Exam 1 Flashcards
Human Resource Management
Goal is to understanding how to effectively maximize the value of the employee
Human Capital
An organization’s employees, described in terms of their training, experience, judgment, intelligence, relationships, and insight.
How does human resource management contribute to an organization’s performance?
Well-managed Human Resources can be a source of sustainable competitive advantage by contributing to quality, profits, and customer satisfaction.
Organizational Behavior
Describes an interdisciplinary field dedicated to understanding and managing people at work
Contingency Approach
Calls for using the OB concepts and tools that best suit the situation, instead of trying to rely on “one best way,”
Hard Skills
The technical expertise and knowledge to do a particular task or job function
Soft Skills
Relate to our human interactions and include both interpersonal skills and personal attributes
Portable Skills
Relevant in every job, at every level, and throughout your career
Why is OB Valuable to your job and career
The farther you go, the more OB Skills you’ll need
Ethics
Guides our behavior by identifying right, wrong, and the many shades of gray in between
Ethical Dilemmas
Situations with two choices, neither of which resolves the situation in an ethically acceptable manner
3 Levels of Organizational Behavior
Individual
Group/Team
Organization
Personal Attributes:
Attitude
Personality
Teamwork
Leadership
Interpersonal Skills:
Active Listening
Positive Attitudes
Effective Communication
Ill-conceived goals
We set goals and incentives to promote a desired behavior, but they encourage a negative one
Motivated Blindness
We overlook the unethical behavior of another when it’s in our interest to remain ignorant
Indirect Blindness
We hold others less accountable for unethical behavior when it’s carried out through third parties
The slippery slope
We are less able to see others’ unethical behavior when it develops gradually
Overvaluing Outcomes
We give a pass to unethical behavior if the outcome is good
Person factors
Infinite characteristics that give individuals their unique identities
Situation factors
All the elements outside us that influence what we do, the way we do it, and the ultimate results of our actions
Interactional Perspective
States that behavior is a function of interdependent person and situation factors
Organizing Framework for Understanding and Applying OB
Inputs: Personal Factors, Situation Factors
V
Processes: Individual Level, Group/Team Level, Organizational Level
V
Outcomes: Individual Level, Group/Team Level, Organizational Level
Economists perspective on employees:
Employees = Expense
HRM perspective on employees:
Employees = Value
Values
Abstract ideals that guide our thinking and behavior across all situations
Values when it comes to time and context
Generally remain stable across time
Not specific to context
A match between an individual’s values and environment/behavior leads to
Positive attitudes and motivation
Schwartz’s Value Theory
Two dimensions of values:
First Bipolar Dimension
Second Bipolar Dimension
First Bipolar Dimension:
<———————————->
Self-Transcendence. Self-Enhancement
Second Bipolar Dimension
<———————————->
Openness to Change. Conservation
What did Schwartz think about values?
They are motivational
Represent broad goals over time
Some are incongruent and some are complementary
Attitudes
Our feelings or opinions about people, places, and objects and range from positive to negative
Workplace attitudes
An outcome of various OB-related processes, including leadership
Cognitive component of an attitude
Our beliefs or ideas about an object or situation
“I believe”
Affective Component of an attitude
Our feelings or emotions about a given object or situation
“I feel”
Behavioral component of an attitude
The way we intend or expect to act toward someone or something
“I intend”
Cognitive Dissonance
The psychological discomfort a person experiences when simultaneously holding two or more conflicting cognitions (ideas, beliefs, values, or emotions)
What is significant about the behavioral component of attitudes?
Very few people follow through with their intentions
Values represent beliefs that influence behaviors ______________; attitudes relate to behavior ______________
Across all situations
Toward specific targets
Perceived behavioral control
The perceived ease or difficulty of performing the behavior, assumed to reflect past experience and anticipated obstacles.
