Organisational Behaviour

Question 1

Define OB and organisations

Answer 1

Study of what people think, feel and do in and around organisations. Organisations are a group of people working independently towards some purpose / have collective sense of purpose.

Question 2

Why study OB

Answer 2

• useful for everyone, not just managers
• comprehend and predict workplace events
• influence organisational events
• important for financial health

Question 3

Globalisation and the pros and cons

Answer 3

Connectivity with people in other parts of the world.

• benefits: larger markets, lower costs, greater access to knowledge and innovation
• may be responsible for work intensification, reduced job security

Question 4

Workforce Diversity

Answer 4

Apparent at both surface level (observable demographic) and deep level (differences in personalities, beliefs, values and attitudes).

May be a competitive advantage that improves decision making and team performance on complex tasks - but may come with challenges such as dysfunctional team conflict and lower team performance.

Question 5

Emerging employment trends

Answer 5

• Work life balance - minimising conflict between work and non work demands
• Virtual work - working from elsewhere or home (teleworker). WFH potentially increases employee productivity, reduce stress but may lead to social isolation and reduced promotion opportunities and tension in family relations.

Question 6

Multidisciplinary anchor

Answer 6

Should develop knowledge in other disciplines (e.g psychology, sociology, economics), not just from it’s own isolated research base.

Question 7

Systematic Research Anchor

Answer 7

OB knowledge should be based on systematic research, consistent with evidence based management.

Question 8

Contingency Anchor

Answer 8

OB theories generally need to consider that there will be different consequences in different situations.

Question 9

The multiple levels of analysis anchor

Answer 9

OB topics may be viewed from the individual, team and organisational levels of analysis.

Question 10

The Open Systems perspective

Answer 10

Organisations that ‘live’ within an external environment - they depend on the external environment for resources, then use organisational subsystems to transform those resources to output which are returned to the environment. Can maintain close ‘fit’ with changing conditions. Zara example.

Question 11

Organisational learning perspective

Answer 11

OL perspective - Organisational effectiveness depends on the organisations capacity to acquire, share, use and store valuable knowledge.

• Can provide competitive advantage
• Organisations can learn and unlearn
• Intellectual capital is the company’s stock of knowledge: human (people knowledge they posses/generate), structural (captured in systems/structures) and relationship (value derive from satisfied customers, reliable suppliers).

Question 12

HPWP

Answer 12

HPWP Identifies a bundle of systems and structures that leverage potential human capital: employee involvement, job autonomy, reward performance and competencies. Studies suggest bundling practices as they work best together.
Can improve OE by:
- develop employees ability & performance
- adapt better to rapidly changing environments
- strengthen employee motivation / positive attitudes

Question 13

Stakeholder Perspective

Answer 13

Leaders manage the interests of diverse stakeholders by relying on their personal and organisational values for guidance.

• Stakeholders are entities who affect or are affected by firm’s objectives / actions
• Stakeholder relations are dynamic, can be negotiated/managed not just fixed
• Corporate Social Responsibility benefit society / environment beyond the firm’s immediate financial interests or legal obligations . Organisations with positive CSR reputation yield better performance.

Question 14

4 factors that directly influence individual behaviour and perfomance

Answer 14

MARS
Motivation - represents the forces within a person that affect their direction (effort), intensity and persistence of voluntary behaviour.
Ability - both natural aptitudes (personal characteristics) and learned capabilities required to successfully complete a task.
Role Perspective: How clearly people understand their job duties - understanding: specific duties/consequences, relative importance of tasks and performance and preferred behaviours to complete task.
Situational Factors - include conditions beyond the employee’s immediate control that constrain or facilitate behaviour / performance e.g time, budget, work facilities, situations (hazard)

Question 15

Individual behaviour in organisations - Task Performance and the 3 types 1/5

Answer 15

Task Performance - goal directed behaviour under the individual’s control that support organisations objectives. 3 types are:
Proficient: performing work efficiently / accurately
Adaptive: how employee’s modify behaviour with the changing environment
Proactive: how employee’ take initiative to anticipate and introduce new work patterns that are beneficial

Question 16

Individual behaviour in organisations - Organisational Citizenship Behaviour 2/5

Answer 16

Organisational Citizenship Behaviour - various forms of cooperation and helpfulness to others that support the organisation’s social and psychological context. May be required or discretionary behaviours e.g. assisting colleagues, sharing work resources, supporting company’s public image.

