Module 1.

Define and explain five-factor model

Five-factor model is the five abstract dimensions representing most personality traits: conscientiousness (careful, dependable, self-disciplined), agreeableness (courteous, good-natured, empathetic, caring), neuroticism (anxious, insecure, self-conscious), openness to experience (imaginative, creative, curious, sensitive) and extroversion (outgoing, talkative, sociable, assertive).

What is MARS model?

(Motivation, Ability, Role Perceptions + Situational Factors = Individual and Behavior Results). A model of individual behavior and results. Consists of these individual characteristics: personality, values, self-concept, perceptions, emotions and attitudes, and stress, all leading to motivation, ability, role perceptions with the influence of situational factors to lead to following behavior and results: task performance, organizational citizenship, counterproductive work behaviors, joining/staying with the organization and maintaining attendance.

Define organizational effectiveness

A broad concept represented by several perspectives, including the organization's fit with the external environment, internal-subsystems configuration for high performance, emphasis on organizational learning and ability to satisfy the needs of key stakeholders.

Define intellectual capital

A company's stock of knowledge, including human capital, structural capital and relationship capital.

Define conscientiousness

A personality dimension describing people who are careful, dependable, and self-disciplined.

Define extroversion

A personality dimension describing people who are outgoing, talkative, sociable and assertive.

Define neuroticism

A personality dimension describing people with high levels of anxiety, hostility, depression, and self-consciousness.

Define high-performance work practices (HPWP)

A perspective which holds that effective organizations incorporate several workplace practices that leverage the potential of human capital.

Define organizational learning aka knowledge management

A perspective which holds that organizational effectiveness depends on the organization's capacity to acquire, share, use, and store valuable knowledge.

Define open systems

A perspective which holds that organizations depend on the external environment for resources, affect that environment through their output, and consist of internal subsystems that transform inputs into outputs.

Define strength-based (appreciative) coaching.

A positive organizational behavior approach to coaching and feedback that focuses on building and leveraging the employee's strengths rather than trying to correct his or her weaknesses. It is potentially motivating as people seek feedback of their strengths, not flaws. However many companies focus feedback on weaknesses rather than strengths.

Define presenteeism

Attending scheduled work when one's capacity to perform is significantly diminished by illness or other factors.

Explain balanced scorecard (BSC).

BSC is organizational-level form of goal setting reward system that translates the organization's vision and mission into specific measurable performance goals related to financial, customer, internal, and learning growth (i.e. human capital) processes.

List 4 current and 1 outdated perspective of organizational effectiveness.

Current: 1. Open systems perspective. 2. Organizational learning perspective. 3. HPWP perspective. 4. Stakeholder perspective. Outdated: 1. Goal attainment perspective.

Why is feedback important?

Feedback clarifies role perceptions, improves skills and knowledge, motivates when it is constructive and when employees have strong self-efficacy.

What are situational factors?

If you have the best employees, but lack resources, time etc, the outcome may not be favorable. These can be managed by the employer. Other reasons may be economic conditions and consumer preferences. This can't be managed by the employer.

Expain open systems perspective

Open systems perspective - organizations are complex organisms living within external environment. They depend on external environments for resources, use organizational subsystems to transform these resources into outputs that are returned to the environment. Feedback from the external enviornment helps maintain a good fit. Fit occurs by adapting to the environemnt, managing the environment or moving to another environment.

Define corporate social responsibility (CSR)

Organizational activities intended to benefit society and the environment beyond the firm's immediate financial interests or legal obligations.

Explain organizational learning perspective

Organizational learning perspective - organizations are effective if they can acquire, share, use and store valuable knowledge. Ability to acquire and store depends on organization's absorptive capacity. Intellectual capital consists of human capital, structural capital, and relationship capital. Knowledge is retained in the organizational memory. Companies can selectively unlearn.

Define organizational behavior

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

Which 2 dimensions apply to recognition and which 2 dimensions apply to regulation of emotions?

Recognition: self-awareness of one's own emotions, awareness of others' emotions. Regulation: self-management of one's own emotions, management of others' emotions.

Explain self-monitoring.

Regularly keeping track of goals through naturally occurring feedback.

Define values

Relatively stable, evaluative beliefs that guide a person's preferences for outcomes or courses of action in a variety of situations.

Define structural capital

Knowledge embedded in an organization's systems and structures.

Define espoused values.

The values we say we believe in.

Define servant leadership.

The view that the leaders serve followers, rather than vice versa; leaders help employees fulfill their needs and are coaches, stewards, and facilitators of employee performance.

How does goal setting improve employee performance?

