Organizational Behavior

• Types of Teams

- Self-directed teams, cross functional work groups that are organized around work processes, complete an entire piece of work requiring several interdependent tasks, and have substantial autonomy over the execution of those tasks. Virtual Teams, teams whose members operate across space, time, and organizational boundaries and are linked through information technologies to achieve organizational tasks.

• Dysfunctional Teams-

- To prevent/ change dysfunctional teams state desired norms when forming teams, select members with preferred values, discuss counter-productive norms, introduce team-based rewards that counter dysfunctional norms, and disband teams with dysfunctional norms.

• Personality Traits

-Personality is the relatively enduring pattern of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize a person, along with the psychological processes behind those characteristics. Personality traits are broad concepts about people that allow us to label and understand individual differences. Personality is developed through hereditary origins (nature) as well as socialization (nature). The big Five Personality dimensions include conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extroversion. Conscientiousness and emotional stability (low neuroticism) predict individual performance in most job groups. Extraversion is associated with performance in sales and management jobs, whereas agreeableness is associated with performance in jobs requiring cooperation and openness to experience and is associated with performance in creative jobs.

• Jungian & Myers-Briggs Personality Types

-a) (Similar to five factor dimension) Extroversion vs. Introversion b) (Perceiving Information) Sensing (uses senses, factual, concrete, realistic, Practical) vs. Intuition (uses insight and subjective experience, imaginative, future focused, abstract) c) (Judging or making decisions) Thinking (rational logic, systematic, objective, impersonal) vs. Feeling (emotions, effects on others, empathetic, caring) d) (orientation toward external world) Perceiving (flexible and spontaneous, adaptable, opportunity focused) vs. Judging (Order and structure, organized, schedule-oriented, closure focused)

• Creative Process

1) Preparation, Understand the problem or opportunity, investigate information seemingly related to the issue. 2) Incubation, Period of reflective thought, Non-conscious or low-level awareness, not direct attention to the issue, Active divergent thinking process. 3) Illumination, Sudden awareness of a novel, although vague and incomplete, idea entering one's consciousness, May include an initial period of "fringe" awareness 4) Verification, Detailed logical and experimental evaluation of the illuminated idea, Further creative thinking.

• Social Cognitive Theory

- A theory that explains how learning and motivation occur by observing and modeling others as week as by anticipating the consequences of our behavior.

• Motivator-Hygiene Theory

- Herzberg's theory stating that employees are primarily motivated by growth and esteem needs, not by lower level needs.

• Need for Affiliation

A learned need in which people seek approval from others, conform to their wishes and expectations, and avoid conflict and confrontation.

• Need for Achievement

A learned need in which people want to accomplish reasonably challenging goals and desire unambiguous feedback and recognition for their success.

• Need for Power

A learned need in which people want to control environment, including people and material resources, to benefit either themselves (personalized power) or others (socialized powers).

• Expectancy Theory

A motivation theory based on the idea that work effort is directed toward behaviors people believe will lead to desired outcomes.

• Four-Drive Theory

A motivation theory based on the innate drives to acquire, bond, learn, and defend that incorporates both emotions a rationality.

• Maslow's Needs Hierarchy Theory

A motivation theory of needs arranged in a hierarchy, whereby people are motivated to fulfill a higher need as a lower one becomes gratified. Separated into five levels and states that the lowest needs are initially most important, but higher needs become more important as the lower ones are satisfied. Although very popular, the theory lacks research support because it wrongly assumes that everyone has the same hierarchy. The emerging evidence suggests that needs hierarchies vary from one person to the next according to their personal values.

• Halo Effect

A perceptual error whereby our general impression of a person, usually based on one prominent characteristic, colors our perception of that person's other characteristics.

• Open Systems Perspective

A perspective that holds that organizations depend on external environment for resources, affect that environment through their output, and consist of internal subsystems that transform inputs into outputs. Open systems cannot exist without dependence on an external environment, whereas closed systems can exist without dependence on an external environment.

• Team Building

A process that consists of formal activities intended to improve the development and functioning of a work team.

• Emotional Intelligence

A set of abilities to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in oneself and others. This concept includes four components arranged in a hierarchy: self-awareness, self-management, awareness of others' emotions, and management of emotions. Emotional intelligence can be learned to some extent, particularly through personal coaching.

• Equity Theory

A theory explaining how people develop perceptions of fairness in the distribution and exchange of resources.

• Social Identity Theory

A theory stating that people define themselves by the groups to which they belong or have an emotional attachment.

• Stress

An adaptive response to a situation that is perceived as challenging or threatening to a person's wellbeing

• Five-Factor Personality Model

CANOE Conscientiousness (organized, dependable, strongest personality predictors of performance), Agreeableness (trusting, helpful, tolerant, effective in jobs requiring cooperation and helpfulness), Neuroticism (anxious, insecure, self-conscious), Openness to experience (Creative, curious, nonconforming, linked to higher creativity and adaptability to change), and Extraversion (outgoing, talkative, energetic, Linked to sales and management performance, related to social interaction and persuasion)

• Cognitive dissonance

Condition that occurs when we perceive an inconsistency between our beliefs, feelings, and behavior

• Decision Making with Diverse Team Members

Diversity may be a competitive advantage by improving decision making and team performance on complex tasks, yet it also brings numerous challenges such as team "fault lines," slower team performance, and interpersonal conflict. One emerging employment relationship trend is the call for more work/life balance (minimizing conflict between work and non-work demands). Another employment trend is virtual work, particularly working from home. Working from home potentially increases employee productivity and reduces employee stress, but it may also lead to social isolation, reduced promotion opportunities, and tension in family relations.

