Chapter 1 - What is Organizational Behavior? Flashcards
An individual who achieves goals through other people.
Manager
A consciously coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals.
Organization
A process that includes defining goals, establishing strategy, and developing plans to coordinate activities.
Planning
Determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made.
Organizing
A function that includes motivating employees, directing others, selecting the most effective communication channels, and resolving conflicts.
Leading
Monitoring activities to ensure they are being accomplished as planned and correcting any significant deviations.
Controlling
The ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise.
Technical Skills
The ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually and in groups
Human Skills
The mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations
Conceptual Skills
A field of study that investigates the impact individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness.
Organizational Behavior
Looking at relationships, attempting to attribute causes and effects, and drawing conclusions based on scientific evidence.
Systematic Study
The basing of managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence.
Evidence-Based Management (EBM)
An instinctive feeling not necessarily supported by research.
Intuition
The science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals.
Psychology
An area of psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology to focus on the influence of people on one another.
Social Psychology
The study of people in relation to their social environment or culture.
Sociology
The study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.
Anthropology
Situational factors: variables that moderate the relationship between two or more variables.
Contingency Variables
The concept that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other characteristics.
Workforce Diversity
An area of OB research that concerns how organizations develop human strengths, foster vitality and resilience, and unlock potential.
Positive Organizational Scholarship
Situations in which individuals are required to define right and wrong conduct.
Ethical Dilemmas and Ethical Choices
An abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of some real-world phenomenon.
Model
Variables that lead to processes.
Input
Actions that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in as a result of inputs and that lead to certain outcomes.
Processes
Key factors that are affected by some other variables.
Outcomes
An unpleasant psychological process that occurs in response to environmental pressures.
Stress
The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing core job tasks.
Task Performance
Discretionary behavior that contributes to the psychological and social environment of the workplace.
Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OcB)
The set of actions employees take to separate themselves from the organization.
Withdrawal Behavior
The extent to which members of a group support and validate one another while at work.
Group Cohesion
The quantity and quality of a group’s work output.
Group Functioning
The combination of the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization.
Productivity
The degree to which an organization meets the needs of its clientele or customers.
Effectiveness
The degree to which an organization can achieve its ends at a low cost.
Efficiency
The degree to which an organization is able to exist and grow over the long term.
Organizational Survival
