Individual behaviour

Individual behaviour refers to the way in which an individual reacts or behaves at his place of work. It can be defined as a combination of reactions to internal and external stimuli. Individual behaviour defines how a person will respond under distinct conditions and will express different emotions such as happiness, rudeness, love, anger etc. It refers to some concrete action by an individual. Study of individual behaviour reveals the behaviour of human at the working environment. Behaviour of an individual have a great influence on the performance of organization. Positive behaviour will lead to enhance the productivity. Whereas on another hand, negative behaviour will cause damages and bring heavy losses for company.

Individual behavior means some concrete actions by a person. For instance, how a teacher behaves in the class reflects his behavior. Organizational behavior has a great challenge as well as responsibility to deal with the difference in individual behavior in the context of organizations.

Psychology, a discipline contributing to organizational behavior, helps to examine how people are similar, and how they differ in their thinking, feeling, and behaviors. The behavior of an individual is influenced by various factors. Some of the factors lie within himself e.g. his instincts, personality traits, internal feelings etc. while some lie outside him comprising the external environment of which he is a part, e.g. weather conditions, events conveying some information, and other people’s behavior that directly influences his behavior.

Personal Factors

Personal factors are of 2 types: Biographic and Learned Characteristics

Biographic Characteristics: Biographic characteristics are genetic nature and are inherited by individual by their parents or forefathers. These are gifted features that an individual possesses by birth.

Psychical Characteristics: Personal characteristics relates to skin, complexion, vision, height, weight, size of nose etc. which influence the performance of individual. A person with good physical characteristics have an attractive personality, they dress well and behave gently in an organization.

Age: Age is an individual inherited characteristic that is determined by date of birth. Young people are expected to be more efficient, energetic, risk-taking, innovative and ambitious.

Gender: Gender is an inherited characteristic as being a men or women is genetic in nature. Woman are expected to be more emotional than men and generates high turnover rates. It is due to more likeness of woman quitting their job citing personal reasons.

Religion: Religious values of individual influence distinct aspects of his/her behaviour in organization. Highly religious person is stricter towards following moral values, ethics and code of conduct while performing their roles.

Marital Status: Researcher indicated that with marital status, responsibilities of individual get inclined and for them having steady proper job becomes more important. Such employees have less absences, low turnovers and more job satisfaction.

Organizational Factors

Individual behavior is influenced by a wide variety of organizational system and resources. Systems such as the organizational structure and hierarchy strongly influence and constrain both what individuals do and how they do. Some of the main organizational factors are organizational culture and climate, tenure, reward system, leadership style etc.

i) Organizational Culture and Climate

Organizational culture and climate also affect an individual’s behavior at work. The various dimensions of organizational culture are values, ethics, beliefs, climate and culture. Organizational climate can be divided into following four categories.

ii) Tenure

Tenure refers to the length of time an employee spends with an organization. It has a direct impact on productivity, job performance, turnover and absenteeism. There is a positive relationship between seniority and job productivity and a negative relationship with seniority and absenteeism. Tenure is another important factor that has an impact on an organization’s turnover. The longer a person continues in a job, the less likely he/she is to quit. It is also true that there is positive relationship between tenure and satisfaction. People who work longer with an organization are not only satisfied with their work, but are also loyal to the organization.

iii) Reward System

Reward system is another influencing factor to the individual behavior. There is positive relationship between rewards, and individual’s work performance. It means when people perform well, they are positively reward through awards, encouragement and appreciation. The aim of rewards should be to develop among employees pride in belonging to the organization and a feeling that people are valued.

iv) Leadership Style

Leadership style is another factor that helps in determining individual’s behavior at work. Leadership styles can be divided as autocratic, democratic, participative and consultative.

• Autocratic Leaders: Autocratic leaders take decision on their own, without consulting other and use threats and other coercive ways to make people comply with their decisions. Autocratic leaders can only be effective when there is no need for any contribution from the others in the decision making and where the motivation of people to implement the decision will not be affected by the fact that they were not involved in the decision making.
• Democratic Leaders: Democratic leaders involve their people in decision making. Democratic decision making may be difficult when the options differ widely and it is difficult to arrive at an equitable final decision. With this kind of leadership style, labour turnover and absenteeism rate is low and productivity is high.
• Participative Leaders: Participative leaders involve people at all levels in the decision-making process. Participative leaders attend to people’s problems and use rewards to encourage appropriate performance. Individual performance is high with this kind of leadership style, and people have a spirit of collaboration.
• Consultative Leaders: In consultative leadership style, the focus of control for day-to-day decision making and problem-solving shifts from the leader to the group members. Individuals display a fair amount of responsibility and ownership of the decisions made. Since a lot of responsibility is with the subordinates, turnover and absenteeism rate is low.

Environmental Factors

The external environment has an effective role in influencing the individual behaviour.

Wages Rate: Monetary compensation is a major factor that every employee considers before joining any organization. Therefore, a decision whether to stay in a particular company or shift anywhere else is taken on the basis of wages he/she is getting.

Employment level: Employment opportunities available within the country act as a major determinant of individual behaviour. In case of less employment opportunities, he/she will remain stick to same job level irrespective of how much satisfaction is attained. However, if there are more employment opportunities available then employees will shift to other jobs.

Political Factors: Political factors indirectly influences the behaviour of an individual. In a politically stable environment, there will be large opportunities of steady job positions. It will provide better freedom to individual which will influence their career choice, performance and job design.

General Economic Environment: Economic cycle in a country greatly influences the behaviour of individual in an organization. They are subject to retrenchment and layoffs. Job security and a stable income are the most relevant factors of motivation for these types of employees. Whereas, employees of public sector undertakings are not affected by economic position within the country as they receive their fixed salaries irrespective of economic conditions.