1. Amplifies intensity and persistence of effort. 2. Gives employees clearer role perceptions.

List directive leadership style characteristics.

1. Assigning work and clarifying responsibilities. 2. Set goals and deadlines. 3. Evaluate and provide feedback on work quality. 4. Establish well-defined best work procedures. 5. Plan future work activities.

What are the 4 flaws of 360 degree feedback?

1. Can get expensive and time-consuming. 2. The feedback may also be conflicting. (Too many people providing it). 3. Peers may provide inflated rather than accurate feedback. 4. Employees have a stronger emotional reaction if a feedback is from many people rather than just 1 person.

What are the flaws of BSC?

1. Companies set goals that are easy to measure rather than valuable. 2. The goals focus on internal processes, rather than external main functions. 3. People get caught up in measures.

Explain 2 important processes not listed in 5-stages team model.

1. Developing team identity. The process of changing their view on a team from something foreign to being a part of themselves. 2. Developing team competence. Habitual routines with teammates and forming shared or complementary mental models (visual or relational mental images) that are shared my all team members.

What are 6 components of an evidence-based management organization?

1. Do not treat old ideas as brand new. 2. Be suspicious of "breakthrough" ideas and studies. 3. Celebrate and develop collective brilliance. 4. Emphathize drawbacks as well as virtues. 5. Use success (and failure) stories to illustrate sound practices, but not in place of valid research method. 6. Adopt a neutral stance toward ideologies and theories.

List and explain 5 stages of team development.

1. Forming. Discover expectations, evaluate value of membership, defer to existing authority, test boundaries of behavior. 2. Storming. Interpersonal conflict, compete for team roles, influence goals and means, establish norms. 3. Norming. Establish roles, agree on team objectives, form team mental models, develop cohesion. 4. Performing. Task oriented, committed, efficient coordination, high cooperation and trust, conflicts are resolved quickly. 5. Adjourning. The team disbands.

Explain and list components of Jungian and Myers-Briggs type indicator types.

1. Getting energy. Extraversion (talkative, externally-focused, assertive) and introversion (quiet, internally-focused, abstract). 2. Perceiving information. Sensing (concrete, realistic, practical) and intuitive (imaginative, future-focused, abstract). 3. Making decisions. Thinking (logical, objective, impersonal) and feeling (empathetic, caring, emotion-focused). 4. Orienting to the external world. Judging (organized, schedule-oriented, closure-focused) and perceiving (spotaneous, adaptable, opportunity focused).

List and describe the four problems with the email.

1. It is a poor medium for communicating emotions. No facial expressions and body movements, so harder to read emotions. 2. Reduces politeness and respect. Email messages are often less diplomatic. Receivers often exaggerate the negative meaning. The senders are more likely to send derogatory messages over email, than any other communication media. There are two reasons for that. The first reason is that there is not enough time for the emotions to subside. The second reason is that impersonal nature of the email. People are more likely to write things that they would never say in face-to-face conversation. This problem usually decreases as teams progress in their development and firmly establish norms of behavior. 3. Poor medium for ambiguous, complex and novel situations. These situations require face-to-face interaction. 4. Contributes to information overload. Easy to copy messages without much effort.

List supportive leadership style characteristics (5).

1. Listen to employees. 2. Make the workplace more pleasant. 3. Show interest in others as people. 4. Recognize employees for their work. 5. Be considerate of employee needs.

What do OB theories help with?

1. Make sense of the workplace. 2. Question and rebuild their personal mental models. 3. Get things done in organizations.

List and explain 4 anchors of organizatonal behavior knowledge.

1. Multidisciplinary anchor. (Organizational behavior should import knowledge form many disciplines). 2. Systematic research anchor. (Organizational behavior should study organizations using systematic research methods). 2. Contingency anchor. (Organizational behavior theory should recognize that the effects of actions often vary with the situation). 3. Multiple levels of analysis anchor. (Organizational behavior knowledge should include three levels of analysis: individual, team, organization).

What are three ways that influence the development of team norms?

1. People need to anticipate or predict how others will act. Example, "Boss likes happy people so approach him with a smile". 2. As team member discover more efficient behaviors. for example, a quick response to email. 3. Experiences and values that members bring to the team. For example, if employees have strong views that life outside work is equally important to work, then they will not be ok with working late hours.

List 5 elements of self-leadership.

1. Personal goal-setting. 2. Constructive thought patterns. 3. Designing natural rewards. 4. Self-monitoring. 5. Self-reinforcement.

How can stress perceptions be changed?

