International Journal of Human Resource Management and Research (IJHRMR) ISSN 2249-6874 Vol. 3, Issue 2, Jun 2013, 17-22 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.
INDICATORS ISSNEQ 2249–6939 Vol.2, Issue 2 (2012) 1-16 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.,
-- TOOLS TO PLUG IN SOCIO-METRIC GAPS IN THE CREATIVE INDUSTRY VIJAISHRI TEWARI
Assistant Professor, MBA-IT & MSCLIS Division IIIT-A, Allahabad, India
ABSTRACT The paper explores and reinforces the capability of emotional Intelligence and EQ indicators as sources of handling perturbation amongst highly skilled work force. The dynamic work environment has brought about a paradigm shift in the work patterns and pressures for the present work force. The competition and dynamism leaves no space for social activities, which act a detractor in the work environment, and kills the human factors at large. The authors are of the view that the growing turbulence in the work patterns of Corporate today has left a huge imbalance in the work and life synthesis, which requires sharp integration to latterly diverging viewpoints regarding individual capabilities, manifested into group strength. The genesis to the approach lies in effort to bridge the everwidening gap existing in creative industry and related fields due to overspecialization, ego-hassles along with independent work pattern. It deals with highly relevant issues like superimposing EQ indicators over socio-metric analysis proposing a model of behavior modification and group facilitation in creative Industry. The modus operandi to the paper is to approach the creative Industry brain ware contributing in isolation and finding out clues, proposing solutions for participative and contributive work climate.
KEYWORDS: Group Cohesiveness, Self-praise Groups, Socoi-merty, and Centralism INTRODUCTION Emotional Intelligence: What it is and why it Matters “Emotional intelligence is the ability to sense, understand, and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions as a source of human energy, information, trust, creativity and influence.” (Goleman, 1995) Emotional intelligence is the knack of perceiving generating and understanding emotions to contemplatively adjust emotions to promote growth. In other words, there are four parts:
Perceive or sense emotions,
Use emotions to assist thought,
Understand emotions,
Manage emotions.
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David Caruso believed that emotional intelligence may not be viewed as an opposite of intelligence. In fact he propagated that EI is a unique intersection head and heart. Damasio‟s contributions present dominant proof that it is synthetic to separate thinking and feeling. Candace Pert a leading neurobiologist stated that even though most of the cognitive process like thinking occurs in the brain ,but it is not the only system involved in the process. Infact he opined that processing of information like thinking and feeling involve the whole body. Therefore from his writings it can be understood that brain is not the epic center for all lucid actions of a human being. So, what does this indicate? Various researchers have envisioned EI as a skill where others perceive it as an effect of certain emotional factors. Researcher Reuven Bar-On was interested has viewed and defined EI as an non-cognitive capabilities and skill that that prepare individuals to succeed coping with the demands and pressures of the environmental. So in my paper, I‟d present the history of Emotional Intelligence along with the contentions where it is viewed as area of research. In my paper I will also quote some of the researches which have linked emotional intelligence to work-related aspects, like; individual performance and organizational productivity. Even though the term has its own history but some of the aspects are still new and undiscovered. Though the interpretation of the concept has largely varied over a time frame and cultural context, I still believe that it has a firm scientific foundation. The Value of Emotional Intelligence at Work Martin Seligman developed a concept called "learned optimism”. It refers to the cause people attribute their negative situations in life. It is found that Optimistic people tend to attribute specific, temporary, external factors whereas pessimistic people attribute their actions to global, permanent, internal factors. Seligman and his colleagues, in a research at Met Life, observed that new optimistic salesmen did 37 percent more insurance business than their pessimist counterparts in their first two years. It was further found that when the company hired a group of people who had high optimistic score but low normal screening scores ,out performed their pessimistic colleagues by 21 percent and 57 percent in two consecutive years. This special hirings even outperformed the average agent by 27 percent. Another facet to emotional intelligence is the ability to manage feelings and handle stress. It is perceived as an important ingredient of success. Various researchers have confirmed this positive relationship. Emotional intelligence is concerned with recognizing and understanding when and how to express an emotion along with the notion of controlling it. Both Goleman and Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso have a contention that EI in itself is not the final measure of performance but may be termed as an important ingredient in its measurement. Goleman has made an effort to differentiate between the concepts of emotional intelligence and emotional competence. Creative Industry-Source of Infotainment Creativity is not a tangible asset, like cinema halls, raw film, lights or the camera equipment, which can be bought, sold or hoarded. It‟s like the air we breathe or the perfume we smell. When it‟s there, we are filled with a feeling of wellbeing. But when it disappears, the industry begins to choke and „die‟ It‟s time to radically change the way we think about our business that‟s the creative industry that compromises of cinema, media &advertising industry. It cannot be denied that the business ways have undergone a paradigm shift in the
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current scenario. Business theories and practices, that were successful and most practiced are becoming redounded and the business heads are looking at more effective and efficient ways the face the current scenario. To a large extent the competition in the market has created a “no scope for mistakes” conditions. The business need to be right all the time or die the competitive death. It is said that change, whether sudden or gradual, at some point makes old behavior and beliefs obsolete. The crisis which creative industry is facing has little to do with the prices of its stars or with its manufacturing capabilities. Neither has this crisis been activated by the raging piracy problem. Creative Industry has run out of new ideas and is going through the throes of „creative death‟. What we have to understand and accept is that the creative industry lives and flourishes because of its competence to accept new ideas and to exploit the creativity of its people. In every age and in every business, people with new, daring ideas have managed to shake the world. But unfortunately ideas, especially new ideas, do not fall into our laps from the heavens. New ideas come from people. Thus it is very important to accept that if one has to survive the competition and the changes and still grow in busness, it will require great innovative working minds. The HR policies need to understand the requirement and create such culture and climate within the organization‟s that not only they attract the fresh and creative mind but also maintain then in the business for good. This can be termed as the new “success mantra” The Mystic Touch - Work Culture Work Culture is the easiest thing to sense but one of the most difficult things to describe. This is because of the aura of mystique that surrounds Work Culture. Work Culture may be defined as the framework in which individuals construe their knowledge and steer their action. Organization Structure is the form that action takes, the actual existing network of organizational relations. Organizational Culture and Organizational Structure are then but different abstractions from the same phenomenon. Work Culture in Creative Industry The work culture of the creative industry is largely features the below mentioned attributes: Industry Level Creative groups as informal organizations Assignment and project based associations Cutlbased “Gurudom” Work-deadline pressure Individual Level Impatience Hyper-active Behavior Overindulgence & Rigidity Non-accommodative nature Unhealthy competition leading to lobbying, propaganda and casteism
