Topic: leadership
Preferred language style: English (U.S.)
How might your understanding of attribution theory and attribution processes influence how you make sense of leadership. Specifically, in ‘accounting’ for someone else’s leadership style and effectiveness, how might you now see things differently in your role as observer—choose a specific ‘leader’ to evaluate and then assignment questions to discuss how your understanding of attribution theory may give rise to some new insights about cause and effect. This is particularly relevant in the contemporary climate as people work to ‘manage impressions’ of presidential leadership on health care, the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan such that observers are more likely to attribute leadership success and accomplishments to the individual/person (President) rather than for example being in the right place at the right time (favorable situation).
Additional info provided by professor:
In this module, we will highlight the significance of the process of perception for understanding problems of performance in organizations. We will revisit our earlier assignment questions to discussion of behavior as a function of (person x situation) and consider the importance of inferring causality by way of attribution processes. As our text describes, perception is the process by which people select, organize, interpret, and respond to information from the world around them (H&S p. 104 -106 -13th edition p. 70-11th edition). In this way, each of the four frames from Bolman and Deal can be seen as an organized’ process by which to attend to information around us. Said differently, we are encouraged to perceive’ differently from each of the four frames. Of particular interest to us in this course is the concept of person perception—how we perceive others in general, and how we perceive organizational members in particular. One way to think of this dynamic is to consider the relationship between two people, one an observer, the other the actor. From this perspective, impression management’ tactics are simply those strategies that the actor’ engages in to influence the perceptions formed by the observer’. For example, an employee (actor) may consciously attempt to influence the perception held by their supervisor of their conscientiousness by sending an email message at 6:00 pm on a Friday night (Table 4.3 contains other examples). And, as our text describes, there are many factors that will influence whether the supervisor (observer) actual imputes the same meaning (i.e. similarly perceived) as that hoped for by the employee (actor). We know for example that the accuracy of judgment’ may be distorted by a number of biases’ or perceptual errors. In many ways, we can think of these distortions as cognitive short cuts; we can’t accurately incorporate and consider all of the information cues before us, and as a result, we tend to find value in relying on stereotypes [attributing characteristics and traits to individuals on the basis of their group membership(s)], risk attending unevenly to information (e.g. primacy effect, halo effect, weighting effects), make premature judgments (e.g. first impression error), shift our metrics (e.g. contrast effect), or as the old adage suggests see in others what we see and like’ in ourselves (e.g. similar to me effect and other forms of projection) (see H&S pp. 114 -119 -13th ed pp. 78-81 11th ed for additional assignment questions to discussion). The attribution process is critical to the study of organizational behavior because it refers specifically to ways in which people come to understand the causes of their own and others’ behavior Causal attributions are necessary anytime we want to explain why’ someone (including ourselves) behaves the way they do (or did). The attribution process outlined on pages 119 -125 (13th ed) of the text emphasizes (a) those factors internal to the perceiver, (b) actual attributions based on information cues, and (c) consequences or outcomes for the perceiver and arguably the person being perceived. Factors that are internal to the perceiver. For example, consider the interaction that occurs in a traditional selection interview between interviewer (observer) and interviewee (actor). In this example, we can see a number of factors operating as antecedents to the attribution (how much information on the candidate does the interviewer have (resume only or do they know of them’ from a referral source), what implicit personality theories does the interviewer hold toward interviewees recognizing that the selection interview is what we generally term a powerful situation where individual behavior’ of the candidate is overly prescribed by tight norms about how to behave’, and how important is an accurate’ assessment or what are the stakes involved in making a mistake . Attributions based on information cues: the person situation debate revisited. There are a number of information cues (consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus) that steer the perceiver to make either an internal or external attribution. As you might have guessed, when the observer’ makes an internal attribution, they are suggesting that the cause of the actor’s behavior is the result of internal factors of the person, and if they make an external attribution, they are suggesting alternatively that the cause of the actor’s behavior is the result of external factors in the situation. Consider how information cues of consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus would lead you to make either an internal (person) or external (situation) attribution in the following two examples. ( Note: You should work through these two examples and post your response under the assignment questions to discussion topic Module 5: Information Cues. Be sure to explain why you made an internal or external attribution using the three information cues.)
1. A supervisor has just observed that one of her employees has an output level 40 percent below that of other members of the work group. A further examination of the employee’s records shows that he has produced consistently at this low level and also that there has been no variation in output when the task assignments change.
2. A supervisor has just observed that one of his employees is performing at 40 percent below expected output levels. Group performance records reveal that other members of the work group have also been performing at about the same level. The employee’s lowered performance has occurred only recently except for one other instance in the past. In the previous instance, as well as at the present time, the employee was working on a task considered to be especially difficult. Before we leave the topic of attribution, we need to consider two other processes, the fundamental attribution error, and self -serving bias. The fundamental attribution error is a discounting model of accounting for human behavior, such that the observer has the tendency to overestimate the role of the person and underestimate the role of the situation in accounting for behavior. The observer over-attributes causality to the person and under-attributes causality to the situation. One way of understanding why’ we have this tendency as observers is to consider the relationship between figure and ground. As observers of an actor’s’ behavior, the action or behavior itself is seen as figure (active) while the situation or environment is seen as ground (stable). So for example, when trying to account for low performance, the actor’ may attribute their low performance to task difficulty (situation) while the observer (supervisor) may be more likely to attribute their low performance to lack of ability (person). To the extent to which we see the fundamental attribution error in operation, we must accept that we as observers and assessors’ of other’s behavior run the risk of overlooking important situational factors because of our tendency to over-attribute dispositional factors that may be impacting performance. Self -serving bias concerns the attributions the actor makes concerning causes for his/her own behavior. Essentially, and as might be expected, we tend to make internal attributions when accounting for successful outcomes/behavior, and external attributions when accounting for unsuccessful outcomes/behavior. Consequences and outcomes of the attribution process: So what are we left with at the end of the day particularly when trying to account’ for ineffective or unsuccessful behavior the observer (supervisor) is likely to succumb to the fundamental attribution error and over attribute the cause of the behavior to the person (actor) while under-attending to situation effects, while the actor or person performing the behavior and being observed will do the inverse, by over attributing causation to the environment and under-attending to their (dispositional) role. And herein lies one of the most significant disconnects of organizational.