Everything is NOT what it seems!

Based on an analysis of the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the managers’ perception on the employees’ performance is studied.

Starting with a brief review of the literature and theories involved in the role of perception in the business world as the “Pygmalion Effect Theory” which attempt to explain how the perceiver’s positive expectation may enhance the target’s performance, the “Theory XY” that offers two sets of managerial assumptions based on negative or positive beliefs that affect the followers’ performance, the “Implicit Perception Theory” which explains that certain personality traits, behavior attitude and values tend to associate with certain types of individuals, the “Attribution Theory” that explain behavior in two attributions: internal as personal factors and external as environmental factors; all these theories among others that serves as background in the building of this analysis.

Then the analysis is made based in four hypotheses which are:

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

-Japanese aid workers tend to have a negative perception of the work environment.

-Japanese aid worker’s positive perception of the local staff causes Japanese aid worker’s positive behavior towards the local staff.

-Japanese aid worker’s positive behavior towards local staff contributes to the enhancement of organizational performance.

These hypotheses were evaluated based on 8 critical factors, those are: Understanding, Work, Environment, Expectation, Stress, Encouragement, Relatedness and Performance. At the end, studying the results the hypotheses 1 and 2 were rejected, the number 3 was contradicted and the hypothesis 4 was partly supported. These results adequately explain how the perception and expectations of the Japanese aid workers largely influences their behavior toward the local staff and the performance of the organization as the whole.

Finally the majority of the respondents generally showed positive perceptions, showing that maintain positive perception is imperative for successful management of people and operations which is the case of JICA, and harmonized human relationships work positively towards enhancing organizational performance.