CMT120 Lecture 2

1
CMT120 - Lecture 2

• Organisations and Organisational Psychology

2
Disclaimer

• There are sorts of Psychologist
• Cognitive
• Clinical
• Developmental
• Social
• Industrial,Occupational, Organisational

3
Warning

• People to sort out heads
• (Clinical) Psychologist
• Psychiatrist
• Psychoanalysis
• Psychotherapist
• Therapist
• Counsellor

4
Contents

• Roles Defining
• Roles Assessing
• Understanding yourself
• Group work Basic ideas
• Organisational structures
• Communication skills

5
Roles Defining

• Give a job a (bad) name
• Naming a job is not sufficient to define it
• Definition is required
• Allows the job to be matched to the person,
  evaluated for critical properties, costed(!)
• General and specific
• Organisational and project-based
• Person independent
• A job definition is not a person definition

6
Roles Defining

• A job can be described as a set of tasks
• These tasks can be broken down into a hierarchy
  of sub-tasks which must be carried out to fulfill
  them
• Task Analysis - trees of procedural knowledge
• Break down to skills or abilities you expect
  in the employee

7
Roles Defining
Video asset collection
Editing
Story boarding
Filming
Direct crew
Organise shoots
Sort logistics
Arrange locations
Co-ordinate personnel
Liaise with police
8
Roles Defining

• Now define the people
• e.g. KSAO (Knowledge, Skill, Aptitude, Other)
• Cant do a complete job
• This is very like user analysis, you know!
• Match the person to the roles
• Note in practice this is rarely 1 to 1. People
  may take parts of different roles

9
Roles Defining
Person 3
Person 2
Person 1
10
Roles Assessing

• Why Assess?
• For the organisation
• Is the job getting done? Is it being done as
  efficiently as it should? Are there gaps in the
  organisation? Could other staff do it better?
• For the individual
• Am I happy? Where is my life going? Can I get
  additional training? More money!
• For the line manager
• Is this work looking on time and within budget?
  Where will the next crisis happen?

11
Roles Assessing

• How to assess?
• Standardised tests
• Do it yourself
• Interviews
• Questionnaires
• Structured interviews
• I like simple scaled questionnaires
• not at all 0 ____________________5 Very much

12
Roles Assessing

• Who assesses?
• The person doing the job
• The peer group
• The immediate manager
• The big boss (or delegate)
• Someone external
• Several of these
• Subjective and Objective both valid

13
Roles Assessing

• Job satisfaction
• motivation, commitment, loyalty
• Real world criteria
• money, promotion, benefits, security, enjoyment,
  colleagues
• This project
• self-development, passing(!), colleagues,
  enjoyment
• These are attitudinal, ie. Conative properties

14
Understanding yourself

• Before trying to work in a team
• you need to examine yourself. Understand what
  you are bringing as skills, strengths, weaknesses
  and emotional baggage
• The future work world is changing
• Can you adapt yourself to fit in with the
  requirements of that world?

15
Understanding yourself

• Future world skills
• Operate without relying on a hierarchy
• Compete in a way that enhances co-operation
• High ethical standard
• Humility
• Process focus
• Multi-skilled and flexible
• Gain satisfaction from results, not status

16
Understanding yourself

• Enterprise skills
• Self-management
• learning
• obtaining/using good quality information
• Decision making and planning
• Recognising, creating and evaluating
  opportunities
• Performing
• Changing
• Inter-personal skills

17
Understanding yourself

• Gulp!
• Examine those conative state
• Wants, needs, desires, beliefs
• How good are you at interaction?
• See later
• What you think is not what others think
• Bite the bullet and discover what other people
  really think of you
• Try attached questionnaires on yourself and
  others

18
Group work Basic ideas

• Inter-relationships
• Who do you relate to?
• Bosses, peers, employees, contractors, clients
• How do you relate?
• Questionnaires and profiles
• Your perception is not necessarily correct
• The group ethos
• A group has a personality of its own

19
Group work Basic ideas

• Roles
• Formal role
• May be a written job specification or contract
• May span several disparate types of task
• Informal role
• Evolve from team needs
• Likely to be transient
• Role structure / Task Structure / people
  structure

20
Group work Basic ideas

• Roles
• Role ambiguity
• Not exactly clear what Im doing
• My interpretation is not your interpretation
• Role conflict
• My head will explode!
• I cannot wear two hats at once
• May be with an extra-work role

21
Group work Basic ideas

• Common goals and objectives
• The more a team shares the common objectives, the
  better they will progress
• Objectives should be shared, explained and
  jointly owned (appropriated)
• Individuals may have personal objectives which
  contribute to the team objectives

22
Group work Basic ideas

• Degradation of performance
• Ten people do not work ten times as well as one
  person because...
• Role interference
• We may duplicate, overlap, or interfere with each
  others objectives
• Maintenance activities
• General awareness, information, social
  structuring, establishing relationships
• Laziness (and SEP)
• A group has an optimum size

23
Group work Basic ideas

• Issues of control
• Democracy
• Enables everyone to participate. Slows things
  down
• Dictatorship
• Faster, but hard to maintain loyalty and
  commitment
• Machiavellian
• An impression of democracy
• Organisational citizenship

24
Group work Basic ideas

• Being a leader
• Not a special role
• Ultimately responsible
• Your neck, sunshine!
• Co-ordinator
• Logos, ethos and pathos
• Decision finaliser
• Listen and synthesise
• Arbiter

25
Group work Basic ideas

• Team building
• Activities to improve your group skills
• e.g. Problem-solving, Communication, Trust
• Not just an excuse for a weekend climbing rocks
  in the cold, wet, snow and saying you love your
  Filofax

26
Group work Basic ideas

• Team evolution
• A team changes over time...
• Experience is gained
• Working relationships adapt
• Roles evolve
• People hate each other

27
Group work Basic ideas

• Team evolution 4 phases
• Forming
• Storming
• Norming
• Performing

28
Group work Basic ideas

• Team evolution Three factors
• Individual needs
• Group needs
• Task needs

29
Organisational structures

• Traditional hierarchies are gradually flattening
  - due primarily to IT
• enabled large scale enterprise to grow in the
  19th century
• Bureaucracies follow the procedures in the book
  like programming an entire company
• Are not all bad! Increase efficiency and provide
  essential audit trails

30
Organisational structures

• Collectives share responsibility for all things
  between members, but often with an appointed
  hierarchy imposed
• Virtual companies operate like collectives, but
  with flexibility of job substitution and
  significant part-time membership
• Independent work is a possible consequence of the
  increased use of IT

31
Communication skills

• Monologues and dialogues 267

32
Communication skills

• Transactional Analysis 272

33
Communication skills

• Persuasion and negotiation 311

34
Communication skills

• Cooperation and competition 437

35
Communication skills
Conflict and repair
High
Confrontation
Collaboration
Concern for own needs
Compromise
Accommodation
Low
Avoidance
High
Low
Concern for others needs
36
Communication skills

• Group communication 480

37
References
Industrial and Organisational Psychology P. E.
Spector, Wiley, 1996 Class 158.7SPE
Interpersonal Skills at Work M. Guirdham,
Prentice-Hall, 1995 Class 158.7GUI