Organizational Behaviour Individual Online Discussion Assignment

This assignment delves into various aspects of organizational behaviour, exploring leadership theories, innovation, and cultural influences. The student analyzes the "Trait Theory" and "Behavioral Theory" of leadership, comparing their validity and application in contemporary society, highlighting the importance of training and development. The assignment also examines sustainable services and disruption technologies that have impacted the student's life, such as household cleansers, SSL VPNs, and web-based videos, assessing their benefits and impacts. Furthermore, it explores the cultural relativity of interpersonal skills, conflict management, and training, emphasizing how cultural differences affect leadership styles, training methods, and negotiation approaches. The assignment uses examples to illustrate these concepts and draws on various academic sources to support its arguments.

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Organizational behaviour
Student Name
(Affiliation institution)

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Week 5
The film which I have seen latest and found it very interesting is” the secret life of pets 1”
which is categorized as animation. The film expresses the quiet life of a domestic terrier known
as Max that turns down after the owner brings home a sloppy mongrel Duke. In Manhattan
apartment, the two dogs get lost and put their quarrels aside and joined forces against a gang of
pets who were abandoned by their owners.
My friend Marvel who is a movie addict and always among the first people to watch new
movies disliked “the secret life of pets 1” film although I find it very enjoyable. The main
differences in perception in the animation film are beliefs, age, gender, background and interest.
Marvel beliefs that animation movies are scripted with intention of capturing interest of children
or teenagers. This perception is total different from my belief that all legalized films and which
have been approved by the film industry for general view are appropriate to everyone regardless
of the age. Furthermore, Marvel also believed that females are subjected to watch films like
opera soaps and animations while males are into movies like actions and horrors and that’s why I
was interested on the animation film “the secret life of pets 1”. The perfectionist is total biased
towards one gender with consideration of the latest study carried out by Sap, Prasettio,
Holtzman, Rashkin and Choi (2017 p.2329) that shows that females’ watches movies more
frequently as compared to men regardless of genre like action, horror, animations and even
Opera soaps. The background where my friend was raised does not often watch animation
movies which have disinterested her from watching animation. Furthermore, no one in their
entire family watches anything to do with animation or sports. However, in my background, I
was raised watching every type of movie including animation and sports. With my brothers and
sisters being great fans of animation, I also find myself gaining interest.

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Week 6
The top 100 companies and workplace in Europe does diverse things to motivate their
staff to contribute significantly. The companies offer attractive packages and benefits to their
employees as a way of encouraging them to be productive. Through the organizations offering
attractive benefits and packages to employees, job stress is significantly reduced; the degree of
employee retention remains high and employee morale is boosted which in turn motivates them
to be more productive (Khalid, Salim and Loke, 2011 p.1). The benefits and compensation
offered by these companies include rewarding employees with health benefits such as health
insurance, dental and optic insurance, allowances, attractive salaries and bonuses, paid vocations
and leave.
The top 100 companies and workplace also have tough discriminations and harassments
policies. The discrimination and harassment policies ensure that all employees in the
organizations are treated equally and with mutual respect regardless of race, gender, religion and
ethnicity (Deery, Walsh and Guest, 2011 p.721). The equality of employees in the organizations
promotes a conductive working environment where each employee is motivated to work
exceptionally .Furthermore, without discrimination and harassments, all employees feel valued
and proud of their organizations hence being motivated to be more productive and also to boost
the profile of the organizations.
The organizations also trains their employees more frequently, promotes the qualified
employees who are very skilled to the managerial roles. The frequent training and mentorship
ensures that employees have the right skills and capabilities that are required in the organizations
(Elnaga & Imran, 2013). When employees have the right skills and capabilities they become
more innovative and effective decision makers which in turn leads to productivity. Promoting

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qualified employees to managerial position instead of recruiting externally also boost morale of
employees to deliver for them to be recognized by strategic management.
Week 8
Trait theory of leadership emphasized on specific virtues that a leader must have in order
to lead other team members. The specific virtues that leaders must have in context to Trait theory
of leadership include inborn traits. The inborn traits usually manifest themselves in the “born
leader” meaning they are able to guide and control employees even if they cannot help.
According to Colbert, Judge, Choi and Wang (2012 p.670), trait theory stresses that there is a
particular set of personality markers that sets a leader apart from the followers.
A leader using trait theory of leadership usually scans and analyses the actions of
employees to see their leadership potential and later train and promote them to make most out of
their capabilities. On the other hand, Behavioral theory of leadership does not consider virtue or
inborn potential approaches of leadership. The theory believes that there are no inborn leaders as
they can be developed or trained. The theories are valid and have basis. In contemporary society,
leaders are trained and developed to lead team members. Through the training, leadership skills
and capabilities are likely to be gained which in turn makes a person a leader. Furthermore, other
people also inherit innate leadership qualities. Organization can select and develop effective
leaders through training of employees. For example, an organization can identify capabilities,
skills, experience and achievement of employees and train them on managerial roles (Yap and
Webber, 2015 p.43-46). Through the training and observation, an organization is able to identify
the commitment degree of employees.
Behavioral theory of leadership Trait theory of leadership
Democratic as leaders are developed through Leaders have particular inherent innate

