Organizational Behavior Test 1
Heuristics - Escalation of Commitment
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it." Decision makers who commit to a course of action tend to make subsequent decisions that continue that commitment - beyond the level of rationality. ->Gambling ->Relationships
What tools do organizations use to manage job performance among employees?
- Management by Objectives (MBO) - 360-degree feedback - Social networking systems - Behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS) - Forced rankings
Generally, perception is influenced by four motives:
1. Desire to feel good about ourselves 2. Need to simplify or reduce amount of info we must process 3. Need to perceive that we are in control 4. Need to feel as if we belong
Normative Commitment
A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member of an organization because of a feeling of obligation You stay because you ought to *Long term want continuance commitment, short term want normative commitment, overall want affective commitment
Continuance Commitment
A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member of an organization because of an awareness of the costs associated with leaving Affected by community/company embeddedness - staying with what you know / where you know *Long term want continuance commitment, short term want normative commitment, overall want affective commitment
Affective commitment
A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member of an organization because of an emotional attachment to, or involvement in, that organization *Ideal form of commitment
withdrawal
A set of actions that employees perform to avoid the work situation (coffee breaks, late starts, early departures, and personal things) High commitment, low withdrawal Low commitment, high withdrawal
Motives of OCB
Affective (Emotional) States: Good mood = spontaneous behavior Reciprocity motives: Because they treat me well Impression management: Helping others makes me look good Role Expectations: See it as part of my job (role breadth)
Cognitive Ability
Capabilities related to the acquisition and application of knowledge in problem solving - Verbal - Quantitative - Reasoning - Spatial - Perceptual
Emotional Intelligence
Capabilities related to the management and use of emotions when interacting with others Sometimes labeled EQ or EI Especially vital in jobs that require a lot of "emotional labor"
Personality Big 5
Conscientiousness Agreeableness Neuroticism Openness to Experience Extraversion
Organizational Commitment
Degree to which an employee wishes to maintain membership in an organization Three forms: Affective Normative Continuance
Mood and emotions
Emotional labor: the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job Emotional contagion: the phenomenon of having one person's emotions and related behaviors directly trigger similar emotions and behaviors in other people
Incivility Examples
Frequent interruptions Social exclusion Free riding Condescension Abusive supervision Inappropriate jokes Gossip/rumors
The Rule of 1/8
Half of organizations don't believe the connection between how they manage their people and profits Half of those who see the connection will try to make a single change to solve their problems, failing to take a more comprehensive and systematic approach (1/4) About half of firms that make comprehensive changes will persist with their practices long enough to actually derive economic benefits (1/8)
"The Problem with Using Personality Tests for Hiring" -Martin
If your hiring process relies primarily on interviews, reference checks, and personality tests, you are choosing to use a process that is significantly less effective than it could be if more effective measures were incorporated. Especially problematic is the use of Four Quadrant (4-Q) personality tests for hiring -> 4-Q tools consist of a list of adjectives from which respondents select words that are most/least like them, and are designed to measure "style," or tendencies and preferences. -> test takers can manipulate the results -> Since they are designed to measure "states" (as opposed to more stable "traits"), there is a significant chance that the results will change over time The strongest personality assessments to use in a hiring context are ones that possess these attributes: -> Measure stable traits that will not tend to change -> Are normative in nature, which allows you to compare one candidate's scores -> Have a "candidness" (or "distortion" or "lie detector") scale -> Have high reliability and have been shown to be valid predictors of job performance
Causes of CWB: Managing for deviance
Individualized incentives Social norms Managers' negative attitudes toward employees Ambiguity about job performance expectations Unfairness Violations of employee trust
Counterproductive behaviors
Interpersonal deviance (bullying) Theft/property crime Production deviance -> purposeful failure to perform job tasks effectively the way they are supposed to be performed -> withdrawal - Working less time than is required, absence, lateness, leaving early, extra long breaks, attempt to avoid or escape a situation rather than do direct harm
What predicts OCB?
Job Satisfaction Organizational Commitment Organizational Fairness Leader support Conscientiousness
How do we identify relevant behaviors?
