Organizational Behavior: Individual Differences and Their Impact

This essay delves into the concept of individual differences in organizational behavior, highlighting factors such as age, gender, intellectual abilities, and personality. It examines the impact of these differences on recruitment, selection, and overall employee management within organizations. The essay also explores the relevance of individual differences in marketing, emphasizing the importance of avoiding bias and stereotypes in advertising. Furthermore, it discusses the social cognitive theory as a framework for understanding how individuals learn and adapt their behavior based on observation and interaction. Recommendations are provided for marketers to ensure fair and inclusive practices, considering cultural sensitivities and avoiding the creation of demonstration effects. The study concludes that marketing strategies are significantly influenced by individual differences, and any marketing approach that disregards these differences can be detrimental to the organization's success. Desklib provides a platform for students to access this and similar resources for academic support.

Running Head: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR 0
Organizational Behavior
Individual Difference
6/11/2018

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR 1
Individual difference in organisation
The difference between people is created by the theory of individual difference. Everyone is
different from each other in many ways such as likes, dislikes, physical aspects, values,
interests and, psychological makeup and so on. In short it could be said that people are
different in personality. There are few factors which can be used to identify the individual
difference i.e. age, gender, intellectual abilities and physical abilities. Under ideal situation,
mangers first work would be to determine the skills required and assemble a team to
complement each other’s skills. It helps in creating a conflict free and enriching team.
Understanding the basic human cognition it is important to understand individual
personalities and behaviour. Every job within the organisation is different and every
organisation is different. There are two factors which help in analysing the aspects of
individual difference i.e. are values and personality. The personality factor tells about the
understanding the values, identifying the traits relevant to organisational behaviour,
connection between individual behaviour and values and, explanation of pitfalls for testing
the personality (Santhi and Menaka, 2017).
Impact of individual difference in organisation
Individual difference is becoming more and more tremendous day by day. The main concern
of individual difference in organisational behaviour is doing recruitment and selection
process. More time is spent by researchers on the discovery of individual performance and its
impact on the organisation. The main focus of the managers remain on the thing that how to
expand individual interest in the organisation. Management of people has become the biggest
issue for the mangers in the organisation. According to Mullins (2007), individual difference
is a basis of differentiating people from each other. It is the duty of the managers to know the
interaction and relation of the employees with the organisation and then ask the employees to
generate good performance. In the marketing business, any advertisement or any criteria used
for the promotion of the product should not be gender, caste or religion biased (Jackson,
Varnner, Denecke and, McNamara, 2013).
Relevancy of individual difference
Individual differences put a direct impact on the behaviour of individuals. Different attitudes
of people have a different response on the things. People with different personalities interact

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR 2
differently with the subordinates, co-workers, bosses and, customers. In the marketing field it
is very important for the employees to handle the customer and their attitude with utmost care
keeping the self-attitude beside. In this situation, some will be productive, if they are
provided a good training.
Social cognitive theory of individual difference of organisational behaviour
Social cognitive theory is a part of organisational behaviour which helps in depicting the
individual difference among the employees. Behaviour is a way one acts towards self and the
people around. In social cognitive behaviour, it watches others behaviours and then replicate
self-behaviour accordingly. The behaviour of individual is guided by the information
available by observing the performance of the models and consequences of their behaviour. It
helps them in learning the different behaviour or prompts the viewer to engage in behaviour
already learned by them. The basic human capabilities identified by Bandura as a part of
social cognitive theory are:
Symbolizing: Visual experiences are expressed into cognitive process by the people around.
This help in future action.
Observational: the performance of referent groups helps the employees to learn and then
identify their actions accordingly.
Forethought: actions of employees are planned by them.
Self-regulatory: setting internal standards helps the employees to self-regulate their actions.
Self-reflective: actions of employees are reflected back and perpetually determine how they
believe then can successfully complete the task.
Taking age as a factor of individual difference, its relation with social cognitive theory is
explained below. An investigation was made on two infant girls. The two key issues of
individual difference were taken into account. The first was communication and interactional
uses and second was social cognitive comprehension skill points and imitation. Mothers and
infants spontaneous pointing the finger on the same correlated with each other (Tomasello,
2011). When it is related with the culture of the people, it has been said that social cognitive
theory replicates the behaviour of another person. Therefore, it can be said that while
advertising the product in the market the different culture and their sentiments should be

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taken care of. People in the market are also affected by demonstration effect i.e. what others
have should be owned by them as well. Therefore, the marketers should take care of the
launch of the products that it could be owned by each class of people. Each person is different
with its values. The ethics, morals of each individual in the organisation are different from
each other. It is the responsibility of the manager in the organisation to manage the
individuals and their requirements accordingly.
Recommendations and conclusion
 The markers should use the tools and techniques which depict a fair marketing
technique for the promotion of the product.
 The marketers should not promote the product which is not acceptable by the
customers.
 Few products create demonstration effect in the market which should be avoided by
the marketers.
 Any product launched or introduced should not be any culture, caste or religion
centred.
 The marketers should not make any stereotype thinking regarding the customers of
any kind and launch the product for them only.
 The marketers should launch the product which could be purchased by all the class of
people.
 The marketing managers should also think about the values of the customers and
introduced the product accordingly.
From the above study it can be easily elucidated that, marketing and individual
difference has a direct relationship with each other. All the marketing strategies of the
organisation are affected by the individual differences. If any marketing tool or
technique used by the organisation for launching the product ad it affects any of the
key issue of individual difference like culture, gender, caste or religion; which can
directly hurt the sentiments of the people all the strategies adopted by the marketers
will go in vain.

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References
Jackson, T.N., Varner, L.K., Denceke, B.C., and McNamara, S.D. (2013) The impact of
individual differences on learning with an educational game and a traditional ITS.
International journal of learning technology. 8(4).
Kharate, T. (2013) organisational behaviour [online]. Available from:
https://www.slideshare.net/tusharkharate1990/individual-differences-organizational-
behaviour. [Accessed 09/06/18].
Lin, C.P. (2010) Learning Virtual Community Loyalty Behavior From a Perspective of Social
Cognitive Theory. International journal of human-computer interaction, 26(4) pp. 345-360.
Mohanta, G.C. (2015) individual differences [online]. Available from:
https://www.slideshare.net/GaurangaMohanta1/individual-differences-43686136. [Accessed
09/06/18].
Santhi and Menaka (2017) PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR international journal of current research. 9(6) pp.
52825-52828.
Tomasello, M. (2011) Individual differences in social, cognitive, and morphological aspects
of infant pointing. Elsevier. 26 pp. 16-29.