Managerial Exam 1 Flashcards
Organizational Behavior as a field
Organizational behavior is
a social science where researchers
try to understand how people and organizations operate to
help them become more efficient, effective, purposeful,
healthy, sustainable, etc
Why OB matters
-
Job Performance (Task performance, Organizational Citizenship, Counterproductive Behavior)
Task performance - The behaviors directly involved in transforming organizational resources into organizational products or services
(i.e. the behaviors included in different job descriptions)
Organizational Citizenship - Voluntary activities that may or may not be rewarded but that contribute to the
organization by improving the quality of the setting where work occurs
Counterproductive Behavior- Employee behaviors that intentionally hinder organizational goal accomplishment
How companies manage performance
Management By Objectives (MBO):
Performance evaluation system that evaluates people on
whether or not they have met pre‐established goals
Behavior Anchored Rating Scales (BARS):
BARS look at job behaviors directly
Critical incidents are used to develop evaluation tool that contains behavioral
descriptions of good and poor performance (chart of data)
360‐degree feedback: Performance evaluation system that
includes performance information from
anyone who has firsthand experience with an employee
including subordinates, peers, and customers
Organizational commitment (Affective, Continuous, Normative)
OC: A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member of an organization
Affective: A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member
of an organization because of an emotional attachment
to, or involvement in that organization
Continuous: A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member
of an organization because of an awareness of the costs
associated with leaving
Normative: A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member
of an organization because of a feeling of obligation
Responses to negative events
-
Personality and where it comes from
Nature: Is our personality hard-wired into us genetically
Nurture: Is our personality something that we develop as a function of our surroundings?
Personality is influenced by BOTH!
It is difficult to tease apart the impact of nature and nurture on personality
The effects of nature and nurture act in combination
Taxonomies of personality (Type A/B, MBTI, Big 5)
Big 5 (OCEAN): Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism
There are 1,710
adjectives to describe
personality.
Most of these
adjectives can be
categorized along these
five dimensions.
Type A vs. Type B: A is highly competitive, works fast, strong desire to succeed, likes control, prone to suffer stress. B is non-competitive, works more slowly, lacks desire to succeed, does not enjoy control, less prone to stress
Myers Briggs Type Indicator: Combination of 4 traits out of Introverted/Extroverted, Sensing or Intuition, Thinking or Feeling, Judging or Perceiving (ex. ISTJ)
Perception
A mental process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment
Why perception matters: People’s behavior is based on their perception of what reality is, not on reality itself
Perception is what’s behaviorally important
Attribution Theory
- when individuals observe behavior, they attempt to determine if it was caused by internal or external factors
Internal attribution:
Under the personal control of the individual
Blame is on the individual: “It’s their fault!”
External attribution:
Outside causes impacted the behavior
Blame is not on the individual: “It’s not their fault!”
There must have been some other reason!
Perception biases and errors
Contrast Effects:
Evaluation of a person’s characteristics that are affected by comparisons with other people who differ on those characteristics
Projection bias:
The faulty perception by decision makers that others think, feel, and
act the same way as the individual.
Assumes that everyone’s criteria will be just like theirs and that everyone will
behave or react to a decision just as they would.
Stereotyping:
Judging someone on the basis of your perception of the group to
which that person belongs
Older workers can’t learn new skills.
Men aren’t interested in child care.
Decision making
the process of generating and choosing from a set of
alternatives (to solve a problem) or Choosing between 2 or more alternatives
Decision making models
Perfect World Model: The rational decision‐making model describes a series of steps that decision
makers should consider if their goal is to maximize the quality of their outcomes.
Rational Model:
Assumptions
1. Problem clarity ‐ the problem is clear and unambiguous
2. Known options ‐ the decision‐maker can identify all relevant criteria and
viable alternatives.
3. Clear preferences ‐ the criteria and alternatives can be ranked and weighted
4. Constant preferences ‐ specific decision criteria are constant and the
weights assigned to them are stable over time
5. No time or cost constraints ‐ full information is available because there are no
time or cost constraints
6. Maximum payoff – there is a best alternative that will yield the highest
perceived value
Real World Model:
- We intentionally construct simplified models that extract essential features
of the problem without capturing all of the potential complexity. We
acknowledge that we cannot formulate and solve complex problems with full
rationality, therefore we look for and accept satisfactory, informed decisions.
Decision making biases: Anchoring effect
The tendency to rely too heavily on one piece of information (often the first) when making decisions even when the anchor might be unreliable or irrelevant
Decision making biases: Framing effect
The tendency to make different decisions based
on how a question or situation is phrased.
Decision making biases: Representativeness effect
The tendency to assess the likelihood of an event/behavior by comparing it
to a similar event/behavior and assuming they will be similar
The mistake of believing that two similar people, things, or events are more
closely correlated than they actually are
Decision making biases: Contrast effect
The tendency to mentally upgrade or downgrade an object when
comparing it to a contrasting object
In an interview process, is it better to go first or last?