Job analysis: 1. Divide a job into major dimensions 2. List 2 key tasks within each of those major dimensions 3. Rate the tasks on frequency and importance 4. Use most frequent and important tasks to define task performance
Job Characteristics Theory
Jobs are more intrinsically enjoyable when work tasks are challenging and fulfilling Five "core job characteristics" combine to make some jobs more rewarding than others -> Variety -> Identity -> Significance -> Autonomy -> Feedback
Progressive Withdrawal Theory
Key question: -> How exactly are the different forms of withdrawal related to one another? Answer: -> The various forms of withdrawal are almost always moderately to strongly correlated -> Those correlations suggest a progression, as lateness is strongly related to absenteeism, and absenteeism is strongly correlated to quitting -> Psychological withdrawal comes before physical withdrawal
Topics in Organizational Behavior
Leadership Personality Emotions (Stress & Burnout) Performance at Work Perception & Decision-making Attitudes Team and Group Behavior National and Organizational Culture Motivation Communication Social Networks Negotiation
What is Organizational Behavior (OB)?
Organizational Behavior: A field of study devoted to understanding, explaining, and ultimately improving the attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups in organizations Organizational behavior replaces management by intuition by systematically examining behavior in the workplace Goal: diagnose & understand problems in organizations
Personality Dimensions: Locus of Control
Reflects the distinction between believing that events are driven by luck, chance, or fate, versus people's own behaviors (internal/external) -> Connection to attributions -> What effect would locus of control have on job satisfaction? -> What impact would locus of control have on mental health? -> Strongly correlated with neuroticism
Personality: Openness to Experience
Relevant adjectives: Curious, imaginative, creative, complex, refined, sophisticated
Psychological Contracts
Schema representing the perceived obligations an employee believes s/he is owed by the organization and vice versa (Psychological contract - what we believe we owe our company, what we believe our company owes us)
How do the antecedents of OCB & task performance differ?
Task Performance = Knowledge, Skills, Abilities Contextual Performance/OCB = Volitional/motivational Predispositions (e.g., personality)
OCB vs Task Performance
Task Performance: Proficiency in performing activities that are formally recognized as part of the job Organizational citizenship behavior / Contextual Performance: Behaviors that go beyond task performance, instead supporting the organizational, social, and psychological context of work
EI: Use of emotions
The ability of an individual to harness emotions and use them to improve their chances of being successful in a given area
EI: Other awareness
The ability of an individual to recognize and understand the emotions that other individuals are feeling
EI: Self awareness
The ability of an individual to understand the types of emotions he/she is experiencing, the willingness to acknowledge them, and the capability to express them accurately
EI: Emotion regulation
The ability to quickly recover from emotional experiences and control one's feelings
Job Performance
The behaviors under the control of an employee that contribute, either positively or negatively, to organizational goal accomplishment *Not the consequences or results of behavior--the behavior itself
How we know about OB: Meta-analyses
The correlations from multiple studies get averaged together using a technique called meta-analysis Meta-analyses can then form the foundation for evidence-based management--the use of scientific findings to inform management education and practice
Personality
The structures and propensities inside a person that explain his or her characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior Nature vs. Nurture Twin Studies ->Scientists study identical twins reared apart in order to separate nature and nurture effects ->This research suggests that between 35% and 49% of the variation in personality is genetic
"Delusions of Success: How Optimism Undermines Executives' Decisions" - Lovallo and Khaneman
When forecasting the outcomes of risky projects, managers make decisions based on delusional optimism rather than on a rational weighting of gains, losses, and probabilities. -> They overestimate benefits and underestimate costs. -> They overlook the potential for mistakes and miscalculations. Executives' over-optimism can be traced to: -> tendency of individuals to exaggerate their own talents -> Attribution error: people to take credit for positive outcomes and to attribute negative outcomes to external factors -> exaggerated degree of control over events -> anchoring: managers fail to put in enough contingency funds because they are anchored to their original cost estimates and don't adjust them sufficiently to account for the likelihood of problems, delays, and extensions of scope -> Competitor neglect -> Organizational pressure Making a forecast using the outside view requires planners to identify a reference class of analogous past initiatives, determine the distribution of outcomes for those initiatives, and place the project at hand at an appropriate point along that distribution
