Chapter 1 - What is OB?

Question 1

What is Organizational Behavior?

Answer 1

A field of study devoted to understanding, explaining, and ultimately improving the attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups in organizations.

Question 2

What is Human Resource Management?

Answer 2

Taking the theories and principles studied in OB and exploring the “nuts-and-bolts” applications of those principles in organizations.

Question 3

Difference between OB and HR?

Answer 3

OB may explore the relationship between learning and job performance, while HR might examine the best ways to structure training programs to promote employee learning.

Question 4

Strategic Management?

Answer 4

focuses on the product choices and industry characteristics that affect and organization’s profitability. A strategic management study might examine the relationship between firm diversification (adding a new product) and firm profitability.

Question 5

What are the Two Primary Individual Outcomes of interest to OB researchers?

Answer 5

Job Performance and Organizational Commitment

Question 6

What are the 5 Individual Mechanisms that directly affect job performance and organizational commitment?

Answer 6

job satisfaction, stress, motivation, “trust, Justice, and Ethics”, “Learning and decision making”

Question 7

Job Satisfaction

Answer 7

what employees feel when thinking about their jobs and doing day-to-day work

Question 8

Stress

Answer 8

reflects employees’ psychological responses to job demands that tax or exceed their capacities.

Question 9

Motivation

Answer 9

captures the energetic forces that drive employees’ work effort.

Question 10

Trust, Justice ,and Ethics

Answer 10

reflects the degree to which employees feel that their company does business with fairness, honesty, and integrity.

Question 11

Learning and Decision Making

Answer 11

deals with how employees gain job knowledge and how they use that knowledge to make accurate judgements on the job

Question 12

Personality and cultural values

Answer 12

reflect the various traits and tendencies that describe how people act, with commonly studied traits including extraversion, conscientiousness, and collectivism.

Question 13

Ability

Answer 13

cognitive abilities (verbal, quantitative, etc.) emotional skills, and physical abilities that employees bring to a job.

Question 14

Inimitable

Answer 14

resource that can’t be imitated

Question 15

History

Answer 15

collective pool of experience, wisdom, and knowledge that benefits the organization.

Question 16

Numerous Small Decisions

Answer 16

captures the idea that people make many small decisions day in and day out

Question 17

Socially Complex Resources

Answer 17

culture, teamwork, trust, and reputation

Question 18

Rule of One-Eighth

Answer 18

at best 12% of organizations will actually do what is required to build profits by putting people first.

Question 19

Method of Experience

Answer 19

people hold a belief because it is consistent with their own experience and observations.

Question 20

Method of Intuition

Answer 20

People hold firmly to a belief because it “just stands to reason”

Question 21

Method of Authority

Answer 21

people hold firmly to some belief because some respected official, agency, or source has said it is so.

Question 22

Method of Science

Answer 22

people accept a belief because scientific studies have tended to replicate that result using a serious of samples, settings, and methods.

Question 23

Theory

Answer 23

collection of assertions

Question 24

Hypotheses

Answer 24

written predictions that specify relationships between variables

Question 25

What is the possible range of correlation “r” in an experiment?

Answer 25

-1 to 1, with 0 meaning no correlation.

Question 26

What is the “r” range of strong correlation in OB?

Answer 26

.5+

Question 27

What is the correlation range “r” that is considered moderate in OB?

Answer 27

.3-.5

Question 28

What is a weak “r” in OB?

Answer 28

0-.1

Question 29

3 steps to assume a Causal Inference

Answer 29

1) 2 variables are correlated, 2) presumed cause precedes the presumed effect in time, 3) There are no alternative explanations

Question 30

meta-analysis

Answer 30

taking all of the correlations found in studies of a particular relationship and calculating a weighted average

Question 31

evidence-based management

Answer 31

perspective that argues that scientific findings should form the foundation for management education, much as they do for medical education.

Question 32

What focuses on the “Why” aspect of the actions of individuals and groups in an organization?

Answer 32

Organizational Behavior (OB)