspects of one's personality. According to Milgram,
"Situation exerts an important press on the individual. It exercises constraints and may
provide push. In certain circumstances, it is not so much the kind of person a man is, as the
kind of situation in which he is placed that determines his actions". We should therefore
not look at personality patterns in isolation.

8.8.3 Theories of Personality

Over time, researchers have developed a number of personality theories and no theory is
complete in itself. The theories can be conveniently grouped under four heads:
1. Intrapsychic Theory
2. Type Theories
3. Trait Theories, and

4. Self-Theory
Intrapsychic Theory

Based on the work of Sigmund Freud, Intrapsychic theory emphasizes the unconscious
determinants of behaviour. Freud saw personality as the interaction between three elements of
personality: the id, ego, and superego. The id is the most primitive element, a primordial source
of drives and impulses that operates in an uncensored manner. The superego, similar to what we
know as conscience, contains values and the "shoulds and should nots" of the personality. There
is an ongoing conflict between the id and the superego. The ego serves to manage the conflict
between the id and the superego. In this, role, the ego compromises, and the result is the
individual's use of defence mechanisms such as denial of reality.

Components of Personality

Freud proposed a new conception of the personality, one that contains three systems – the id, the
ego, and the superego. These systems do not exist physically; they are only concepts, or ways of
looking at personality.
1. Id: The id is the only part of the personality that is present at birth. It is inherited, primitive,
inaccessible and completely unconscious. The id contains:
(a) The life instincts, which are sexual instincts and the biological urges such as hunger
and thirst, and

(b) The death instinct, which accounts for our aggressive and destructive impulses.

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