Self-Reference Effect
When information is relevant to our self-concepts, we process it quickly and remember it well Memories form around ourselves
Heuristics - Peak-End Effect
When we recall events, we recall the (1) peak of the event, and (2) how the event ends
Self-Schemas
elements of your self-concept; specific beliefs by which we define ourselves Affect how we perceive, remember, and evaluate others and ourselves
Honesty/Integrity Tests
An increasing number of organizations are attempting to measure "honesty" or "integrity" for use in hiring. Why? Such measures tap three of the Big Five: High conscientiousness Low neuroticism High agreeableness
Influences on Performance
Declarative knowledge (DK) - what you know; facts, principles, goals, self-knowledge Procedural knowledge & skill (PKS) -- knowing how to do things; cognitive, psychomotor, interpersonal, physical & self-management skills Motivation (M) -- individual drive to perform; direction, persistence, and intensity of effort ***Performance = DK * PKS * M
Value-Percept Theory
Dissatisfaction = (VALUEwant-VALUEhave) x (VALUEimportance)
Cognitive Ability and Performance
General cognitive ability predicts of success at work and in academia For certain jobs, tests of specific mental ability can add significantly to the predictive power of tests of general intelligence General cognitive ability influences: -> how quickly a person can learn a job -> how he or she can adapt to changing circumstances
Reliability and Validity in Individual Difference Tests
Reliable -describes extent to which measure is free from random error -> Correlation coefficients; reliability should be 1; test-retest; split-half -> "consistency is only a good thing if you're not a screw-up" Valid -extent to which performance on a measure (test) is related to what the measure is designed to assess (job performance) -> Criterion-related validity -based on showing a substantial correlation between test scores and performance scores -> Predictive validation - -> Concurrent validation -
Personality: Agreeableness
Relevant adjectives: Kind, cooperative, sympathetic, helpful, courteous, warm What's your score? Men with disagreeable personalities out-earn men with agreeable personalities by about 18 percent Disagreeable women, on the other hand, earn only about five percent more than their sweet and gentle counterparts
Personality: Extraversion
Relevant adjectives: Talkative, sociable, passionate, assertive, bold, dominant
"Affective forecasts are affected by 2 factors:
(1) The event; (2) "everything else - Psychological immune system: discounting, rationalizing, forgiving, etc.) - "Immune neglect: - minor irritations are more problematic than are major problems - We can be very resilient
How we know about OB: Scientific Method
- A collection of assertions (both verbal and symbolic) that specify how and why variables are related, as well as the conditions in which they should (and should not) be related - Scientific Method: Hypothesis, Data, Verification - To test our theory we gather data on the variables included in our hypotheses - We then use variants of the correlation coefficient to test hypotheses, to see if they verify our theory theory -> hypothesis -> data -> verification ---^
Social Science and Contingencies
- Few absolutes exist in the social sciences - Behavior is a product of traits, but it is also strongly influenced by the situation - Thus - most personality traits do NOT predict performance across jobs; and - There is no formula for the traits of an effective leader across situations - So... we can only hope to make better decisions across time -Do not believe those who tell you that they they have formulas or lists that will make you universally successful - Situations are extremely important, more important than personality traits - In management: job related knowledge is more important than personality traits
Causes & Consequences of Incivility
-> Antecedents: Pace of work No time to be nice Norms Casual workplace Student-faculty relations Workplace change Demographic change Changing PCs -> Outcomes: 13% of time devoted to employee conflict Incivility affects job satisfaction, commitment, etc. Incivility weakens leadership Sexual harassment costs - $6 million per Fortune 500 company
"Toxic Workers" -Housman & Minor
