Reference no: EM133363604

Case: Sam Design is a local marketing agency that has grown over the past 10 years and during that period, SD has expanded in the areas of web design and digital marketing. As part of its rapid expansion, SD hired several new designers as well as marketing executives. Leading the latter is Mr Loo, a senior manager in the marketing division who joined SD in its early days and worked diligently over the years, often clocking long hours in the office till late at night. He expects all his staff to work equally hard. Mr Loo wants to know exactly what all his staff are doing, and he constantly walks around the office cubicles to check on them and also to check every detail of all the projects that he supervises. The new marketing executives and designers who recently joined SD quickly realised that it is the culture for everyone in the marketing division to work late together with Mr Loo.

Work From Home changed things abruptly when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. SD, like most other companies, had to change the way it works. Almost all the employees are now required to work from home (WFH) for an indefinite period. Mr Loo must quickly adapt to the new way of working from home as well as supervising his staff remotely. He constantly wonders what his staff are doing and if they are working as diligently as they should. Hence, he tracks their online presence through the collaboration platform used by SD. He immediately concludes that the staff is not working whenever he sees that the staff's online status is inactive and he would then sends a message or call the staff to check on him. He is even more anxious about the new executives and designers and worries that they are slacking at home. He thus decided to set up a daily routine meeting for all his staff to report the status of their work and to account for what they plan to accomplish each day. During such daily meetings, all staff are required to turn on their cameras to register their attendance and to show that they are indeed at home. In addition, to make sure that staff are fully present at work till the end of office hours, Mr Loo initiates random virtual meetings with his staff even late in the day. He also tracks how promptly staff respond to his messages and regularly emails them to ascertain that they are actively at work. At the end of each workday, all the staff supervised by Mr Loo have to report to him their progress as well as what they have accomplished each day. Mr Loo continues to manage each project very closely even though everyone is working remotely.

Joe, one of the new designers, is greatly distressed by Mr Loo's close monitoring of his daily work and the need to stand by for his calls and messages that can be lodged at any time. Even though his job contract states that his working hours are from 8:30 am to 6 pm, he realises that all the members of his project group are working well past 9 pm daily and they seem to expect him to do the same. With the WFH arrangements, there is no definite time to stop work. While his official lunch break is at 12:30 pm, Joan does not feel at ease to take his lunch break away from his computer for fear of missing Mr Loo's frequent messages. He is particularly anxious about ensuring his online status would always appear active.

Lam joined SD recently as a marketing executive. She was happy to join SD as the job description looks promising and gives her autonomy and leadership opportunities. However, she is dismayed by Mr Loo's management style and his close surveillance of her work. She feels suffocated by the need to report her project progress on a daily basis and most of all, the loss of productive time which she has to endure as the meetings are long and rigorous. She could not understand Mr Loo's obsession to track the staff's online presence and why he cannot trust his staff. It causes her so much stress that she finds herself unconsciously moving her mouse all the time in case her online status turns to "inactive". She is concerned that Mr Loo will perceive that her work attitude is poor if her online status is not active all the time. Barely two months into the new WFH arrangement, SD staff are experiencing various problems such as insomnia and loss of appetite while many have become irritable as they find it difficult to focus on work. Work tension increased among staff as they fear being held responsible for negative outcomes of team projects. This affects team collaboration and undermines the trust and camaraderie that was established prior to the pandemic. As for the new staff who just joined SD before the pandemic, they are disheartened as this is not the work environment that they expected. Some of them are designers and thought that they would be given the freedom to design in their own time and own ways. They did not expect to be watched so closely that they find it stifling to produce any creative designs

Question: Define perception and comment on why it is important in organisational behaviour, giving examples from the case mentioned above.