beyond_pygmalion perception - takao inamori[1]

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Beyond Pygmalion effect: the roleof managerial perception

Takao Inamori and Farhad AnalouiDepartment of Development and Economic Studies, University of Bradford,

Bradford, UK

AbstractPurpose – The inuences of perception have been studied in educational, army, sports and businesssettings but never in the development eld. The Pygmalion effect generally suggests that theperceiver’s positive expectation enhances the target’s performance. This rst time research seeks toexplore how managerial perceptions of the aid workers of the local staffs affect their behaviour andperformance in cross-cultural project settings.

Design/methodology/approach – With the cooperation of Japan International CooperationAgency ( JICA), 244 valid responses were obtained from the aid workers through a web-basedsurvey. Using factor analysis, ve perception-related factors and two behaviour-related factors wereextracted. Subsequently, in order to clarify the causal relationship, the above factors and one observedorganisational performance variable were tested using path analysis.Findings – Positive causal relationships were conrmed between two perception-related factors andone behaviour-related factor, and also between the behaviour-related factor and the organisationalperformance variable. These results strongly suggest that aid workers’ positive perception causespositive behaviour in local colleagues and will result in higher organisational performance.Practical limitations/implications – Whilst avoiding generalisation, nevertheless, the resultssuggest that there is a need for people-related and cross-cultural management skills to ensuresuccessful future activities, and stress management competencies to maintain the positive managerialperception on the part of the aid workers.

Originality/value – Despite the considerable inuence of donor staff’s managerial perception on thequality of the human relationships and organisational performance, this eld of enquiry has remainedneglected. The study provides rst-time empirical evidence on its signicance.

Keywords Managerialism, Perception, Skills, Design and development, Aid agencies, Japan

Paper type Research paper

1. IntroductionNumerous studies have been carried out which explore the relationship between theperceiver’s expectation and the target’s performance. These studies, often referred to asa “Self-fullling prophecy” (Merton, 1948) and/or the “Pygmalion effect” (Rosenthaland Jacobson, 1968), attempt to explain how the perceiver’s positive expectation mayenhance the target’s performance. Similarly, McGregor’s (1960) Theory XY also offerstwo sets of managerial assumptions, based on positive or negative beliefs andperception on the part of the managers, which inuence followers’ performance atwork. The possible inuence resulting from having positive expectations has beengiven much attention in education, sport, military and business settings (Kierein andGold, 2000; McNatt, 2000) and these results generally support the notion that positiveexpectation works in certain situations.

In an international setting, particularly in aid projects, the cross-cultural workenvironment exerts considerable inuence on both the donor’s and the local staff’s

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available atwww.emeraldinsight.com/0262-1711.htm

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Received 22 October 2009Accepted 26 November 2009

Journal of Management DevelopmentVol. 29 No. 4, 2010pp. 306-321q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0262-1711DOI 10.1108/02621711011039132



perception and makes the task of working harmoniously together much more difcult(Analoui, 1998; Analoui and Karami, 2002). Moreover, differing perceptions on the partof the actors in the eld might also provoke conicts between donor and local staff,consequently resulting in ineffective work relationships (Hofstede, 1991; Kakabadseet al., 2004; Adler and Gundersen, 2007).

After the Second World War, development projects were widely used wherebyinitially donors focused more on economic development (Cracknell, 2000). However,since the 1980s, participatory approaches have become increasingly popular andattempts have been made to involve project participants and beneciaries in theprojects and development activities (Chambers, 1983; Smith, 1989; Cernea, 1991).Moreover, since the 1990s, human capacity development also began to be recognised asan important factor towards sustainable development (UNDP, 1997; Analoui, 1998).Thus, people as opposed to task-related perceptions, knowledge and relationships(Analoui, 1993, 1998; Analoui and Al-madhoun, 2006), have been increasingly regardedas an essential ingredient for the successful management of work organisations.However, despite its considerable importance the inuence of the actor’s perceptionand expectations in development projects and programmes has received little attention(Eyben, 2006) and has remained relatively a neglected eld of enquiry.

