Chapter 7: organizational mgmt

Self-concordance

"A more recent outgrowth of self-determination theory is self-concordance, which considers how strongly people's reasons for pursuing goals are consistent with their interests and core values"

Mgmt y objectives (MBO)

"A more systematic way to utilize goal setting is with management by objectives (MBO), an initiative most popular in the 1970s but still used today. MBO emphasizes participatively set goals that are tangible, verifiable, and measurable."

Equity theory

"According to equity theory, employees compare what they get from their jobs (their outcomes such as pay, promotions, recogni-tion, or a bigger office) to what they put into it"

Distributive justice

"Distributive justice is concerned with the fairness of outcomes, such as the pay and recognition that employees receive. Outcomes can be allocated in many ways. "

Expectancy theory

"Expectancy theory argues that the strength of our tendency to act a certain way depends on the strength of our expectation of a given outcome and its attractiveness. In practical terms, employees are motivated to exert a high level of effort when they believe that it will lead to a good performance appraisal, that a good appraisal will lead to orga-nizational rewards such as salary increases and/or intrinsic rewards, and that the rewards will satisfy their personal goals."

Goal commitment

"Goal commitment. Goal-setting theory assumes an individual is committed to the goal and determined not to lower or abandon it. The individual (1) believes he or she can achieve the goal and (2) wants to achieve it"

Intensity

"Intensity describes how hard a person tries. This is the element most of us focus on when we talk about motivation.

Job engagement

"Joseph has a high level of job engagement, the investment of an employee's physi-cal, cognitive, and emotional energies into job performanc"

National characteristics

"National characteristics. Goals may have different effects in different cultures. In collectivistic and high power-distance cultures, achievable moderate goals can be more motivating than difficult ones"

Reinforcement theory

"Reinforcement theory, in contrast, takes a behavioristic view, arguing that re-inforcement conditions behavior."

Goal-setting theory

"Research on goal-setting theory, proposed by Edwin Locke, reveals the impressive effects of goal specificity, challenge, and feedback on performance. Un-der the theory, intentions to work toward a goal are considered a major source of work motivation."

Self-efficacy theory

"Self-efficacy theory, also known as social cognitive theory or social learning theory, refers to an individual's belief that he or she is capable of performing a task"

Task characteristics

"Task characteristics. Goals themselves seem to affect performance more strongly when tasks are simple rather than complex, well learned rather than novel, indepen-dent rather than interdependent, and on the high end of achievable.30 On interdepen-dent tasks, group goals are more effective."

Hierarchy of needs

"The best-known theory of motivation is Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs,2 which hypothesizes that within every human being there is a hierarchy of five needs. "

Behaviorism

"The concept of operant conditioning was part of Skinner's broader con-cept of behaviorism, which argues that behavior follows stimuli in a relatively un-thinking manner."

Two-factor theory

"The responses differed significantly and led Herzberg to his two-factor theory (also called motivation-hygiene theory, but this term is not used much today)"

Interpersonal justice

"The second type of justice relevant to interactions between managers and employees is interpersonal justice, which reflects whether employees are treated with dignity and respect"

Social learning theory

"The view that we can learn through both observation and direct experience is called social-learning theory"

Prevention focus

"Those with a prevention focus strive to fulfill duties and obligations, as well as avoid conditions, that pull them away from desired goals. "

Promotion focus

"Those with a promotion focus strive for advancement and accomplishment, and approach conditions that move them closer toward desired goals."

Motivation

"We define motivation as the processes that account for an individual's intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal."

"Some leaders, such as U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs (and former Procter & Gamble CEO) Robert McDonald and Best Buy's CEO Hubert Joly, are known for their demanding performance goals"

"When asked whether their jobs had clearly defined goals, a minority of respondents to a survey said yes"

Procedural justice

"While distributive justice looks at what outcomes are allocated, procedural justice examines how"

Organizational justice

"al-though equity theory's propositions have not all held up, the hypothesis served as an important precursor to the study of organizational justice, or more simply fairness, in the workplace.

Cognitive evaluation theory

"cognitive evaluation theory, a complementary theory hypothesizing that extrinsic rewards will reduce intrinsic interest in a task."

Informational justice

"informational justice, which reflects whether managers provide employees with explanations for key decisions and keep them informed of important organizational matters. The more detailed and candid managers are with employees, the more fairly treated those employees feel."

