Question
1. Applying integrated psychology knowledge, discuss how working in open plan workplace may (or may not) affect productivity for your profession.
Acquiring an open plan workplace would enhance productivity for a financial planner. Only the office environment would be emphasized in this case. Working in the open plan workplace arouses the planner’s social needs because he needs a strong connection of support and commination between teammates. A team work together for commission and extrinsic awards such as holidays trips and promotion, this kinds of extrinsic motivation encourages them to work harder accompany with the team. Well-built relationship with teammates triggered the planner emotion of excitement and pleasant so they would appraise the situation of working in this company and team members is excited or rewarded, which are the intrinsic motivation encouraging planners’ productivity.
Other members’ performance could observe by the planner easily in the open workplace. Suppose the average quality of proposal prepared by other teammates is higher than the planner and he wants to improve it through others’ suggestions and evaluations, he would form mental representations to understanding the suggestions and others’ performance to rectify his mistakes. Once the performance is improved, it triggers his self-evaluation and under the effect of social facilitation would help trigger the planner to reevaluate his positive ideal self as he sees himself as capable to finish high quality work with reference to others’ performance. Along with teammates sharing opinions in the open office, the effect of informational social influence would make the planner conform to the way others’ perform. The above influences is similar to the intergroup contact theory, which demonstrates the planner’s beliefs towards his work would be changed through interactions with his group members and finally result in an increase in the productivity.
2. Applying integrated psychology knowledge, discuss how an organized workspace may (or may not) help with productivity for your profession.
A financial planner are responsible to prepare contracts and customized insurance plans for customers in the office. An organized workspace may not help increase productivity for the financial planner because of principals of attention and perception. The financial planner may prepare tailor-made plans for different customers, the planner may still easily to recognize a piece of information of a specific customer on an unorganized table. The planner could figure out the clients’ information because the massy table is meaningless and it is a background to him, the piece of information is the figure. This unorganized office setting could trigger the planner emotion of pleasant, he appraised working in this office is pleased or feeling comfortable and this result in the intrinsic motivation motivated him to work in the office.
The similar situation also applied to other teammates working in the same office, if the teammates see themselves as a group members, they would conform to the norm as working in unorganized workspace. In a country with collectivism culture, planner would force to conform to the group which means the working team compare to the culture of individualism. Under the effect of group polarization, the tendencies of the planner and his planner working in an unorganized workspace would be strengthened over time out of social needs. They could gain support from the group and the productivity would still enhance without an organized workspace.
Instead, memory also help the planner to find necessary paper of information from an unorganized worktable. Visual pictures of the working task stored in the iconic memory and this sensory memory would transfer to short or long term memory through the process of elaborative rehearsal. Once the planner want a single piece of customer contact to fill in insurance application form, the location of the
