HRM EXAM

What is the systematic approach

A belief that behavior is not random, rather there are certain fundamental consistencies underlying the behavior of all individuals that can be identified and then modified to reflect individual differences.

What is affective commitment

An emotional attachment to the organization and the belief in its values.

What does ability mean

An individual's capacity to perform the various tasks in a job. An individual's overall abilities are essentially made up of two sets of factors: intellectual and physical.

What is job involvement

This term measures the degree to which people identify psychologically with their job and consider their perceived performance level important to self-worth. High level of job involvement strongly identify with and really care about the kind of work they do. A closely related concept is psychological empowerment. High job involvement has been found to be related to a reduced number of absences and lower resignation rates.

What is the disseminator role

Transmits information received from outside or from other employees to members of the organization.

How do dissatisfied and satisfied employees affect an organization

When employees like their jobs or dislike their jobs there are 4 responses which are constructive/destructive and active/passive. 1: the exit response is behavior toward leaving the organization. The voice response involves actively and constructively attempting to improve condition. The loyalty response involves passively but optimistically waiting for conditions to improve. The neglect response involves passively allowing conditions to worsen, including chronic absenteeism.

What is job satisfaction

A positive feeling about one's job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. This represents an attitude rather than a behavior. Its demonstrated relationship to performance factors and the value preferences held by many OB researchers.

What are intellectual abilities

Abilities needed to perform mental activities-for thinking, reasoning, and problem solving. The seven most frequent cited dimensions making up intellectual abilities are number aptitude, verbal comprehension, perceptual speed, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, spatial visualization, and memory.

What is number aptitude

Ability to do speedy and accurate arithmetic. Example: accountant computing the sales tax on a set of items.

What is inductive reasoning

Ability to identify a logical sequence in a problem and then solve the problem. Example: market researcher forecasting demand for a product in the next time period.

What is perceptual speed

Ability to identify visual similarities and differences quickly and accurately. Example: fire investigator identifying clues to support a charge of arson.

What is spatial visualization

Ability to imagine how an object would look if its position in space were changed. Example: interior decorator redecorating an office.

What is memory

Ability to retain and recall past experiences. Example: salesperson remembering the names of customers.

What is verbal comprehension

Ability to understand what is read or heard and the relationship of words to each other. Example: plant manager following corporate policies on hiring.

What is deductive reasoning

Ability to use logic and assess the implications of an argument. Example: supervisor choosing between two different suggestions offered by employees.

What biographical characteristics are important factors

Age, gender, race, and length of service with an organization.

What is positive organizational scholarship

Also known as positive organizational behavior is an area of OB research that concerns how organizations develop human strength, foster vitality and resilience, and unlock potential. Includes a concept called "reflected best-self" asking employees to think about situations in which they were at their "personal best" in order to understand how to exploit their strengths. It challenges organizations to think about how to exploit their employees' strengths rather than dwell on their limitations.

What is employee engagement

An individual's involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for, the work she does.

What is normative commitment

An obligation to remain with the organization for moral or ethical reasons.

What is productivity

An organization achieving its goals by transferring inputs to outputs at the lowest cost, and is a concern for both effectiveness and efficiency. Effective means to meet the needs, and efficient is doing so at the lowest cost.

What is the importance of Interpersonal skills

An understanding of human behavior determines a manager's effectiveness. It is closely tied to the need for organizations to get and keep high-performing employees.

What are attitudes and why are they important

Are evaluative statements-favorable/unfavorable-about objects, people, or events. They reflect how we feel about something. They are complex, and you must know its components.

What is the systematic study

Behavior is predictable, and this study of behavior is a means to making reasonably accurate predictions. It means to look at relationships, attempt to attribute causes and effects, and basing our conclusions on scientific evidence.

What are the most important moderators of the attitudes

Behavior relationships are the importance of the attitude, its correspondence to behavior, its accessibility, whether there exist social pressures, and whether a person has direct experience with the attitude. Important attitudes reflect fundamental values, self-interest, or identification with individuals or groups that a person values. Attitudes that individuals consider important tend to show a strong relationship to behavior.

