Chapter 14 Understanding Individual

Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®)

A general personality assessment tool that measures the personality of an individual using four categories: Social interaction: Extrovert or Introvert (E or I) Preference for gathering data: Sensing or Intuitive (S or N) Preference for decision making: Feeling or Thinking (F or T) Style of decision making: Perceptive or Judgmental (P or J)

Attitude Surveys

A instrument/document that presents employees with a set of statements or questions eliciting how they feel about their jobs, work groups, supervisors, or their organization.

Employee Productivity

A performance measure of both efficiency and effectiveness

Perception

A process by which individuals give meaning (reality) to their environment by organizing and interpreting their sensory impressions.

Personality Job Fit Theory (John Holland)

An employee's job satisfaction and likelihood of turnover depends on the compatibility of the employee's personality and occupation. Key points of the theory: - There are differences in personalities. - There are different types of jobs. - Job satisfaction and turnover are related to the match between personality and job for an individual.

Self-Monitoring

An individual's ability to adjust his or her behavior to external, situational factors. High self-monitors: - Are sensitive to external cues and behave differently in different situations. - Can present contradictory public persona and private selves—impression management. Low self-monitors - Do not adjust their behavior to the situation. - Are behaviorally consistent in public and private.

Cognitive Dissonance

Any incompatibility or inconsistency between attitudes or between behavior and attitudes.

Workplace Misbehavior

Any intentional employee behavior that has negative consequences for the organization or individuals within the organization.

Learning

Any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience.

Assumed Similarity

Assuming that others are more like us than they actually are

Shaping Behavior

Attempting to "mold" individuals by guiding their learning in graduated steps such that they learn to behave in ways that most benefit the organization. Shaping methods: - Positive reinforcement: rewarding desired behaviors. - Negative reinforcement: removing an unpleasant consequence once the desired behavior is exhibited. - Punishment: penalizing an undesired behavior. - Extinction: eliminating a reinforcement for an undesired behavior.

Define attitudes. List and discuss the three components of attitudes and include an example of a statement that describes each component to support your answer.

Attitudes are evaluative statements either favorable or unfavorable concerning objects, people, or events. They reflect how an individual feels about something. The three components that make up attitudes are cognition, affect, and behavior. The cognitive component of an attitude is made up of the beliefs, opinions, knowledge, or information held by a person. The affective component of an attitude is the emotional or feeling part of an attitude. Finally, affect can lead to behavioral outcomes. The behavioral component of an attitude refers to an intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something.

Individual behavior

Attitudes, personality, perception, learning, and motivation

Components of Attitude

Cognitive component: the beliefs, opinions, knowledge, or information held by a person. Affective component: the emotional or feeling part of an attitude. Behavioral component: the intention to behave in a certain way.

People seek consistency in two ways

Consistency among their attitudes. Consistency between their attitudes and behaviors.

Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB)

Discretionary behavior that is not a part of an employee's formal job requirements, but which promotes the effective functioning of the organization

Correlation between Job Satisfaction and Workplace Misbehavior

Dissatisfied employees will respond somehow Not easy to predict exactly how they'll respond

Employee behaviors that managers are concerned about?

Employee Productivity Absenteeism turnover Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) Job Satisfaction workplace misbehavior

Define Attitude

Evaluative statements—either favorable or unfavorable—concerning objects, people, or events.

Halo Effect

Forming a general impression of a person on the basis of a single characteristic of that person

Attribution Theory

How the actions of individuals are perceived by others depends on what meaning (causation) we attribute to a given behavior. Internally caused behavior: under the individual's control Externally caused behavior: due to outside factors

Focus of Organizational Behaviors

Individual Behavior Group Behavior Organizational

Emotions

Intense feelings (reactions) that are directed at specific objects (someone or something)

Locus of Control

Internal locus: persons who believe that they control their own destiny. External locus: persons who believe that what happens to them is due to luck or chance (the uncontrollable effects of outside forces).

Organizational Commitment

Is the degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization. Leads to lower levels of both absenteeism and turnover.

Perceived Organizational Support

Is the general belief of employees that their organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being.

Stereotyping

Judging someone on the basis of our perception of a group he or she is a part of.