• Decision Making and Mental Model

Emotions shape our preferences for alternatives and the process we follow to evaluate alternatives. We also listen in to our emotions for guidance when making decisions. This latter activity relates to intuition—the ability to know when a problem or opportunity exists and to select the best course of action without conscious reasoning. Intuition is both an emotional experience and a rapid unconscious analytic process that involves both pattern matching and action scripts.

• Ethics

Ethics refers to the study of moral principals or values that determine whether actions are right or wrong and outcomes are good or bad. Three ethical principles are utilitarianism, individual rights, and distributive justice. Ethical behavior is influenced by the degree to which an issue demands the application of ethical principles (moral intensity), the individual's ability to recognize the presence and relative importance of an ethical issue (ethical sensitivity), situational forces, and the extent to which people actively evaluate their decisions and actions against ethical and personal values (i.e., mindfulness). Ethical conduct at work is supported by codes of ethical conduct, ethics training, mechanisms for communicating ethical violations, the organization's culture.

• Stakeholders

Individuals, organizations, or other entities that affect, or are affected by, the organization's objectives and actions.

• Why create a positive work environment

Job satisfaction represents a person's evaluation of his or her job and work context. Four types of job dissatisfaction consequences are quitting or otherwise getting away from the dissatisfying situation (exit), attempting to change the dissatisfying situation (voice), patiently waiting for the problem to sort itself out (loyalty), and reducing work effort and performance (neglect). Job satisfaction has a moderate relationship with job performance and customer satisfaction. Affective organizational commitment (loyalty) is the employee's emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in a particular organization. Companies build loyalty through justice and support, shared values, trust, organizational comprehension, and employee involvement. EVLN is a template for organizing and understanding the consequences of job dissatisfaction.

• Managing Workplace Stress

Many interventions are available to to manage workplace stress, including removing the stressor, withdrawing from the stressor, changing stress perceptions, controlling stress consequences, and receiving social support.

• Values

Stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences. Define right or wrong, good or bad.

• Diversity

Surface level diversity is the observable demographic or physiological differences in people such as their race, ethnicity, gender, age, and physical disabilities. Deep-level diversity are differences in the psychological characteristics or employees, including personalities, beliefs, values, and attitudes.

• Brainstorming

Team structure in which participants try to think up as many ideas as possible. Four specific rules to follow: 1) speak freely, 2) Don't criticize, 3) Provide as many ideas as possible and 4) Build on others' ideas.

• Stages of Team Development

Teams develop through the stages of forming(learn about each other, evaluate membership), storming(conflict, members proactive, compete for roles), norming(Roles established, consensus around team objectives and team mental model), performing(efficient coordination, highly cooperative, high trust, commitment to team objectives, identify with the team), and eventually adjourning(disbanding, shift from task to relationship focus). Within these stages are two distinct team development processes: development and functioning of a work team. Teams develop norms to regulate and guide member behavior. These norms may be influenced by initial experiences, critical events, and the values and experiences that team members bring to the group.

• Team Size

Teams should be large enough to perform the work yet small enough efficient coordination and meaningful involvement.

• Decision Making

The conscious process of making choices among alternatives with the intention of moving toward some desired state of affairs.

• Role Perceptions

The extent to which a person accurately understands the job duties (roles) assigned to or expected of him or her. Beliefs about what behavior is required to achieve the desired results: a) understanding what tasks to perform b) understanding priority of tasks and c) understanding preferred behaviors to accomplish tasks.

• Motivation

The forces within a person that affect his or her direction, intensity, and persistence of voluntary behavior

• Abilities

The natural aptitudes and learned capabilities required to successfully complete a task.

• Self-fulfilling Prophecy

The perceptual process in which our expectations about another person cause that person to act more consistently with those expectations.

• Attribution Process

The perceptual process of deciding whether an observed behavior or event is caused largely by internal (the person) or external factors (environment). Attributions are decided by perceptions of the consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus of behavior. This process is subject to fundamental attribution error and self-serving bias.

• Stereotyping

The process of assigning traits to people based on their membership in a social category. This economizes mental effort, fills in missing information, and enhances our self concept, but it also lays the foundation for prejudice and systemic discrimination.

• Confirmation Bias

The process of screening out information that is contrary to our values and assumptions and more readily accepting confirming information.

• General Adaption Syndrome

The stress experience, involves moving through three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. Stressors are the causes of stress and include any environmental conditions that place a physical or emotional demand on a person. Three stressors that received considerable attention are harassment and incivility, work overload, and low task control.

• Organizational Behavior

The study of what people think, feel, and do in and around organizations.

• Bounded Rationality

The view that people are bounded in their decision making capabilities, including access to limited information, limited information processing, and tendency toward satisfying rather than maximizing when making choices.

• Organizational Citizenship

Various forms of cooperation and helpfulness to others that support the organization's social and psychological concept.

• Mental Models

Visual or relational images in our mind representing the external world. Perception involves selecting, organizing, and interpreting information to make sense of the world around us. Perceptual organization engages categorical thinking—the mostly non-conscious process of organizing people and objects into preconceived categories that are stored in our long-term memory. Mental models also help us make sense of incoming stimuli.