What are the main components of attitudes

Cognition, affect, and behavior. Cognition is the aspect of an attitude that is a description of or belief in the way things are. Affect is the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude and is reflected in the statement "I am angry over how little I'm paid." The behavioral component of an attitude refers to an intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something.

What is psychological empowerment

Employees' beliefs in the degree to which they influence their work environment, their competence, the meaningfulness of their job, and the perceived autonomy in their work. High levels of both job involvement and psychological empowerment are positively related to organizational citizenship and job performance.

What causes an employee to have a high level of job satisfaction

Enjoying the work is almost always the one most strongly correlated with high levels of overall job satisfaction. Most people prefer work that is challenging and stimulating over work that is predictable and routine. Personality also plays a role, people who are less positive about themselves are less likely to like their jobs. People who have a positive core self-evaluations are more satisfied with their jobs than those with negative core self-evaluations.

What approach complements systematic study, and define it

Evidence-based management (EBM) involves basing managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence.

What is key for manager's to know about abilities

From a management's standpoint, the issue is not whether people differ in terms of their abilities, the issue is knowing how people differ in abilities and using that knowledge to increase the likelihood that an employee will perform his or her job well.

How is race involved in the workplace

In employment settings, there is a tendency for individuals to favor colleagues of their own race in performance evaluations, promotion decisions, and pay raises. Also, there are substantial racial differences in attitudes toward affirmative action, with African Americans approving of such programs to a greater degree than whites. African Americans generally fare worse than whites in employment decisions for example Africans receive lower ratings in employment interviews, are paid less, and are promoted less frequently.

How is religion an issue in the work force

In the United States the greatest religious issue revolves around Islam, because most U.S. adults admit that they harbor negative feelings or prejudices toward U.S. Muslims, and 52% believe that U.S. Muslims are not respectful to women.

What are individual-level variables

Includes age, gender, and marital status; personality characteristics; an inherent emotional framework; values and attitudes; and basic ability levels. Also included are: perception, individual decision making, learning, and motivation.

What are the three levels of analysis in OB

Individual level, group level, and organization systems level.

What is Mintzberg's Managerial Rules

Interpersonal: figurehead, leader, liaison. Informational: monitor, disseminator, spokesperson. Decisional: entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, negotiator.

Systematic study and EBM add to what

Intuition, because the vast majority of management decisions are still made "on the fly" with little or systematic study of available evidence. The limits of relying on intuition are made worse by the fact that we tend to overestimate the accuracy of what we think we know.

What is organizational citizenship behavior

Is discretionary behavior that is not part of an employee's formal job requirements but that nevertheless promotes the effective functioning of the organization. It is abbreviated as OCB, and successful organizations need employees who will do more than their usual job dutes.

What is a dependent variable

Is the key factor that you want to explain or predict and that is affected by some other factor. The primary variables in OB are: productivity, absenteeism, turnover, job satisfaction, deviant workplace behavior, and organizational citizenship behavior.

What is turnover

Is the voluntary and involuntary permanent withdrawal from an organization. A high turnover rate results in increased recruiting, selection, and training costs. A high turnover rate can disrupt the efficient running of an organization when knowledgeable and experienced personnel leave and replacements must be found and prepared to assume positions of responsibility.

Why are the components of attitudes helpful

It is helpful in understanding their complexity and the potential relationship between attitudes and behavior. Note that cognition and affect are intertwined. Example: an employee didn't get the promotion he deserved. the employee thought he deserved the promotion (cognition), the employee strongly dislikes his supervisor (affect), and the employee is looking for another job (behavior).

What is the major dilemma of race faced by employers

It is the use of mental ability tests for selection, promotion, training, and similar personnel decisions in concern that they may have a negative impact on racial and ethnic groups.

What are the major job attitudes

Job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment.

What is the liaison role

Maintains a network of outside contacts who provide favors and information. Example: The sales manager who obtains information from the quality-control manager in his or her own company has an internal liaison relationship. When that sales manager has contacts with other sales executives through a marketing trade association, he or she has an outside liaison relationship.

What is the resource allocator role

Makes or approves significant organizational decisions. Also, managers are responsible for allocating human, physical, and monetary resources.

