HRM385 Exam#1
#25 - Emotions
-A mental state that arises spontaneously within a person based on interactions -People cannot be separated from their emotions -Managers can influence positive or negative emotions at work . Emotional contagion -Good managers pay attention to people's emotions. There are some who think that emotions are linked to irrationality and expressing emotions in public may be damaging to your career or status. However, research has shown that emotions are necessary for rational thinking. People who are behaving ethically are at least partially making decisions based on their emotions and feelings. Emotions help us make better decisions and help us understand the world around us. If we are going to make decisions we need to incorporate both thinking and feeling.
#31 - Personality
Personality is often defined by characteristics such as outgoing or charming. However, psychologists define personality as the growth and development of a person's whole psychological system. We study personality in Organizational Behavior because it impacts a number of important work outcomes. We can attempt to measure personality through a variety of methods. Often these methods are utilized in the hiring process to assist in hiring the right person for the job and the organization.
#32 - Hofstead's Five Dimensions of National culture
Power distance is the extent to which a society accepts that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally. Low-distance occurs when there is relatively equal power between those with status and wealth and those without. Higher distance occurs when there is unequal power distribution between groups. The second component in Hofstede's framework is individualism vs. collectivism. Individualism is the degree to which people prefer to act on their own rather than in a group. Collectivism is the idea that people operate within a social framework where they help others out and they expect help when they need it. Hofstede offers a third component in his model that distinguishes between masculinity and femininity. Masculinity is the extent to which the culture prefers achievement, power and control vs. characteristics that are more feminine in nature. The fourth component is uncertainty avoidance. This is the extent to which a society is willing to live with uncertainty and ambiguity. High uncertainty avoidance cultures will try to avoid ambiguous situations as much as possible. Lower uncertainty avoidance cultures do not mind ambiguity. The final component is time orientation. Long-term orientation societies will emphasize the future and what it takes to get to the future they desire, thrift and persistence. Short-term orientation societies will emphasize the here and now.
#8 - 3 Concepts: Prejudice, discrimination, stereotype
Prejudice - different is deficient Discrimination - acting on prejudicial attitudes Stereotypes - rigid, exaggerated, and irrational beliefs
#26 - Personality Assessment
Self-reports are the most common and easiest way to measure personality, but they are prone to error due to the fact that the individual is reporting all the data about themselves. There are many determinants of personality including heredity, environmental factors and age. There has been a long standing debate about whether genetics or environment are more important in determining personality. They both play an important role. The heredity approach refers to factors determined at conception such as physical stature and gender. This has been reaffirmed by studies that have looked at twins who were raised apart but still had similar personalities. However, there were differences observed leading to the idea the environmental factors can have some influence. Age does influence the level of ability that an individual has even though it is widely held that the basic personality stays constant throughout the life of the individual.
#6 - Diversity
Social and cultural differences can create difficulties. Europe has very complex social and cultural systems. National cultures are intangible, pervasive, and difficult to comprehend. It is imperative to understand local cultures. The demographics of the U.S. workforce has changed over the last thirty plus years. Today's workforce is not only more ethnically and racially diverse, it also includes more women and older workers. Wage gaps persist across genders and racial and ethnic groups, however the gaps have begun to shrink.
#24 - Emotions and Age
Some characteristics that are beyond our control can impact our moods such as age and gender. Elderly people tend to have fewer negative emotions.
#16 - Attitude and Behavior
Some variables do moderate the relationship between attitude and behavior. These factors include the importance of the attitude, the correspondence of the attitude to the behavior, the accessibility of the attitude, the existence of social pressures on behavior and the personal and direct experience of the attitude. These variables will impact the ability to estimate how a certain attitude will predict behavior.
#5 - What a lady does..... What discipline is this about?
-Psychology = Psychology focuses on the individual level by seeking to measure, explain, and sometimes change behaviors in individuals. This area of study offers insights into such areas as learning, training, decision making, and employee selection. -Social Psychology = blends the concepts of psychology and sociology to focus on people's influence on one another. One major area is change and contributions include: measuring, understanding, and changing attitudes; identifying communication patterns; and building trust. -Sociology = studies people in relation to their social environment or culture. Contributed through study of group behavior in organizations, particularly formal and complex organizations. -Anthropology = is the study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities. Work on cultures and environments has helped us understand fundamental values, attitudes, and behavior between people in different countries and within different organizations.
