MGT Exam 2

What is ability?

Ability refers to the relatively stable capabilities of people to perform a particular range of different but related activities. Differences in ability are a function of both genes and the environment.

What does it mean to be equitably treated according to equity theory, and how do employees respond to inequity?

According to equity theory, rewards are equitable when a person's ratio of outcomes to inputs matches those of some relevant comparison other. A sense of inequity triggers equity distress. Underreward inequity typically results in lower levels of motivation or higher levels of counterproductive behavior. Overreward inequity typically results in cognitive distortion, in which inputs are reevaluated in a more positive light.

What three beliefs help determine work effort, according to expectancy theory?

According to expectancy theory, effort is directed toward behaviors when effort is believed to result in performance (expectancy), performance is believed to result in outcomes (instrumentality), and those outcomes are anticipated to be valuable (valence).

What two qualities make goals strong predictors of task performance, according to goal-setting theory?

According to the goal-setting theory, goals become strong drivers of motivation and performance when they are difficult and specific. Specific and difficult goals affect performance by increasing self-set goals and task strategies. Those effects occur more frequently when employees are given feedback, tasks are not too complex, and goal commitment is high.

Is personality driven by nature or by nurture?

Although both nature and nurture are important, personality is affected significantly by genetic factors. Studies of identical twins reared apart and studies of personality stability over time suggest that between 35 and 45 percent of the variation in personality is genetic. Personality can be changed, but such changes are apparent only over the course of several years.

What are the various types of cognitive ability?

Cognitive abilities include verbal ability, quantitative ability, reasoning ability, spatial ability, and perceptual ability. General cognitive ability, or g, underlies all of these more specific cognitive abilities.

How does personality affect job performance and organizational commitment?

Conscientiousness has a moderate positive relationship with job performance and a moderate positive relationship with organizational commitment. It has stronger effects on these outcomes than the rest of the Big Five

What are the various types of emotional ability?

Emotional intelligence includes four specific kinds of emotional skills: self-awareness, other awareness, emotion regulation, and use of emotions.

What decision-making problems can prevent employees from translating their learning into accurate decisions?

Employees are less able to translate their learning into accurate decisions when they struggle with limited information, faulty perceptions, faulty attributions, and escalation of commitment.

What types of knowledge can employees gain as they learn and build expertise?

Employees gain both explicit and tacit knowledge as they build expertise. Explicit knowledge is easily communicated and available to everyone. Tacit knowledge, however, is something employees can learn only through experience.

What are the methods by which employees learn in organizations?

Employees learn new knowledge through reinforcement and observation of others. That learning also depends on whether the employees are learning-oriented or performance-oriented.

How does cognitive ability affect job performance and organizational commitment?

General cognitive ability has a strong positive relationship with job performance, due primarily to its effects on task performance. In contrast, general cognitive ability is only weakly related to organizational commitment.

What taxonomies can be used to describe cultural values?

Hofstede's taxonomy of cultural values includes individualism-collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity-femininity, and short-term vs. long-term orientation. More recent research by Project GLOBE has replicated many of those dimensions and added five other means to distinguish among cultures: gender egalitarianism, assertiveness, future orientation, performance orientation, and humane orientation.

How does learning affect job performance and organizational commitment?

Learning has a moderate positive relationship with job performance and a weak positive relationship with organizational commitment.

What is learning, and how does it affect decision making?

Learning is a relatively permanent change in an employee's knowledge or skill that results from experience. Decision making refers to the process of generating and choosing from a set of alternatives to solve a problem. Learning allows employees to make better decisions by making those decisions more quickly and by being able to generate a better set of alternatives.

What steps can organizations take to hire people with high levels of cognitive ability?

Many organizations use cognitive ability tests to hire applicants with high levels of general cognitive ability. One of the most commonly used tests is the Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test.

How does motivation affect job performance and organizational commitment?

Motivation has a strong positive relationship with job performance and a moderate positive relationship with organizational commitment. Of all the energetic forces subsumed by motivation, self-efficacy/competence has the strongest relationship with performance.

What is motivation?

Motivation is defined as a set of energetic forces that originates both within and outside an employee, initiates work-related effort, and determines its direction, intensity, and persistence.

How does trust affect job performance and organizational commitment?

Organizations can become more trustworthy by emphasizing corporate social responsibility, a perspective that acknowledges that the responsibilities of business encompass the economic, legal, ethical, and citizenship expectations of society.

What steps can organizations take to increase employee motivation?

Organizations use compensation practices to increase motivation. Those practices may include individual-focused elements (piece-rate, merit pay, lump-sum bonuses, recognition awards), unit-focused elements (gain sharing), or organization-focused elements (profit sharing).

How can team compensation be used to manage team effectiveness?

Outcome interdependence has important effects on teams, which can be managed with compensation practices that take team performance into account.

