Psychology of management

Identification
is connected with forming the feeling of belonging to the group in the 
course of interpersonal communication. The process evolves on three levels: emotional – ability 
of empathy; on value-and world-viewing level – the ablity of sharing another person’s point of 
view; on behavioral level – reproduction of behavior patterns. 
Identification is facilitated: 
1) in relation to all persons inducing the desire to imitate; 
2) in unclear, ambiguous, and confusing situations for which there don’t yet exist socially 
sanctioned behavior patterns; 
3) for persons who are “trainees” and that is why have to initially adapt their behavior to 
new situations; 
4) for persons who due to their character are not sure of themselves and (or) suffer from 
inferiority complex. Thanks to identification with an authoritative person they subjectively 
acquire the needed confidence. 
In the identification mechanism an important role is played by an anti-ideal containing 
such behavioral patterns which a person doesn’t want or mustn’t demonstrate. An anti-ideal 
concentrates everything that a person doesn’t want to associate oneself with. An anti-ideal is 
usually expressed brighter than an ideal. For many people it is easier to think dichotomically, and 
that is why when defining notions they usually apply the “rule of contraries”: “generous is not 
greedy”, etc. A manager working with the identification mechanism needs to orientate the group 
on the both sides of behavior reality – on the ideal one, and the anti-ideal one as polar sides of 
labor activity and communication. 

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115 
There may be spatial, time, and information coordination. In the case of spatial 
coordination of homogenous work operations one speaks mainly od simple adding of forces. It is 
known that bricks that are passed to the wall “by chain” will go faster if they are carried by 
separate workers even if the number of workers remains the same. So, five people can carry a 
heavier log than sum total of their individual forces would permit. Employees in organizations 
are usually well aware of this coordination effect, but they don’t take inti account its opposite 
effect: in large groups every new member diminishes the efforts of the rest of the team, and due 
to this there happens the so-called “social discharge”. The phenomenon of social discharge is not 
always negative: when a worker is lost, a group will work more effectively for a while. 
In the case of coordination of homogenous work operations in time the adding of forces is 
more complicated. Here, there are summed up not as much as forces as such, but also their 
possible advantages and disadvantages, i.e., their quality. At the simultaneous action of 
homogenous forces their disadvantages are compensated, and their advantage increases. Thus, 
five people busy with looking for a lost thing will find it with a greater probability than one 
person who is given five times more time for it. The decisive additional productivity is gained 
not by means of this common directedness, but by means of simultaneous and combined use of 
production abilities of various qualities. While in the case of spatial coordination of single forces 
they necessarily have to be directed at an object in the same sense, in time coordination the total 
productivity increases thanks to independence of separate workers. Employees know in general 
whose role in the production output or service rendering is the biggest, but everyone tries to 
overestimate his/her own role, and accordingly to diminish that of another person. Hence the 
appearance of resentments when it comes to material and moral stimulation, and satisfaction 
with labor decreases. 
Information coordination is directed at overcoming of uncertainty in common actions. It 
is determined on the one hand by the preset aims and operations, and on the other hand by 
activity control. The collective must have information on labor conditions, its remuneration, 
perspectives, to be sure of stability in organization’s development, stability in every employee’s 
life. If such information is not provided by the management in time, there appear various rumors, 
some of which may be openly destructive in character (frightening rumors for instance). 
Management of social-and-psychological climate is more effective when the objects, 
actions, and information in people cooperation are coordinated into one joint force.