Hence, in light of paucity of studies addressing inuences of perception in aid projectsetting, this paper examines the extent of the inuence of the Japanese aid worker’sperceptions of the local staff and partner country on organisational performance of thedevelopment project. To achieve this, a brief review of the related literature, which formsthe basis for the development of hypothesis, will be discussed in some detail. Then, theresearch methodology, a web-based survey that was conducted amongst Japanese aidworkers to generate the relevant data, will be introduced, the ndings of this novel studywill be discussed and relevant conclusions will be reached.

2. Theoretical background2.1 Perceptual tendencyPeople’s perception is affected by internal factors such as personal experiences,personality and external factors such as stimuli from environment and context inwhich they operate (George and Jones, 1999; Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004; Analoui,2007). People continually attempt to understand and make sense of the informationreceived from their environment. In order to achieve this, people select, organise(groups and categorise) and interpret the information (Brewer and Miller, 1996). Brunerand Tagiuri (1954) have introduced “Implicit personality theory” on how the groupingand categorisation of people takes place. The theory explains that certain personalitytraits, behaviour, attitude and values tend to associate with certain types of individuals. Evidently, these early interpretations were found to be oversimplied andnot always true (Pettigrew, 1979; Bodenhausen, 1988). As for stereotyping in groups,the concept of in-group and out-group were offered in perception studies (Allport,1979). In-group is dened as any group to which one belongs and out-group is viewedas any group to which one does not belong. “Out-group homogeneity” is based on thebelief that people tend to classify out-group members as more similar to each otherthan members of their own group. In other words, people are apt to perceive in-groupmembers individually and other members as a group (Hamilton, 1976; Quattrone, 1986;Linville et al., 1989).

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Studies of attribution were originally developed by Heider (1958) and Kelley (1972,1973) and referred to as “Attribution theory”. Heider suggested that explanations of behaviour fall into two categories. One is internal attribution and the other is externalattribution. Internal attribution is associated with personal factors such as personality,ability and motivation. In contrast, external attribution is related to environmentfactors such as organisational rules, luck and natural environment. The notion of “Correspondent inference theory” (Jones and Davis, 1965; Gilbert and Malone, 1995)explained that people tend to think that each individual is responsible for internalfactors and that external factors are essentially uncontrollable and out of one’s ownresponsibility, however, observations showed that internal factors are oftenoverestimated. Similarly, ‘Fundamental attribution error’ ( Jones and Harris, 1967)describes that the overestimated perception might be wrong. “Actor-observer effect”(Storms, 1973; Baxter and Goldberg, 1988) refers to a tendency to see the behaviour of others as being caused by internal causes, while own behaviour is caused by externalcauses. Furthermore, “Self-serving attribution” (Zuckerman, 1979; Roesch andAmirkham, 1997) explains that people generally associate their success with internalfactors whereas they tend to blame their failure on external factors.

2.2 Inuence of perceiver’s expectation on target It is important to bear in mind that positive expectation does not automaticallyenhance the target’s performance. Sutton and Woodman (1989) integrated a number of Pygmalion effect models to show (see Figure 1) that the perceiver’s thought wouldaffect not only their own behaviour but also the target’s expectation and behaviour.Moreover, as the reversed arrow illustrates (shown by dotted arrow), past perceptionsinuence new perceptions (Mullins, 2005; Analoui, 2007).

Similarly, based on the McGregor’s idea, Adler and Gundersen (2007) also explainedthat manager’s values, belief and attributes would inuence both the manager’s

behaviour and that of subordinates’. If the idea of the process is applied to aid projectsetting, aid worker’s expectation could negatively work on local colleagues due to theinuence of simplied and biased perception.

2.3 Inuence of manager’s behaviour on employee and organisational performanceLeadership models explain how leaders can enhance the performance of the followersand organisation from the trait, skill and management styles viewpoint (Northouse,2007). Path-Goal theory (House, 1996) is one of the contingency leadership modelswhich explains how leaders generate subordinates’ motivation and increase workperformance for accomplishing a designated goal. The theory assumes that motivatedsubordinate’s behaviour, which is inspired by the leader’s behaviour, is the mediator

Figure 1.Integrated model of thePygmalion effect

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for accelerating organisational performance. As the Hawthorne effect (Franke andKaul, 1978; Jones, 1992; Metzgar, 1995; Hamilton et al., 2002) and transactional analysis(Berne, 1968; Stewart and Joines, 1987) explained, healthy human interactions andrelationships are essential for an effective organisation.