#21 - Mood
Our basic moods carry positive and negative affects, they cannot be neutral. Emotions are grouped into general mood states. These states impact how employees perceive reality, and thereby the moods can impact the work of employees.
#43 - Equity Theory
Adam's equity theory utilizes the perception theory that we looked at in previous chapters. The idea is that employees compare their ratios of outcomes to inputs of others they see as relevant. When they see the ratios as equal there is a perceived state of equity and no tension arises. However, when they perceive the ratios to be unequal they may experience anger or guilt depending on the result of the equity analysis and then tension can arise. This tension can motivate people to act in a way to bring the situation into a more equitable state. People behave differently when they are over-rewarded than under-rewarded. Sensitivity to over-rewarding is less. The equity theory is often hard to apply because sensitivities differ amongst individuals and it is hard to predict how they will respond to inequities.
#19 - Affect
Affect is a generic term that covers a broad range of feelings people experience. This includes both emotions and moods. Emotions are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something. Moods are the feelings that tend to be less intense than emotions and that lack a contextual stimulus.
#41 - MBO programs (Management By Objectives)
An implementation of the goal-setting theory is Management by Objectives or better known as MBO. MBO is a systematic way to utilize goal setting theory in which goals are set jointly by managers and employees. The goals must be tangible, verifiable and measurable in order to be effective. The manager helps to break down the organizational goals into smaller more specific goals for the employee. In order for MBO to be effective the goals must be specific, the employees must participate in the goal setting, there must be a defined time period and feedback must be incorporated into the process. Step#1: Set Goals Step#2: Develop Action Plans Step#3: Review Progress Step#4: Appraise Overall performance
#42 - Self-Efficacy
Another theory of motivation is the self-efficacy theory developed by Albert Bandura. This theory is based on an individual's belief that he or she is capable of performing a task. This theory is a complement to the goal-setting theory as it incorporates goals into the process. Higher efficacy is related to greater confidence, greater persistence in the face of difficulties and responding to negative feedback with working harder, not shutting down. Self-efficacy: Individual's belief that he or she is capable of performing a task Self-efficacy increased by: Enactive mastery - gain experience Vicarious modeling - see someone else do the task Verbal persuasion - someone convinces you that you have the skills Arousal - get energized
#29 - Big Five
As shown, the Big Five traits are related to job performance and also have other implications for work and life. Extraversion - Agreeableness - Conscientiousness - higher job and life satisfaction, lower stress levels. Emotional Stability - Openness -
#13 - Attitude
Attitudes are made up of three components. The cognitive component is composed of the belief in the way things are. The affective component is the more critical part of the attitude as it is calls upon the emotions or feelings. The behavioral component describes the intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something. These three components work together to aid in our understanding of the complexity of an attitude.
#12 - Attitude
Attitudes are statements that make an evaluation about objects, people or events. They offer a favorable or unfavorable view that reflect how one feels about something.
#3 - Example of Janet.... Which Management Style is She Using?
Average Managers - Traditional Management 32% Human resource management 20% communication 29% networking 19% (mainly traditional) Successful Managers - Traditional Management 13% Human resource management 11% communication 28% networking 48% (big networkers) Effective Managers - Traditional Management 19% Human resource management 26% communication 44% networking 11% (communication heavy) What skills do managers need to effectively achieve their goals? Researchers have identified several skills that set successful managers apart from their less effective counterparts. These include technical skills: (the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. All jobs require some specialized expertise, and many people develop their technical skills on the job, human skills: (the ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually and in groups), and conceptual skills: (the mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations.)
#7 - Diversity
Biographical characteristics including age, gender, race, disability, and length of service are some of the more obvious ways in which employees differ.
#17 - Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance: any inconsistency between two or more attitudes, or between behavior and attitudes
#10 - Diversity
Diversity management makes everyone more aware of and sensitive to the needs and differences of others. Diversity programs include and are meant for everyone. Diversity can both help and hurt team performance. Leverage differences for superior performance. Transformational leaders are more effective in managing diverse teams.