-> Hypothesis 1: Self-regarding workers are more likely to be toxic -> Hypothesis 2: Overconfident workers are more likely to be toxic -> Hypothesis 3A: Workers that claim the rules should be followed are less likely to be toxic (this personality trait predicts lower incident rates of adverse behaviors) -> Hypothesis 3B: Workers that claim the rules should be followed are more likely to be toxic (subjects are highly incentivized to respond to a rule following question in a job application in whichever way they believe will secure them a job) -> Hypothesis 4: Workers with increased exposure to other toxic workers are more likely to be toxic -> incentives can play a very important role in causing adverse outcomes -> a worker's personal characteristics are important in determining his ethical behavior -> selection of workers plays a role at least as important, if not more important than incentives in generating outcomes. -> One approach to managing toxic workers and the approach we focus on in this paper is simply avoiding them. -> Toxic workers work faster but have lower quality performance
"Goodbye to MBTI, the Fad That Won't Die" -Grant
-> Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) -> The MBTI does poorly on reliability -> MBTI is not a valid indicator for job performance or team effectiveness -> MBTI attempts to pass off independent overlapping traits as mutually exclusive (e.g. thinking vs feeling) -> Missing key elements (e.g. emotional stability vs reactivity) -> Solution: The Big Five Personality Traits
"Happy Employees and Firm Performance: Have We Been Putting the Cart Before the Horse?" -Kiewitz
-> maybe it's not that happy employees make for high-performing firms, but that when organizations excel, it makes employees happy. -> company performance measures (ROA and EPS) were consistently stronger predictors of employee satisfaction than the reverse. -> employees often become satisfied when they receive valued rewards for great performance. In other words, when firms do well, managers can typically offer superior benefits, pay, and job security to employees. -> circular loop" with respect to causality -> having high-performance work practices may improve company efficiency, eventually resulting in superior firm performance. -> As a consequence, the firm's reputation improves, as does its ability to offer superior benefits and higher pay to employees. -> Eventually, this leads to higher employee morale and greater satisfaction with pay, job security, and benefits.
"Self-Concept: Who Am I?" - Meyers
-> self-reference effect: When information is relevant to our self-concepts, we process it quickly and remember it well -> we overestimate our conspicuousness -> we have an illusion that our emotions are transparent to others Individualism -> Independent -> Identity is Personal, defined by individual traits and goals -> What matters: Me—personal achievement and fulfillment; my rights and liberties -> Disapproves of conformity -> Found in western culture Collectivism -> Identity is social, defined by connections with others -> What matters: We—group goals and solidarity; our social responsibilities and relationships -> Disapproves of egotism -> Found in Asian and third world countries -> Other people predict our behavior better than we can predict our own -> people have greatest difficulty predicting the intensity and the duration of their future emotions -> we often "miswant" -> Our rational explanations may omit the unconscious attitudes that actually guide our behavior. -> we have a dual attitude system: our unconscious, automatic, implicit attitudes regarding someone or something often differ from our consciously controlled, explicit attitudes.
CWB Interventions
1) Selection Pre-hire Screening -> Integrity tests -> Background checks Goal = Screen out potential offenders 2) Policies and Practices -Zero-tolerance policies -Self-examination -Dispute resolution process -Security systems Goals = Norms & expectations Preventative measures Risk assessment 3) Good management Climate Interventions -> Job stress -> Ethical climate -> Organizational justice Training -> Social skills training -> Risk factors identification -> Train managers & union officials how to handle terminations Goal = Improve working conditions 4) Incident response Core concepts -> Demonstrate support -> Address health concerns -> Remove offender Actions -> Form reaction teams -> Discharge employee -> EAPs Goals: Treat harm Prevent future events
Proving causation requires:
1. Correlation 2. Temporal precedence 3. Elimination of alternative explanations (Could be a hidden factor)
Problems with Classic Model for Understanding Performance
1. Most objective measures have limitations 2. Objective measures are not available for many jobs 3. Different objective measures for the same job may not be related to each other
Performance is distinct from:
1. Results of performance Situational context (e.g., economy affects sales) 2. Effectiveness of performance Evaluation of results (e.g., meeting organizational goals) 3. Productivity Resources/outcome ratio (e.g., employee salary/total sales) 4. Utility Value of performance (e.g., how important your work is to the organization)
