Individual Behavior in Organizations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Individual Behavior in Organizations - Essay Example In psychology, there are various approaches in understanding personality. These include trait approach, learning approach, biological and evolutionary approach and humanistic approach. Based on these approaches, leaders could be either born or made. From the trait approach, psychologists believe each person possesses certain trait to a given degree (Feldman 335). This means everyone has certain form of personality, but there is only variation of certain degree an individual possesses it. According to the learning approach, personality could be learned responses to the external environment (Feldman 338). In other words, personality could be learned. On the other hand, the biological and evolutionary approach is under the assumption that important components of personality are inherited, showing the importance of genetic factors in personality (Feldman 340). Under the humanistic approach, people are at the basic level good and continue to develop to higher level of functioning (Feldman 343). Each of these theories has strong remarkable point, but also some weak points that could be addressed by other theories. This explains the level of complexity found in understanding personality. Thus, in this manner, it has also been complex to understand whether leaders are born or made. Zaleznik believes organizations can develop leaders (81). For him, peer relationship exists and has important impacts on employee’s personality development. At Apple Inc., Steve Jobs created a culture of developing personality of its employees. There is a strong point of personality development as Jobs wanted to develop human resource that would be leading the innovation. As a result, Apple created a strong innovative culture. This clearly shows that personality could be influenced by the environment and those who already have strong degree of some certain personality tend to be developed or underdeveloped depending on the environmental influence. This could