Lecture 1: Chapter 1: Introduction to Organizational behavior Flashcards
What is the study of organizational behavior?
Study of what people think, feel and do in and around organizations
Subjects: behavior/perception/emotional reactions of employees, teams and whole organizations as they interact with the environment
What are organizations?
Groups of people that are dependent on each other and work together towards a common goal
What 3 things does an organization require?
- Communication
- Coordination
- Interdependence between members
What 6 critical skills do employers look for in new hires?
Problem solving
Communication
Teamwork
Adaptability
Initiative
Resiliency
What are the 3 perspectives on organizational effectiveness?
- Organizations as open systems
- Human Capital as competitive advantage
- Organizations and stakeholders
What are the three levels of analysis in organizational psychology?
Employee - team - organization
What are the 2 key aspects of organizations?
- Interdependence: structured communication, task coordination, collabora tion
- Collective purpose/mission
When did organizational behavior research emerge?
Early 1940s, but it was also considered from the age of Plato (leadership) and confucius (leadership and ethics)
What is organizational effectiveness?
An ideal state in which an organization has a good fit with its environment, effectively transforms inputs to outputs through human capital and satisfies needs of key stakeholders
What is the view of organizations as open systems? Name 3 aspects.
How is this relevant for organizational effectiveness?
- Organizations are dependent on external environment for resources
- They consist of internal subsystems that transform inputs to outputs
- Affect environment through outputs
Relevant: see if organizations are able to maintain a good fit with their external environment
What does it mean when an organization has a good fit?
Organization’s input, process and output align with resources of environment and needs/expectations of the same environment
What are examples of inputs and outputs in an organization? And of the transforming stage?
Input: materials, HR, info, finances, equipment
Output: products, waste, community support, services
Transforming: production, technology, engineering, managing, cultural subsystem, accounting
What is human capital as the organization’s competitive advantage?
The knowledge, skills, abilities, creative thinking and other valued resources that employees bring to the organization
What are boomerangs in an organization and what is their advantage?
Rehiring former employees
–> Boosts human capital faster
What are the three ways an organization is more effective when they enhanced their capital?
- Better job performance: more skills and knowledge
- Better adaptation to change: skilled employees are better at tasks in unfamiliar situations
- Better motivation in employees: organizations invest in their employees
What is the organizational learning perspective?
A broader view on organizational effectiveness, which discusses that effectiveness in organizations depends on abillity to acquire, share and use valuable knowledge
Which 3 types of knowledge in organizations are there?
- Human capital: knowledge of employees
- Structural capital: knowledge retained in organization’s structure
- Relationship capital: knowledge in relationships with clients
What are stakeholders? How do they affect organizations?
Individuals, groups and other entities that affect or are affected by the organization’s objectives and actions
Affect organizational effectiveness: organizations are more effective if they are more capable of understanding and satisfying stakeholders’ needs
Why is understanding/satisfying stakeholders difficult? Give 2 reasons
- Stakeholders have conflicting interests
- Organization doesn’t have enough resources to satisfy everyone
What is the corporate social responsibility (CSR)?
Organizational activities intended to benefit society and the environment beyond the firm’s immediate financial interests or legal obligations
What is the triple-bottomline philosophy? What happens to firms that adopt this view? Which concept fits with this?
Companies have a contract with society in which they must serve stakeholders beyond stockholders and customers
–> Firms that adopt this, have better relationships with stakeholders, thus higher organizational effectiveness + better resources
Concept: Corporate social responsibility
What are the 6 differenct organizational inputs and processes?
- Organizational structure
- Organizational culture
- Organizational technology
- Organizational change
- Human resources practices
- Organizational strategy
What is the systematic research anchor?
Organizational behavior knowledge should be based on systematic research
What is evidence-based management? With what anchor does this concept fit?
Practice of making decisions and taking actions based on research evidence
Anchor: systematic research anchor
What are the 5 anchors of organizational behavior knowledge?
- Systematic research anchor
- Practical orientation anchor
- Multidisciplinary anchor
- Contingency anchor
- Multiple levels of analysis anchor
Why do many leaders overlook evidence-based knowledge? Give 5 reasons
- Leaders are bombarded with many ideas from consultants, websites and other sources, whilst real research is limited accessible
- Commercial advisors gain public attention because they are persuasive, not strong evidence-based
- Leaders ignore evidence-based knowledge that contradicts their beliefs
- OB research is generic, not specific to a situation. Leaders find it hard to figure out what is relevant to their situation
- Leaders exhibit herd mentality when choosing new organizational practices –> look at others without considering evidence
What is the practical orientation anchor?
OB theories need to be useful for organizations
What is the multidisciplinary anchor?
Organizational behavior field should integrate perspectives from other disciplines (sociology, marketing etc.)
What is the contingency anchor?
Specific situations moderates the effect of one variable onto the other
So specific actions in certain circumstances have different consequences
What is the multiple level of analysis anchor?
Everything in an organization can be analyzed on three levels: employee - team - organization
To which 4 challenges do organizations need to adapt?
- Globalization
- Increased workforce diversity
- Longer workdays
- Virtual world
What is the globalization challenge for organizations? What are advantages and disadvantages?
