Michael Scott, a regional manager at Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, exerts a pattern of alarming behavior that set his employees to question his authority at times. In this comedic series played by Steve Carell on NBC’s hit television show, The Office, Michael is known for his inappropriate sense of humor and oblivious behavior to those around him. Though he was initially hired for his impressive skills in sales, he may be ill-suited for management. Michael prides himself on being, what he considers, a great boss, friend, and entertainer however, his habits of joking around and treating professional colleagues as personal friends are often inappropriate.
¬ Michael transmits his sexual impulses and goes to great lengths to try to find the “perfect”
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He constantly needs to be told to stay on task and oftentimes, when it comes to important decisions he insists that someone else make them for him. The company cannot depend on Michael because it does not take much to distract him from his work. The cognitive perspective includes the concept of field dependence. Whether a person takes the outside environment into account when in certain situations, the person can be field dependent or field independent. According to this perspective, Michael Scott would be referred to as field dependent which means that he is extremely reliant on the environment and outside factors when completing a task or trying to solve a problem. This can be illustrated because it is clear Michael prefers social situations and working with other people rather than being alone and working independently. It is also seen in his career choice because in his everyday job he works with several different people and before he became a manager, he was a salesman, which allowed him to work with clients on a daily basis. Had Michael been field independent, he would be uncomfortable in these social situations. Categorization is also something Michael shows a great deal of. For the most part, Michael categorizes people into groups. This gets him into trouble because he tends to stereotype and generalize people in the office. For instance, after he found out Oscar from accounting was gay; he would often make references about Oscar being feminine and other, sometimes inappropriate, jokes. Kelly and Stanley also were stereotyped by Michael and he often made references to their race. Michael does not look at any of his employees negatively because of these stereotypes, but because he openly talks about them, the people around him tend to feel