2.4 Development of hypothesisFrom above discussion, it is therefore possible to develop a number of hypothesesrelating inuence of perception. Handy (1985) categorised organisational effectivenessfactors into three groups: individual, organisational and environmental, whereby thequality of managerial perception on these categories would heavily affectorganisational performance (Thomas et al., 1993; Analoui and Karami, 2002). In aidprojects, donor staff’s perception of local staff, partner organisation and workenvironment would inuence organisational performance as with commercialorganisations. Thus, the present research is extending the “Pygmalion effect” toinclude performance of the organisation. Based on past studies, four hypotheses were

developed and a framework of analysis has been constructed (see Figure 2). Thehypotheses are as follows:

H1. Japanese aid workers tend to have a negative perception of the local staff.

H2. Japanese aid workers tend to have a negative perception of the workenvironment.

H3. Japanese aid worker’s positive perception of the local staff causes Japanese aidworker’s positive behaviour towards the local staff.

H4. Japanese aid worker’s positive behaviour towards local staff contributes tothe enhancement of organisational performance.

It is deemed important to add that due to the research limitations, in this survey, onlythe causal relationships between donor staff’s perception/expectation, donor staff’sbehaviour/action, and performance have been studied.

3. Research methodologyAfter an extensive review of the related literature as illustrated in previous section, thesurvey planning procedure offered by of Czaja and Blair (2005), was adapted to design

Figure 2.Hypothesised

perception-behaviour-performance model


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a survey (questionnaire). The questionnaire was piloted in July 2008 and it wasamended accordingly.

3.1 Scope of the study3.1.1 Sampling . Having negotiated cooperation from the Japan InternationalCooperation Agency (JICA) overseas ofces, in September 2008, aid workers wereasked to answer the questionnaire using a web-based survey. As a result, 244 validresponses from 59 countries were collected. The web-survey site was protected by adata security system and the questionnaire was made anonymous. The JICA aidworkers consist of the following categories; “expert”, “senior volunteer” and“grass-roots level of project staff”. The above respondents all work with localcolleagues in partner organisations, although the nature of the job and schemes aredifferent. The response rates were 19.9 per cent (Expert), 13.1 per cent (Seniorvolunteer) and 2.5 per cent (Grass-roots level of project staff) respectively. The researchintended to include the cooperation of all JICA overseas ofces in developing countries.

However, since participation in this survey was on a voluntary basis, arguably theresponse rate could have been affected by the decisions of overseas ofces concerningthe participation of the aid workers and the issue of internet literacy, a weaknesstypically associated with web based sampling (Ray and Tabor, 2003; Gray, 2009).

3.1.2 Questionnaire . In this study, from total 69 questions, 20 perception, behaviourand performance related questions and several demographic related questions havebeen used for the analysis. Most of the questions were measured according to a 4-pointLikert scale: “Disagree”, “Tend to disagree”, “Tend to agree” and “Agree” with thehighest point “4” being given to most positive answers and lowest “1” to the mostnegative answers. Additionally, a reversed score was allocated to ve questions whichaddressed negative perception. Since the usage of neutral answers is subject to manydebates (Garland, 1991; Albaum, 1997; Tourangeau et al., 2004) and in order to avoid

ambiguity, these type of answers were not provided.3.1.3 Analysis . In order to understand the characteristics of the respondents, rst a

descriptive analysis of 244 responses was attempted. Then factor analysis usingprincipal axis factoring with promax rotation, as standardised practice of perceptionstudies (e.g. Joung and Miller, 2006), directed toward perception and behaviour relatedquestions to extract similar variables and factors by using SPSS 16. For this analysis,the following criteria were used: eigenvalue is more than 1.0, factor loading is morethan 0.40 and all items need to be loaded on a single factor. Regarding Cronbach’salpha, to measure of the internal consistency reliability, the lower limit was set to 0.60(Robinson et al., 1991).