4 varieties of emotional intelligence
1. self-awareness 2. other awareness 3. emotion use 4. emotion regualtion
Job Satisfaction
A pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experiences It is based on both cognition (calculated opinions of your job) and affect (emotional reactions to your job)
Individual Differences
Abilities - biological/learned trait that permits a person to do something Skills - task-related competencies Gender differences - absenteeism
Heuristics - Anchoring
Anchoring and (insufficient) adjustment People make estimates starting with an initial value and making adjustments to yield a final answer Conjunctive vs. Disjunctive events How many countries are in Africa? Contrast effects
How we maintain our self-concept: Attributions Self-serving bias Fundamental attribution error Self-handicapping
Attribution: process of perceiving the causes of behavior and outcomes; situation vs. disposition Self-serving bias: tendency to attribute our own successes to internal factors and our failures to situational factors Fundamental Attribution Error- tendency to automatically attribute the behavior of others to internal (dispositional) factors as opposed to situational factors Self-handicapping - failing to control others' attributions
Attributions & Confirmation Bias
Attributions create a first impression that causes a confirmation bias Confirmation Bias: tendency to seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs and opinions and ignore information that runs contrary to these opinions and beliefs
Heuristics - Availability
Availability Heuristic: tendency to base decision on easily accessible or readily available information; ease of recall; peak-end Recency, negativity, observational selection
(2) performance dimensions
Citizenship behavior - Voluntary activities that may or may not be rewarded but that contribute to the organization by improving the quality of the setting where work occurs Counterproductive behavior - Employee behaviors that intentionally hinder organizational goal accomplishment
Personality Dimensions: Narcissism
Clinical Narcissism: disorder; "pervasive pattern of grandiosity," in fantasy or behavior, along with a "need for admiration and lack of empathy" (APA, 2000) Subclinical Narcissism: derived from an attempt to regulate and maintain unrealistically high levels of self-esteem -> Narcissists rate themselves more highly than is warranted on intelligence, creativity, competence, and leadership ability -> Brag, derogate others, react to ego threats with hostility and aggression, make internal attributions for success and external attributions for failure, and overestimate future outcomes even in the face of disconfirming feedback
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
E-I Scale - where you like to focus your attention Extroverts: outer world of people and things Introverts: inner world of your own thoughts S-N Scale - the way that you perceive/acquire info Sensing: through your own five senses iNtuitive: intuition shows you the meanings, relationships, and possibilities beyond info provided by senses T-F Scale - describes how you make decision Thinking: make decisions through logic Feeling: feeling or considering what is important w/o logic J-P Scale - describes the lifestyle you prefer to adapt, worldview Judging - thinking or feeling attitude towards the world Perceiving: view the world intuitively ***What does it tell us? --- PREFERENCES!!!!
Personality Dimensions: Machiavellianism
Machiavellianism - degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that the ends justify the means Prefer economic opportunism to cooperation; endorse the negative as opposed to positive reciprocity norm; lack empathy; do not develop relationships; manipulate others
Theory of Individual Differences in Task and Contextual Performance
Motowidlo et al. (1997): basic tendencies are expressed through characteristic adaptations (attitudes, social skills and schemas) which affect performance
How we know about OB: Correlation
Perfect positive relationship: 1 Perfect negative relationship: -1 Strength of the correlation inferred from judging the compactness of a scatterplot of the X-Y values More compact = stronger correlation Less compact = weaker correlation
Heuristics - Prospect Theory
Prospect Theory: Framing matters People experience more disutility for a loss than they experience utility for a gain of the same amount. Overreact to small probability events, but under-react to medium and large probabilities. ex. Fear over risk of terrorist attack versus risk of auto accident
Causes of CWB (counterproductive work behavior)
Proximal Processes -> Frustration/Anger Hypothesis -> Instrumental Aggression -> Control/Powerlessness -> Injustice/Inequity/Displaced aggression -> Reciprocity -> Self-regulation Individual Differences -> Integrity -> Behaviors/Cognitive Styles
Why would OCB be associated with overall performance ratings?
