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The effects of organizational culture
The effects of organizational culture
The effects of organizational culture
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The novel Olive Kitteride written by Elizabeth Strout contains thirteen short stories, one of which is “The Piano Player”. Angela O’Meara is the main character of this chapter, and she has been the piano player at a local cocktail lounge for over twenty years. When looking at her behavior, she displays traits that show that she has a reflective personality. A reflective personality is one of four basic communication styles, which are all influenced by sociability and dominance. Subsequently, a reflective communicator is somebody who has a low sociability and a low dominance. As written in Selling Today: Creating Customer Value, “Sociability reflects the amount of control we exert over our emotional expressiveness.” (Manning 78), while “Dominance can be defined as the tendency to …show more content…
control or prevail over others.” (Manning 77). Angela O’Meara is low in both sociability and dominance, and she occasionally falls into the excess zone of this communicator, which brings forth a “high degree of intensity” (Manning 89). Angela’s reflective personality causes her to become detached, which gives her trouble with Malcom. He is a man she has been having an affair with for twenty-two years, and the conflict they have finally led to a standoff between the two of them at the end of the chapter. Angela O’Meara has had a rough life, which is why she is a reflective communicator.
Angela shows her low sociability when she is on the job as she works straight through her shift without taking a break. When asked by her boss why she does not stop, Angela responds with, “I hate to get started again” (Strout 50). She does not take a break as she has stage fright. It takes plenty of courage to walk up on stage to begin with, and she cannot muster up the courage to do it twice in one night. Additionally, when Angela was younger she was offered a scholarship to a music school in Chicago. It would be fully paid for, but the catch was that her mother would not get to have her as her “mommy’s girl”. Therefore, her mother decided that she would not go to the school (Strout 55-56). From this, Angela has led her life letting people forge decisions for her, while also keeping to herself. As Selling Today says, “people with [low dominance] classification tend to be reserved and cautious.” (Manning 83), which is how Angela tends to act as a result of her mother babying her. Her reflective personality is why she appears to be so submissive and quiet not only at work, but also in her personal
life. Angela’s reflective behavior is due directly to her low sociability. As found in Selling Today, “Lower sociability is an indicator of a person’s desire to work in an environment where the person has more time alone instead of having to make conversation with others.” (Manning 78). This not only relates back to her desire to work through her shift, but also when she breaks up with Malcom over the phone instead of in person (Strout 54). She has been with him for two decades, but has not once called him at his house. Although he was having an affair with her and it would not be smart for her to call his house, perhaps she never called him due to the fact that she does not enjoy being confrontational. In this case, she has to call him to end their relationship because doing it in person would prove to be too daunting a task for somebody as reserved as Angela. Nevertheless, she most likely would not have called him if she had realized he would come to see her in person. After she finishes her shift, Angela walks home to find Malcom is waiting outside of her house. She is startled by Malcom, as he did not indicate that he would go to her house and start prodding her for answers on why she called him. He starts walking towards her and saying, “Calling my house. Who the fuck do you think you are?” (Strout 59). This is a threatening statement to make to someone with a reflective personality. Angela has inferior dominance and she will not fight him back because of this. For example, Selling Today says, “[Low dominance people] have a tendency to be quite cooperative and let others control things. They tend to be lower in assertiveness.” (Manning 77). This describes exactly what Angela is letting Malcom do and say to her. After he starts cursing at her, Angela cannot form sentences and she stammers phrases like, “Well...Let’s see,” since not fighting back is her way of dealing with this situation (Strout 59). Angela’s lack of authority throughout her life has culminated to the point of Malcom walking all over her when she wanted to stop the affair quickly and quietly. The climax of the story takes place when Malcom is yelling at Angela outside of her house. When Angela called him, the last thing she expected was to meet him waiting for her outside her home. This event shows readers the “excess zone” of Angela’s reflective personality (Manning 89). Selling Today describes the excess zone as “a high degree of intensity and rigidity” (Manning 89). This area of communication style is not inherently present all the time, in fact it tends to only show up under stressful conditions. The excess zone for a reflective communicator is seen when one “becomes stiff and formal” (Manning 89). When Malcom starts to swear at Angela and ask questions he knows he will not get the answer to, Angela gets caught off guard and this brings out the excess zone. She froze and could not think about what to say back to him. This confrontation truly shows Angela is not at all comfortable with the situation; she is not answering his questions and not fighting back. From the way that Angela communicates with Malcom in this event, readers become aware that Malcom took advantage of her reflective temperament throughout their relationship. In this brief scene, Malcom shows up to Angela’s house unannounced, acts as if he is the boss of her, and proceeds to yell and curse at her. He knows how Angela will respond to this considering he has been with her for twenty-two years. Malcom has a high dominance, so naturally his personality will prevail over Angela’s. Based off of this interaction, it appears that Angela is possibly afraid of Malcom, which is why she broke up with him over the phone and not in person. Due to Angela’s reflective personality, she will naturally “control emotional expression” (Manning 83), meaning she will not display her feelings openly. Angela did this in reaction to breaking up with Malcom over the phone, which prompted Malcom to come to her house, and shout at her on the sidewalk. Angela’s reflective personality has made her life difficult in several ways. She has had difficulties with work, with personal relationships, and with putting herself in front of others. Throughout her struggles, the reader is able to contemplate how a reflective personality with low dominance and sociability affects a person and their relationship with others. However, their relationship was not healthy. Angela and Malcom were together for so long since he represents everything she is not, and opposite personalities tend to stick together. With her inability to do anything for herself, she is left alone with no one to truly call her own.
