How our managers go wrong.

Compiled by Eng K K Hewavithana

Engineer Motive Power (Diesel Hydraulic), Sri Lanka Railways.
Email: keerthieh@gmail.com

Today any modern organizations in this highly competitive business environment facing
several challenges namely challenges due to advancement/development of technology,
availability of sufficient financial back up, competition from other players, competition
from alternative products or services etc. But due to the open environment and liberal
political setup spread throughout, may be as globalization and development in
information technology it is very difficult to gain a competitive advantage through above
factors. It is clearly evident that in today’s environment competitive advantage emerges
from better utilization of human capital. It is to attract talented, dynamic self motivated
and knowledgeable people to the organization and more importantly retain them within
the organization. Effective handling of human capital can only be ensured by using
correctly formulated management decisions which are taken by middle and higher level
management. Correct attitude of the leadership towards decision making will act a vital
role in this process.
Management decision making process is highly influenced by the perception of the
manager. It is the process by which managers select, interpret, retrieve and respond to
information received from the environment or organization. It is clearly understood d that
human perception differs so much among individuals. Because perception across
individuals differ so much, the same incident, problem and challenges will naturally be
perceived differently among members within the organization. Due to this perception
variety people will act differently for the same event.
In a highly complex and widely spread organization like Railway it is impossible to
devote manager’s attention to all information available to them. So naturally they tend to
select, either consciously or unconsciously, the information they will process. This is
something like riding a bicycle by controlling only the actions needed to keep it balance.
Managers organize information as efficiently as they can, and they often need to use
schemas and scripts to do this.
What is the schema/script? Schema is a knowledge stricture that managers use to
organize and make sense of social and organizational information and stricture. For
example Stereotypes are schemas .Managers have schema about group of people,
specific profession, cultures ect. While schema offers managers a system for
categorizing and understanding behaviour of staff, they do not necessarily guide
managers into a specific action
Script guides one to understanding others behaviour and help guide one’s own
behaviour or sequence of behaviours and events. Managers can only behave in the
organization properly only if they know the right script.
Distortion in the managers perception process will definitely affect both selection and
organization processes. Most common perception distortions are
Stereotyping- This involves attributing behaviours or attitudes to a person based on that
person’s membership or association of particular group or category. (People often make
assumptions about behaviour based on person’s occupation or membership. For
example, managers may think a person as a trouble maker because he is a member of
a radical union.) Stereotyping tends to be inaccurate and therefore managers must be
aware of the danger in adapting them.
The Halo Effect- This exists when an individual allows one salient aspect of a person to
dominate the individual’s evaluation of that person.( For example an enthusiastic public
speaker who handles questions very well might be perceived to be intelligent,
knowledgeable and friendly . A poor public speaker might be perceived to be ill-
informed or incompetent.)If managers give prominence to one or two characteristics of a
person they risk making broad assumptions about one’s overall character, intelligence
and effectiveness in an organization.
Projection-This exists when an individual attributes his/her own attitudes or feelings to
another person. People often make the assumptions that others are like themselves.
For example, a manager who believes that others are respecting the importance of
confidentiality may find later that some information is leaked.
Self fulfilling prophecy- This exists when an individual expects another person to act or
behave in a certain way, and they tend to see these expectations realized. It must be
understood that others also may have methods or ideas which are equally good or even
better than the method expected by the manager.
Elimination of above distortions is a prime requirement for today’s manager.