Perceptual Differences and the Management of People in the Organization

摘要

People are all unique with different ways of looking at and understanding their environment and the people within it. These perceptual differences may affect the management of people within it. The principal objective of this paper is to unravel the impact of these differences on the management of organizational people and the power of the perceptual process in guiding our behavior for effective worker-management relationships in the Public sector of Nigeria. Three hypotheses in line with these objectives were drawn and tested based on the data gathered through a questionnaire. The survey investigation method was used in collecting data and the Kruskal- Wallis test statistic was used to analyze the data. The results show that perceptual differences distort and affect the hiring of employee, performance appraisal, and leadership and communication effectiveness at 0.65, 0.60 and 0.68 respectively. Based on the aforementioned, the paper concluded that circumstances like stereotyping, Halo effect, perceptual defense, projection, attribution and self-fulfilling prophecy-the Pygmalion effect are encountered in the workplace which in turn affect the management of people in areas like employee hiring, performance appraisal, leadership and communication. The paper recommends employee education and training, and the identification of valid individual differences, equity and the construction of a hierarchical framework in solving perceptual differences for effective organizational management.