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How behavior of individuals forms or takes shape? What motivates them for superior performance and greater job satisfaction? These are the questions of particulars interest to managers. Managers need to know individual behavior (actions) in the context of an organization. Four of the utmost important elements of individual behavior are: biographical characteristics, ability, personality, and learning.

BIOGRAPHICAL CHARACTERISTICS: Out of many physical or personal characteristics, some are especially significant and can be traced from employees’ curriculum vitae (CVs) and personal records.

1. AGE: Age of an employee has a significant impact and performance. It is envisaged that younger people are more energetic, skilful and talented than older people. The belief is true but this is not always true because in many cases, older people are highly skilled, regularly updating their skills, well-experienced, persistent, and even physically and mentally fit.

2. SEX/ GENDER: Do males perform better then females? The research reveals, no. Females do not perform less then males, if they are equally trained or having similar capabilities.

3. MARTIAL STATUS: The scientific studies undercover that married people are more responsible, persistent in nature and undergo less absence and turnover and are more satisfied from their jobs because marriages cause them to accept new responsibilities.

4. NUMBER OF DEPENDANTS: The greater the children or other dependants a person has, the lesser is the concentration on work. It has been observed in most cases, that many times, employees especially females with huge children or other persons, such as relatives as dependants make leaves to take care of the schooling and hospitalization needs of their dependants.

5. TENURE: Switching jobs or companies is not a big deal/ problem, rather it may be a result of serious need to leave a problematic company or to avail a better opportunity. But the persons that show greater stay (of years) on a job show their persistent nature and an indication of their satisfactory performance.

ABILITY
Ability is the capacity to perform a work or action. A lawyer has the ability to defend legal suits in the court. A swimmer has the ability to swim in the oceans. Two types of ability include:

1. PHYSICAL: It is the ability to perform various physical works. For instance, a body builder and a commando have the vigor/ power and stamina to lift heavy weight and do intense physical work.

2. INTELLECTUAL: It is ability to perform various mental tasks accurately. SAT is a test to evaluate intellectual ability of under graduate/ graduate students. Similar tests include ACT, GMAT for business graduates, LSAT for lawyers, MCAT for medicines, and so on. Other examples of intellectual ability include:

i. NUMBERS APTITUDE: Ability to do speedy and accurate arithmetic.

ii. VERBAL COMPREHENSION: Ability to understand what is read or heard.

iii. PERCEPTUAL SPEED: Ability to identify similarities and differences between things.

iv. INDUCTIVE REASONING: Ability to identify a logical sequence in a problem in order to solve it.

v. DEDUCTIVE REASONING: Ability to use logic (i.e. logical reasoning) and assess the implications or connections of an argument.

vi. SPATIAL VISUALIZATION: Ability to imagine/ visualize how an object would look if its position and place were changed. For example, an interior designer plans to redecorate her office.

PERSONALITY
Personality is a set of distinct characteristics of an individual. Some people tend to be emotional, others intellectual, bold or timid, hesitant or confident, reserved or social, etc. Personality is shaped from heredity and culture and environment, which lead to personality traits.

i. HEREDITY: Heredity refers to those factors that were determined at conception (expectancy time of a female), for instance, physical stature/ structure, facial attractiveness, skin color, hair color, muscles composition, energy level, height, built, sex/ gender, temperament, and so on. Heredity is a transformed from molecular structure of genes located in the chromosomes. Moreover, our parents or forefathers’ genes determine our biological, physiological, and psychological make-up.

ii. CULTURE & ENVIRONMENT: Culture is a set of values, norms, customs, traditions, rituals, and attitudes passed from one generation to the other. The norms of our family, friend circle, and social groups influence our behavior. Environment also impacts our personality; the person groomed in highly educated society tends to be well-educated, well-mannered, and gentle. Pathans are industrious, competitive, and result-oriented but aggressive in nature.

iii. PERSONALITY TRAITS: Personality traits or characteristics include shy, confident, aggressive, submissive, dominant, lazy, ambitious, disloyal, loyal, timid, bold, reserved, outgoing/ social, imaginative, practical, group-dependant, and self sufficient.

iv. MYER-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR (MBTI): One of the most widely used personality tests in USA is MBIT, which comprises of 100 questions to identify an individual’s personality from a group of 16 personality types. For more references, see books and internet.

v. THE BIG 5 MODEL: The research supports five major personality traits.

A. EXTRAVERSION: These people are extraverts/ sociable and talkative.

B. AGREEABLENESS: These people are cooperative and trusting.

C. CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: These people are responsible, persistent, and achievement-oriented.

