Question

List and describe key biographical characteristics. How are they relevant to OB?

Answer 1

Biographical characteristics play a vital role in predicting employee performance and satisfaction. It includes age, race, gender, disability, tenure, and religion. These characteristics are easy to identify. They represents many of the surface-level aspects of diversity and thus they are relevant to organizational behavior.

1) Age - Many organization believes that age is an important factor which determines the job performance of the individual. Job performance decreases with increasing age. But on the contrary, it is also true that the older the employee is, the more he will have experience. Many employers recognize that older workers represent a huge potential pool of high-quality applications. Moreover, older workers have a low turnover rate. Another perception is that older workers lack flexibility and resisting new technology.

2) Race - Same race employees tend to favor each other during the performance evaluation, promotion decisions, pay raises and hiring decisions. This leads to workplace discrimination which can raise conflicts or increases politics in the organization.

3) Gender - It is found that there is a very few difference between men and women that impact job performance. Women are more agreeable and willing to conform to authority whereas men are more aggressive in nature and always have an expectation of success. This difference is minor and does not affect their job performance. However, women have higher rates of absenteeism.

4) Disability - It is a perception that disability limits the efforts of a person. The organization has to provide reasonable accommodation which is problematic for the employers.

5) Tenure - The people with high job seniority are more productive, have low turnover, less absenteeism and are more satisfied with their job.

6) Religion - Due to religious restrictions, the employees' job performance may get affected but only for a short duration of time.