#40 - McGregor's Theory X
Douglas McGregor added to the motivation work done in the 1950s and developed the theory called Theory X, Theory Y. He believed that there are two distinct views of human beings that managers hold. The Theory X view is basically negative and holds that workers have little ambition, dislike work and avoid responsibility. Theory X: Inherent dislike for work and will attempt to avoid it Must be coerced, controlled or threatened with punishment
#28 - Big Five Model
Extraversion - is a comfort level with relationships. Extroverts tend to be gregarious, assertive, and sociable. Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet. Agreeableness - is Individual's propensity to defer to others. People who are high on agreeableness are cooperative, warm, and trusting. Low agreeableness is indicated by people who are cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic. Conscientiousness - is a measure of reliability. A highly conscientious person is responsible, organized, dependable, and persistent. Those who score low on this dimension are easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable. Emotional stability - describes a person's ability to withstand stress. People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm, self-confident, and secure. Those with high negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed, and insecure. Openness - to experience suggests the range of interests and fascination with novelty. Extremely open people are creative, curious, and artistically sensitive. Those at the other end of the openness category are conventional and find comfort in the familiar.
#36 - This person is late for class..... why is this happening? (attribution theory)
If he is late due to his personal characteristics such as laziness then it is internal Attribution and if he is late due to a certain situation such as traffic then it is external attribution.
#38 - Decision Making
In organizational behavior we are concerned with how decisions are made and perceptions play a significant role in that process. Often decision-making occurs as a reaction to a problem or a perceived discrepancy between the way things are and they way we would like them to be. A decision is then made based on various alternatives that have been developed from the data collected. Perception influences this entire process from problem recognition to data selection to alternative chosen. Decision-making is done by individuals but occurs in organizations. There are some models that can help us in thinking through decision-making in organizations. The first is the rational decision-making model. The steps are outlined in this slide. Although this is a good model it is more of a goal than a practical method.
#44 - Justice (3 forms of justice... about one of them)
Increasingly we think of equity as organizational justice, a larger perception of what is fair in the workplace. Employees perceive their organizations as just when they see that what they receive matches what they have put in. One key element of organizational justice is an individual's perception of justice. Distributive Justice In other words, fairness or equity can be subjective, residing in our perception. What one person sees as unfair, another may see as perfectly appropriate. The second component is procedural justice—the perceived fairness of the process used to determine the distribution of rewards. The final component is interactional justice, an individual's perception of the degree to which she is treated with dignity, concern, and respect. These three components make up an individuals view of justice within the organization. Equity theory is popular in the United States because U.S. style reward systems assume that employees are highly sensitive to equity in reward allocation. Research shows however, that in other cultures inputs and outputs may be valued differently. Managers need to determine what is considered "fair" in a particular culture. Managers need to be transparent, consistent, and unbiased in their decision making.
#49 - Motivation on the Job
It is easy to see that some individuals are more motivated than others. However, the reasons for that motivation are more difficult to determine. When defining motivation it is important to look at the interaction between the individual and the situation. There are three key elements that help us define motivation. The first is intensity or how hard the person tries to accomplish the task. The second element is direction and that is the effort that is channeled toward organizational goals. The final element is persistency or how long a person can maintain the effort.
#47 - Job Characteristics Model (JCM)
JCM creates motivational jobs as they are designed to give internal rewards. Positive outcomes are moderated by individual growth needs as each individual will respond differently. In order for the jobs to increase motivation there should be a high degree of autonomy, feedback and a least one meaningfulness factor such as significance, identity or variety. Note that because the JCM is relatively individualistic, job enrichment strategies might not have the same effect in collectivistic cultures as they do in individualistic cultures like the United States.