D. EMOTIONAL STABILITY: These people are confident, enthusiastic, un-depressed, and not nervous.

E. OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE: These people are bold, practical and venturesome.

vi. LOCUS OF CONTROL: Some people believe they are masters of their own fate/ destiny, and other believes in luck or chance. Individuals who believe that they control what happens to them are called “internals” and the individuals who believe that what happens to them is controlled by outside forces, such as luck or chance are called “externals”.

vii. SELF-ESTEEM: It is the individual’s degree of liking or disliking of oneself. In OB, it is generalized that people with high self-esteem (high-SE) are choosy in selection of jobs and strive to be result-oriented. On the contrary, people with low self-esteem (low-SE) are dependant on others for guidance and control to get the job done.

viii. SELF-MONITORING: This is the ability to measure one’s own performance against some performance standards or benchmarks. Such people offer better results.
ix. RISK TAKING: It is the willingness to take risks or chances. Risk is the degree of failure or uncertainty. Risk taking managers are challenge-acceptors and fast decision-makers. Research proves that risk taking managers make rapid decisions with less information but surprising with greater accuracy of decisions.

x. PERSONALITY & NATIONAL CULTURE: In global corporations, recruiters evaluate the personalities of international managers and diversified workforce in terms of their suitability in national culture.

xi. MATCHING PERSONALITIES & JOBS: Recruiters try to fit the personalities of employees with their jobs, for instance, public relations officers and marketing personnel must be pleasant in behavior and gregarious/ social in nature.

LEARNING
Learning is defined as many permanent change in behavior as a result of observation and experience. The students who learn their courses and soon after exams, forget the courses is not learning. From OB point of view, learning is permanent and it changes behavior. For example, a typist can type fifty words a minute, after training, he can type eighty five words a minute, is learning. Some of the theories of learning are depicted below:

1. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING: A Russian physiologist, Ivon Pavlov made experiments on dogs. He presented meat to dogs, the dogs secreted saliva, then he merely rang the bell, the dogs did not salivate. After that he used to ring the bell before presenting meat to the dogs. The bell became stimuli to the dogs and they were salivated even when Pavlov only rang the bell but did not present the meat. So, finally the bell became conditional stimulus and the meat was an unconditioned stimulus, which caused the dogs to react in a specific way. Similarly, the sales reps and managers of Brookes Pharmaceutical are rewarded incentives on target achievement in their annual conference, so the sales-force prepares itself for the whole year to win the rewards of Rs4-5 lakhs. So, the reward becomes conditional stimulus and performance as unconditioned stimulus.

2. OPERANT CONDITIONING: It’s a type of conditioning in which desired behavior leads to a reward or prevents a punishment. For example, your boss tells you to work hard and make overtime before Eid and you will be rewarded. But when you do these things, you receive no incentives. There is no reinforcement of behavior, so next time when your boss instructs you the same things, you may decline. Reinforcement theory, also called operant conditioning is associated with the work of B.F skinner. The theory suggests that behavior is a function of its consequences. The behavior or performance that results in positive consequences, such as rewards is more likely to be repeated, while the behavior or performance that results in negative consequences, such as punishment is less likely to be repeated.

3. SOCIAL LEARNING: What we learn from our friends and family as a result of observations and experiments is called social learning theory.

4. METHOD’S OF SHAPING BEHAVIOR: There are four ways to shape behavior: through positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment and extinction. In positive reinforcement, managers reward desired behavior or performance. In negative reinforcement, managers show resentment or anger on undesired behavior or performance. For instance, employees wish to avoid the behaviors that managers dislike, coming late, being regularly absent, not wearing uniforms at work are few examples. Punishment for undesired behavior can result in verbal or written reprimands, pay cuts, loss of privileges, lay offs, and termination. Extinction is the withdrawal of reinforcement or the behavior that was rewarded earlier or reinforced in any way becomes extinguished. A true example that can be about those managers/ management that altogether discounts/ ignores the suggestions and recommendations passed by low-rank staff on various problems, which eventually leads to extinction or dying out of such practice (i.e. giving recommendations).

5. SCHEDULES OF REINFORCEMENT: The major types of reinforcements include continuous, fixed, variable interval, fixed ratio, and variable ratio reinforcement. Continuous reinforcement is rewarding behavior/ performance every time it occurs. Fixed interval is rewarding behavior/ performance at fixed intervals like, quarterly, biannually, and annually. Variables interval reinforcement is rewarding behavior/ performance some times but neither continually nor at a fixed schedule. Fixed ratio reinforcement is rewarding behavior/ performance on fulfilling fixed target, like producing 100 units of indigenous chocolates a day. Variable ratio reinforcement is rewarding behavior/ performance on fulfilling varying performance targets per period.

6. SELF-DISCIPLINE, MENTORING, AND TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT: Self-discipline is training about the moral behavior or ethical code of conduct like being regular and punctual, wearing uniform, respecting seniors, coworkers, and especially ladies. Mentoring or coaching (supervision/ overseeing) is also a kind of on-the-job training. Training imparts basic skills of a subject or job and development is the advancement in skills. In USA, companies spend more than $44 billion annually on employees training and development. Motorolla Company believes that when it spends $1 on training, in return, with in 3 years, it makes $30.