What are some ways companies are handling ethical dilemmas

Managers and their organizations are writing and distributing codes of ethics to guide employees through ethical dilemmas. They are offering seminars, workshops, and other training programs to try and improve ethical behaviors. They're providing in-house advisors who can be contacted for assistance in dealing with ethical issues, and they're creating protection mechanisms for employees who reveal internal unethical practices.

What are conceptual management skills

Managers must have the mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations. Decision making requires managers to identify problems, develop alternative solutions to correct those problems, evaluate alternative solutions, and select the best one.

Effective verses Successful managerial activities found what

Managers who were successful had very different emphasis than managers who were effective. Successful is defined in terms of the speed of promotion within their organization, and effective is defined in terms of quantity and quality of their performance and the satisfaction and commitment of their employees. Among successful managers, networking made the largest relative contribution to success, and human resource management activities made the least relative contribution. Among effective managers, communication made the largest relative contribution and networking the least.

How is sexual orientation and gender identity involved in the workplace

Most organizations ignore it practicing some version of the "don't ask, don't tell" military policy. An increasing number of employers are implementing policies and practices protecting the rights of gays in the workplace. Also many companies are putting in place policies to govern how their organization treats employees who change genders, called transgender employees.

Does behavior always follow from attitudes

Not necessarily, from researcher Leon Festinger he argued that attitudes follow behavior. The reason why is because they don't want their actions to be contradicted to what they say, and it is illustrated in the effects of cognitive dissonance.

What is organizational behavior

Often abbreviated OB, which is the term that is widely used to describe discipline. It is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization's effectiveness. OB is concerned with the study of what people do in an organization and how their behavior affects the organization's performance. OB includes core topics of motivation, leader behavior and power, interpersonal communication, group structure and processes, learning, attitude development and perception, change processes, conflict, work design, and work stress. OB is an applied behavioral science that is built on psychology and social psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

What are organization system-level variables

Organizational behavior is more than the sum of their member groups. The design of the formal organization; the organization's internal culture; and the organization's human resource policies and practices all have an impact on the dependent variables.

What is workforce diversity

Organizations are becoming a more heterogeneous mix of people in terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

What is POS, explain

Perceived organizational support is the degree to which employees believe the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being. Research shows that people perceive their organization as supportive when rewards are deemed fair, when employees have a voice in decisions, and when their supervisors are seen as supportive. Employees with strong POS perceptions are more likely to have higher levels of organizational citizenship behaviors and job performance.

What is the monitor role

Receives a wide variety of information; serves as a nerve center of internal and external information of the organization.

What is cognitive dissonance

Refers to any incompatibility an individual might perceive between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes. Festinger argued that any form of inconsistency is uncomfortable and that individuals will attempt to reduce the dissonance and, hence the discomfort. Festinger proposes the desire to reduce dissonance depends on the importance of the elements creating it and the degree of influence the individual believe he has over the elements.

What is GMA

Researchers recognized a general factor of intelligence called general mental ability that suggests that it makes sense to talk about overall, or general, intelligence.

What is the disturbance handler role

Responsible for corrective action when organization faces important, unexpected disturbances.

What is the negotiator role

Responsible for representing the organization at major negotiations.

What is the leader role

Responsible for the motivation and direction of employees. Includes hiring, training, motivating and disciplining employees.

What is the entrepreneur role

Searches organization and its environment for opportunities and initiates projects to bring about change.

What are contingency variables

Situational factors: variables that moderate the relationship between two or more other variables.

What is the figurehead role

Symbolic head; required to perform a number of routine duties of a legal or social nature.

What are Robert Katz three essential management skills

Technical, human, and conceptual.

What is body coordination, balance, and stamina

The ability to coordinate the simultaneous actions of different parts of the body, to maintain equilibrium despite forces pulling off balance, to continue maximum effort requiring prolonged effort over time.

What is static strength

The ability to exert force against external objects.

What is dynamic strength

The ability to exert muscular force repeatedly or continuously over time.

What is trunk strength

The ability to exert muscular strength using the truck (abdominal) muscles.

What is explosive strength

The ability to expend a maximum of energy in one or a series of explosive acts.

What is a networked organization

The ability to link computers within organizations and between organizations which creates a different workplace for many employees. These changes allow people to communicate and work together even though they may be far away. The manager's job is different in a networked organization, especially when it comes to managing people.

