Apichat’s Personality - Organizational Behavior

Answer for Question 1

According to the case study, Apichat’s personality type can be observed as ENTP.

Being an Extrovert, he likes to walk around the factory rather than just sitting in his private office as he is gregarious and can get energy from being around other people. He is open to changes, active and practical as well. It can be observed in his interaction with one of his worker “Somchai” that he likes to communicate verbally, distractible and he can also thinks and acts quickly with enthusiasm.

Due to his Intuitive Personality, he is future-focused and prefers to come up with and try out idealistic and theoretical solutions for the company, like the job rotation program. He gets easily bored routine tasks and he can perceive the possibilities in things that he encounters. He saw the potential in what “Somchai” was doing and instead of dwelling on his failure, he used his imaginative and inventive abilities to come up with the idealistic “Odd Elephants” program which turns out to be a success.

As a thinker, he is driven by thoughts, rational and objective. He focuses on facts, data and surveys to analyze the situation and problems of the company and his decisions are not influenced by emotion.

Lastly, with a perceiving personality, he is curious about new experiences and alternatives and open to change. This personality reflected noticeably in his “Odd Elephants” program as the program was built up spontaneously in the moment and it is very casual and flexible with open options for the workers.

In summary, as a person with ENTP personality type, Apichat is open-minded and wanted to renew the system and drive the company into new directions. He can observe and get energy from other people and prefers to communicate verbally. While he could get bored easily by routine tasks, he enjoys brainstorming and coming up with innovative and original ideas to tackle the problems and challenges. He is knowledgeable and resourceful and likes to make logical decisions by analyzing the facts and data.

In terms of EQ, it can be said that Apichat has a moderately high EQ. He is aware of the preferences of his personality, like his ability to get energy from other people or to come up with idealistic solutions for the problems, and make the best use out of his strong abilities. He also understands his values and therefore uses them to reinforce in guiding the company to a new direction to be more successful. By understanding his own personality and values, he knows where he is heading and have confident in himself as well.

Moreover, it can be observed that he can also control his emotions from affecting his performance. Although he bemoaned his failure about the Job Rotation Program, he can still control his emotion and use his intuitive ability to see the potential in Somchai’s work, comes up with a better, innovative program and successfully implemented it later on.

After observing around the factory, Apichat perceived that his workers are feeling bored about their jobs and feels empathic for them as well. After observing what Somchai was doing, he realized that Somchai value innovation and freedom to display his creativity as well.

After realizing that his workers are bored, he tried to make the work more fun and less repetitive for the workers as well as allowing them to experience new horizons of the business which reveals his social expertise.

Since he’s perceived the boredom of the workers as well as the factors that could cause them too feel insecure and stressful in the job rotation program, he came up with the Odd Elephant Program where he influences his workers to work towards his new goals to reinvent the company.

Since he was aware and passionate about his values and his direction, he succeeded in influencing and motivating the workers to work towards his visions for the success of the company as well as solving the problems of the workers being bored and unmotivated at the workplace.

Therefore, he succeeded in managing the workers effectively without letting his negative emotions for failure to affect his performance or the relationship with his workers.

Answer for Question 2

It can be observed from the case that employees who participated in the Odd Elephant program have following terminal (intrinsic) values –

• a sense of accomplishment

• self-respect

• social recognition

• freedom

In their routine work, their tasks are focus on just one part of the production and they were just doing the same things repeatedly throughout the day so they start to feel bored and forget the meaningfulness of their work. However, when the workers were asked to create their own elephants, they get to be involved throughout the whole process and when the project is finished, they can actually see the outcome of their effort and feel like they have achieved their goal and feel a sense of accomplishment.

When they were given the chance to create their own odd elephants, some of the workers crafted the elephants in order to improve and expand their skills and abilities. Although they don’t get much in return for their product, in terms of money, their value for self-respect has been fulfilled and it acts as a motivator for them.

After the production of their own odd elephants, the workers can receive recognition for the product either from the customers, colleges or their family and friends which gives them motivation and encouragement to produce better and more creative products.

Since the workers are given the freedom to work on their own odd elephants according to their ideas, schedules, skills and creativity, their value for freedom has been fulfilled and they produce better performance although there are no limitations or deadlines for their projects.

Answer for Question 3

(a) Motivation theories “Goal-Setting Theory” and “Job Characteristics Theory” will be used to describe the situation at Siam Traditional Carvings Limited before and after the introduction of the odd elephant program.

Before the program, Apichat noticed that their productivity had stayed the same for ten years despite the use of latest equipment, the machines were just moderately busy and the employees seemed bored with much time to sit around although the complaints and turnover rates were low.

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