What is personality? What are cultural values?

Personality refers to the structures and propensities inside people that explain their characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior. It also refers to people's social reputations—the way they are perceived by others. In this way, personality captures what people are like (unlike ability, which reflects what people can do). Cultural values are shared beliefs about desirable end states or modes of conduct in a given culture that influence the development and expression of traits.

Are personality tests useful tools for organizational hiring?

Personality tests are useful tools for organizational hiring. Research suggests that applicants do "fake" to some degree on the tests, but faking does not significantly lower the correlation between test scores and the relevant outcomes.

What are the various types of physical ability?

Physical abilities include strength, stamina, flexibility and coordination, psychomotor abilities, and sensory abilities.

What two methods can employees use to make decisions?

Programmed decisions are decisions that become somewhat automatic because a person's knowledge allows him or her to recognize and identify a situation and the course of action that needs to be taken. Many task-related decisions made by experts are programmed decisions. Nonprogrammed decisions are made when a problem is new, complex, or not recognized. Ideally, such decisions are made by following the steps in the rational decision-making model.

What is psychological empowerment, and what four beliefs determine empowerment levels?

Psychological empowerment reflects energy rooted in the belief that tasks are contributing to some larger purpose. Psychological empowerment is fostered when work goals appeal to employees' passions (meaningfulness), employees have a sense of choice regarding work tasks (self-determination), employees feel capable of performing successfully (competence), and employees feel they are making progress toward fulfilling their purpose (impact).

What are the five general team types and their defining characteristics?

There are several different types of teams—work teams, management teams, action teams, project teams, and parallel teams—but many teams in organizations have characteristics that fit in multiple categories and differ from one another in other ways.

How do team characteristics influence team effectiveness?

Task interdependence has a moderate positive relationship with team performance and a weak relationship with team commitment.

What factors are involved in team composition?

Team composition refers to the characteristics of the members who work in the team. These characteristics include roles, ability, personality, and member diversity, as well as the number of team members.

What are the three general types of team interdependence?

Teams can be interdependent in terms of the team task, goals, and outcomes. Each type of interdependence has important implications for team functioning and effectiveness.

What are the "Big Five"?

The "Big Five" include conscientiousness (e.g., dependable, organized, reliable), agreeableness (e.g., warm, kind, cooperative), neuroticism (e.g., nervous, moody, emotional), openness to experience (e.g., curious, imaginative, creative), and extraversion (e.g., talkative, sociable, passionate).

What taxonomies can be used to describe personality, other than the Big Five?

The Big Five is the dominant taxonomy of personality; other taxonomies include the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory and Holland's RIASEC model

What are the types of team diversity, and how do they influence team functioning?

The effect of diversity on the team depends on time and whether the diversity is surface level or deep level. The effects of surface-level diversity tend to diminish with time, whereas the effects of deep-level diversity tend to increase over time.

What dimensions can be used to describe the fairness of an authority's decision making?

The fairness of an authority's decision making can be judged along four dimensions. Distributive justice reflects the perceived fairness of decision-making outcomes. Procedural justice reflects the perceived fairness of decision-making processes. Interpersonal justice reflects the perceived fairness of the treatment received by employees from authorities. Informational justice reflects the perceived fairness of the communications provided to employees from authorities.

What is the four-component model of ethical decision making?

The four-component model of ethical decision making argues that ethical behavior depends on three concepts. Moral awareness reflects whether an authority recognizes that a moral issue exists in a situation. Moral judgment reflects whether the authority can accurately identify the "right" course of action. Moral intent reflects an authority's degree of commitment to the moral course of action.

What steps can organizations take to foster learning?

Through various forms of training, companies can give employees more knowledge and a wider array of experiences that they can use to make decisions.

In what three sources can trust be rooted?

Trust can be disposition-based, meaning that one's personality includes a general propensity to trust others. Trust can also be cognition-based, meaning that it's rooted in a rational assessment of the authority's trustworthiness. Finally, trust can be affect-based, meaning that it's rooted in feelings toward the authority that go beyond any rational assessment of trustworthiness.

What is trust, and how does it relate to justice and ethics?

Trust is the willingness to be vulnerable to an authority based on positive expectations about the authority's actions and intentions. Justice reflects the perceived fairness of an authority's decision making and can be used to explain why employees judge some authorities as more trustworthy than others. Ethics reflects the degree to which the behaviors of authority are in accordance with generally accepted moral norms and can be used to explain why authorities choose to act in a trustworthy manner.

What dimensions can be used to describe the trustworthiness of an authority?

Trustworthiness is judged along three dimensions. Ability reflects the skills, competencies, and areas of expertise that an authority possesses. Benevolence is the degree to which an authority wants to do good for the trustor, apart from any selfish or profit-centered motives. Integrity is the degree to which an authority adheres to a set of values and principles that the trustor finds acceptable.