Finally, path analysis was used to clarify the causal relationship between theworker’s perception, behaviour and organisational performance by testing thehypothesised model. As SPSS AMOS 17 does not accept any missing values for pathanalysis, 222 fully answered responses were used. For measuring the model t,goodness-of-t index (GFI), adjusted goodness-of-t index (AGFI), comparative tindex (CFI) and Root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) were employed.GFI, AGIF and CFI range from 0 to1 where a value greater than 0.90 reects a good t,whist in the case of RMSEA, if the value is less than 0.08 is considered as good t.Although these cut off values are debatable, they were set for the subsequentinterpretation based on the studies of Browne and Cudeck (1992) and Hair et al. (2009).

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Concerning interpretation of standardised path coefcient, an absolute value of less0.10 is considered as small effect, a value around 0.30 is considered as medium effectand a value of more than 0.50 will be considered as a large effect (Kline, 2005).

4. Results4.1 DemographicsThere were 184 male (75.4 per cent) and majority of the respondents had over ve yearswork experience in developing countries (52.9 per cent, n ¼ 129). Mode of age groupwas 40s age group which occupied 29.0 per cent of the respondents ( n ¼ 73). Regardingeducational background, master degree holders was the rst mode (42.2 per cent,n ¼ 103) and the second was bachelor degree holders (40.2 per cent, n ¼ 98). Most of the respondents work in the Asian region, which consists of East Asia, South-EastAsia, South Asia and Central Asia, and the total number 110 represents 45 per cent of the total respondents. Mode of assigned region was in South-East Asia and itrepresented 25.4 per cent ( n ¼ 62) of the total responses. The demographic proles of

the respondents are shown below in Table I.4.2 Factor analysisFrom the perception and behaviour related category, 15 perception related questionsand four behaviour related questions were selected for factor analysis. Mean andstandard deviation (SD) of the 19 questions, and one performance related question areshown in Table II.

Analysis in Table II showed that the mean of P1 , P2 and B1 were skewed to theupper end of the scale which may be regarded as “Ceiling effect”. Nevertheless, theseitems were used for the analysis since this study assumed that the answer “Agree”could represent the exact feelings of the respondents, hence, “Strongly agree” was notnecessary for the measurement.

Factor analysis extracted ve factors from the 15 perception related questions. Thecumulative percentage of variance was 67.12 per cent and the Cronbach’s alpha valueranged from 0.819 to 0.552. Then two factors were extracted from the four behaviourrelated questions whereby the cumulative percentage of variance was 77.19 per cent andthe alpha values were 0.794 and 0.599, however, being different from other psychologicalresearches, as this study included a variety of aid workers (e.g. age group and gender),thus the two factors below 0.60 were exceptionally included for the analysis.

The ve factors from the perception related questions were named as follows:“Understanding”, “Work”, “Environment”, “Expectation” and “Stress” (see Table III),and the two factors from behaviour related questions were named “Relatedness” and“Encouragement” (see Table IV).

4.3 Path analysisThese perception and behaviour related factors and one observed variable fromperformance related questions named “Performance” were used for Path analysis totest the causal relationship in the H3 and H4 . The path is shown in Figure 3, wherebyall the paths were signicant at 5 per cent level. The model t indices were:RMSEA ¼ 0 : 081, GFI ¼ 0 : 859, AGFI ¼ 0: 813 and CFI ¼ 0 : 845, thus the model isconcluded and described as a “mediocre t model”. However, despite the model tlevel, the analysis explained some tendencies between the variables.


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4.4 Hypothesis test Accordingly, four hypotheses were tested. Regarding H1 and H2 , although the mean of P3 (2.24),P8 (2.38),P10 (2.10) and P11 (2.44) in “Expectation” and “Stress” were all below2.5, which indicate negative perceptual tendency, the results of the perception related

questions did not show a clear negative perceptual tendency toward local colleagues andwork environment. Thus, this study concluded that H1 and H2 were rejected.

