Stop bossing, your employee productivity is at risk
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 27 May 2010, 15:17 IST   |    41 Comments
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Stop bossing, your employee productivity is at risk
Bangalore: If employees love freedom then at times when they have controlling bosses, that may affects their productivity, as they think more on how much of freedom is being curbed rather than concentrating in their work, according to researchers at the Duke University. The study on 'significant others' has found that people deeply value their freedom so much that even an unconscious memory of significant persons, parents, bosses or any controlling persons, stimulates a behavioral reaction. The researchers found that people with an ingrained sense that others are trying to control them tend to have the most intense negative reactions to unconscious thoughts of significant others. While conducting the study the researchers has found that even a memory of significant others, who wanted the children or employees to work hard make them doing poor work. Because they think that their freedom is being restrained, according to a blog by Andrew O'Connell. "We love our freedom to choose," opined Gavan J Fitzsimons, Professor of Marketing and Psychology at Duke. He added that "the highly reactant individuals love their freedom and they will do anything to protect it." The psychological mechanism that connects the love of freedom and the behavioral response is known as reactance. The concept was described by Jack Brehm back in 1966, recently it has become an active area of psychological research with many implications for business. During the study, the team at Duke- Tanya L. Chartrand, Amy N. Dalton, and Fitzsimons- who sought to see whether reactance, usually thought of as a conscious effect, could be unconscious too. Their findings show that indeed it can. The researchers suggest that in certain circumstances, "reactance becomes automatized."

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