Job Performance Equation

I’m in the middle of my 3rd term MBA course, studying this subject called “Organisational Behaviour”. Very interesting subject, but strip down to the basic, bottom line of OB is getting people to do what you want them to do.

Came across this equation which formulated the core of OB:

Job Performance = Individual Attributes X Work Efforts X Organisation Support

Individual Attributes refers to your capacity or ability to perform (character, integrity, etc)

Work Efforts refers to your willingness to perform, how committed are you in the job, how much efforts you put in.

Organisation Support refers to the support from Organisation to help you achieve your job, the environment and structure that allows you to perform.

And the reason why they multiply each other is because if any factor is a zero, Job Performance will be zero, they are trying to emphasis the importance of each factor.

The lecturer asked us, “Do you guys agree on that? Think about it.” She is always challenging us to do critical thinking on everything that we studied.

And so I think..

For decades, people have been using this equation and it is obviously not working, we still have alot of HR issues, staffing issues, performance issues, etc.

Perhaps it should be the following ?

Job Performance = (Individual Attributes + Work Efforts) X Organisation Support

Reasons as follows :
1) If there is no good attributes, but there is enough Work Efforts and good Organisation Support, you will still be able to perform in your job.

2) If there is no work effort, but you have good attributes and good organisation support, you will still survive on your job.

3) However, if there is no organisation support, even if you have good attributes and you work hard, sooner or later, your performance will be zero.

And the reason why I put a multiplication on Organisation Support is because in today’s context, the support from your organisation or your management is so very important.

Everybody is striving hard on their own achievements, but why some of them are still being laid off, some of them have not maximize their full potential, some of them are not given the opportunity to shine? It is because everybody is working on different organisation and each of it has different support to their staffs. That’s why support from organisation is so important.

Perhaps Organisation need to concentrate more on how the management deal with their staffs, how much support they provide their staffs to enable them to perform and how are they willing to get their staffs more involved in company’s direction and objectives.

Well, we will leave this to them, but nonetheless we still need to work hard, because in my equation, if you don’t have good attributes and no work effort, you will still end up a big fat ZERO in your performance, regardless of how much support the organisation provided you. 😉