Theory of Planned Behavior Determinants of Intention
Attitude toward the behavior
Subjective Norm
Perceived Behavioral Control
Organizational commitment
The extent to which an individual identifies with an organization and commits to its goals
Psychological contracts
An individual’s perception about the reciprocal exchange between him- or herself and another party
Flextime
A policy of giving employees flexible work hours so they can come and go at different times, as long as they work a set number of hours or meet deadlines
Employee Engagement
The extent to which employees give it their all to their work roles
Stressors
Environmental characteristics that cause stress
Perceived Organizational Support
The extent to which employees believe their organization values their contributions and genuinely cares about their well-being
Job Satisfaction
An effective or emotional response towards various facts of a job
Job Involvement
Represents the extent to which an individual is personally engaged in his or her work role
Withdrawl cognitions
An individual’s overall thoughts and feelings about quitting
Organizational citizenship behavior
Individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of the organization
Counterproductive work behavior
Behavior that harms other employees, the organization as a whole, and/or organizational stakeholders such as customers and shareholders
Turnover
The total number of workers who leave a company over a certain time period.
Value attainment
the importance someone attaches to the task
Equity
Employee perceptions of fairness and feeling fairly treated
Individual Differences
The many attributes, such as traits and behaviors, that describe each of us as a person
Are Individual Differences Fixed or Flexible?
Both
Examples of Individual Differences from relatively fixed to relatively flexible
Values
Intelligence
Ability
Personality
Attitudes
Emotions
Intelligence
An individual’s capacity for constructive thinking, reasoning, and problem solving
Linguistic Intelligence
potential to learn and use spoken and written languages
Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
Potential for deductive reasoning, problem analysis, and mathematical calculation
Musical intelligence
Potential to appreciate, compose, and perform music.
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence
Potential to use mind and body to coordinate physical movement
Spatial intelligence
Potential to recognize and use patterns
Interpersonal Intelligence
Potential to understand, connect with, and effectively work with others
Intrapersonal intelligence
Potential to understand and regulate yourself
Naturalist intelligence
Potential to live in harmony with your environment.
Practical Intelligence
The ability to solve everyday problems by utilizing knowledge gained from experience in order to purposefully adapt to, shape, and select environments
Personality
The combination of relatively stable physical, behavioral, and mental characteristics that gives individuals their unique identities
Big Five Personality Dimensions:
Extroversion
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Emotional stability
Openness to experience
Proactive Personality
Someone who is relatively unconstrained by situational forces and who effects environmental change.
The Dark Triad
Narcissism
Psychopathy
Machiavellianism
Conscientiousness
Focus on doing the right thing, know what’s expected
Self-Efficacy
A belief about your chances of successfully accomplishing a specific task
Narcissists
Having a grandiose sense of self-importance; requiring or even demanding excessive admiration; having a sense of entitlement; lacking empathy; and tending to be exploitative, manipulative, and arrogant
Psychopaths
A lack of guilt, remorse or concern for others when their own actions do others harm
Machiavellianism
A belief that the ends justify the means, maintenance of emotional distance, and use of manipulation
Core self-evaluations (CSEs)
A broad personality trait comprised of four narrow and positive individual traits:
Generalized self-efficacy
Self esteem
Locus of control
Emotional Stability
Self-esteem
General belief about your self-worth
Locus of control
A relatively stable personality characteristic that describes how much personal responsibility we take for our behavior and its consequences
External Locus of Control
A belief that one’s performance is the product of circumstances beyond their immediate control
Internal locus of control
A belief that one can control the events and consequences that affect their lives
PREFERRED BY COMPANIES
Emotional Stability
Tendency to be relaxed, secure, unworried, and less likely to experience negative emotions under pressure
Emotional Intelligence
The ability to monitor your own emotions and those of others, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide your thinking and actions
Key Components of Emotional Intelligence
Self-Awareness
Self-Management
Social Awareness
Relationship Management
Emotions
Complex, relatively brief responses aimed at a particular target, such as a person, information, experience, or event. They also change psychological and/or physiological states
Organizations and Emotions
For many years emotions were seen as the antithesis of rationality, but now organizations are trying to harness their power.
