Joe Salatino, President of Great Northern American

Joe Salatino

Joe Salatino is the president of Great Northern American (GNA), a telemarketing company based out of Dallas, Texas which has been around over 30 years. According to Joe, the success of his company is due to the amount of money he pays to his employees. He believes that spending money on commissions and bonusess is a means to keep his sales force of 30 people motivated. (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011)

This paper will address the following topics:

• How Joe could address the importance of understanding how people form perceptions and make attributions about others with his employees;

• Choose which learning theory will be most appropriate for Joe to apply in this situation and explain the reasons why this theory was selected;

• Ways Joe could apply the learning theory to improve employees’ performance; and

• Determine how Joe could leverage an understanding of the value of self-efficacy to ensure he hires the most successful salespeople

Understanding Perceptions in the Workplace

Perception is the process by which the individual selects, organizes, interprets and responds to information. Employees are constantly exposed to a variety of information, whether from personal experience or from co workers. However this information is obtained, this information is processed in their minds and organized to form concepts pertaining to what is sensed or experienced. There are two main factors that influence what an individual perceives: External factors and Internal Factors. (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011).

Extenal factors are factors that come from culture rather than personal observation, that enable perception and includes: (a) Size, the larger the object; (b) Intensity, the more intense an external factor, like bright lights and loud noises; (c) Contrast, factors that stand out. These are unexpected, therefore, more noticeable; (d) Motion, a moving factor stands out more from a stationay factor; and (e) Repetetion, a repeated factor that will eventually stand out. (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011)

Internal factors are factors that influence what the individual sees. Types of internal factors that affect what a person perceives are: (a) Personality, (b) Learning and (c) Motivation.

Person Perception is the process by which an individual attributes characteristics or traits to other people. Many people perceive others based on information told to them by other people and at that point the damage has been done. When prejudgement has been done, this is call a perceptual error. However, to prevent forming perceptions of a coworker, the individual should try to understand the caouse of their own and others’ behaviors. This is