#18 - Job Satisfaction
Job Satisfaction - a positive attitude toward one's job. Discussing job satisfaction is intuitively a good thing in an organization as it is a concept people understand, and it is important to recognize because of its bottom line impact. However, job satisfaction is something that is not easy to measure. One method for measure is the Single Global Rating method. This method asks one question such as "How satisfied are you with your job?" and gives options such as extremely satisfied to extremely dissatisfied. It does not go into the many facets of a job, so it does not help the organization break down where the problems are. The Summation Score Method is more sophisticated in that it asks about the various job components and breaks down how employees are specifically feeling about the different aspects of the job, thus it offers a more comprehensive look at job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is not solely a U.S. concept, but much of the research has been done in the U.S. so more research is needed to effectively expand these theories to other cultures. Workers in western cultures do tend to be more satisfied in their jobs, but this could be due to the fact that western cultures put greater emphasis on emotions and individual happiness than other cultures do. The type of work people do and their desire to do that type of work has the strongest correlation with job satisfaction. There is also a strong link between the social context of the work place and how people view their work. The more they enjoy the social aspects of their job the more satisfied they are with the job. Pay has an influence on job satisfaction but not as much as one might think. Typically, once a worker exceeds $40,000 a year pay has limited impact on the level of satisfied workers.
#45 - Job Characteristics Model (JCM)
Job characteristics model: jobs are described in terms of five core dimensions: Skill variety Task identity Task significance Autonomy Feedback The job characteristics model looks at describing any job in terms of five core job dimensions. These job dimensions include skill variety which is the degree to which the job incorporates a number of different skills and talents. Task identity is another dimension that looks at the degree to which the job requires a completion of whole and identifiable piece of work. Task significance is included and looks at how the job impacts the lives of others. Autonomy, the fourth dimension, identifies how much freedom and independence workers have over their jobs. And finally, feedback is how much the job generates direct and clear information about the worker's performance.
#33 - Perception
Perception is the way people organize the massive amounts of information they receive into patterns that give it meaning. People will use their perceptions of reality, not reality itself, to decide how to behave. The Perception Process - Observe = observing information with the senses ---> Screen = screening info and selecting what to process ---> Organize = organizing the selected data into patterns for interpretation and response.
#46 - Job Characteristics Model (JCM)
Much evidence supports the JCM concept that the presence of a set of job characteristics—variety, identity, significance, autonomy, and feedback—does generate higher and more satisfying job performance Job enrichment is helpful in keeping the worker engaged in their work. There are many actions a manager can take to help the worker. These actions help to achieve core job dimensions. For example if the manager combines tasks for the worker it can help the worker increase the amount of skills that are utilizing and help the worker to identify tasks that need to be completed. This action can help the worker have a better understanding of the job and how it helps the organization complete its goals as well as help the worker enjoy his work more because he is using more of his skill set.
#1 - General Question on Organizational Behavior
Organizational Behavior - is a field of study that investigates the impact individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge towards improving an organization's effectiveness. Basically the study of what people do in an organization and how their behavior affects the organization's performance.
#2 - General Question on Organizational Behavior
Organizational behavior (OB) 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. More specifically, OB explores motivation; leader behavior and power; interpersonal communication; group structure and processes; attitude development and perception; change processes; conflict and negotiation; and work design. OB is a behavioral social science that merges concepts from a number of different social sciences to apply specifically to the organizational setting at both the individual (or micro) and group (or macro) levels. The most significant social sciences are psychology, social psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Look at each for a moment.
#15 - Attitude and Behavior
Sometimes we observe people who will change what they say so it doesn't contradict their behavior. When attitudes and behaviors don't line up, individuals will experience cognitive dissonance. This incongruity is uncomfortable, and individuals will seek to reduce the dissonance to find consistency. People are willing to live with some discomfort, but the degree to which this is true depends upon the importance of the elements, how much influence the individual has in the situation and the rewards that are available.
#27 - Big Five
The Big Five model of personality sets forth that there are five basic dimensions that underlie all others and encompass most of the significant variations in human personalities. The Big Five factors are: Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and Openness to Experiences. There is a lot of research that supports the Big Five model and it has been shown to predict behavior at work.
