HR DIARIES: CHAPTER 9: Learning Organizational Behaviour Through Stories: An Academic Example
One way to learn about human behaviour is through stories. The stories always fascinate me and I do use them (with a lot of discretion and without diluting core content, to the best of my ability) to teach Organizational Behaviour, Business Ethics and other such subjects. Here I am sharing my first post on how I use stories to explain some concepts of OB.
Let us talk about the conformity pressures (norms) in a group and how it shapes one's behaviour due to that.
The Asch Conformity Experiments, carried out by Solomon Asch, a Polish-American psychologist, also considered to be a great contributor to the field of psychology, carried out the studies, were about how the pressures from the group, would ultimately force an individual, to change his/her own actions and behaviors. To the extent that people started giving wrong answers, in order to show conformity with the group norms.
The same learning can be derived from an old story.
There used to live a poor man in the remote parts of India. His and his wife's only possession was a goat, who would give them enough milk, that they would sell to the people in nearby villages, to manage their very basic life style.
The wife once realised that they could make some big money by selling the goat in the animal market, that was there in a town, some 15 km away from their home. She convinced her husband to sell the goat.
He started walking towards the town very next day, along with the goat, with the idea to sell it and make 100 gold coins. Three thieves saw him and thought of snatching away the goat from him and sell. But that man was too strong to be defeated by all three of them combined. So, they came up with an idea (which changed their lives and that man's life too!). One by one, but at a time only one, started walking with this man (the owner of the goat). As the first one of them started walking with the owner of the goat, he asked why that gentleman was carrying A DONKEY! The owner of the goat clarified to the thief that it was a goat and not a DONKEY. The first thief left and after some time, the second thief started walking with him. asked the same question, why are you carrying the DONKEY?! So did the third....
After being asked for three times, as to why he was carrying a donkey, the man thought that it must be a donkey and not a goat and left it into the jungle and went back to his home empty handed!
The story can really be used to teach the concepts like group conformity along with the Asch Studies.