1. Positive self-evaluation. 2. Increase optimism. 3. Improve self-concept so that work challenges no longer seem threatening. 4. Personal goal-setting in new work setting. 5. Self-reinforcement in new work setting 6. Some forms of humor by taking psychological weight away.

List and describe 4 dimensions of emotional intelligence.

1. Self-awareness of emotions. Ability to perceive and understand the meaning of your own emotions. 2. Self-management of emotions. Ability to manage your own emotions. 3. Awareness of others' emotions. Ability to perceive and understand the emotions of other people. 4. Management of others' emotions. For example, inspiring, consoling etc.

Explain 6 characteristics of effective goal setting.

1. Specific goals. Employees put more effort in specific goals, rather than "do your best goals". 2. Relevant goals. The goal must be relevant to the job and within the employee's control. 3. Challenging goals. Challenging goals increase intensity and persistence of work. 4. Goal commitment. Goals should be challenging, but no so challenging that the employees lose motivation. 5. Goal participation (sometimes). Goals are usually more effective when employees are involved in setting the goals. 6. Goal feedback. Feedback redirects out efforts and may also fulfill our growth needs.

Why are 5 most important characteristics of effective feedback?

1. Specific. Specific metrics. 2. Relevant. Within the employee's control. 3. Timely. This way employees see clear relationship between their actions and consequences. 4. Credible. Employees are more likely to accept feedback from trustworthy and credible sources. 5. Sufficiently frequent. More so for new employees and less for older more experienced employees.

Discuss the anchors on which organizational behavior knowledge is based.

1. The multidisciplinary anchor states that the field should develop from knowledge in other disciplines, not just from its own isolated research base. 2. The systematic research anchor states that OB knowledge should be based on systematic research, which is consistent with evidence-based management. 3. The contingency anchor states that OB theories generally need to consider that there will be different consequences in different situations. 4. The multiple levels of analysis anchor states that OB topics should be viewed from the individual, team, and organization levels of analysis.

What are three conditions that strengthen the linkage between personal values and behavior?

1. We tend to apply values only when we can think of specific logical reasons for doing so. 2. We tend to aply our values when the situation allows or encourages so, 2. We are more likely to apply values when we actively think about them.

Explain team building and its four types.

A process that consists of formal activities intended to improve the development and functioning of a work team. It attempts to speed up team development process. 1. task-focused. It clarifies performance goals, increases team motivation to accomplish these goals, and establishes mechanism for systematic feedback on the team's goal performance. 2. improving problem-solving skills. 3. clarifies and reconstructs each member's perception of his or her role and roles expectations of other team members. 4. improve relations between team members. The members learn about each other, build trust in each other and develop ways to solve conflict within the team.

Define emotional intelligence.

A set of abilities to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion in oneself and others.

Define Myers-Briggs Type (MBTI) indicator

An instrument designed to measure the elements of Jungian personality theory, particularly preferences regarding perceiving and judging information.

Define competencies and why are they similar to abilities.

Competencies are characteristics of a person that result in superior performance, which is basically learned skills and knowledge, natural aptitudes, and other personal characteristics (like being hot. jk but yea seriously something like that).

Define deep-level diversity

Differences in the psychological characteristics of employees, including personalities, beliefs, values, and attitudes.

Define globalization

Economic, social, and cultural connectivity with people in other parts of the world.

What causes and increases emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is connected with personality traits as well as with emotional intelligence of parents. Emotional intelligence can also be learned. It also increases with age. Yet there is no objective tool that measures emotional intelligence.

What feedback sources do employees prefer?

Employees prefer nonsocial feedback sources for goal progression - makes it more legit. Employees prefer nonsocial feedback for negative feedback - makes it less damaging to self-esteem. Employees prefer social feedback for pleasant feedback - feels better than non-social.

Debate the organizational opportunities and challenges of globalization, workforce diversity, and emerging employment relationships.

Globalization, which refers to various forms of connectivity with people in other arts of the world has several economic and social benefits, but it may also be responsible for work intensification, reduced job security and work-life balance. Workforce diversity is apparent at both the surface-level (obsevable demographic and other overt differences in people) and deep-level (differences in personalities, beliefs, values and attitudes). There is some evidence of deep level diversity between generational cohorts. It can provide competitive advantage in complex tasks, but it also create slower team performance and interpersonal conflict. One emerging relationship trend is the call for more work-life balance (minimizing conflict between work and nonwork demands). another employment trend is virtual work, particularly working from home. Working form 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.

Has goal-setting theory been proven? How is feedback beneficial? What are the benefits and downsides of goal setting?