#34 - Attribution Theory
The attribution theory helps us to understand our perceptions about others. Research has shown that our perceptions about others are based upon the assumptions we make about them. The attribution theory says that when we observe behavior we try to determine if it is internally or externally driven. If it is internally driven it is under the person's control whereas external causes are not under the individual's control. Attributions - judgment about the cause of behavior Internal Attribution --- characteristics of the person led to the behavior. For example, he missed the meeting because he is careless and lazy. External Attribution --- something about the situation caused the person's behavior. For example, he missed the meeting because the traffic was bad.
#14 - Attitude
The field of organizational behavior focuses on how attitudes will influence the work place. There are several major job attitudes we will look at throughout the book. The first is job satisfaction, which is the positive feeling about the job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. The second is job involvement. Job involvement looks at the degree of psychological identification with the job. An additional job attitude is psychological empowerment, the belief in the degree of influence over the job, competence in the job and job meaningfulness. A very important job attitude is organizational commitment or identifying with a particular organization and its goals. There are three dimensions to this job attitude - affective, continuance, and normative. Organizational commitment has been found to have some relationship to performance and in particular for new employees. Over the years this may be losing importance as people are tending to be more loyal to their profession than to a given employer. Employees also respond to how they perceive the organization supports them or POS. The more support they believe they are receiving the more positive their job attitude will be. An emerging concept is employee engagement, an individual's involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for, the work she does. Engagement is beginning to be linked to many positive work outcomes.
#39 - Maslow's Hierarchy of needs
The first theory was developed by Abraham Maslow in the 1950s. His theory states that with every individual there is a hierarchy of five needs. As each need is met or satisfied the next need becomes dominant. His theory posits that individuals are stuck in their existing need level until it is satisfied and then they can move on to the next level. For example, until their safety needs are met they will not be able to move on to the social level. The organization of these need levels may vary across cultures. Self-Actualization Esteem Social Safety Physiological (Pyramid bottom to top)
#22 - Perception
There are many factors that influence people's perceptions. The factors are either in the perceiver such as attitudes and experience; in the situation such as social setting and time; or in the target such as sounds, size or background.
#20 - Emotion & Mood
There are many things that impact our mood and emotions. The time of day or the day of the week is a common cause of emotions for all of us. Many are happier towards the end of the week or mid-day. Weather is thought to have an impact on our emotions, but there is no proven effect. Stress is an important factor and even at low levels it can cause our mood to change. It is important to maintain a low level of stress to help us control our psychological, as well as our physical health. Social activities have been shown to have a positive impact on our moods. This could be physical outlets such as playing in a basketball league, or it can be going out to dinner with friends. These type of activities are found to have positive impact on our moods. Sleep can be another factor, it is important to get enough, and high quality levels of sleep. Physical activity can also aid in keeping our moods upbeat. Some characteristics that are beyond our control can impact our moods such as age and gender. Elderly people tend to have fewer negative emotions. Women tend to express their emotions readily, and their moods tend to last longer. Research has shown that this is due to more cultural socialization than to biology.
#23 - Emotional Reactions
There are numerous applications of emotions and moods. These include selection of employees, decision making and creativity. Motivation, leadership, negotiation and customer service are also work outcomes that are impacted by emotions and moods, and it is important for managers to understand the connection. Job attitudes can influence our home life but don't always get carried back to the workplace. However, deviant workplace behaviors are often the result of negative emotions and significantly impact the workplace. Negative emotions can also lead to increased injuries at work.
#9 - Discrimination
To discriminate is to note a difference between things. While this in and of itself isn't a bad thing, when we talk about discrimination, we're usually referring to stereotypes about groups of people and assumptions that everyone in a group is the same. This type of discrimination can be harmful to organizations and employees.
#11 - Religious Diversity
U.S. law prohibits employers from discriminating against employees based on their religion. Even so, religion is still an issue in OB, especially when it comes to Islam. Some four in ten U.S. adults have negative feelings toward U.S. Muslims, and about half feel that U.S. Muslims are not respectful of women.
#35 - Attribution Theory
We can use three factors to help us decide if behavior is internally or externally controlled: distinctiveness, consensus, consistency. Distinctiveness shows different behaviors in different situations. Consensus looks at the response and compares it to others in the same situation to see if it is consistent with the behaviors of others. Consistency looks to see if the response is the same over time.