Group behavior

Norms, roles, team building, leadership, and conflict

Theories of learning

Operant conditioning Social learning

What is organizational behavior? How can the study of organizational behavior help managers?

Organizational behavior is a field of study that is concerned specifically with the actions of people at work. It focuses primarily on two areas, individual behavior and group behavior. Individual behavior includes topics such as attitudes, personality, perception, learning, and motivation. Group behavior includes norms, roles, team building, leadership, and conflict.

Correlation between Job Satisfaction and Productivity

Organizations with more satisfied employees are more effective than those with fewer satisfied employees.

The Big-Five Model

Personality trait model that includes: Extraversion : The degree to which someone is sociable, talkative, assertive, and comfortable in relationships with others. Agreeableness : The degree to which someone is good natured, cooperative, and trusting. Conscientiousness : The degree to which someone is reliable, responsible, dependable, persistent, and achievement oriented. Emotional stability : The degree to which someone is calm, enthusiastic, and secure (positive) or tense, nervous, depressed, and insecure (negative). Openness to experience: The degree to which someone has a wide range of interests and is imaginative, fascinated with novelty, artistically sensitive, and intellectual.

Correlation between Job Satisfaction and Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB)

Relationship between job satisfaction and OCB is tempered by perceptions of fairness Individual OCB is influenced by work group OCB

Correlation between Job Satisfaction and Turnover

Satisfied employees have lower levels of turnover; dissatisfied employees have higher levels of turnover.

Correlation between Job satisfaction and absenteeism

Satisfied employees tend to have lower levels of absenteeism, although satisfied employees are bound to take company approved days off

Organizational

Structure, culture, and human resource policies and practices

Emotional Intelligence (EI)

The ability to notice and to manage emotional cues and information. Dimensions of EI: - Self awareness: knowing what you're feeling - Self-management: managing emotions and impulses - Self-motivation: persisting despite setbacks and failures - Empathy: sensing how others are feeling - Social skills: handling the emotions of others

Organizational Behavior (OB)

The actions of people at work

Job Involvement

The degree to which an employee identifies with his or her job, actively participates in it, and considers his or her performance to be important to his or her self-worth.

Machiavellianism (Mach)

The degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and seeks to gain and manipulate power—ends can justify means.

Self-Esteem (SE)

The degree to which people like or dislike themselves High SEs - Believe in themselves and expect success. - Take more risks and use unconventional approaches. - Are more satisfied with their jobs than low SEs. Low SEs - Are more susceptible to external influences. - Depend on positive evaluations from others. - Are more prone to conform than high SEs.

Absenteeism

The failure to report to work when expected

Job Satisfaction

The individual's general attitude toward his or her job

Correlation between Job Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction

The level of job satisfaction for frontline employees is related to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. Interaction with dissatisfied customers can increase an employee's job dissatisfaction. Actions to increase job satisfaction for customer service workers: - Hire upbeat and friendly employees. - Reward superior customer service. - Provide a positive work climate. - Use attitude surveys to track employee satisfaction.

Risk Taking

The propensity (or willingness) to take risks. High risk-takers take less time and require less information than low risk-takers when making a decision.

Self-serving bias

The tendency of individuals to attribute their successes to internal factors while blaming personal failures on external factors.

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and to overestimate the influence of internal or personal factors.

Operant Conditioning (B.F. Skinner)

The theory that behavior is a function of its consequences and is learned through experience. Operant behavior: voluntary or learned behaviors - Behaviors are learned by making rewards contingent to behaviors. - Behavior that is rewarded (positively reinforced) is likely to be repeated. - Behavior that is punished or ignored is less likely to be repeated.

Social Learning

The theory that individuals learn through their observations of others and through their direct experiences. Attributes of models that influence learning: - Attentional: the attractiveness or similarity of the model - Retention: how well you can remember the model - Motor reproduction: the reproducing of the model's actions - Reinforcement: the rewards associated with learning the model behavior

Personality

The unique combination of emotional, thought and behavioral patterns that affect how a person reacts and interacts with others

Turnover

The voluntary and involuntary permanent withdrawal from an organization

Goals of Organizational Behavior

To explain, predict and influence behavior.

Gen Y

individuals born after 1978