Joe Salatino, President of Great Northern American

Abstract
Joe Salatino is the president of Great Northern American (GNA), a telemarketing company based out of Dallas, Texas which has been around over 30 years. According to Joe, the success of his company is due to the amount of money he pays to his employees. He believes that spending money on commissions and bonuses is a means to keep his sales force of 30 people motivated. (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011)
This paper will address the following topics:
• How Joe could address the importance of understanding how people form perceptions and make attributions about others with his employees;
• Choose which learning theory will be most appropriate for Joe to apply in this situation and explain the reasons why this theory was selected;
• Ways Joe could apply the learning theory to improve employees’ performance; and
• Determine how Joe could leverage an understanding of the value of self-efficacy to ensure he hires the most successful sales people

Joe Salatino, President of Great Northern American gauges his 35- years old company’s success by the amount of money he pays his sales people. This success can only be achieved by a special breed of salespeople who recognize their own strength, limitations and who thrive on taking the initiative. This company with sales forces strength of 30 – persons is motivated by spending money on commissions and bonuses. It competes with internet users therefore, Great Northern American must rely on the quality of its employees whose work is organized and improved on a daily basis. Joe also bases decisions about rewards on perceptions whiles subordinates have succeeded at some task. With Joe, failure is not an option here. Most of the employees often attribute their own success to four casual factors: these factors include ability, effort, task- difficulty and luck. Joe’s employees must understand that: * They will succeed because they had the competencies to do the task; such a statement is called “ability attributions”. * Secondly, they will succeed because they worked hard at the telemarketing; this statement is called “effort attribution. * Again, they succeeded because the task was easy. This attribution is about task difficulty. * Finally, they succeeded at the task because they were lucky. Such statements are attributions about luck. Casual attributions of ability and effort are internal. Casual attributions of task – difficulty and luck are external. These attributions about success or failure reflect differences in self-esteem and locus of control – personality. Research has shown that, job performance and job satisfaction are influenced by one’s personality. That is, a person’s locus of control and personality characteristics that affect the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. The difficulty of relating attitudes to behavior is important. For example, if Joe’s employees hold a positive attitude towards their job but are low in conscienceless they may not necessarily work harder but they may end up coming to work late, unorganized, fail to show up or call-in at work. That is why general attitudes best predict general behaviors and specific attitudes are related most strongly to specific behaviors. Joe’s employees must understand that individuals in various organizations use several management tactics to evaluate how others perceive them. They are especially likely to use these tactics when talking to Joe Salatino himself, who have power over them, and on whom they are dependent for raises, promotion, and good job assignments. Impression management is used by individuals at all organizational levels as they talk with suppliers, co-workers, managers and clients and vice versa. That’s why Joe believes in his telemarketing success, also believes he has employees who has established relationship with their customers, such as excellent communication skill. His