Concerning H3 , due to the negative path, it can be concluded that the hypothesiswas partly supported. In Figure 3, standardised path coefcient, which ranges from2 1 to 1 and explains the direct effect of the independent variable on a dependentvariable, was described by a single headed arrow. The result shows that there is apositive large effect path from “Understanding” to “Relatedness” (pathcoefficient ¼ 0: 55) and also that there exists positive medium effect path from

Variable Demographic Frequency %

Gender Male 184 75.4Female 60 24.6

Age Under 29 years old 8 3.330-39 years old 57 23.440-49 years old 73 29.950-59 years old 62 25.4Over 60 years old 43 17.6No response 1 0.4

Work experience in developing countries Under 12 months 24 9.813-23 months 25 10.224-35 months 26 10.736-47 months 22 9.048-59 months 17 7.0Over 60 months 129 52.9

No response 1 0.4Educational level Certicate 5 2.0

Associate degree 16 6.6Bachelor 98 40.2Master 103 42.2PhD 21 8.6No response 1 0.4

Assigned region East Asia 1 0.4South-East Asia 62 25.4South Asia 42 17.2Central Asia 5 2.0Oceania 6 2.5Central America/Caribbean 28 11.5South America 17 7.0Europe 1 0.4Middle East 19 7.8North Africa 14 5.7Sub-Saharan Africa 49 21.0

Source: Data analysis

Table I.Demographic prole of the respondents ( n ¼ 244)

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“Work” to “Relatedness” (path coefficient ¼ 0 : 37). These paths support H3 . On theother hand, paths from the perception related factors to behaviour related factor“Encouragement” showed ambiguous results. The “Encouragement” received twopositive medium effect paths; one from “Understanding” (Path coefficient ¼ 0 : 47) andthe other from “Work” (Path coefficient ¼ 0 : 38) but also two negative medium effectpaths; one from “Environment” (Path coefficient ¼ 2 0 : 27), another from “Stress” (Pathcoefficient ¼ 2 0 : 39). These negative paths contradict H3 .

Regarding H4 , observed variable “Performance” received positive medium effectpath only from “Relatedness” (Path coefficient ¼ 0 : 33), however, there was no pathfrom “Encouragement” to “Performance”. Therefore, it can be concluded that H4 wasonly partly supported.

Item n Mean SD

Perception-related questionP1. I feel my work is challenging 243 3.48 0.694P2. I enjoy my work 244 3.32 0.733P3. Sometimes I am depressed about my work (REV) 244 2.24 0.940P4. My activities are appreciated by local colleagues 244 3.30 0.644P5. I like the atmosphere of my workplace 242 3.24 0.713P6. My workplace environment is well arranged by my partner

organisation242 2.64 0.883

P7. I can accept the work process/practice of my partnerorganisation

241 2.71 0.784

P8. I am stressed from responsibility to achieve our project purpose(REV)

243 2.38 0.875

P9. In busy periods, if local colleagues are not working hard, I willbe irritated (REV)

238 2.55 0.844

P10. When I work hard, I feel local colleagues also should work hard

(REV)

235 2.10 0.861

P11. Local colleagues should feel grateful for what the Japanese sidehas done for them (REV)

237 2.44 0.840

P12. Local colleagues will enhance their ability through workingwith me

240 3.18 0.636

P13. My attitude affects behaviour of local colleagues 241 2.99 0.689P14. I believe local colleagues implement their task as we planned 239 2.93 0.738P15. Local colleagues work hard with my encouragement 238 3.08 0.769

Behaviour-related questionB1. I keep good relations with local colleagues 241 3.36 0.643B2. I keep close communication with local colleagues 241 3.17 0.715B3. I have attempted some activities to establish favourable human

relations with local colleagues239 3.16 0.827

B4. I have attempted to motivate local colleagues 241 2.88 0.802

Performance-related questionPF1. Our activities are progressing very well in comparison with the

plan244 2.85 0.705

Notes: Reversed score was allocated to the question with (REV) sign such as Agree: 1-point andDisagree: 4-pointSource: Data analysis

Table II.Descriptive data of questionnaire item


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5. DiscussionExcept for the four variables ( P3 , P8 , P10 and P11 ) in the perception related questions,overall the results indicated the presence of positive perceptual and behaviouraltendencies. The underlying reason for this ought to be explored by further analysis.Concerning the P9 and P10 in “Expectation”, these questions were designed to clarifyhow the aid workers with a Japanese organisational culture mindset worked in

