Attribution theory
1.0 Introduction
The attribution theory will be explained and applied to my workplace. The company I worked for is a mechanical contractor. The attribution theory is used to express the cause of employees’ action, and applies to discuss the actions the manager should take to improve the individual performance. The errors with attribution theory are also discussed and possible solutions are listed.
2.0 Theory
Attribution theory is based on the assumption that human beings as rational beings attempt to explain the causes of behaviour in themselves and others. They tend to employ two types of explanations or attributions, internal attribution, which infer that behaviour caused by internal factors, such as effort, personality, ability and experience, and external attributions which infer that behaviour is caused be external factors, such as task difficulty, and organizational influences. (Knouse, 1995, p97)
The attribution theory can be used to analyse the cause of employees’ behaviour by the manager. In my workplace, the manager sees the poor performance of employees as a lack of motivation, and then the manager would monitor the employee more closely and manipulating individual incentives or administering punishments. This indicates that the manager focus on an internal attribution. If the manager consider the external attribution, he/she could find that the employee’s poor performance may be caused by inappropriate work load, unrealistic deadlines, insufficient information or inadequate resources. The manager should consider the external attribution to improve the individual performance. Hence the manager should change the work situation such as to provide better equipment, reduce the workload, create realistic deadlines, provide sufficient information and adequate resources. In doing so, the employees could have ability to perform well. There are ways for managers to focus on external causes. Firstly, the greater exchange of job-related...