Analyzing Staff Conduct Through Social Cognitive Theory: A Case Study

This essay explores how social cognitive theory, encompassing self-observation, self-efficacy, and self-reaction, influences staff conduct within organizations, using The Guardian newspaper as a case study. It examines environmental factors such as technological changes and market shifts, behavioral factors including job redundancies and organizational restructuring, and personal factors like cognitive responses to management decisions. The analysis highlights how these interconnected elements, rooted in observational learning and social influences, shape employee attitudes and behaviors. The study underscores the importance of understanding these factors for managing staff effectively and adapting to organizational challenges, emphasizing how personal, environmental, and behavioral elements interact to impact individual conduct and overall workplace dynamics, which are core to the application of social cognitive theory.

USING SOCIAL COGNITIVE
THEORY OF BANDURA EXAMINE
FACTORS THAT IMPACT THE
INDIVIDUAL'S CONDUCT OF
STAFF.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Social cognitive theory of Bandura can be defined as a kind of social learning theory that
consist of four processes: self-evaluation, self-observation, self-efficacy and self-reaction. Code
of conduct can be defined as rules, principles, values of business. This code of conduct helps
employees of an organization to understand acceptable behaviour, standards and expectation that
they had to fulfil (Jenkins Hall and Raeside, 2018). There are various factors that affect overall
behaviour of the staff members within an organization. There are various kinds of theories that
can be used for explaining factors that impact employees conduct of staff. This essay will lay
emphasis on examining facing that can impact an individual’s conduct of staff using Social
Cognitive Theory.
MAIN BODY
Case study and Factors that impact conduct of staff
This case study is about a British newspaper called The Guardian. They are facing
difficulty in maintaining quality of newspaper because of changing market and changing
technologies because of which they are facing loss and as a result employee have started losing
their jobs. In order to overcome the loss, they had taken various changes and reduced a greater
number of jobs. They had closed their own printing plant and had also changed their print
newspapers style which was not liked by the people.
These factors were affecting overall conduct of the staff members of the newspaper.
There was a drastic change within behaviour of the employees of the newspaper (Stillman, Shen
and Ferguson, 2018). Most of them either focused on retaining their jobs and rest of them started
searching for new job. In order to sustain within the market and compete with the competitors,
the guardian newspaper had to focus on updating their code of conduct so that their staff
members can understand ways they are
Social Cognitive Theory
Social cognitive theory can be defined as influence of individual experience, other’s
action, and environmental factors on individual health behaviour. This theory provides a social
support by instilling expectations, self-efficiency, observational learning and various other kinds
of reinforcements to achieve behavioural change. This theory is majorly based upon
observational learning (Schultz, Khazian and Zaleski., 2008). With the help of this theory
undesirable behaviour of people can be understand and then their learning behaviour can be
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reproduced in order to maximize rewards. This theory can be applied to different social settings
and populations and can be used to understand or guide behavioural change among individuals.
As per this theory social and cognitive influence greatly impacts subject matter. A workplace is a
social system where an individual behaviour can be directly or indirectly influenced by the peers
(Font, Garay and Jones, 2016). Additionally, it also influences amount of skills or knowledge
that an individual possesses to accomplish target behaviour in order to accomplish or ensure
success.
Social cognitive theory can be used for understanding factors that impact the individual
conduct of staff. The Guardian are facing difficulty with change in technology and change in
market. They had focused on making numerous changes within their organization in order to
overcome the difficulties they are facing currently. According to social cognitive theory there are
three main factors that can influence behaviour of individuals are: personal, environmental,
behavioural factors. They are focusing on restricting their whole organization which is impacting
employees code of conduct as well. Influence of all the three factors on conduct of staff members
are as follows:
Environmental Factor:
According to a research t was observed that information alone is not enough to bring
changes within employees’ behaviour. In fact, there are various kinds of personal preferences
and environmental influences employees (Collins and et al., 2019). Adoption of digital first
strategy helped the organization to bring changes within the way in which they can deliver the
news to their customers. This did not affect reports of the organization but it did influence other
staff members and their behaviour at large scale. This did bring changes within overall behaviour
of the journalist of the organization as editor and journalist can easily measure popularity of
articles and videos. Judgement and opinion of the journalist was heavily being affected by
popular opinions and judgements (Middleton, Hall and Raeside, 2019). This influenced
behaviour of the journalist as well. This event can affect overall behaviour and attitude of the
journalist as well. As per social cognitive theory, cognitive components of observational learning
and environmental impact helps in shaping people. This measurement of online popularity of
articles and videos was worrying the journalist editors to prioritize the news events that are
required to be published first and which should not be.
Behavioural Factors:
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One of the main factors that had affected conduct of staff is loss that organization
suffered. More than 70 jobs were made redundant. However, redundancies were not forced as
some of the employees of staff members chose to leave, some chose to retire and some of them
choose to take a transfer to another position. But outcome of this redundancy affected employees
and their confidence level and were concern about their jobs in simple words this affected their
overall behaviour (Oyibo, Orji and Vassileva, 2018). As most of them were only concerned
about sustaining their job positions but still they got on with their jobs. In order to sustain within
the competitive environment, The Guardian took drastic measures and took some serious actions
such as more job cuts were done. This made staff members anxious but tried to got on with their
jobs. This was another drastic reason that affected behaviour of the staff members as they only
focused on sustaining within their job positions. To these measures and thought of outcomes of
redundancy influenced thinking and actions of the staff members. Expectation of some serious
measures took by ‘The guardian’ newspaper in order to recover the loss, sustain within the
market and compete with their current competitors brought various kinds of changes within
behaviour and attitude of the staff members. They became more conscious of retaining their jobs,
they become aware about new job opening within the market.