Reciprocity High ratings are a form of "repayment" for OCB Schema-Triggered Affect OCB stimulates positive feelings about subordinate Attribution Theory OCB are distinctive and therefore more likely to be attributed as stable characteristics of employees Stable characteristics are easy to recall
Heuristics - Representativeness
Representativeness: assessing likelihood by drawing analogies and seeing identical situations where they don't exist Probabilities are evaluated by the based on the degree to which A is representative of B -> baseline probabilities, sample size, regression to the mean -> Stereotyping: ------>Judge entire group based on one individual ------>Judge individual based on entire group ------>Pygmalion effect; stereotype threat
Personality Dimensions: Self-Esteem and Self-Monitoring
Self-esteem - individuals' degree of liking or disliking themselves Self-monitoring - personality trait that measures an individual's ability to adjust his or her behavior to external, situational factors
Task Performance
The behaviors directly involved in transforming organizational resources into the goods or services an organization produces (i.e., the behaviors included in one's job description)
Ability
The relatively stable capabilities people have to perform a particular range of different but related activities In contrast to skills, which are more trainable and improvable As with personality, about half of the variation in ability levels is due to genetics
Perception
The world is as it is perceived is the world as it is behaviorally important Behavior is based on perception, not facts
Wisdom and the illusion of self analysis: Dual Attitude System
Unconscious, automatic implicit attitudes often differ from our conscious, explicit attitudes More aware of the results of our thinking than the processes Processes that control behavior distinct from those that explain it -> Rational explanations for behavior omit unconscious attitudes -> Happiness predicts whether people will be dating in a few months, but the factors believed to cause the happiness do not
Personality and Performance: Trait Activation Theory
Understand the situations in which individual differences occur Effects of trait -> behavior depend on the extent to which situational characteristics provide an opportunity for or create a necessity for activation of that trait
Things I've Learned Through My OB Research
We are more impressionable than we think - our coworkers influence our beliefs about how we think we are being treated We tend to have similar levels of burnout to our advice ties and coworkers with whom we work closely Our helping behavior is affected by others: we tend to help out at work to the same degree that those who give us advice do While personality traits affect bad supervisory behavior, displaced aggression and organizational culture are also key causes Don't mistreat your subordinates - their reactions will not remain in the workplace Children are more likely to become abusive supervisors themselves if their parents yell at them/undermine them We are likely to avoid, ignore or exclude other people if we think they are rude and obnoxious - unless.... People are most likely to take revenge when (1) they have low self-control; and (2) organizational culture is aggressive When our organizations fail to fulfill the promises we believe they've made to us, we tend to distance ourselves and retaliate Griping to our family or friends about our work problems doesn't help us People with different cultural values respond to mistreatment very differently Personality is much more strongly associated with helping and counterproductive behaviors than task performance Always remember that what we do and who we do it for are critical to who we are. So use your power carefully. Competition makes it difficult for organizations to take care of employees so that they are motivated.
Self-Knowledge
We are unaware of what affects our moods Our experiences (over two months) vs. the average person's experiences View outcomes of relationships more optimistically than is warranted; others can predict their outcomes better than we can The people who know you can predict your behavior in certain situations better than you can We can better predict our own behavior by predicting the behavior of others ***Takeaway: When it comes to our behavior, past behavior is better predictor of future behavior!
Affective Forecasting: Predicting Our Feelings
We know how we will feel in general, but not the intensity and duration of our emotions -> Hungry shoppers and impulse buying (Gilbert & Wilson, 2000) -> Overestimate warmer winters, free time, weight loss, TV channels We have a tendency to "miswant" -> Happiness from events dissipates more quickly than we expect -> Sadness and grief over loss also does not have the effect we expect -> New cars don't make us as happy; losing our job doesn't make us as sad as we expect
Heuristics - Similar to Me Effect
We like people like us - share our interests and experiences, identify with the same groups We give things to people who we like more than to people who we don't like Play up similarity with the opposition
Spotlight Effect
We tend to overestimate the extent to which other people pay attention to us as well as the role that we play in events The more self-conscious we are, the more we believe this illusion of transparency
Personality: Conscientiousness
diligent, thorough, hard-working Relevant adjectives: Dependable, organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking, persevering
Perceived Organizational Support
employee's global belief that the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being Employees personify the organization and form a social exchange relationship -> Reciprocity norm - individuals help (and do not harm) those who help them Favorable treatment from the organization obligate employees to help the organization succeed -> Rewards and job conditions -> Fairness -> Supervisory relationships
Schemas
mental templates by which we organize our worlds (things you associate with certain words) Ex. Puppies happiness expensive house damage kittens etc.
Personality: Neuroticism
over-anxious Relevant adjectives: Nervous, moody, emotional, insecure, jealous, unstable