MGT 301 Exam 1

Conflict is best defined as:

A process in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party.

The uncomfortable tension felt when our behavior and attitudes are inconsistent with each other is called:

Cognitive dissonance

Explain why communication is important in organizations and discuss four influences on effective communication encoding and decoding.

Communication refers to the process by which information is transmitted and understood between two or more people. Communication supports work coordination, organizational learning, decision making, changing others' behavior, and employee well-being. The communication process involves forming, encoding, and transmitting the intended message to a receiver, who then decodes the message and provides feedback to the sender. Effective communication occurs when the sender's thoughts are transmitted to and understood by the intended receiver. The effectiveness of this process depends on whether the sender and receiver have similar codebooks, the sender's proficiency at encoding that message to the audience, the sender's and receiver's motivation and ability to transmit messages through that particular communication channel, and their common mental models of the communication context.

Some investors in the stock market become overconfident and ignore evidence that their strategies are more likely to lose money. This can be attributed to _____.

Confirmation bias

The degree of physiological, psychological, and behavioral deviation from healthy functions is known as:

Distress

To increase work efficiency and make it easier to match employee competencies with job requirements, companies:

Divide work into more specialized jobs.

Which of the following statements about job satisfaction and job performance is true?

Employees who are satisfied with their jobs have higher job performance.

Constructive conflict:

Encourages employees to re-examine their basic assumptions about a problem and its possible solutions.

In order for something to be called an organization, it must have certain assets such as buildings and equipment.

False

Motivation is an external force on the person that causes him/her to engage in specific behaviors.

False

Describe the four factors that directly influence individual behavior and performance.

Four variables - motivation, ability, role perceptions, and situational factors - which are represented by the acronym MARS directly influence individual behavior and performance. Motivation represents the forces within a person that affect his or her direction, intensity, and persistence of voluntary behavior; ability includes both the natural aptitudes and the learned capabilities required to successfully complete a task; role perceptions are the extent to which people understand the job duties (roles) assigned to them or expected of them; and situational factors include conditions beyond the employee's immediate control that contain or facilitate behavior and performance.

Organizational behavior knowledge:

Helps us to understand, predict, and influence the behaviors of others in organizational settings.

Formalization

How formal an organization is. Number of rules/regulations/procedures that a firm has. Ex. Nordstroms has only 1 rule = very informal

What is a Stressor?

Include any environmental conditions that place a physical or emotional demand on a person.

Recent studies suggest that we have a(n) _____ self (our personal traits), _____ self (interpersonal relations), and _____ self (our membership in identifiable social groups).

Individual; relational; collective

According to the communication process model

Information flows through channels between the sender and receiver

Effective communication occurs when:

Information is transmitted and understood between two or more

Larger organizations

Make greater use of standardization than do smaller firms

Describe the bargaining zone model and outline strategies skilled negotiators use to claim value and create value in negotiations.

Negotiation occurs whenever two or more conflicting parties attempt to resolve their divergent goals by redefining the terms of their interdependence. The bargaining zone model identifies three strategic positions for each party (initial, target, resistance) and shows how each party moves along a continuum in opposite directions with an area of potential overlap. All negotiations consist of two divergent objectives: claiming value (discover ways to achieve mutually satisfactory outcomes for both parties). Skilled negotiators claim more value by preparing and setting goals, knowing their alternatives to the negotiation (BATNA), managing time to their advantage, and managing first offers and concessions. Skilled negotiators create more value by gathering information, using offers and concessions to discover issue priorities and building relationships with the other party. The situation is also an important consideration in negotiations, including location, physical setting, and audience characteristics.

In a purely win-lose situation, the bargaining zone states that:

Neither the target nor the resistance point is revealed to the other party

Define organizational behavior and organizations, and discuss the importance of this field of inquiry.

Organizational behavior is the study of what people think, feel, and do in and around organizations. Organizations are groups of people who work interdependently toward some purpose. OB theories help people (a) make sense of the workplace, (b) question and rebuild their personal mental models, and (c) get things done in organizations. OB knowledge is for everyone, not just managers. OB knowledge is just as important for the organization's financial health.

Describe the elements of self-concept and explain how each affects an individual's behavior and well-being.

Self-concept includes an individual's self-beliefs and self-evaluations. It has three structural characteristics - complexity, consistency, and clarity - all of which influence employee well-being, behavior, and performance. People are inherently motivated to promote and protect their self-concept (self-enhancement) and to verify and maintain their existing self-concept (self-verification). Self-evaluation consists of self-esteem, self-efficacy, and locus of control. Self-concept also consists of both personal identity and social identity. Social identity theory explains how people define themselves in terms of the groups to which they belong or have an emotional attachment.

The three main components of active listening, in order, are:

Sensing, evaluating, and responding

The process of assigning traits to people based on their membership in an identifiable social category is called:

Stereotyping

Intellectual capital refers to the:

Stock of knowledge that resides in an organization.

Describe the stress experience and review three major stressors.

Stress is an adaptive response to a situation that is perceived as challenging or threatening to a person's well-being. The stress experience, called the general adaptation syndrome, involves moving through three stages: alarm, resistance, and environmental conditions that place a physical or emotional demand on a person. Three stressors that have received considerable attention are harassment and incivility, work overload, and low task control.

The observable demographic or physiological differences in people, such as their race, ethnicity, gender, age, and physical disabilities constitute ______ diversity.

Surface-level

Which form of departmentalization tends to have a very flat hierarchy, little formalization and organizes employees around work processes?

Team-based structure

Flatter organizational structures

Tend to reduce overhead costs

Which of the following is true about the organizational grapevine?

The typical pattern of a grapevine is a cluster chain, whereby a few people actively transmit rumors to many others.

Consistency, consensus, and distinctiveness are the:

Three rules that determine whether we make an internal or external attribution

Most organizational events may be studied from all three levels of analysis: individual, team and organization.

True

Organizational effectiveness is considered the "ultimate dependent variable" in organizational behavior.

True

The evidence-based management approach embraces scientific methods because they produce more valid theories to guide management decisions.

True

The four elements of the MARS model affect all voluntary workplace behaviors and performance.

True

Coordination Through Formal Hierarchy

assigns power to individuals who use power to direct work processes and allocate resources. only can supervise limited amount of employees (costly when company grows)

Coordinating work activities

closely connected to division of labor. An organization's ability to divide work among people depends on how well those people can coordinate with one another.

Tall vs. Flat Structures

companies with wider span has more employees per supervisor. when employees added company must widen span or build taller hierarchy

Coordination Through Standardization

creating routine patterns of behavior or output

Division of Labor

refers to the subdivision of work into separate jobs assigned to different people. Subdivided work leads to job specialization, because now each job includes a narrow subset of the tasks necessary to complete the project or service. Job specialization → increases work efficiency

Coordination Through Informal communication

sharing information on mutual tasks as well as forming common mental models so that employees synchronize work activities using the same mental road map.

Organizational structure

the division of labor as well as the patterns of coordination, communication, workflow, and formal power that direct organizational activities. It dictates what activities receive the power that direct organizational activities.