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The features of the work culture predominantly affect the individual behavior and the overall functioning of the organization. The affect of the salient features shows up in form of symptoms in individual behavior and group behavior. The symptoms that have been identified include:
Isolation
Burn out
Intoxication
Hostility
Emotional instability As the conceivers of the theme of the paper we see that these symptoms are laregely due to the lack of true and
positive Interpersonal relationships and imbalance in the felt and exhibited emotions. These imbalances occur due to the presence of certain detrimental factors in the working environment of the creative industry. The study salient features and the symptoms of the environment and the work groups in the creative industry brings out largely situation where we find individual in a continuous state of emotional unease and guarding their interaction with team members and non team members with extreme professionalism which mars the human facet interaction necessary for positive and normal state of existence. Sociometry: The Analysis Tool The word sociometry originates from the Latin “socius,” denoting social and the “metrum,” denoting measure. Therefore sociometry may be termed as a measure of the degree of human associations and relatedness. A functionally sociometery may be defined as a method of tracking interpersonal relationships in a group.
It
draws patterns which depict varied individual association within the members of a group working towards a specific end or goal. We propose a model for work environment /behavior modification on the basis of our study of the sociometric analysis we applied on the inter and intra group levels in the creative Industry. For a work grouping creative Industry, sociometry may be utilized as a potent tool for reducing differences and developing better and valid communications as it lets the group observe and analyze itself. In a group, people are either positive or negative towards each other. This flow of positive or negative affectivity transmits feelings via behavior. The flow of feeling may be mutual or non-mutual. Mutual flow is reciprocated whereas non-mutual flows trigger conflicts. The flow of feelings (mutual or non mutual) carve and shape the socio- psycho -emotional connections in a group or society and form the evident and important informal relationships. Socio-metry has tools for measuring, exploring and developing network of relationship in organizations and helps in identifying the key factors involved in the evolution of such patterns. The data thus generated may be utilized, in understanding group development and its dynamics. These findings help managers/individuals explore and work with 'intangible' side of organizational development. Socio-metric study helps the members of its group to understand and identify the important facets that effect their interpersonal relations at work and in general. The usage of sociomerty provides an understanding of the varied aspects of human behavior and helps individuals in identifying and accepting the various patterns of behavior. To meet the
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requirement thus raised individuals in return creates new patters of interaction to plug in the gaps of the group dynamics. Using such interactive learning methods, groups and its members respond to the positive behavior and thereby create an surroundings of openness and creativity which positively affects their productivity and performance. People working in such environments feel more stimulated and their belongingness to the group and work increases, and so the output increases bringing growth and success. Thus we may say that sociometric interventions results in bringing unity and corroborating the group and secondly create a conducive culture for growth directed behaviors and roles. Model for Plugging the Sociometry Gaps in Creative Industry I feel that measurement of relatedness is useful in assessing behavior within groups,on one hand, and also help in determining the scope and type of interventions required to guide positive change ,on the other hand. The study of sociomentric combination of any work group of the creative industry, will give the patterns of interactions and these patterns will guide us to the utilization of emotional intellence tools which would help us in filling up the gaps formed by the faulty interactive patterns.
Figure 1: Model of Environmental & Behavior Modification
RESULTS As the conceptualizer of the theme I strongly recommend that the sociometric analysis and Emotional interventions made would lead to outcomes that will make the functioning in the creative industry more transparent, true and wide. Till now the myopic view that the individuals were carrying due to the various environmental factors and individualistic views will transform and bring about a paradigm shift in the sociometric pattern.
CONCLUSIONS "Every individual knows that the group of people with which he works is more that an aggregation of individuals.� Individuals understand that groups comprise of structure and roles, these roles direct them to act and interact with individuals, roles and sub groups in the group. These actions generate a dynamics of likeable and unlikable behavior, attitudes and in general acceptable or unacceptable people. The formation of such clichÊ dominantly determines the
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functioning of the group and its reaction to new scope of learning. It is important here to highlight that sociometrists are trying to accomplish techniques and interventions by studying groups in social settings to enhance better group functioning and management. For work group, sociometry can be termed as a powerful tool used for reducing conflict and improving communication within its sphere of working Furthermore, as the pace of change increases and the world of work make ever-greater demands on a person‟s cognitive, emotional, and physical resources, emotional intelligence will become increasingly important tool to provide socio-cultural plug in for the creative industry. I opine that instead of arguing about the nascence of the concept of emotional intelligence it would be important and interesting to accept and consider its utility in effecting performance at work. To conclude the EQ interventions would bring about a wider plain for positive creativity and the creative industry can be saved by the fast approaching creative decay.
Figure 2: Pre & Post Intervention Stage (Results)
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