Persistence

"motivation has a persistence dimension. This measures how long a person can maintain effort. Motivated individuals stay with a task long enough to achieve their goals"

Self-determination theory

"self-determination theory, which proposes that people prefer to feel they have control over their actions, so anything that makes a previously enjoyed task feel more like an obligation than a freely chosen activity will undermine motivation."

"employees perceive that procedures are fairer when they are given a say in"

"the decision-making process. Having direct influence over how decisions are made, or at the very least being able to present our opinion to decision makers, creates a sense of control and helps us to feel empowered "

"Based on equity theory, employees who perceive inequity will make one of six

1. Change inputs (exert less effort if underpaid or more if overpaid). 2. Change outcomes (individuals paid on a piece-rate basis can increase their pay by producing a higher quantity of units of lower quality). 3. Distort perceptions of self ("I used to think I worked at a moderate pace, but now I realize I work a lot harder than everyone else") 4. Distort perceptions of others ("Mike's job isn't as desirable as I thought"). 5. Choose a different referent ("I may not make as much money as my brother-in-law, but I'm doing a lot better than my Dad did when he was my age"). 6. Leave the field (quit the job)."

"self-efficacy can be increased: "

1. Enactive mastery. 2. Vicarious modeling. 3. Verbal persuasion. 4. Arousal.

"The original five needs are:

1. Physiological. Includes hunger, thirst, shelter, sex, and other bodily needs. 2. Safety-security. Security and protection from physical and emotional harm. 3. Social-belongingness. Affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship. 4. Esteem. Internal factors such as self-respect, autonomy, and achievement, and ex-ternal factors such as status, recognition, and attention. 5. Self-actualization. Drive to become what we are capable of becoming; includes "

"McClelland's theory of needs was developed by .

David McClelland and his associates. As opposed to Maslow's hierarchy, these needs are more like motivating factors than strict needs for survival

"Contemporary theories of motivation have one thing in common:

Each has a reasonable degree of valid supporting documentation. We call them "contemporary theories" be-cause they represent the latest thinking in explaining employee motivation. This doesn't mean they are unquestionably right."

"The three needs are linked to important job outcomes.

First, when jobs have a high degree of personal responsibility and feedback, along with an intermediate degree of risk, high achievers are strongly motivated."

"The relationship between goal setting and ethics is quite complex:

If we emphasize the attainment of goals, what is the cost? The answer is probably found in the standards we set for goal achievement.

"What does self-determination theory suggest about providing rewards?

It suggests that some caution in the use of extrinsic rewards to motivate is wise, and that pursuing goals from intrinsic motives (such as a strong interest in the work itself) is more sustain-ing to human motivation than are extrinsic rewards."

"Because lower-unit managers jointly participate in setting their own goals,

MBO works from the bottom up as well as from the top down. The result is a hierarchy that links objectives at one level to those at the next. For the individual employee, MBO provides specific personal performance objectives"

There are three:

Need for achievement (nAch) is the drive to excel, to achieve in relationship to a Hygiene factors set of standards. Need for power (nPow) is the need to make others behave in a way they would not have otherwise. Need for affiliation (nAff) is the desire for friendly and close interpersonal "

"The two theories are clearly philosophically at odds.

Reinforcement theorists see behavior as environmentally caused. You need not be con-cerned, they would argue, with internal cognitive events; what controls behavior are reinforcers—any consequences that, when they immediately follow responses, increase the probability that the behavior will be repeated."

"How do managers make goal-setting theory operational?

That's often left up to the individual. Some managers set aggressive performance targets"

"f employees can participate in the setting of their own goals, will they try harder?

The evidence is mixed. In some studies, participatively set goals yielded superior per-formance; in others, individuals performed best when assigned goals by their boss"

" The Pygmalion effect is

a form of self-fulfilling prophecy in which believing something can make it true. Here, it is often used to describe "that what one person expects can come to serve a self-fulfilling prophecy.""

"The higher your self-efficacy, the more confidence you have in your

ability to succeed. So, in difficult situations people with low self-efficacy are more likely to lessen their effort or give up altogether, while those with high self-efficacy will try harder to master the challenge"

"so set

achievable goals, remove distrac-tions, and provide structure to reduce the potential for missing a goal"

"Though it may seem obvious that managers should be honest with their em-ployees

and not keep them in the dark about organizational matters, many managers are hesitant to share information. This is especially the case with bad news, which is uncomfortable for both the manager delivering it and the employee receiving it."