Goal setting is a major proven theory in organizational behavior. Feedback in partnership with performance increases motivation and performance. The problems with goal-setting are: 1. Goal setting focuses on measurable performance indicators, ignoring difficult to measure aspects of performance. 2. When achievement has rewards, employees tend to set easy goals while making them look difficult. 3. Setting performance goals is effective in established jobs, but interferes with learning process in new complex jobs.

Explain high-performance work practices perspective and its components (4)

HPWP - high performance work practices. This is abundle of systems and structures to use workforce potential most effectively. The components are: 1. Employee involvement. 2. Job autonomy. 3. Developing employee competencies 4. Peformance/ skill-based rewards.

What is value system?

Hierarchy of preferences in values.

Explain espoused-enacted values congruence.

How consistent the values apparent in our actions (enacted values) are with what we say we believe in (espoused values).

Explain values congruence.

How similar a person's vlaues hierarchy is to the values hierarchy of the organization, a co-worker, or another source of comparison.

Define stakeholders

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

Explain Multisource (360 degree) feedback.

Information about employee's performance is collected from a full circle of people, including subordinates, peers, supervisors and customers. This gives a more complete and accurate picture. This is especially useful if the supervisor cannot directly observe the employee's performance over time.

Is EI inherited or a skill?

It is a skill.

Are organizations most successful with high levels of congruence and why or why not?

Nope. Comfortable level of values congruence is necessary, however some level of incongruence is good as it offers different perspectives. Too much congruence can create a "corporate cult" that undermines creativity, organizational flexibility and business ethics.

Explain netiquette

Norms of behavior established for communicating online.

Define goal setting.

Process of motivating employees and clarifying their role perceptions by establishing performance objectives.

What is the lowest and what is the highest item on hierarchy of emotional intelligence?

Self-awareness is the lowest. Management of others' emotions is the highest.

Explain team roles and what are two types of team roles.

Set of behaviors people are expected to perform because of the positions they hold in the team or organization. Roles maybe formal and informal. Formal: responsible for design. Informal: a shoulder to cry on.

Describe personal goal setting.

Setting goals alone, rather than getting them assigned or jointly decided.

Explain natural rewards.

Slightly altering tasks to make them more enjoyable and motivating.

What are the sources of feedback?

Social and non-social. Non-social: electronic displays, etc.

Define values

Stable, evaluative beliefs, that guide our preferences for outcomes or courses of actions in a variety of situations. They are stable and long-lasting.

Explain stakeholder perspective

Stakeholder perspective states that leaders manage the interests of diverse stakeholders by relying on their personal and organizational values for guidance. Ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are natural extentsions of values-based organizations. CSR consists of organizational activirties intended to benefit society and the environment, without financial benefits to the company or legal requirements.

Are team-building activities beneficial? What are the problems?

They are popular, but work for general problems only. Better approach is assess the team's health, the address with specific interventions. Also team-building is often used as one-shot inoculation, when it should be an ongoing activity.

What types of performance does emotional intelligence not improve?

Tasks that require minimal social interaction.

Explain team norms

Team norms are informal rules and shared expectations that groups establish to regulate the behavior of their members. They apply to behavior only, not thoughts and feelings, and apply to team-relevant behaviors only. Based on punishment and reinforcement.

Define virtual teams.

Teams, whose members operate across space, time and organizational boundaries and are linked though information technologies to achieve organizational tasks.

Define absorptive capacity

The ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate it, and use it for value-added activities.

Define organizational efficiency

The amount of outputs relative to inputs in the organization's transformation process.

Discuss preventing and changing dysfunctional team norms (4).

The best prevention is to establish desirable norms when the team is created. Another way is to select people with appropriate values. As for change, leaders can reduce bad norms and increase good norms though speaking up or active coaching or team-based rewards (the latter is not always effective). If the dysfunctional norms are deeply ingrained, it may be necessary to disband the team completely and get more fitting members.

Define work-life balance

The degree to which a person minimizes conflict between work and nonwork demands.

Define and explain role perceptions and three ways that make roles clear or unclear.

The extent to which people understand the job duties (roles) assigned to or expected of them. 3 ways of roles being clear: 1. Make duties specific and consequences clear. 2. Make clear understanding of prioritizing and performance expectations. For example, quantity vs quality and vice versa. 3. Make clear preferred behaviors. This applies to situations when employees have several ways of accomplishing the task.

Describe motivation and its 3 components.

The forces within a person that affect his or her direction, intensity, and persistence of voluntary behavior. The three super lame components of motivation are: 1. Direction. It is goal-oriented, not random. 2. Intensity. The amount of effort you dimwit are willing to put into a goal. 3. Persistence. How long you lamo are willing to go until you give up.

Explain constructive thought patterns and their two components.