What is extent and dynamic flexibility

The ability to move the trunk and back muscles as far as possible, to make rapid, repeated flexing movements.

What are human management skills

The ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually and in groups. Managers must have these goods skills to communicate, motivate, and delegate.

What are group-level variables

The behavior of people in groups is more than the sum total of all the individuals acting in their own way. People's behavior is different in groups than when they are alone.

What are physical abilities

The capacity to do tasks that demand stamina, dexterity, strength, and similar characteristics. This includes dynamic, trunk, static, and explosive strength, extent, and dynamic flexibility, body coordination, balance, and stamina.

How is intelligence correlated

The dimensions are positively related, so that high scores on one dimension tend to be positively correlated with high scores on another. Example: high score on verbal comprehension means you're more likely to score high on spatial visualization. These correlations created a general factor of intelligence. The correlation between intelligence and job satisfaction is about zero because they are more critical in evaluating their job conditions.

What is absenteeism

The failure to report to work. This is a huge cost and disruption to employers. Levels of absenteeism beyond the normal range in any organization have a direct impact on that organization's effectiveness and efficiency.

What is the one common thread that runs through management

The importance of managing people.

How has work and non-work time changed in the last 50-40 years

The lines between employees' work life and personal live has become blurred. The creation of global organizations means their world never sleeps. At any time and on any day thousands of employees of one company are working. The need to consult with colleagues or customers 8-10 time zones away means that many employees of global firms are "on call" 24 hours a day. Communication technology allows employees to do their work at home, in their cars, or on the beach in Tahiti. This lets many people in technical and professional jobs do their work any time and from any place. Organizations are asking employees to put in longer hours. Fewer families have only a single breadwinner. Today's married employee is typically part of a dual-career couple, which makes it increasingly difficult for married employees to find the time to fulfill commitments.

What effect does age actually have on turnover, absenteeism, productivity and satisfaction

The older you get, the less likely you are to quit your job which is related to turnover. This could be because as workers get older, they have fewer alternative job opportunities and they are less likely to resign than are younger workers because their long tenure tends to provide them with higher wage rates. The age-absence relationship is partially a function of whether the absence is avoidable or not. In general, older employees have lower rates of avoidable absence than do younger employees. There is a widespread belief that productivity declines with age. It is often assumed tha an individual's skills decay over time and that prolonged job boredom and lack of intellectual stimulation contribute to reduced productivity. However there is some research that contradicts this belief.

What is continuance commitment

The perceived economic value in remaining with an organization compared to leaving it.

What is the perception of older working people

The positive side holds that older people bring experience, judgment, a strong work ethic, and commitment to quality. The negative side is perceived as lacking flexibility and being resistant to new technology.

What is an independent variable

The presumed cause of some change in a dependent variable.

What is the most significant change in the U.S. labor force during the last half of the twentieth century

The rapid increase in the number of female workers. We can expect an increasing number of technical, professional, and managerial jobs to be filled by females.

How is tenure involved in employee productivity

The seniority-productivity relationship is defined as time on a particular job, and there is a positive relationship between seniority and job productivity. Tenure appears to be a good predictor of employee productivity. Tenure is negatively related to absenteeism in terms of both frequency of absence and total days lost at work, tenure is the single more important explanatory variable. Tenure is also a potent variable in explaining turnover. The longer a person is in a job, the less likely he or she is to quit. Also, past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. Tenure an job satisfaction are positively related, in fact when age and tenure are treated separately, tenure appears to be a more consistent and stable predictor of job satisfaction than is age.

How do we measure job satisfaction

The two most widely used approaches are a single global rating and a summation score made up of a number of job facets. The single global rating method is nothing more than a response to one question, such as "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your job?" Respondents circle a number b/w 1-5 that corresponds to answers. A summation of job facets is more sophisticated. It identifies key elements in a job and asks for the employee's feelings about each.

What is the relationship between age and job performance

There is a widespread belief that job performance declines with increasing age. Also, the workforce is aging, and the U.S. legislation outlaws mandatory retirement. The evidence is mixed, most studyes indicate a positive association between age and satisfaction, however there are studies that found a U-shaped relationship. When separating the professional and nonprofessional employees satisfaction tends to increase among professionals as they age, and it falls among nonprofessionals during middle age and then rises again in the later years.

