Organizational Behavior Date Here (Day, Month, Year)

This paper explains the core concepts of organizational behavior in the view of the case study of president of Great Northern American, Joe Salatino. The paper first explains the importance of perceptions and the attributions formed on the basis of those perceptions by the people. It also highlights the appropriate learning theory which could be deployed by Joe Salatino effectively in dealing with his employees. Moreover, it also explains how operant conditioning, learning theory and social learning theory could be instrumental in improving the performance levels of the employees. It also explains how self-efficacy could lend a hand to Joe Salatino in hiring new people within the organization.

Organizational Behavior (Joe Salatino Case Study)

The Process of Formation of Attributions from Perceptions and Its Significance for Joe's Employees

Perception tends to be a pivotal aspect of consideration in the domain of sales and marketing. In order to sell a product successfully within the market, a company needs to build up strong and trustworthy perceptions within the minds of the target customers. Perceptions are mainly responsible for making customers select, organize and interpret the information catered to them by the company. Attributions comprise of an understanding regarding the causes and reasons which lead to one's own behaviors or others behaviors too (Hellreigel & Slocum, 2011). This means that attributions are formed through perceptions. A customer having a negative perception regarding a particular product will definitely decline the sales of that product, due to the negative attributions so formed by the customer. Similarly, a favorable or positive perception of the customer could be instrumental in enhancing the sales of that product. Thus attributions and perceptions go hand in hand with each other and are significantly important in retaining loyal customers of a particular product. Not only this, perceptions and attributions so formed by the customers actually serve as core factors determining the sales of products of a company (Champoux, 2011). It is highly essential for a sales person to deeply understand his customers, their likings and dis-likings and their way of forming perceptions and attributions. Once they are acquainted with the customer's perceptions and attributions, they can come up with efficient and effective ways of overcoming the shortcomings and negative aspects pertaining to the product impression within the market. This implies that an appropriate understanding of perceptions and attributions is essential in the process of impression management too (Hellreigel & Slocum, 2011). This aids a company in maintaining a strong impression within the customers that the product served by the company in the market is in accordance with their needs and is worth buying as well.

Joe's employees can effectively use the understanding of formation of perceptions and attributions in building strong relationships with their customers which will be beneficial in enhancing the company sales and acquirement of customer trust. Joe's employees can utilize the knowledge of perception and attribution formation by controlling the perceptions made by their potential customers regarding them and the products offered by them. This understanding could serve as matter of either making or losing sales for the company. As Joe's employees are evaluated on the basis of amount of sales made by them, an effective understanding of attributions and perceptions can make Joe's employees successful by establishing meaningful relationships with the employees.

Application of Social Learning Theory in Mr. Joe's Company

In my opinion, the most suitable learning theory for Mr. Joe's company would be social learning theory as it revolves around acquiring knowledge through processing information mentally by observing, watching, looking and imitating others. Social learning theory often produces productive results as people tend to adopt behaviors of others by observing them. This learning process could either be a direct one or an indirect one as people get to adopt one's life behaviors after observing the outcomes yielded by those adopted behaviors in the life of others (Pawar, 2009). Effective learning is often considered as a social process where role models and real life examples are instrumental in teaching several behaviors to people in an effective way. Social learning revolves around five core features which include symbolizing, self-efficacy, self-control, fore-thought and vicarious learning (Griffin & Moorhead, 2009). All these characteristics are instrumental in making the employees realize which behaviors are considered appropriate and which ones are not. Not only this, social learning theory also caters the employees in understanding the behaviors and personality traits which are essentially required for succeeding within the company and eventually within the target market.

Social learning theory actually delivers the importance of adopting appropriate workplace social...

For example, an employee can start interacting well within the company, if he/she observes that the company rewarded another employee who gave creative ideas to the management. This is a natural social phenomenon as people imitate the behaviors of those whom they admire or respect or the ones who have already attained fruitful outcomes after the application of those social workplace behaviors. As social learning theory advocates the concept of learning from the behaviors of others, I believe that this would be the most appropriate strategy which could be adopted by Mr. Joe's company.
Role of Social Learning Theory in Improving Employee's Performance in Mr. Joe's Company

Social learning theory can be effectively used by Mr. Joe for advocating reward desired workplace behaviors and punishment of inappropriate behaviors observed within the organization. Mr. Joe can effectively use social learning theory principles in formulating the company's training strategies. Managers and instructors of the company could be encouraged for using live videos, presentations, demonstration exercises and anecdotal stories during the training sessions for delivering the concepts of appropriate and inappropriate workplace behaviors to the employees. Moreover, successful employees depicting outstanding behavioral performance could be invited for training in the company, which will encourage other employees as well to adopt suitable workplace behaviors.

Next, social learning theory can also be implemented by the managers of the company which will eventually present them as role models of good behavior within the company. The adoption of social learning theory practices by managers will actually make them abstain from doing favoritism in terms of rewarding the employees for their performance and social behaviors. Managers could actually practice rewarding the deserving employees in their staff meetings and punishing those employees who depict inappropriate social behavior. This will actually make managers as the role models of appropriate social behaviors within a workplace which will eventually foster an ethical and healthy environment within the entire company. Moreover, managers can also inspire other employees to depict high degree of professionalism in contrast to political maneuvering by making them firmly committed towards norms of equity and refuse from taking part in office politics.

The concept of social learning theory can also be applied by Mr. Joe in helping the newly hired employees in getting acquainted with the company's work environment. Mr. Joe can actually use social learning theory and pair each successful sales person with a new employee. The new employee will actually learn about company's social behavior practices and will also asses personality traits required for being a successful salesman of the company. This practice will actually serve as an effective mentoring exercise as the new employees will be able to grasp quickly the appropriate social workplace behaviors prevalent within the organization.

Ways for Leveraging the Value of Self-Efficacy in the Hiring Process

Self-efficacy describes the extent to which an individual believes in the ability of its own for performing a particular task. This means that self-efficacy measures an individual's estimate regarding his or her own capability of doing a particular task. Employees possessing high levels of self-efficacy are instrumental in paving the way for success of an organization (Griffin & Moorhead, 2009). Self-efficacy tends to be an important aspect of sales and marketing field. Mr. Joe can work in collaboration with the Human Resource department of his company for leveraging the value of self-efficacy which will eventually enhance the performance levels of the employees. This could be attained by formulating appropriate questions regarding self-efficacy during the interviews conducted in the hiring process. Mr. Joe along with the HR managers can adopt appropriate behavioral techniques during interviews for assessing the self-efficacy levels of the potential employees of the company. Such assessments during interviews require the formulation of appropriate questions. These questions usually revolve around assessing the response of the candidates to certain situations. One possibility for assessing self-efficacy level would be to determine the candidate's response to rejection situations. Interviews for evaluating self-efficacy may ask questions like if an employee is outsold, will that encourage a sense of healthy competition among them or will they simply congratulate the team members. The answers of the candidates to such questions actually indicate self-efficacy level of a candidate. If employees possess high self-esteem it eventually advocates high levels of self-efficacy, which are instrumental in making employees successful within the company. Moreover, Mr. Joe can organize training on propagating the importance and significance of self-efficacy.…