Economic, social and cultural connectivity people have around the world
+ : bigger markets, lower costs, more knowledge/innovation
- : more competition, higher expectations of employees, relocation low-salary countries
What are the two types of workforce diversity?
- Surface-level: observable differences between people such as ethnicity, age and gender
- Deep-level: differences in psychological characteristics in employees that are hard to see at first (personality, values, attitudes)
Which challenges and which advantages does increased workforce diversity present?
+: high diversity leads to high creativity and better decision making
- : communication problems, performance takes longer
What are the challenges that occur with longer workdyas?
- : more work-related stress, poor work-life balance
What is an inclusive workplace?
A workplace that values people of all identities and allows them to be themselves whilst contributing to the organization
What is work-life integration?
The degree that people are effectively engaged in work and nonwork roles and have a low degree of role conflict across those life domains
What is the challenge that comes with increase in presence of the virtual world?
Social media has altered communication patterns and dynamics
When does work-life integration occur?
When one is able to balance the satisfaction of their demands with their ability to have good experiences outside of work
What is a work-life conflict?
When demands of one’s work exhaust personal resources, which starve other roles, leading to employees not having enough time/energy to deal with personal remaining roles in their lives
What 4 strategies are there for improving work-life integration?
- Integrate 2/more roles: bring dog to work, exercise whilst working
- Flexible work scheduling: attend a meeting from home
- Your job, family life etc. should align with your personality
- Engage in boundary management between roles: keep work and non-work roles separate
What are 4 tactics to manage role boundaries?
- Schedule time blocks
- Create physical role spaces
- Apply technological boundaries (work devices)
- Communicate role boundary expectations
What is remote work? Which two variations on it exist?
Any arrangement where an individual works while located away from the employer’s physical premises, often connected through technology
- Employees located to a client workplace
- Employees work away from worksite (home)
What are 5 benefits to remote work? And 5 risks?
Benefits:
1. Better work-life integration
2. Higher productivity, less workstress
3. Low employee turnover
4. Attractive benefit for applicants
5. Reduction greenhouse gasses
Risks:
1. Limited social interaction
2. Less word-of mouth info –> lower promotional opportunities
3. Lower team cohesion
4. Weaker organizational structure
5. More home stress
What 3 job characteristics are necessary for a job to be able to work remotely?
- Low interdependence, because coordination and communication are difficult
- Resources have to be able to go to another place
- Task performance must be measurable
What is the MARS model of individual behavior and performance? Which factors does it have?
A four-factor model of facets that influence voluntary behavior and performance in organizations
M otivation
A bility
R ole perceptions
S ituation
–> Behavior & results
What is motivation in the MARS model? Of what 3 elements does it consist?
Force that influences one’s direction, intensity and persistence of effort for volutary behavior
- Direction: goal directed?
- Intensity: amount of effort
- Persistence: amount of time individual continues to put effort in
What is meant with ability in the MARS model?
The natural aptitudes and learned capabilities needed to complete a task successfully
What is the difference between aptitude and learned capabilities? Together, what are they called?
Aptitude = natural talents that serve as foundations for employee task performance
Learned capabilities = physical/mental skills already acquired in an individual
Competencies = aptitudes + learned capabilities = characteristics of an individual resulting in exceptional performance
What are habits? How do they differ from learned capabilities?
Tendencies to engage in specific behaviors in response to contextual cues and enacted with little conscious awareness/reflection
Difference: habits are triggered by situational cues with no conscious thought
What are role perceptions in the MARS model?
How clearly a role is understood by the employee regarding duties
Which 2 perspectives on role perception are there? How do they interact?
Role clarity + ambiguity
People with high clarity: accurate and efficient performance
People with high ambiguity: waste time and resources by performing tasks in wrong way
Which 3 forms of role clarity exist?
- Employees understand duties or consequences
- Employees understand priority of their tasks and expectations of performance
- Employees understand the appropriate procedures in succeeding tasks
What is role ambiguity?
Employees know many distinct ways to perform a task but don’t know which way the organization prefers.
What are situational factors in the mars model and what are the 2 main influences?
Situations have 2 main influences on individual behavior and performance
- Work context strains performance or aids work-behavior
–> E.g. if budget is lacking, a talented person performs poorly - Work context provides clues to guide and motivate people
What is motivation, ability and role perceptions in the mars model in short?
Motivation: what we want
Ability: what we can
Role perceptions: what we know
Which 5 types of behavior results exit the MARS model?
- Task performance
- Organizational citizenship
- Maintaining work attendence
- Joining/staying
- Counterproductive work behaviors
Which 3 types of task performance are there?
- Proficiency: produce efficient product
- Adaptive: adapting thoughts and behavior to changing environment
- Proactive: adopting initiatives to create benefits for organization
What is organizational citizenship behavior?
Forms of cooperation and helpfulness for others that support the context of the organization
What is counter-productive work behavior?
Voluntary behavior that can damage the organization (stealing, harassing etc.)
What is the benefit of long-term employment?
Avoids high costs and capital loss for organization
What are 3 ways to match people with job demands?
- Selecting people
- Train people
- Redesign job
What are the predictors of the MARS model?
Motivation, ability, role perceptions
