Pygmalion Effect

“One's expectations about a person can eventually lead that person to behave and achieve in ways that confirm those expectations” (taken from http://www.users.muohio.edu/shermalw/edp603_group2-f00.html )

If you believe so hard in something, it might just become true. We have heard a lot of histories about succesful actors, football players, basketball players, scientists, politicias, etc. All of them, have something in common, and is that they say that is because they believe so much in something, that it became true. The Pygmalion Effect tell us that if an expectation placed on a person is high, that person will perform better, just because they want to achieve that expectation.

A very good example would have to be Forrest Gump. This, being a great movie, shows us how anyone can achieve great things, no matter what their situation is. Yes, it's movie, but still it can appy to many things.

Forrest Gump has well below average intelligence, but still manages to do so many things. Finishing school, going to college, going to the army and fighting in Vietnam, being a ping pong champion, owning a shrimp company, being shareholder of Apple. All this because his mother told him that he can be whatever he wants to be, and being less intelligent, in a way, help him, because he doesn't understand that a person with his condition "can't" do a lot.

So you see, believing big, sometimes let's you achieve big.

Taken from : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLkNPjbaPTk

Organizational Behaviour

As part of this week topic, we will talk about Organizational Behaviour, and after seeing Mr. Nick B. Meyer conference "Dealing with Cultural Differences", we will discuss the importance of this topic.

But what is Organizational Behaviour? If we want to be really technic about it is: "The study of individual behavior in an organizational setting. This includes the study of how individuals behave alone, as well as how individuals behave in groups."[1] This simply means on how people or individuals behave in an organization, based on their cultural background.

The problem here begins when certain people of a certain culture, work in an organization of a different culture. This creates a "confrontation", that if not developed adequately can become a real problem for the organization.

For example, lets say that a Japanese car company, opens a subsidiary in India, because salaries in India are lower and workers are qualified to do the job required. The Japanese company opens the production plant with 100% Indian workers, except for the managing staff which is Japanese. In Japan Power Distance (PDI) is 51, in India PDI is 77 [2]. This means that India is a more unequal society. You may say that Japan is also very unequal, but if you travel to India, you'll find a very large differences between the persons that have the most and the persons that don't have anything. The gap between rich and poor is very big, compared to Japan.

Continuing with the example, in Japanese culture it is very normal for the regular worker to give ideas to the upper levels of the organization, regarding any type of problems or ideas that he or she notices, and this is not only from the lower part of organizations, in the upper part, the managers expect for workers to bring them this ideas. Imagine the Japanese managers sent to India for this case in particular, expecting the Indians to come up to them and tell them anything, when in India, regular workers see the managers so far away, that they wouldn't even talk to them because of fear and respect to higher power. Managers would never learn what is going on in the company and workers will feel harassed by theire bosses.

A situation like this one, will be very hard for an organization, that's why organizations have to study cultures, and understand them, in order to acknowledge that there are situations that can exist, that can be prevent for the sake of the company. That's the importance of Organizational Behaviour.

Bibliographical References:

[1] Reference for Business. (2010). Encyclopedia of business. Retrieved from: http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Ob-Or/Organizational-Behavior.html

[2] Statistics taken from http://www.geert-hofstede.com)

- Images taken from www.gettyimages.com