Chapter 2

Question 1

Describe the four factors that directly influence individual behaviour and performance.

Answer 1

Motivation
Ability
Role Perception
Situational factors

Question 2

What is motivation?

Answer 2

Motivation represents the forces within a person that affect his or her direction, intensity, and persistence of voluntary behaviour;

Question 3

What is Ability?

Answer 3

ability includes both the natural aptitudes and the learned capabilities required to successfully complete a task

Question 4

What is Role perception?

Answer 4

role perceptions are the extent to which people understand the job duties (roles) assigned to them or expected of them

Question 5

What are situational factors?

Answer 5

situational factors include conditions beyond the employee’s immediate control that constrain or facilitate behaviour and performance.

Question 6

What are the five main types of workplace behaviour?

Answer 6

Task Performance
Organisational Citizenship
Counterproductive work behaviours
Joining/staying with the organisation
Maintaining work attendance

Question 7

What is Task performance

Answer 7

goal-directed behaviours under the individual’s control that support organisational objectives.
Consists of
Proficiency - efficient and accurate outcomes/work
Adaptability- response to and coping and supporting new circumstances
Proactivity - how well the employee anticipates environmental changes and initiates new work patterns that are aligned with those change

Question 8

What is Organisational citizenship?

Answer 8

Organisational citizenship behaviours consist of various forms of cooperation and helpfulness to others that support the organisation’s social and psychological context. Ie behaviour that extends beyond their specific task

Question 9

What are Counterproductive work Behaviours?

Answer 9

Counterproductive work behaviours are voluntary behaviours that have the potential to directly or indirectly harm the organisation

Question 10

Joining/Staying with Company?

Answer 10

Joining and staying with the organisation refers to agreeing to become an organisational member and remaining with the organisation.

Question 11

Maintaining work attendance?

Answer 11

Maintaining work attendance includes minimising absenteeism when capable of working and avoiding scheduled work when not fit (i.e. low presenteeism).

Question 12

What is personality?

Answer 12

Personality is the relatively enduring pattern of thoughts, emotions and behaviours that characterise a person, along with the psychological processes behind those characteristics

Question 13

What are personality traits?

Answer 13

Personality traits are broad concepts about people that allow us to label and understand individual differences.

Question 14

How is personality developed

Answer 14

Personality is developed through hereditary origins (nature) as well as socialisation (nurture)

Question 15

What it MBTI?

Answer 15

Based on Jungian personality theory, the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) identifies competing orientations for getting energy (extraversion vs introversion), perceiving information (sensing vs intuiting), processing information and making decisions (thinking vs feeling) and orienting to the external world (judging vs perceiving). The MBTI improves self-awareness for career development and mutual understanding but is more popular than valid.

Question 16

What are the big 5 personality traits?

Answer 16

Concienticness - 
Agreeableness - 
Neuroticism - 
Opens to experience - 
Extraversion -

Question 17

Summarise Schwartz’s model of individual values and discuss the conditions in which values influence behaviour

Answer 17

Values are stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences for outcomes or courses of action in a variety of situations. Compared to personality traits, values are evaluative (rather than descriptive), more likely to conflict and formed more from socialisation than heredity. Schwartz’s model organises 57 values into a circumplex of 10 dimensions along two bipolar dimensions: openness to change to conservation and self-enhancement to self-transcendence.
Values influence behaviour when the situation facilitates that connection and when we actively think about them and understand their relevance to the situation. Values congruence refers to how similar a person’s values hierarchy is to the values hierarchy of another source (organisation, person, etc.).

Question 18

Describe three ethical principles and discuss three factors that influence ethical behaviour.

Answer 18

Ethics refers to the study of moral principles or values that determine whether actions are right or wrong and outcomes are good or bad. Three ethical principles are utilitarianism, individual rights and distributive justice. Ethical behaviour is influenced by the degree to which an issue demands the application of ethical principles (moral intensity), the individual’s ability to recognise the presence and relative importance of an ethical issue (moral sensitivity) and situational forces. Ethical conduct at work is supported by codes of ethical conduct, mechanisms for communicating ethical violations, the organisation’s culture and the leader’s behaviour.

Question 19

Ethics refers to the study of moral principles or values that determine whether actions are right or wrong and outcomes are good or bad. Three ethical principles are utilitarianism, individual rights and distributive justice. Ethical behaviour is influenced by the degree to which an issue demands the application of ethical principles (moral intensity), the individual’s ability to recognise the presence and relative importance of an ethical issue (moral sensitivity) and situational forces. Ethical conduct at work is supported by codes of ethical conduct, mechanisms for communicating ethical violations, the organisation’s culture and the leader’s behaviour.

Answer 19

Five values often studied across cultures are individualism (valuing independence and personal uniqueness); collectivism (valuing duty to in-groups and group harmony); power distance (valuing unequal distribution of power); uncertainty avoidance (tolerating or feeling threatened by ambiguity and uncertainty); and achievement-nurturing orientation (valuing competition vs cooperation).