INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY – VNU HCMC

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

MID-TERM EXAMINATION

VÕ THỊ THANH NGÂN – BABAWE18506

Class code: BA130IU_G05_S2_2019-20

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 Understanding profoundly and genuinely about ourselves is the key to reach internal

happiness, which is the foundation to accomplish personal success in the outer world. As every

human being is a unique person, we possess distinguishable intrinsic characteristics and

spontaneously influenced by the surrounding environment, leading to the distinctive

combinations to answer whom we are, what mission we born to pursue, and so forth. Although

these questions seem too conceptual to recognize quickly, we can utilize both accumulated life

experiences and academic sources to discover unshakable traits within us. Thus, based on

intellectual ability, personality, value, perception, and motivation, enhancing self-awareness

about strengths and weaknesses leads to adequate improvements, nurturing the preparation for

the future career plan.

Firstly, intellectual ability illustrating how our mental world perceives things, analyze

contexts, and solve issues, encompasses seven elements, number aptitude, linguistic

comprehension, extraordinary identification, inductive logic, deductive reasoning, dimensional

imagination and memory. Indeed, scientific evidences believe cultural factors contributing to

individual mental ability. For example, although Asian students believed to be excellent at

scientific subjects, like mathematics or chemistry, compared to other continents, not all of them

can perform well as stereotypical expectations. Due to distinctive characteristics among

individuals, there always exist strong and weak capabilities within ourselves, regardless of how

self-motivation and attempts we have. From my perspective, I recognize the talent in verbal

ability and memory makes up the most remarkable experiences in my life, while learning

subjects related to complicated figures, like Financial Accounting, requires significant efforts

that pressure myself. Specifically, when joining the IU study tour with Korean Konkuk

University, I tremendously realize how passionate to be a tour guide. I love talking with

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foreigners, sharing them how beautiful Vietnam is, and the hospitality of ourselves, being an

enthusiastic storyteller with the collected information about historical events and relevant topics.

Indeed, related to my future career, I enjoy working in the service industry, mostly utilizing

communication skills, adapting to cultural diversity, and travelling many places.

Figure 1. IU Study Tour with Konkuk University in front of Saigon Central Post Office. December 23, 2019.

Additionally, owning high core self-evaluation, I hold in mind that the more we practice,

the better we become, and we only feel bored when facing accumulated misunderstanding.

Therefore, to deal with weaknesses in life, I focus on solving any occurring entanglements, keep

practice patiently, and the most crucial one, I do not believe in any limitations of my abilities, as

self-efficacy theory. My life quote has always denoted where there's a will, and there's a way.

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 Secondly, personality reflected through how an individual interacts with others,

patterning the consistent and permanent manners of feeling, thinking, and behaving towards

someone or something. Notably, according to the most well-known method, Myers-Briggs Type

Indicator (MBTI) possesses four characteristics and categorizes personality into 16 types,

controversially debated its effectiveness due to lacking clarity, consistency, practicality, and

credibility. Thus, managers tend to apply The Big Five Model since this approach strongly

connects with actual job performance and provide more proper structures to determine the

solidity of multiple individual traits. Applying myself in both tests, while the results in MBTI

belong to both ENFP and ENFJ, indicating the charisma of a diplomat 1, the latter method shows

my highest scores related to openness to experience, consciousness and lowest in emotional

stability2. Indeed, these outcomes are well compatible with what I perceive about myself, some

of which even surprisingly portray my ambivalent strengths and weaknesses.

From high school experiences, I actively led a group to accomplish the class yearbook, by

involving in the process of contacting the photography company and renting outfit shop,

planning a detailed timeline, costs and presenting them in class. This experience illustrates how

energetic, well-organized, and persuasive I am, reflecting the extrovert and consciousness within

two tests. Notably, due to wholeheartedly devoting myself living with nothing to regret as the

openness to experience concept, I am highly willing to try unusual activities, like playing

extreme sports or actively asking a boy out. Nonetheless, impacted by neuroticism, my innate

courage sometimes leads to intensely stressful periods and unexpected outcomes, also known

as affect intensity. Thus, I need to practice how to achieve inner peace, building up the

consistent mindset to get emotional stability, and then focus on distinctive personal strengths to

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(Myers & Briggs)
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(Big Five Personality Test Results)

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develop my career. Also, as intuitive and feeling play the dominant elements, I have always been

interested in spiritual activities. For instance, I started Vipassana meditating, learning Tarot and

reading for others, enhancing my capability to see things with its insights rationally and better

at emotional contagion. However, I still belong to the internal locus of control because of

understanding the Buddhism causality concept that states our lives are our choices.

Additionally, recently, a Forest personality test created by Seekrtech Company has been

well-known on social media due to its creative content and well-decorated theme 3. Despite for

entertaining purpose only, many users find it accurate their personality and keep sharing

extensively. Personally testing, I closely link with Bamboo, regarded as constant and

trustworthy, detailed-oriented with wholehearted dedications to pursue my dreams.

