MGT 331(Brink) Final Exam Key Terms

Norming

Members cooperate, help one another, and work toward accomplishing tasks.

Group cohesiveness

The extent to which a group is committed to staying together.

Channel

The medium used to send the message.

Espoused values and norms

The preferred values and norms explicitly stated by the organization.

Refreezing

The process of making new behaviors relatively permanent and resistant to further change.

Body language

A body movement such as a gesture or expression that conveys information to others.

Feedback

A check on the success of the communication.

Charisma

A form of interpersonal attraction that inspires support and acceptance.

Workgroups

A formal group formed by an organization to do its work.

Change agent

A person responsible for managing a change effort.

Informal leader

A person who engages in leadership activities but whose right to do so has not been formally recognized by the organization or group.

Power

A person's or group's potential to influence another person's or group's behavior.

Referent power

A personal power based on a manager's charisma or attractiveness to others.

Expert power

A personal power based on an individual's knowledge or expertise.

Legitimate power

A position power based on a person's holding of the managerial position rather than anything the manager is or does as a person.

Coercive power

A position power based on fear or a desire to avoid punishment.

Reward power

A position power that involves the use of rewards to influence and motivate followers.

Command group

A relatively permanent, formal group with functional reporting relationships and is usually included in the organization chart.

Norm

A standard against which the appropriateness of a behavior is judged.

Organizational culture

A system of shared values, norms, and assumptions that guide members' attitudes and behaviors.

Functional teams

A team whose members come from the same department or function area.

Charismatic leadership

A type of influence based on the leader's personal charisma.

Teams

An interdependent collection of at least two individuals who share a common goal and share accountability for the team's as well as their own outcomes.

Noise

Anything that blocks, distorts, or changes in any way the message the sender intended to communicate.

Trait approach

Attempted to identify stable and enduring character traits that differentiated effective leaders from nonleaders.

Position power

Based on one's position in the organization.

Personal power

Based on the person's individual characteristics, stays with a person regardless of his or her job or organization.

Hersey and Blanchard model

Based on the premise that appropriate leader behavior depends on the "readiness" of the leader's followers (i.e., the subordinate's degree of motivation, competence, experience, and interest in accepting responsibility).

Leadership

Both a process and a property.

Affinity groups

Collections of employees from the same level in the organization who meet on a regular basis to share information, capture emerging opportunities, and solve problems.

Nonverbal communications

Communications that are not spoken or written but that have meaning to others.

Trust

Confidence that other people will honor their commitments, especially when it is difficult to monitor or observe the other people's behavior.

Encoding

Converting a thought, idea, or fact into a message composed of symbols, pictures, or words.

Roles

Define the behaviors and tasks each team member is expected to perform because of the position they hold.

Michigan leadership studies

Defined job-centered and employee-centered leadership as opposite ends of a single leadership dimension.

Ohio State leadership studies

Defined leader consideration and initiating-structure behaviors as independent dimensions of leadership.

Chapter 15 Term

Definition

Social facilitation

Happens when people are motivated to look good to others and want to maintain a positive self-image.

Influence tactics

How people translate their power to affect the behavior of others.

Filtering

How we reduce the amount of information being received to a manageable amount.

Employee-centered leader behavior

Involves attempting to build effective work groups with high performance goals.

Consideration behavior

Involves being concerned with subordinates' feelings and respecting subordinates' ideas.

Initiating-structure behavior

Involves clearly defining the leader-subordinate roles so that subordinates know what is expected of them.

Job-centered leader behavior

Involves paying close attention to the work of subordinates, explaining work procedures, and demonstrating a strong interest in performance.

Leadership (as process)

Involves the use of noncoercive influence.

Informal groups

Is established by its members.

Friendship groups

Is relatively permanent and informal and draws its benefits from the social relationships among its members.

Interest groups

Is relatively temporary and informal and is organized around a common activity or interest of its members.

Transactional leadership

Leadership focused on routine, regimented activities.

Storming

Members discuss their feelings more openly and agree on group goals and individual roles in the group.

Overdetermination

Occurs because numerous organizational systems are in place to ensure that employees and systems behave as expected to maintain stability.

Groupthink

Occurs when a group's overriding concern is a unanimous decision rather than a critical analysis of alternatives.

In-group

Often receives special duties requiring more responsibility and autonomy; they may also receive special privileges, such as more discretion about work schedules.

Process loss

Performance decrements that occur when a team performs worse than the individual members would have if they had worked alone.

Process gain

Performance improvements that occur because people work together rather than independently.

Informational power

Power derived from control over information.

Persuasive power

Power due to the ability to use logic and facts to persuade.

Out-group

Receive less of the supervisor's time and attention and are likely to be assigned the more mundane tasks the group must perform and not be "in the loop" when information is being shared.

Empowerment

Sharing power with employees and giving them the authority to make and implement at least some decisions.

Organizational politics

Social influence attempts directed at those who can provide rewards that will help promote or protect the self-interests of the actor.

Leader-member exchange model (LMX) (

Stresses the importance of variable relationships between supervisors and each of their subordinates.

LPC theory of leadership

Suggests that a leader's effectiveness depends on the situation.

Problem-solving teams

Teams established to solve problems and make improvements at work.

Virtual teams

Teams of geographically and/or organizationally dispersed coworkers who communicate using the Internet and other information technologies.

Self-directed teams

Teams that set their own goals and pursue them in ways decided by the team.

Global teams

Teams with members from different countries.

Influence

The ability to affect the perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, motivation, and/or behaviors of others.

Group composition

The degree of similarity or difference among group members on factors important to the group's work.

Verbal intonation

The emphasis given to spoken words and phrases.

Message

The encoded information.

Organizational communication

The exchange of information among two or more individuals or groups in an organization that creates a common basis of understanding and feeling.

Culture of inclusion

The extent to which majority members value efforts to increase minority representation, and whether the qualifications and abilities of minority members are questioned.

Performing

The group is mature; members work together and are flexible, adaptive, and self-correcting.

Artifacts

The physical manifestation of the culture including open offices, awards, ceremonies, and formal lists of values.

Unfreezing

The process by which people become aware of the need for change.

Impression management

The process of portraying a desired image or attitude to control the impression others form of us.

Organizational socialization

The process through which employees learn about the firm's culture and pass their knowledge and understanding on to others.

Socialization

The process through which individuals become social beings.

Transformational leadership

The set of abilities that allows the leader to recognize the need for change, to create a vision to guide that change, and to execute the change effectively.

Leadership (as property)

The set of characteristics attributed to someone who is perceived to use influence successfully.

Social network

The set of relationships among people connected through friendship, family, work, or other ties.

Social loafing

The tendency of some members of groups to put forth less effort in a group than they would when working alone.

Communication

The transmission of information from one person to another to create a shared understanding and feeling.

Assumptions

Those organizational values that have become so taken for granted over time that they become the core of the company's culture.

Decoding

Translating the message back into something that can be understood by the receiver.

Behavioral approach

Tried to identify behaviors that differentiated effective leaders from nonleaders.

Group

Two or more people who interact with one another such that each person influences and is influenced by each other person.

Abuse of power

Using any type of power to demean, exploit, or take advantage of another or influencing someone to do something the person later regrets.

Enacted values and norms

Values and norms that employees exhibit based on their observations of what actually goes on in the organization.

Selective perception

When we selectively interpret what we see based on our interests, expectations, experience, and attitudes rather than on how things really are.

Cross-functional teams

A team whose members come from different departments or functional areas.

Active listening

Becoming actively involved in the process of listening to what others are saying and clarifying messages' meaning.

Forming

Characterized by members' sharing information about themselves and getting to know one another.