"Across cultures, if individuals pursue goals because of intrinsic interest, they are more likely to

attain goals, are happier when they do, and are happy even if they do not.19 Why? Because the process of striving toward goals is fun whether or not the goal is achieved."

"Reinforcement strengthens a

behavior and increases the likelihood it will be repeated"

"Organizational justice is concerned

broadly with how employees feel authorities and decision makers at work treat them."

"Intelligence and personality are absent from Bandura's list, but they too

can increase self-efficacy.47 People who are intelligent, conscientious, and emotionally stable are so much more likely to have high self-efficacy that some researchers argue self-efficacy is less important than prior research suggested.48 They believe it is partially a by-product in a smart person with a confident personality."

"Without participation, the individual pursuing the goal needs to

clearly un-derstand its purpose and importance"

"Goal setting is a

cognitive approach, proposing that individuals' purposes direct their actions."

" Much research on self-determination theory in OB has focused on"

cognitive evaluation theory

"Employees therefore take the ratio of their Outcomes (O) to their Inputs (I) and

compare it to the ratio of others, usually someone similar like a coworker or someone do-ing the same job."

"Goal-setting theory and self-efficacy theory

don't compete; they complement each other."

"Beyond outcomes and procedures, research has shown that

employees care about two other types of fairness that have to do with the way they are treated during interactions with others"

"Training programs often make use of

enactive mastery by having people practice and build their skills. "

"The most important source of increasing self-efficacy is

enactive mastery—that is, gaining relevant experience with the task or job. The second source is vicarious modeling—becoming more confident because you see someone else doing the task. "

"Finally, arousal increases self-efficacy. Arousal leads to an

energized state so we get "psyched up," feel up to the task, and perform better."

"If we want to motivate people on their jobs, we should emphasize

factors associated with the work itself or with outcomes directly derived from it such as promotional opportunities, per-sonal growth opportunities, recognition, responsibility, and achievement."

" high intensity is unlikely to lead to

favorable job-performance outcomes unless the effort is channeled in a direction that benefits the organization. "

"Skinner's form of radical behaviorism rejects

feelings, thoughts, and other states of mind as causes of behavior. In short, under behaviorism people learn to associate stimulus and response, but their conscious awareness of this association is irrelevant"

"Three personal factors influence the goals-performance relationship:

goal commitment, task characteristics, and national culture"

"Time pressure also increases as we are nearing a

goal, which can tempt us to act unethically to achieve it.40 Specifically, we may forego mastering tasks and adopt avoidance techniques so we don't look bad,41 both of which can incline us toward unethical choices"

" Goal commitment is most likely to occur when

goals are made public, when the individual has an internal locus of control, when the goals are self-set rather than assigned, and when they are based at least partially on individual ability"

a sixth need has been proposed for a highest level—intrinsic values—which is said to

have originated from Maslow, but it has yet to gain widespread acceptance."

"Second,

high nAch does not necessar-ily make someone a good manager, especially in large organizations. People with high nAch are interested in how well they do personally, and not in influencing others to do well. "

"we consider the quality of effort as well as its

intensity. Effort directed toward, and consistent with, the organization's goals is the kind of effort we should be seeking. "

"Compared to the other forms of justice we've discussed,

interpersonal justice is unique in that it can occur in everyday interactions between managers and employees"

"What does all this mean? For individuals,

it means you should choose your job for reasons other than extrinsic rewards. For organizations, it means managers should pro-vide intrinsic as well as extrinsic incentives. Managers need to make the work interesting, provide recognition, and support employee growth and development. Employees who feel that what they do is within their control and a result of free choice are likely to be more motivated by their work and committed to their employers"

"OB research suggests that people who pursue work goals for intrinsic reasons are

more satisfied with their jobs, feel they fit into their organizations better, and perform better."