Maria Teresa Mirabal, also known as Mate was born on October 15, 1935. She is the youngest out of all the Mirabal sisters and we mostly get to know her from her journal entries. Mate received her diary from Minerva on the day of her first communion. At school, people would make fun of her for having the diary and would steal it from her. Mate used to think differently about Trujillo as a little girl, she thought he was someone that everyone loved and should be respected. On Benefactor’s Day, she wanted to give Trujillo her best wishes, "I am taking these few minutes to wish El Jefe Happy Benefactor's Day with all my heart. I feel so lucky that we have him for a president." (37) Mate’s sister Minerva starts to get in trouble at school for leaving
Our lady of Guadalupe is the most venerated and respected by the Catholics. The appearance of the Virgin caused a great commotion in the Catholic Church. Ever since the Virgin's first appearance, Catholics have respected and acquired so much faith to the Virgin. The lady of Guadalupe has so many faithful followers that believe in her without any hesitation because of the miracles that she has made for the people that were once suffering and were miraculously helped by her. Because of the help that she has provided for those who were suffering people never forget her and they celebrate the day of her appearance every year by doing parties in her honor. The Lady of Guadalupe’s appearance certainly changed the belief of Catholics and, I believe
Though Nomi Nickel from A Complicated Kindness and Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye both possess negative attitudes towards school, only Nomi evaluates her attitudes and grows as a result. Nomi’s ...
For so long she has been around what she saw as the destination for her life, which was success and happiness, in the lifelong family friends the Lowells. She assumed they were just given this life without ever thinking they had to work as hard as she did to get there, consequently envy and resentment ensued. The resentment started with the whole family and then got more intense and personal when it came to the daughter of the Lowells, Parker, someone Andrea could identify with on a personal level. This story illustrated for us the unseen factors and repercussions that too much ambition to be accepted by anyone can have one's long lasting development into their own person. This journey to prove who you are to others can lead to intense emotions and motives that aren’t normal yours and can cause you to lose sight of the very person you’re trying to prove that you
The article starts of on Amy reflecting on how for years the way she approached work was to be a nice thoughtful person to everyone, even when it wasn't necessary. She states how she would always say please and thank you and express concern for other peoples problems, in their work life or in their personal life. She very clearly stated that she was not a boss, but had a mid level position in the company, and implied she never understood why she was stuck there and had not moved up in rank in the company.
In the article “Dealing with People”, Greg McGrew explains that different types of personality to solve the problems of people’s relationship in our society. He classifies people by four types that are dominants, expressives, analyticals, and amiables. Greg begins with dominants who are forceful, confident, sociable, outgoing, and confrontational tend to threat their mental. Secondly, he describes expressives who are also quite forceful and reluctant to reject a suggestion due to concern about relationship. Talking with them is good method of treating expressive people. Then, he points out that analytical people deliberate to get the right answer. Even though they are superior in making decision, they need time to think how to answer the question.
In Flannery O'Connor's short stories, "A Good Man is Hard to Find", "Revelation", and "Greenleaf", the main character in each share similar traits. Though the grandmother, Mrs. Turpin, and Mrs. May differ from each other in many aspects, there are three notable traits that each clearly possesses. Each of these individuals is highly conscious of their own social status, is socially prejudiced, and is extremely racist.
Henry’s personality type is reflective because he has a low dominance and sociability, seen when he is described as a good listener (Strout 4), people with reflective personalities let others do all the talking and leading. Olive is a directive communicator, someone with high dominance and low sociability. This is seen when Olive’s son Christopher calls her out for being a bad mother, she has the nerve to act offended and cannot believe that he would say such a thing, but she does not realize that he is right (Strout 231). Malcom’s personality is emotive, a high sociability and high dominance. Malcom exhibits it the most clearly when he goes to confront Angie for calling his house, he has the power and ability to come at her cursing and yelling with no remorse (Strout 59). Bob and Kerry are both supportive communicators, people with a high sociability and a low dominance. Bob shows his communication style when he easily plays off his wife’s confusion at him being in Miami, but is not dominant enough to come out right away and tell her the truth (Strout 132-136). Kerry displayed it for many years as she did not ever tell Marlene that she had an affair with her husband, yet she was able to remain friends with her even though she thought Marlene knew about the affair. All of these character’s get the same personality type when they have their affairs. They each get a low sociability and a
Psychologists have shown that there exist two major social behaviors that are widely associated with a person as they mature into young adulthood: extraversion or introversion. Carl Yung, a swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, coined the term “introversion” versus “extroversion”. His idea was further elaborated upon by Hens Eysenck, a British psychologist, who defined extroverts and introverts by their baseline arousal. As Jerome Kagan, Professor of psychology at Harvard says, ““Introverts” and “extroverts” are not definitive diagnoses like blood types”, a person displays more or less of one of these two traits; extroverts generally has a more advantage over introverts but each of these personality traits has its own strengths and building on these strengths is what one ought
Tallichet, S, and C. Hensley. (2008). The Social and Emotional Conte. International Journal of Offen, 53 (5), pp. 596-606.