Decision making biases: Recency effect
The tendency to weigh recent events more
than earlier events
Decision making biases: Ratio effect
The tendency to judge the likelihood of an
unlikely event as lower when the probability
is presented in the form of a ratio of smaller
rather than larger numbers
Different ways we experience emotions (affect, emotion/feelings, moods)
-
Affective Events Theory
- Emotions are negative or positive responses to work events
Personality & mood determine the intensity of the emotional
response
Emotions influence a broad range of performance and
satisfaction variables
Emotional labor
the effort, planning, and control needed to express
organizationally desired emotion during interpersonal transactions
Emotional contagion
People are hard‐wired to pick up
emotional signals from others
People “catch” the emotions of
others
This has a strong impact on
behavior
Stress
A psychological response to demands where there is something
at stake and where coping with the demands taxes or exceeds a
person’s capacity or resources
Job satisfaction and dissatisfaction
Observational Behavior view: A “good feeling” resulting from a positive appraisal of your job itself
and/or your job experiences
It is based on both affect (how you feel about your job) AND cognition
(what you think about your job)
Sources of dissatisfaction/satisfaction:
- Physical Environment
Social Environment
Personal Dispositions
Organizational Tasks
Organizational Roles
Compensation
***Motivation (what is it and why is it important)
The processes (int and ext) that initiate work-related effort and account for an employee’s direction, intensity, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal
Why it is important:
Content theories of motivation
- Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory, Herzberg’s Two‐Factor Theory, Theory X & Theory Y, McClelland’s Theory of Needs, Compensation as a motivator
Similarities: They all believe that workers have needs and when these needs are not met,
the unmet needs decrease motivation.
They suggest specific things that management can do to help their
employees become self‐actualized.
They believe that there is a reason for human specific behavior.
They also suggest differences in humans in terms of need. Different things
motivate different people.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory
Motivation is a function of five
basic needs.
Human needs emerge in a
predictable stair‐step fashion
People are motivated by their
lowest unsatisfied need.
Assumptions
Only unsatisfied needs can influence behavior, satisfied needs
do not act as motivators.
Needs are arranged in an order of importance or hierarchy
from the basic physiological to the complex self‐actualization
needs.
An individual’s need at any level on the hierarchy emerges only
when the lower needs are reasonably satisfied.
Theory X & Theory Y
X: - Dislike their work.
- Avoid responsibility and need constant direction.
- Have to be controlled, forced and threatened to deliver work.
- Need to be supervised at every step.
- Have no incentive to work or ambition, and therefore need to be enticed by rewards to achieve goals.
Y: - Happy to work on their own initiative.
- More involved in decision making.
- Self-motivated to complete their tasks.
- Enjoy taking ownership of their work.
- Seek and accept responsibility, and need little direction.
- View work as fulfillling and challenging.
- Solve problems creatively and imaginatively.
Herzberg’s Two‐Factor Theory
Job characteristics that satisfy/motivate are different from job characteristics
that dissatisfy/demotivate
Motivators – Intrinsic factors that increase satisfaction
Work itself, promotion opportunities, personal growth opportunities, recognition,
responsibility, achievement
Hygiene factors – Extrinsic factors that decrease dissatisfaction
Pay, quality of supervision, company policies, physical working conditions, job security
McClelland’s Theory of Needs
Acquired Needs Theory is based on a belief that our needs are
shaped over time and formed by our experiences and cultural
background. McClelland classified needs into three main categories:
* Need for achievement (nACH)
* Need for affiliation (nAFF)
* Need for power (nPOW)
McClelland theorized that the degree to which particular needs
motivate varies tremendously from person to person, with some
people being motivated primarily by achievement and others by
power or affiliation.
Compensation as a motivator
“Employees earning salaries in the top half of our data range reported similar levels
of job satisfaction to those employees earning salaries in the bottom‐half of our data
range” (Judge et al, 2010, p.162)
meta‐analysis found less than a 2% overlap between pay and job satisfaction
Do higher salaries create higher levels of motivation?
“strategies that focus primarily on the use of extrinsic rewards do, indeed, run a
serious risk of diminishing rather than promoting intrinsic motivation”
Contemporary theories of motivation
- Contingencies of Reinforcement
Job Characteristics Theory
Goal‐Setting Theory
Expectancy Theory
Equity Theory
- Contingencies of Reinforcement
Managers/organizations can choose to add or remove consequences that
reinforce behavioral outcomes
There are 4 total approaches.
2 are intended to promote desired employee behaviors.
2 are intended to decrease unwanted employee behaviors.
Job Characteristics Theory
Job Characteristics Model (JCM) (a.k.a. Job Characteristics Theory)
The way different elements in a job are organized (job design)
impacts motivation, satisfaction, and performance.
5 core characteristics:
skill variety, task identity, task significance, task autonomy, feedback
3 critical psychological states: meaningfulness of work, responsibility of outcomes, knowledge of results
Goal‐Setting Theory
Goals
defined as the objective or aim of an action and typically refer to attaining a
specific standard or proficiency, often within a limited time
primary drivers of the intensity and persistence of effort
tell employees what needs to be done and how much effort is needed
Specific & difficult goals higher performance than without goals
**Expectancy Theory
Effort -> Performance -> Outcome
Victor Vroom at the Yale School of Management was the first to put forward the Expectancy Theory (1964) defined as behavior motivated by consequences or anticipated results. He postulated that you make a decision to behave in a specific way based on what you think will result from the executed behavior. An example of this is a person who chooses to work harder because they think the effort expended will, subsequently, be rewarded.
Equity Theory
- acknowledges that motivation does not just depend on your own
beliefs and circumstances but also on what happens to other people.
Key Components:
Beliefs about fairness of outcomes
Comparisons with others based on a simple ratio:
