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Management Practices and Organisational Behaviour

Notes open one morning and was robbed by three armed men. While trying to open the safe, his
handshaking from nervousness slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and
shot him. Luckily, Tom was found quickly and rushed to the hospital. After 18 hours of
surgery and weeks of intensive care, Tom was released from the hospital with fragments
of the bullets still in his body.
Peter saw Tom about six months after the accident. When he asked him how he was, he
replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Want to see my scars?” Peter declined to see his
wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place. “The
first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Tom
replied. “Then, after they shot me, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two
choices: I could choose to live! or choose to die. I chose to live.” “Weren’t you scared?”
I asked. Tom continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to
be fine. But when they wheeled me into the Emergency Room and I saw the expressions on
the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ‘He’s a dead
man.’ I knew I needed to take action.” “What did you do?” Peter asked. “Well, there was a
big nurse shouting questions at me,” said Tom. “She asked if I was allergic to anything.”
‘Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. Peter
took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Lead!’ Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I am choosing to
live. Please operate on me as if I am alive, not dead’.
“Tom lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude.
Peter learned from him that “Every day ! You have the choice to either enjoy your life, or
to hate it”. The only thing that is truly yours that no one can control or take from you - is
YOUR ATTITUDE, so if you can take care of that, everything else in life becomes much
easier.
Question
Enumerate the benefits of a positive attitude?

Source: Jayantee (Mukherkjee) Saha, Management and Organisational Behaviour, First Edition,
Excel Books, 2006.

9.7 Values

Another source of individual differences is values. Values exist at a deeper level than attitudes
and are more general and basic in nature. We use them to evaluate our own behaviour and that
of others. Value is an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end state of existence is
personally and socially preferable to the alternative modes of conduct or end states of existence.
Once it is internalized, it becomes consciously or unconsciously, a standard or criterion for
guiding action, for developing and maintaining attitudes toward relevant objects and situation,
for justifying one's own and others' actions and attitudes for morally judging oneself and others,
and for comparing oneself with others. Value, therefore, is a standard or yardstick to guide
actions, attitudes, evaluations and justifications of the self and others.
Ronald D White and David A Bednar have defined value as a "concept of the desirable, an
internalized criterion or standard of evaluation a person possesses. Such concepts and standards
are relatively few and determine or guide an individual's evaluations of the many objects
encountered in everyday life".
Values are tinged with moral flavour, involving an individual's judgement of what is right,
good or desirable. Thus values:
1. Provide standards of competence and morality.

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