Thinking positively (and always constructively) before and while performing a task. Two components are positive self-talk and mental imagery. Positive self-talk is talking to ourselves with can-do belief. This increases motivation and reduces anxiety. (Negative self-talk undermines confidence). Mental imagery - walking ourselves thought the task. This help identify and find a solution for potential obstacles. Also motivates for achieving reward when we visualize it.

Explain person-organization values congruence.

This occurs when a person's values are similar to the organization's dominant values.This leads to higher job satisfaction.

Compare and contrast 4 current perspectives of organizational effectiveness as well as the early goal attainment perspective.

The goal attainment perspective (organizations are only effective if they achieve their stated objectives) is not longer accepted. This is because: 1. Goals may be too easy. 2. Goals may be too abstract to determine their accomplishment. 3. Achievement of some goals may threaten the company's survival. 1. Open systems perspective - organizations are complex organisms living within external environment. They depend on external environments for resources, use organizational subsystems to transform these resources into outputs that are returned to the environment. Feedback from the external environment helps maintain a good fit. Fit occurs by adapting to the environment, managing the environment or moving to another environment. 2. Organizational learning perspective - organizations are effective if they can acquire, share, use and store valuable knowledge. Ability to acquire and store depends on organization's absorptive capacity. Intellectual capital consists of human capital, structural capital, and relationship capital. Knowledge is retained in the organizational memory. Companies can selectively unlearn. 3. HPWP - high performance work practices. This is a bundle of systems and structures to use workforce potential most effectively. The components are: 1. Employee involvement. 2. Job autonomy. 3. Developing employee competencies 4. Peformance/skill-based rewards. 5. Stakeholder perspective states that leaders manage the interests of diverse stakeholders by relying on their personal and organizational values for guidance. Ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are natural extentsions of values-based organizations. CSR consists of organizational activirties intended to benefit society and the environment, without financial benefits to the company or legal requirements.

Explain the difference between individual, group and organizational components of multiple levels of analysis.

The individual level is the characteristics and behaviors of employees as well as the thought processes attributed to them such as motivation, perceptions, personalities, attitudes and values. The team level of analysis looks at the way people interact. This includes team dynamics, team decisions, power, organizational politics, conflict and leadership. At the organizational level, we focus on how people structure their working relationships and on how organizations interact with their environments.

Define and explain ability and its two subtypes.

The natural aptitudes and learned capabilities required to successfully complete a task. Aptitudes - natural talents that help employees learn specific tasks more quickly and perform them better. Learned capabilities - you learned skills and knowledge. Learned capabilities tend to wane over time if not used.

Define surface-level diversity

The obsevable demographic or physiological differences in people, such as their race, ethnicisty, gender, age, and physical capabilities.

Define evidence-based management

The practice of making decisions and taking actions based on research evidence.

Why are virtual teams gaining popularity? Why are they possible and why are they necessary? Differentiate.

The spread of information technology is responsible for popularity. Information technology increase and an increase of knowledge-based work makes them possible. They are necessary due to organizational learning and globalization. Organizational learning is good for people in distant geographic areas, so they can collaborate and learn online, since they can't do it in person. Globalization - doing business all over the world encourages people to co-operate over distance.

Define human capital

The stock of knowledge, skills, and abilities among employees that provides economic value to the organization.

Define ethics

The study of moral principles or values that determine whether actions are right or wrong and outcomes are goof or bad.

Define relationship capital

The value derived from an organization's relationships with customers, suppliers, and others who provide added mutual value for the organization.

Define organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs)

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

What are success factors in virtual teams (6)?

Virtual teams face the same challenges as regular teams with the complications of distance and time, especially with missing the deadlines. 1. Must have good communication technology skills. 2. Strong self-leadership skills to motivate and guide their behaviors without peers and bosses nearby 3. Higher emotional intelligence to decipher the feelings from the emails. 4. Must have a toolkit of communication channels with the freedom to choose the channels they work the best for them. Imposing technology is bad. Also different channels lose or gain importance over time and it is important to adjust accordingly. 5. Virtual teams need a plenty of structure. Many of successful team's principles rely on the structure. For example, clear operational objectives, documented work processes, agreed upon roles and responsibilities 6. Meet face to face early in the team development process.

Define counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs)

Voluntary behaviours that have the potential to directly or indirectly harm the organization.

Explain self-reinforcement.

When an employee has control over reinforcement and implements it only when a self-set goal is complete. Such reinforcement may be taking a break.

Define virtual work

Work performed away from the traditional physical workplace by means of information technology.

Define organizations

groups of people who work interdependently toward some purpose.