How does gender effect the workplace

There is no significant difference in job productivity between men and women, however there are some issues that come about.

How are organizations in service industries affected by productivity

These organizations need to include attention to customer need and requirements in assessing their effectiveness. Why? Because in these type of businesses, there is a clear chain of cause and effect running from employee attitudes and behavior to customer attitudes and behavior to an organization's productivity.

What are technical management skills

These skills encompass the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. Not all of these skills have to be learned in schools or other formal training programs, however, all jobs require some specialized expertise, and many people develop these skills on the job.

How satisfied are employees in their jobs

This depends on the country you are working in. In the U.S. job satisfaction levels are dropping, also research shows that satisfaction levels vary a lot, depending on which facet of job satisfaction you're talking about. Overall, yes people are satisfied with their jobs, however they are less satisfied with their pay and promotion opportunities.

How is social psychology associated with OB

This science blends psychology and sociology, and focuses on peoples' influence on one another. One major issue is change-how to implement it and how to reduce barriers to its acceptance. In relation to OB these people are concerned with measuring, understanding, and changing attitudes, etc.

How is anthropology associated with OB

This science is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities. In relation to OB, this study helps us understand differences in fundamental values, attitudes, and behavior between people in different countries and within different organization.

How is psychology associated with OB

This science seeks to study and attempt to understand individual behavior. In relation to OB these people concerned themselves with the problems of fatigue, boredom, and other factors relevant to working conditions that could impede efficient work performance. Also, learning, perception, personality, emotions, training, leadership effectiveness, etc.

How is sociology associated with OB

This science studies people in relation to their social environment or culture. This relates to OB because of group behavior in organizations, particularly formal and complex organizations. It also contributes to organizational culture, formal organization theory and structure, etc.

What is job satisfaction

This term describes a positive feeling about a job, resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. A high level of job satisfaction holds positive feelings about the job, while dissatisfied people hold negative feelings. This is interchangeably used with employee attitude because of the high importance to OB.

What is organizational commitment

This term is a state in which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization. High org. commitment means identifying with your employing organization. Includes: affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment. A positive relationship exists between organizational commitment and job productivity. The relationship between commitment and performance is strongest for new employees and it is considerably weaker for more experienced employees. There is a negative relationship between organizational commitment and both absenteeism and turnover.

Effective verses Successful managerial activities includes what

Traditional Management, communication, human resource management, and networking. Traditional management includes: decision making, planning, and controlling. Communication includes: Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork. Human Resource Management includes: motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and training. Networking includes: socializing, politicking, and interacting with others.

What is the spokesperson role

Transmits information to outsiders on organization's plans, policies, actions and results; serves as expert on organization's industry.

What is deviant workplace behavior

Voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and, in doing so, threatens the well-being of the organization or its members. This is also known as antisocial behavior or workplace incivility. OB researchers are studying the cost of absenteeism and turnover as indicators or markers of deviant behavior. Deviance can range from someone playing his music too loudly to violence. It is an important concept because it's a response to dissatisfaction, and employees express this dissatisfaction in many ways.

Is there a correlation between job satisfaction and other factors

With absenteeism, a consistent negative relationship between satisfaction and absenteeism. With turnover, there is a stronger negatively related correlation to turnover. An important moderator of this correlation is the employee's level of performance.

How does "temporariness" involved with OB

With change comes temporariness, and organizations must be fast and flexible if they are now to survive. The result is that most managers and employees work in a climate best characterized as "temporary." Today's managers and employees must learn to cope with temporariness. They have to learn to live with flexibility, spontaneity, and unpredictability. The study of OB can provide important insights into helping you better understand a work world of continual change, how to overcome resistance to change, and how best to create an organizational culture that thrives on change.

What are the few important differences between men and woman that will affect their job performance

Work schedules, working mothers are more likely to prefer part-time work, flexible work schedules, and telecommuting in order to accommodate their family responsibilities. Why, because North American culture has historically placed home and family responsibilities on the woman.