Adopted into sociology by Erving Goffman, he developed most terms and the idea behind dramaturgical analysis in his 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. This book lays out the process of human social interaction, sometimes called "impression management". Goffman makes the distinction between "front stage" and "back stage" behavior. “Front stage" actions are visible to the audience and are part of the performance. We change our hair color, eye color, complextion. Wearing make-up, the way our hair is styled, the clothes we wear. The demeanor we present to the world to the. All of these things lead to an outward appearance of what we want others to think we are. People engage in "back stage" behaviors when no audience is present. We whine and moan about the customers we deal with. Hair goes un-styled, make is wiped off. Clothing is comfortable and unrestricting. When a person conducts themselves in certain way not consistent with social expectations, it is often done secretly if this ...
How we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. Throughout the interview I knew that the way I interacted within the group would determine whether or not I would be able to study as a student nurse. Subsequently, I wanted to appear socially desirable. Therefore, I believe there was a distortion of self-image because the interview was very important to me. Using Goffman 's theory of self (1959), the 'social mask ' I put on during the interview, could be seen as 'performance ', '...the term ‘performance’ refers to all activity of an individual in front of a particular set of observers, or audience... ' , I wasn 't my: bubbly, hyper self, I felt I had to keep this hidden as I was in a professional environment. Therefore, Johari 's window demonstrates mundane realism, because my self-image did change. My bubbly, hyper personality which is usually 'open/public ' was now 'Hidden/private '. However, Johari 's window see 's self-awareness constructed by the individual alone, which makes the theory over –simplified and not interactionist as it only considers 'nurture ' factors impacting on an individual’s self-awareness, when in reality it’s a combination of biological/genetic and social factors (nature nurture). Therefore the theory is reductionist as it over simplifies human behaviour. Although Johari 's window doesn 't give a holistic reflection for my own self-awareness and communication, the fact I can identify this as a result of using Gibb’s model means that I have a rounded analysis of my interviewing
The main character in the film Black Swan, twenty-eight year old female Nina Sayers, displays signs of numerous disorders through her abnormal behavior. Nina’s life is consumed by her occupation: professional ballerina/dancer. Nina resides with her mother and rarely socializes with others. She has difficulty concentrating, is restless, irritable, suffers from muscle tension, and sleep disturbances from nightmares. Nina also feels very uncomfortable in social and intimate situations. She appears to be unable to successfully interact with those around her. The interaction that Nina has with her fellow dancers appears to be strained and superficial. Nina exhibits behavior that indicates she views all other dancers as competition instead of potential comrades’ or friends. Being very introverted and unable to share any part of herself with those around her, even her mother, who appears to be the only person that has been remotely close to Nina, causes her to seek companionship with parts of herself instead of healthy relationships with others. Nina exhibits signs of generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and paranoid personality disorder through these abnormal behaviors.
Erving Goffman uses a dramaturgical perspective in his discussion of impression management. Goffman’s analysis of the social world primarily centres around studies of the self and relationship to one’s identity created within a society. Through dramaturgy, Goffman uses the metaphor of performance theatre to convey the nature of human social interaction, drawing from the renowned quote “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players” from Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It.’ Much of our exploration of Goffman’s theories lies within the premise that individuals engage in impression management, and achieve a successful or unsuccessful performance. Impression management refers to the ways in which individuals attempt to control the impression that others have of them stemming from a basic human desire to be viewed by others in a favourable light. Goffman argues that our impressions are managed through a dramaturgical process whereby social life is played out like actors performing on a stage and our actions are dictated by the roles that we are playing in particular situations. In a social situation, the stage is where the encounter takes place, the actors are the people involved in the interaction, and the script is the set of social norms in which the actors must abide by. Just as plays have a front stage and back stage, this also applies in day-to-day interactions. Goffman’s theory of the front and back stage builds on Mead’s argument of the phases of the self. The front stage consists of all the public and social encounters with other people. It is similar to the ‘me’ which Mead talks about, as it involves public encounters as well as how others perceive you. Meanwhile the back stage, like the ‘I’, is the time spent with oneself reflecting on the interactions. Therefore, according to Goffman’s dramaturgical
...t functions in our everyday life and relationships. Our culture is a good determinant of how we may act and show our feelings around people. The social conventions in our culture also serves as a guide as to what is supposed to be proper behavior when we are playing our social roles in the society we live in. There are times when people would choose to present artificial emotions because of the anxious situations that they are dealing with, hence refusing to disclose their feelings to others. A person’s personality also has huge influence on how they understand and convey expressions; just as our personality shapes our emotions, in turn our emotions also affect our personality. The people that we often socialize with can influence our feelings as we do the same with them. As has been noted, these are all the factors that influence the expression of our emotions.