"Criticisms center on Herzberg's

original methodology and his assumptions, such as the statement that sat-isfaction is strongly related to productivity. Subsequent research has also shown that if hygiene and motivational factors are equally important to a person, both are capable of motivating"

"People respond to the way they

perceive and define consequences, not to the objective consequences themselves"

"Fourth,

personality characteristics influence our need pursuit, too. Recent research of Cameroonian and German adults indicates high neuroticism may constrain the drive toward establishing relationships (see Chapter 5). Agreeableness supports our pursuit of affiliation, while extraversion has no significant effect

"Operant conditioning theory,

probably the most relevant component of reinforcement theory for manage-ment, argues that people learn to behave a certain way to either get something they want or to avoid something they don't want. "

"Self-generated feedback—with which employees are able to monitor their own

progress or receive feedback from the task process itself—is more powerful than externally generated feedback."

"Ideally, it's probably best to be both

promotion and prevention oriented."

"Similarly, cognitive evaluation theory suggests that

providing extrinsic incentives may, in many cases, undermine intrinsic motivation

"Conditions such as

quality of supervision, pay, company policies, physical work conditions, relationships with others, and job security are hygiene factors"

"Individuals with higher levels of self-efficacy also appear to

reap more benefits from training pro-grams and are more likely to use their training on the job"

"One study introduced the additional explanation that

self-efficacy may be associated with a higher level of focused attention, which may lead to increased task performance"

"Goal-setting theory is well supported. First, evidence strongly suggests that

specific goals increase performance; that difficult goals, when accepted, produce higher performances than do easy goals; and that feedback leads to higher performance than does non-feedback.23 Second, the more difficult the goal is, the higher the level of performance. Once a hard task has been accepted, we can expect the employee to exert a high level of effort to try to achieve it. Third, people do better when they get feedback on how well they are progressing toward their goals—that is, feedback guides behavior. "

"Believing an individual's relationship to work is basic, and that the attitude toward work can determine

success or failure, psychologist Frederick Herzberg wondered, "What do people want from their jobs?" He asked people to describe, in detail, situations in which they felt exceptionally good or bad about their jobs"

"The best way for a manager to use verbal persuasion is through

the Pygmalion effect"

"First,

the concept of nAch has received a great deal of research attention and accep-tance in a wide array of fields, including organizational behavior (OB), psychology, and general business.1"

"if you want to motivate someone, you need to understand what level of

the hierarchy that person is currently on and focus on satisfying needs at or above that level."

"Although you would be right to note that both strategies are in the service of goal accomplishment,

the manner in which they get there is quite different. "

"Third,

the most effective leaders are high in nPow and nAff, according to re-cent research11—the "rough edges" of nPow may be tempered by the nAff desire to be included"

"Third,

the nAff concept is well established and accepted in research. Although it may seem like an updated version of Maslow's social need, it is actually quite separate. Many people take for granted the idea that human beings have a drive toward relationships, so none of us may completely lack this motivation."

"Second,

the nPow concept also has research support, but it may be more familiar to people in broad terms than in relation to the original defi-nition.14

"It's when outcomes are unfavorable that people pay close attention to

the process. If the process is judged to be fair, then employees are more accepting of unfavorable outcomes"

"Self-determination theory and goal-setting theory are well supported contemporary

theories of motivation. But they are far from the only noteworthy OB theories on the subject. Self-efficacy, reinforcement, equity/organizational justice, and expectancy theories reveal different aspects of our motivational processes and tendencies."

"Although employees care a lot about what outcomes are distributed (distributive justice),

they also care about how they are distributed."

"used for over 30 years in the governments of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.However, the popularity of these programs does not mean

they always work.When MBO fails, the culprits tend to be unrealistic expectations, lack of com-mitment by top management, and inability or unwillingness to allocate rewards based on goal accomplishment."

"when people do not enjoy their work for intrinsic reasons,

those who work because they feel obligated to do so can still perform acceptably, though they experience higher levels of strain as a result"

"Research has found that people differ in the way they regulate their

thoughts and behaviors during goal pursuit. Generally, people fall into one of two categories, though they can belong to both. "

"The third source is verbal persuasion:

we become more confident when someone convinces us we have the skills necessary to be successful. "

"Reinforcement theory ignores the inner state of the individual and concentrates solely on

what happens when he or she takes some action. Because it is not concerned with what initiates behavior, it is not, strictly speaking, a theory of motivation. But it does provide a powerful means of analyzing what controls behavior, and this is why we typi-cally consider reinforcement concepts in discussions of motivation."

"The view that high nAch acts as an internal motivator presupposes two cultural characteristics

—willingness to accept a moderate degree of risk (which excludes countries with strong uncertainty-avoidance characteristics, see Chapter 5), and concern with performance"