Type of perceptionFactorloading

Cronbach’salpha

1. Understanding 0.764P12. Local colleagues will enhance their ability through working with me 0.855P15. Local colleagues work hard with my encouragement 0.656P13. My attitude affects behaviour of local colleagues 0.588P14. I believe local colleagues implement their task as we planned 0.579

2. Work 0.821P1. I feel my work is challenging 0.939P2. I enjoy my work 0.858P4. My activities are appreciated by local colleagues 0.407

3. Environment 0.743P7. I can accept the process/practice of my partner organisation 0.835P6. My workplace environment is well prepared by my partner

organisation0.726

P5. I like the atmosphere of my workplace 0.4944. Expectation 0.614P10. When I work hard, I feel local colleagues also should work hard 0.720P9. In a busy period, if local colleagues are not working hard, I will be

irritated0.658

P11. Local colleagues should feel grateful for what the Japanese side hasdone for them

0.433

5. Stress 0.552P8. I am stressed from responsibility to achieve our project purpose 0.749P3. Sometimes I am depressed about my work 0.517


Table III.Factors of JICA aidworkers’ perception

Type of perceptionFactorloading

Cronbach’salpha

1. Relatedness 0.794B1. I keep good relation with local colleagues 0.832B2. I keep close communication with local colleagues 0.787

2. Encouragement 0.599B3. I have attempted some activities to establish favourable human

relations with local colleagues0.698

B4. I have attempted to motivate local colleagues 0.607


Table IV.Factors of JICA aid

workers’ behaviour

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developing countries, whereby cooperation and teamwork are important componentsin Japanese organisations (Ouchi, 1981; Johnson, 1990). According to the result of P10 ,it can be safely assumed that a majority of Japanese aid workers, 69 per cent of therespondents ( n ¼ 169) selected either “Agree” or “Tend to agree”, brought theteamwork spirit to their workplace and expected local colleagues to work hard and as ateam. This type of perception might not be categorised as negative perception, but theexpectation could result in stress for them if the local colleagues did not work as hardas they were expected to. However, this study did not deal with the perception of localstaff, whereby the introduction of Japanese organisational culture might result increating considerable stress for the local colleagues (Shadur et al., 1995; Adler andGundersen, 2007).

As for path analysis, each was interpreted accordingly in Table V. It seems“Understanding” and “Work” provide large positive inuences on the two behaviouralfactors, whilst, “Environment” and “Stress” only negatively work on“Encouragement”. Regarding “Expectation”, there is no path to the behaviourrelated factors but there are three identied correlations (see Figure 3). Correlationbetween two factors is indicated by double-headed arrow.

From the relations between “Understanding”, “Work”, “Relatedness” and“Performance,” it can be concluded that positive understanding of local colleagues

and positive perception about work result in a close human relationship between theaid workers and local colleagues. Thus, close relationships between the above actorscontribute to enhanced organisational performance.

On the other hand, interpretations of “Expectation” and “Encouragement” arecomplicated. “Expectation” has a positive small effect correlations with “Environment”and “Stress” but shows a negative small effect correlation with “Understanding”. Fromthe identied correlations, although correlation cannot explain causal relationship, thefollowing interpretations about JICA aid workers are discernible:

Figure 3.Path coefcient in

hypothesised relationship


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. Those who are not stressed regarding their work tend not to have high levels of expectation about their local colleagues.

. Those who are satised regarding their work environment tend not to have highlevels of expectation about their local colleagues.

. Those who have a positive understanding of their local colleagues tend to havehigh levels of expectation about their local colleagues.

In other words, “Expectation” is related to both positive and negative perception of JICA aid workers whereby this mixed perceptual tendency could be the reason for thepresence of no path to the behaviour factors.

The notion of “Encouragement” was also inuenced by both positive and negativeperceptual factors. Based on the result, it is assumed that there might be two kinds of encouragement. One would be a motivating type of encouragement that originatesfrom positive perception and the other would be urging type encouragement thatderives from stress and frustration. Hence, it could appear that the aid workersencouraged their local colleagues by the both means. Although a number of studiesexplain that motivational behaviour succeeds in towards enhancing staff ’sperformance (e.g. Rudolph and Kleiner, 1989; Analoui, 1995; Halepota, 2005), theresults of the present study imply that the motivational behaviour which is caused bystress or frustration does not contribute to increase organisational performance. Due tothis combined inuence, there may be no positive path present from “Encouragement”to the performance variable.