Emotional Labor
The effort required to display emotions that one is not really feeling.
Sympathy
A feeling of pity for another, offering advice
Empathy
Our ability to understand how someone feels, letting them talk
Emotional Contagion
The influence of one person’s affect on the moods of others
Perception
A cognitive process that enables us to interpret and understand our surroundings
Stages of Social Perception:
Selective attention/comprehension
Encoding and simplification
Storage and retention
Retrieval and response
Attention
The process of becoming consciously aware of someone or something
Cognitive categories
Groups of objects that are considered equivalent
Schema
A person’s mental picture or summary of a particular event or type of stimulus
Event Memory
Memories that describe sequences of events in familiar situations
Semantic memory
Refers to general knowledge about the world and definitions and associated traits with different mental definitions
Person memory
Memories about individuals or people
Implicit cognition
Any thoughts or beliefs that are automatically activated from memory without our conscious awareness
Stereotype
An individual’s set of beliefs about the characteristics or attributes of a group
How stereotypes are formed and maintained:
Categorization
Inferences
Expectations
Maintenance
Discrimination
When employment decisions about an individual are based on reasons not associated with performance or related to the job
Relationship between Stereotypes and Discrimination
Stereotypes can lead to discrimination
How to combat stereotypes:
Educate
Create opportunities
Increase people’s awareness
Casual attributions
Suspected or inferred causes of behavior
Internal factors
Factors within a person (such as ability)
External Factors
Factors within the environment (such as a difficult task)
Consensus (in attribution theory)
Compares an individual’s behavior with that of his or her peers
Distinctiveness (in attribution theory)
Compares a person’s behavior on one task with his or her behavior on other tasks
Consistency (in attribution theory)
Judges whether the individual’s performance on a given task is consistent over time
Fundamental attribution bias
Tendency to attribute another person’s behavior to his or her personal characteristics, rather than to situation factors
Self-serving bias
Tendency to take more personal responsibility for success than for failure
Kelley’s attribution theory
People make casual attributions by observing three dimensions of behavior:
Consensus
Distinctiveness
Consistency
Demographics
The statistical measurements of populations and their qualities (such as age, race, gender, or income) over time
Diversity
The multitude of individual differences and similarities that exist among people
Surface-level characteristics
Those that are quickly apparent to interactants, such as race, gender, and age
Deep-level characteristics
Those that take time to emerge in interactions, such as attitudes, opinions, and values
Discrimination
Occurs when employment decisions about an individual are based on reasons not associated with performance or related to the job
Affirmative action
An intervention aimed at giving management a chance to correct an imbalance, injustice, mistake, or outright discrimination that occurred in the past
Managing diversity enables
People to perform to their maximum potential
The Four Layers of Diversity
Personality
Internal Characteristics (Surface Level)
External Influences (Deep Level)
Organizational dimensions (Deep Level)
Access-and-legitimacy perspective
Recognition that the organization’s markets and constituencies are culturally diverse
Glass ceiling
An invisible but absolute barrier that prevents women from advancing to higher-level positions
Americans with Disabilities Act
Prohibits discrimination against those with disabilities and requires organizations to reasonably accommodate an individual’s disabilities
Underemployed
Working at jobs that require less education than attained
Ethnocentrism
The belief that one’s native country, culture, language, and behavior are superior.
Diversity Climate
An organizational climate characterized by openness towards and appreciation of individual differences
Psychological safety
The extent to which people feel free to express their ideas and beliefs without fear of negative consequences
On-ramping
Encourages people to reenter the workforce after a temporary career break
Managing Diversity metaphor
Being invited to dance vs. being asked to dance
Inclusion
Organizational members brought together in a meaningful way to increase success
