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Occasionally we are able to determine with certainty the reasons people act as they do. More often, such certainty isn’t possible, we
simply do not have enough information and time to fully understand people’s action. Managers, on the other hand, are more concerned with examining reasons for behavior than other people.
The major purpose of this article is to examine factors affecting our understanding of behavior which have been addressed by a branch of social psychology called “Attribution Theory”.
To do that, we first take a look at attribution theorists which suggest that managers tend to assume that employee’s behavior is a result of either their personality characteristics or of external situational characteristics.
Then, the attribution process, actor- obsever differences, and success - failure differences are discussed. Finally, some effects of attribution are evaluated. In addition, at the same time in order to enrich the quality of evaluation, some of the findings of the writer’s personal researches are presented throughout the paper.