There are various kinds of theories that helps in influencing overall behaviour of the
employees. One of them is normative social influence. As per this theory normative message
among an organization helps in influencing overall behaviour of a specific group. Normative
conduct theory helps in influencing overall behaviour of the employees. ‘The guardian’
newspaper had to focus on various job cuts but their decision that they would not force any one
to resign from their job or would not terminate any one against their will brought changes within
their employees behaviour.
Personal or cognitive factors:
These were the main factors that affected or influenced overall behaviour of the
individuals were cognitive factors. When management staff of the organization represented their
three years plan with an assurance that there would be no forced redundancies within the
organization. Management changed newspaper printing style, they closed down their printing
plant and because of which 30 job cuts was done. However, because of this printing staff
members were offered retraining so that they can sustain within the organization and fulfil their
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responsibilities that were expected from them. This affected the behaviour of printing staff
members as they had to retain their job in which they had zero experience (Wang, Hungand
Huang, 2019). Attitude and personal thinking of staff members did get in influenced as some
printing staff members thinking and attitude towards this was supporting and were ready to retain
their jobs but thinking and attitude of some staff members towards this was not supporting and
were looking for other jobs.
Management also took a major action and made 350 jobs redundant from editorial,
commercial and support departments. However, they also made an announcement that there
would not be any forced redundancies in fact there would be voluntarily redundancies. This did
influence the behaviour and attitude of the staff members as they felt encouraged by the fact that
no forced redundancies were done but however, they sustained the fact of forced redundancy and
also demanded that this voluntarily redundancy should be done on negotiating table (Lowry,
Zhang and Wu, 2017). The change brought within the newspaper design was not liked by the
staff members they did not liked the change within the newspaper design which further affected
their attitude towards organizational change that were being brought within the organisation.
These are the three main factors that influenced behaviour and attitude of the staff
members and impacted individual conduct of staff. Social cognitive theory clearly explains that
personal, behavioural and environmental factors can influence behaviour and attitude of the
employees (Otaye-Ebede, Shaffakat and Foster, 2019). All the factors are directly or indirectly
related to each other which also impacts behaviour of the employees. These personal,
environmental and behavioural factors are also related to each other. These factors also impacted
the organization in many different ways. they were also required to focus on increasing
employees’ satisfaction of their staff members as well as it impacted individual code of conduct
of staff members.
CONCLUSION
From the above assignment it has been summarised that there are various kinds of factors
that affect or influence behaviour of an individual. It has been analysed that there are various
kinds of theories that can be used to understand or evaluate factors that influence change in
behaviour. Social cognitive theory one of the psychological theories that can used to understand
influence of individual experience, other’s action, and environmental factors on individual health
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behaviour. this theory has helped in understanding various factors that influences impact conduct
of staff members of an organization.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Beauchamp, M.R., Crawford, K.L. and Jackson, B., 2019. Social cognitive theory and physical
activity: Mechanisms of behavior change, critique, and legacy. Psychology of Sport and
Exercise. 42. pp.110-117.
Collins, E.I., and et al., 2019. Two observational studies examining the effect of a social norm
and a health message on the purchase of vegetables in student canteen
settings. Appetite, 132, pp.122-130.
Font, X., Garay, L. and Jones, S., 2016. A social cognitive theory of sustainability empathy.
Annals of Tourism Research. 58. pp.65-80.
Jenkins, L., Hall, H. and Raeside, R., 2018. Applications and applicability of social cognitive
theory in information science research. Manuscript of paper submitted to Journal
Librarianship and Information Science.
Lowry, P.B., Zhang, J. and Wu, T., 2017. Nature or nurture? A meta-analysis of the factors that
maximize the prediction of digital piracy by using social cognitive theory as a
framework. Computers in Human Behavior. 68. pp.104-120.
Middleton, L., Hall, H. and Raeside, R., 2019. Applications and applicability of Social Cognitive
Theory in information science research. Journal of Librarianship and Information
Science. 51(4). pp.927-937.
Otaye-Ebede, L., Shaffakat, S. and Foster, S., 2019. A Multilevel Model Examining the
Relationships Between Workplace Spirituality, Ethical Climate and Outcomes: A Social
Cognitive Theory Perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, pp.1-16.
Oyibo, K., Orji, R. and Vassileva, J., 2018. Developing Culturally Relevant Design Guidelines
for Encouraging Physical Activity: a Social Cognitive Theory Perspective. Journal of
Healthcare Informatics Research. 2(4). pp.319-352.
Schultz, W.P., Khazian, A.M. and Zaleski, A.C., 2008. Using normative social influence to
promote conservation among hotel guests. Social influence. 3(1). pp.4-23.
Stillman, P.E., Shen, X. and Ferguson, M.J., 2018. How mouse-tracking can advance social
cognitive theory. Trends in cognitive sciences. 22(6). pp.531-543.
Wang, S., Hung, K. and Huang, W.J., 2019. Motivations for entrepreneurship in the tourism and
hospitality sector: A social cognitive theory perspective. International Journal of
Hospitality Management. 78. pp.78-88.
Online
Corner, A., 2011. Social norm strategies do work – but there are risks involved. The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/social-norm-behaviour-change.
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