Figure 2 Seekrtech co. ltd, (April 23 2020). Forest personality test [screen capture].

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(Test Your Focus Type x Find Your Personal Flower)

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 Thirdly, values represent fundamental beliefs helping individuals determine what is right

and wrong, and how to conduct themselves suitably with the society, attributed by both content

and intensity. According to my value system, health stands in the top priority, followed by

family, happiness, freedom, prosperity, and so forth. As Milton Rokeach, these mentioned

previous known as terminal values, in which I pursue throughout my lifetime, while instrumental

values are the means of fulfilling terminal ones, chiefly money. Since prioritizing long-term

goals motivates people to accomplish life missions, we tend to be more satisfied than those who

focus on the cash only for years. Indeed, depending on ages and experiences, different life

perspectives mentioned in Maslow's hierarchy of needs influence the ranking sets of values.

Consequently, despite comprehending how essential to have a healthy life, as a

youngster, I attempt to achieve the highest quality performance in study, which sometimes ruins

my health, and unbalance work-life, called cognitive dissonance. Nevertheless, I will try to

reorganize daily schedules, avoid perfectionism in work and aim for my health first.

Furthermore, practicing cooking is a smart choice since it helps me spend more time together

with my family and well-prepared for the future as well.

Fourthly, perception is the process individuals favorably reflect and interpret sensory

patterns into their mental world, regardless of the actual environments. Indeed, as possessing

unique characteristics, we perceive and evaluate differently under the same context, leading to

diverse attitudes and behaviors towards a particular subject. According to the attribution

theory, to judge others reasonably, determining the original causes of distinctiveness, consensus

and consistency must avoid self-serving bias, cultural stereotypes, and selective perception, halo

and contrast effects4. Additionally, making rational decisions with integrity and without

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(Robbins & Judge, 2017, p. 211)

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prejudices or fallacy plays the most vital role. Personally analyzing, self-dedicated to

achievement leads me to high expectation in group performance, thus positively inspiring

teammates as applying self-fulfilling prophecy.

Nevertheless, when any conflict occurs in discussions, it evokes myself-serving bias, and

I quickly fall into the selective perception, reducing fair assessment. Besides,

sometimes randomness error vastly affects my decision-making process due to bounded

rationality. Therefore, from today, I need to eliminate these biases when judging others, and

enhance the moral practices to reach higher creativity, building up sustainable development and

consistent social standards for the organizational goals in the future.

Fifthly, motivation defined as the inspirational methods spurs individuals to take action

and achieve outcomes, consisting of strength, direction and determination, depicting through four

traditional and six contemporary approaches. Indeed, Maslow concept has cultivated the most

fundamental background on human needs, containing five levels but vary proportions relied on

individuals' personality and living conditions. Besides, while the two-factor theory of Herzberg

illustrates intrinsical fulfilling motivate and satisfy employees, McClelland's approach modestly

focuses on needs for achievement, power or affiliation. Furthermore, McGregor's Theory X and

Theory Y later combined as Theory Z, explaining how Japan can quickly revitalize the economy

after suffering US nuclear bombs.

For instance, as dreaming of becoming a tour guide, the intrinsic value terminally forms

the happiness to travel numerous places and well-learned cultural experiences, while extrinsic

one belongs to high salary and gratuity from foreigners, also called instrumental value or hygiene

factors of theory X, thus temporary motivators. Therefore, cognitive evaluation theory & self-

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concordance are two extreme subset dimensions, sequentially revealing whether I will be

attracted to incentives of money or consistently pursuit the job with its core values. Personally

speaking, due to only living once, following dream jobs is a must for me. Also, to reach further

in life, striving for a hard but SMART goal spontaneously lights up our innate missions.

To conclude, I can recognize who I am.

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 References
1. Big Five Personality Test Results. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2020, from
Openpsychometrics.org: https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/IPIP-BFFM/results.php?
r=3.2,2.5,4,4,4.4#_V

2. Contributors, W. (2020, April 21). Tarot. Retrieved April 24, 2020, from Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot

3. Goenka, S. (n.d.). Vipassana Meditation. Retrieved April 24, 2020, from Dhamma.org:
https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/vipassana

4. Myers & Briggs. (n.d.). The Myers & Briggs Foundation. Retrieved April 23, 2020, from
Myersbriggs.org:
https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/the-16-mbti-
types.htm

5. Robbins & Judge. (2017). ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR (17 ed.). (Global, Ed.)
Boston: PEARSON.

6. Test Your Focus Type x Find Your Personal Flower. (n.d.). (Forest, Producer, &
Seekrtech) Retrieved April 23, 2020, from Forest-mt.seekrtech.com: https://forest-
mt.seekrtech.com/