Finally, the main reason for the presence of a positive medium effect path from“Relatedness” to “Performance” is the project situation itself in developing countries.An uncontrollable external environment such as unstable revenue of partner country

Cause Effect Interpretation

Understanding Relatedness JICA aid workers who have positive understanding of theirlocal colleagues tend to keep close relationships with localcolleagues

Work Relatedness JICA aid workers who enjoy work tend to keep closerelationships with local colleagues

Understanding Encouragement JICA aid workers who have positive understanding of theirlocal colleagues tend to encourage their local colleagues

Work Encouragement JICA aid workers who have high work satisfaction tend toencourage their local colleagues

Environment Encouragement JICA aid workers who are dissatised with their workenvironment tend to encourage their local colleagues

Stress Encouragement JICA aid workers who are stressed about work tend toencourage their local staff

Relatedness Performance JICA aid workers who keep a close relationship with theirlocal colleagues tend to have high organisationalperformance


Table V.Interpretation from pathdiagram

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often affects the performance of projects, whereby even if the project teams have astrong tendency towards teamwork, sometimes the external environment cannot betotally overcome.

These results adequately explain how the perception and expectations of theJapanese aid workers largely inuences their behaviour toward the local staff and theperformance of the organisation as the whole. Hence, motivated aid workers withpositive perception will be one of the critical factors for the effective management of development projects and programmes (Analoui, 1998), such that more attention needsto be paid to the psychological aspects of the aid workers.

6. ConclusionThis study intended to extend the theory of the “Pygmalion effect” to performance of theorganisation within the developing world. It does not intend to criticise the aid workers(donors) for having negative perceptions and behaviours towards the local staff. Rather,it aims to explore and explain the phenomenon in order to provide a basis for betterunderstanding the behaviour of actors involved. It is not uncommon to see people with anegative perception of others and situations due to their differing perceptual tendencies.In this study, although the majority of the respondents generally showed positiveperceptions, the results pointed to the presence of tendencies that stressed Japanese aidworkers due to frustration from the environment and their high expectation from theirlocal counterparts with whom they shared the responsibility of work.

Analysis of the data indicated the presence of causal relationships betweenperception related factors (Understanding and Work), behaviour related factors(Relatedness) and the organisational performance variable (Performance). Positiveperception on the part of the aid workers causes close human relationships betweenthem and their local colleagues. Moreover, harmonised human relationships workpositively towards enhancing organisational performance.

However, the analysis clearly shows that lack of positive encouragement behaviouron the part of the aid workers, due to experiencing stress and frustration, failed toincrease organisational performance. Thus, this indicates that maintaining positiveperception is imperative for successful management of people and operations. It istherefore prudent for the future success of the project implementation thatcross-cultural management training should be included in the brieng of workersprior to embarking on the management of development projects in order to removeunnecessary misunderstanding and tension between the actors involved. In addition,the aid worker’s mental health also needs to be nurtured because positive perceptionsunderpin a healthy mind. As a number of studies in management have proven,understanding and maintaining healthy psychological well being in the organisation isessential for successful management. In this sense, these results shed light on the

importance of people-related management skills in development projects. Moreover,further analysis is required to clarify the complexity of the relationships at work,especially in the context of development.

Action levers. Cross-cultural management is vitally important for the success of the projects

and organisations and should be considered in order to reducemisunderstanding.


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. Prior to embarking to new mission abroad, aid workers ought to be familiarisedwith stress-management techniques to maintain positive perception.

. Owing to presence of human relation challenges in the eld, people-related skillsand competencies ought to be provided.

. Aid workers need to understand that their negative perception of local colleaguesand work environment will not contribute to enhanced organisationalperformance.

. Aid workers have to understand the value of positive perception andencouragement towards achieving the organisational goal.

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Corresponding authorFarhad Analoui can be contacted at: [email protected]


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