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training qualities
Week 11
Sustainable services and products are type of innovation developed by diverse companies
in order for them to be able to compete with others. The sustainable innovation that have affected
me over the past years include household cleansers, Demetra and SSL, VPNs. Household
cleanser sustainable innovation pairs cleaning agent with new scent or makes it 10% stronger.
SSL VPNs which has been innovated to replace the traditional IPSec VPNs. The SSL VPNs
sustainable technology uses http as a way of transporting data instead of installing a software
client. Dimitra is another sustainable innovation that has impacted my life. The sustainable
innovation involves all-natural treatment for food preservation and is made up of 100 percent
extracts from plants and it improves shelf life of natural produce. The disruption technologies
that have impacted me include web-based videos like Netflix, 3D printers, collaborative
commerce and cryptocurrency. Generally, I warmly welcomed all the sustainable and disruption
technologies with open hands as they seemed to be beneficial to me and the entire world. For
example, the introduction of Netflix disruption technology seemed to be a way of cost-cutting on
entertainment as I am able to scribe monthly or annually and watch limited movies. The same
case also happened to Diamatra, the innovation that improved sanitation in my house and
ensured that I live in a very conductive environment. Collaborative e-commerce innovations
eased the way I shop. At least, now I can stay at home, does my homework or any other creative
activities as I wait for my shopping to be delivered at my door step. The disruption innovation
also seemed to be convenient, cost saving and saving time as one only need few resources like
Internet and the app or website of the company to make orders and facilitates sales.

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Week 12
Interpersonal skills, conflict management, training, predominant leadership style,
structure, group behaviour and motivation are all cultural relative. Diverse cultures influences on
a leadership styles to be implemented at a particular location or an organization. For example,
leaders use different leadership style to societies with high individualism cultures like USA as
compared to those with high collectivism cultures like China.
Training is also a cultural relative. For example, in a location where there are strong
communication cultures, productivity and communication, face-to-face training is usually
appropriate. Furthermore, conducting training in some cultures may take long for people to be
competent as compared to others. Conflict management is also a cultural relative. Making deals
across diverse cultures tends to have a bad outcome when compared to making negotiations
within the same culture. The reason for this variation is because a culture is also relative to
norms, communication style and behaviors. When negotiating deals across cultures, different
perspectives are created which in turn results to potential misunderstanding that leads to lower
likelihood of solutions, value-creating, exploring and discovering integrative. Therefore, to
manage conflict, one must be able to understand beliefs, customs and cultures of another party.
Group behavior and interpersonal skills are also culture relative. For example, a group
may confront another due to people relying on stereotypes and other cultural differences.
Furthermore, stereotypes are often pejorative and if not well monitored they distort expectation
of other people behaviours. Therefore, instead of groups relying on behaviour, they should focus
on prototypes.

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References
Colbert, A.E., Judge, T.A., Choi, D. and Wang, G., 2012. Assessing the trait theory of leadership
using self and observer ratings of personality: The mediating role of contributions to group
success. The Leadership Quarterly, 23(4), pp.670-685.
Deery, S., Walsh, J. and Guest, D., 2011. Workplace aggression: the effects of harassment on job
burnout and turnover intentions. Work, employment and society, 25(4), pp.742-759.
Elnaga, A., & Imran, A. (2013). The effect of training on employee performance. European
Journal of Business and Management, 5(4), 137-147.
Khalid, K., Salim, H.M. and Loke, S.P., 2011. The impact of rewards and motivation on job
satisfaction in water utility industry. In International Conference on Financial Management and
Economics, IACSIT Press. Singapore2011.
Yap, Q.S. and Webber, J.K., 2015. Developing corporate culture in a training department: A
qualitative case study of internal and outsourced staff. Review of Business & Finance
Studies, 6(1), pp.43-56.