Individual Behavior

Individual behavior includes Learning,Values,Attitudes,Job satisfaction,Personality,Emotions,Perception and Motivation.Organization structure has served as an independent variable in the investigation of human behavior in the areas of job satisfaction, job performance, motivation, and leadership. One set of studies has examined the extent to which individual behavior(for example in the areas of performance and job satisfaction) covaries with such properties of the organization as the number of hierarchical levels relative to organization size, span of control, size of subunits and size of the total organization(Meltzer and Salter, 1962). Individual behavior includes biographical characteristics which include personal characteristics such as age, gender, and marital status that are objective and easily obtained from personnel records. Ability refers to an individual’s capacity to perform the various tasks in a job while intellectual ability is the capacity to do mental activities. This includes Number aptitude, verbal comprehension, Perceptual speed, Inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, spatial visualization and memory. Physical Abilities include the capacity to do tasks demanding stamina, dexterity, strength, and similar characteristics. Another aspect of individual behavior is learning. Learning is any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience. Learning

• Involves change
• Is relatively permanent
• Is acquired through experience

Organizations sometimes try to shape individual behavior by systematically reinforcing each successive step that moves an individual closer to the desired response. There are several types of reinforcement such as Positive reinforcement (providing a reward for a desired behavior), Negative reinforcement (removing an unpleasant consequence when the desired behavior occurs), Punishment (applying an undesirable condition to eliminate an undesirable behavior), and extinction -withholding reinforcement of a behavior to cause its cessation. The schedules of reinforcement include Continuous Reinforcement in which a desired behavior is reinforced each time it is demonstrated, and Intermittent Reinforcement where a desired behavior is reinforced often enough to make the behavior worth repeating but not every time it is demonstrated.