Movie Selection
Willy Wonka, the key character of the movie, can fulfill the dreams of any child. As a commercial reception, he hides five gold tickets in chocolate bars and decides to test the honesty of the winners. During the tour in the country of delicacies, the participants are expected to follow the strict rules, otherwise there will be no lifelong provision of chocolate by Willy Wonka. This movie is a rather interesting and beneficial in terms of learning how to manage people and engage them in work.
More to the point, this fantasy movie reveals the vital issues, focusing on children and their desires with the allusion to those of adults. The analysis and interpretation of this movie are likely to provide the essential insights into the core of organizational behavior (OB).
Topic Selection
This movie presents the vivid example of organizational behavior concepts and, thus can be used as the one to explore the theme in detail. In particular, there is the evident presence of theories of personality and motivation. Motivating children as well as their parents, who were taken to the journey, Willy Wonka reaches his goals and leads participants on their way. In particular, this character applies the goal-setting theory according to which he creates the challenging goals, increasing their level of performance. Furthermore, Herzberg’s two-factor theory, consisting of hygiene and motivation factors, can be noted here. The former group of factors focuses on supervision, interpersonal relationships, and operating conditions, and the latter one is represented by responsibility, achievement, etc.
Willy Wonka interacts with all the participants and encourages them to communicate with each other, observing what others do. Such an approach can be defined as the social cognitive theory that refers to learning from the example of others. For example, the mentioned statement becomes rather evident when Willy Wonka compares good egg and a bad egg along with Egg-dicator that can identify the nature of eggs. It should be noted that eggs here symbolize people or they can also be subject to employees. The attitude and behavior are the key aspects that are to be considered while acting in terms of the social cognitive theory.
Academic Research
To support the assumptions regarding OB theories that were specified above, it is necessary to back them up with the relevant evidence. The two academic journals I will use to accomplish this goal are Academy of Management Review and The Career Development Quarterly. The article by Lent (2013) reveals the significance of career development theories, especially the one that concerns the social cognitive learning. The author claims that the implementation of these theories helps to prepare employees for the potential challenges associated with the workplace and, thus successfully address them based on the development of resilience and adaptability.
Another article by Barrick, Mount, and Li (2013) emphasizes the role of OB domain and, in particular, the theory of the purposeful work behavior that comprises personality and motivation theories that act as the two leading factors of the effective organization of work. At this point, it is noted that the psychological state of both an employer and employees largely depends on the appropriate application of these theories as well as the outcome of work performed by the staff. Thus, the scholarly peer-reviewed articles by Lent (2013) and Barrick et al. (2013) will serve as the sources of the credible information.
Personal Reflection
In my point of view, the investigation of OB concepts and theories based on the movie of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory along with the identified theories is likely to increase my current knowledge and skills, thus changing my behavior in an organization. In particular, I consider that the organizational setting changes continuously affected by such factors as the goals set by employees, corporate mission and vision, characteristics of staff, approaches accepted in an organization, and so on. In this connection, it is also necessary to amend one’s attitude towards the organizational behavior in order to ensure competence and competitiveness.
In effect of this assignment, I hope to enhance my awareness of OB and how to apply it on practice as, in my opinion, the real life example or the one from the movie explains the situation in the best way possible, so that it becomes rather clear how to act and what to expect. In other words, I will align my experience, contemporary views regarding the theme, and new information acquired from the exploration of the mentioned movie in relation to the research analysis.
References
Barrick, M. R., Mount, M. K., & Li, N. (2013). The theory of purposeful work behavior: The role of personality, higher-order goals, and job characteristics. Academy of Management Review, 38(1), 132-153.
Lent, R. W. (2013). Career‐life preparedness: Revisiting career planning and adjustment in the new workplace. The Career Development Quarterly, 61(1), 2-14.