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Business 107: Organizational Behavior26 chapters | 234 lessons
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Control: an easy word to understand yet a challenging word to actually deal with. We have people that think they control everything, others that think they are controlled by the world around them and pretty much everything in between. Control can be defined as the power to determine outcomes by directly influencing actions, people and events. When we look at it that way, we can begin to see that there is no way to control everything in our lives. I'm not saying we cannot control anything, but put in the context of that definition, we have to step back and really analyze what we can and cannot control.
The word 'control' becomes even more interesting when we have the word locus, before it. You see, locus is defined as a position, point or place, or more specifically, a location where something occurs. A person's locus of control may be internal or external.
People who base their success on their own work and believe they control their life have an internal locus of control. In contrast, people who attribute their success or failure to outside influences have an external locus of control.
For example, let's say you're a person with an internal locus of control and you get a promotion at work or achieve some other type of success. You will probably attribute that positive end result to the work you put in. In other words, your success was a direct result of your hard work.
If, on the other hand, you have an external locus of control, you might attribute that promotion or success to external or environmental factors, such as luck, fate, timing, other people or some type of divine intervention.
Let's use the same example and say that you were denied a promotion. If your locus of control is internal, you would find a way to blame yourself for the perceived failure. If your locus of control is external, it would be easy, even natural, to blame outside sources beyond your control.
Individuals who identify with an internal locus of control tend to take more responsibility for their actions, whether those actions or the end results are good or bad. They do not accept outside influence for the outcomes, no matter what that is. If, for example, this person did not get back to work in time from lunch, they would think they should have eaten in the office or not gone to lunch altogether. The results of the action are theirs and theirs alone to bear.
On the other hand, a person who identifies with an external locus of control looks at everything around them as part of the success or failure. In many ways, they believe in the team aspect more than those that focus on the internal locus of control, as they will always praise those around them for a job well done, even if they had nothing to do with it at all. They are team players.
There are drawbacks to both of these viewpoints, though. An internally-focused person will be hard on themselves and constantly analyze what they did wrong. That perspective almost forces these individuals to be hard charging, driven individuals that at times can assume a take-no-prisoners attitude. Conversely, those that have an external focus may come off as someone who just does not accept responsibility. While they are and can be team players, if the result is not a positive one, they will be the first to complain that something outside their personal control attributed to the shortfall.
It is not difficult to imagine how the internal and external locus of control can impact organizational behavior. True, that impact will start at an individual level (internal or external control), but an organization is a grouping of individuals that will possess one of these traits, thus it will make up the entire organization.
Take, for instance, the individuals that identify with an internal locus of control. They will be hard on themselves, and that is something a manager needs to manage. However, those same people will also be the hard-charging individuals we spoke about earlier. They could step over or around individuals to get the end result they need, and that can cause bad feelings and divides within an organization - something organizational behavior strives to identify and remedy at all turns.
Of course, we cannot leave out the external locus of control people and their impact on organizational behavior. Imagine a team working very hard to accomplish a task and not getting the end result they need. The external person will complain, point fingers in other directions and blame just about everything under the sun for the shortcoming. These are not traits that build team unity and positively impact organizational behavior.
It doesn't matter if the direction is internal or external, a manager will need to manage the traits of all types of individuals and the subsequent groups or teams that are made up within them. One of the many goals of organizational behavior is to have a functioning work environment that focuses on achievement, communication and embracing diversity. One can see how the achievement portion of organizational behavior can be impacted by the internal or external focus. These aspects can splinter an organization, and it is up to the manager and the leadership team to allow internal and external locus to be present to some degree, but not if it breaks down the fabric of the organization and thus the organization's behavior.
External and internal locus of control is present in all of us and indeed can exist at the same time within us. Many people can shift back and forth between them, but they will always have one dominate control type within them. Remember, our locus of control is our perception of where control lies and centers on how we account for the successes and failures we experience. People who base their success on their own work and believe they control their life have an internal locus of control, while people who attribute their success or failure to outside influences have an external locus of control.
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