Question 17

Individual behaviour in organisations - Counterproductive work behaviours 3/5

Answer 17

Dysfunctional activities. Voluntary behaviours that have potential to directly or indirectly harm the organisation e.g. harassing co-workers, creating conflicts and stealing
- Can undermine organisational effectiveness

Question 18

Individual behaviour in organisations - Joining and staying with the organisation 4/5

Answer 18

• hiring and retaining talent
• employee retention is essential for all the other performance-related behaviours to occur
• high turnover = high cost = loss of intellectual capital

Question 19

Individual behaviour in organisations - Maintaining work attendance 5/5

Answer 19

• is related to job satisfaction and motivation
• Absenteeism is related to dissatisfaction, organisational policy, norms and the person’s values and personality
• Presenteeism occurs when employees attend scheduled work when one’s capacity to perform is significantly diminished by illness or other facts. Related to organisational norms.

Question 20

Personality

Answer 20

Personality - pattern of thoughts, emotions and behaviours that characterise a person, along with the psychological processes behind those characteristics. Personality traits are broad concepts about people that allow us to label and understand individual differences.
- Is developed through hereditary origins (nature) as well as socialisation (nurture).

Question 21

The Big Five personality dimensions

Answer 21

conscientious, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience and extraversion.

• conscientious and emotional stability (low neuroticism) predict individual performance in most job groups.
• Extraversion is associated with performance in sales and mgmt jobs, whereas agreeableness is associated in jobs requiring cooperation and openness to experience in creative jobs.

Question 22

Schwartz’s model of individual values

Answer 22

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 circumplex of 10 dimensions along with 2 bipolar dimensions: openness to change to conservation and self-enhancement to self-transcendence.

Question 23

5 values commonly studied across cultures

Answer 23

• individualism (valuing independence and personal uniqueness)
• collectivism (valuing duty to in-groups and groups harmony)
• power distance (valuing unequal distribution of power)
• uncertainty avoidance (tolerating and feeling threatened by ambiguity and uncertainty.)
• achievement-nurturing orientation (valuing competition vs cooperation)

Question 24

ethics

Answer 24

ethics: study of moral principles or values that determine whether actions are right or wrong and outcomes are good or bad.

Question 25

3 ethical principles - discuss 3 factors that influence ethical behaviour

Answer 25

utilitarianism, individual rights and distributive justice.
- 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 communication ethical violations, the organisation’s culture and leader’s behaviour.

Question 26

Self concept

Elements of SC - explain how each affects an individual’s behaviour and wellbeing

Answer 26

Self-concept includes an individual’s self-beliefs and their self-evaluations. It has 3 structural characteristics - complexity, consistency and clarity - all of which influence employee wellbeing, behaviour and performance. People are inherently motivated to promote and protect their self concept (self-enhancement and verify and maintain their existing self-concept (self verification). Self concept personal and social identity.

Question 27

Self evaluation consists of

Answer 27

self esteem, self efficacy and locus of control

Question 28

Social identity theory

Answer 28

how people define themselves in terms of groups to which they belong or have an emotional attachment

Question 29

Outline the perceptual process and discuss the effects of categorical thinking and mental models in that process.

Answer 29

Perception involves selecting, organising and interpreting info to make sense of the world around us. Perceptual organisation applies categorical thinking - the most non-conscious process of organising people and objects into preconceived categories that are stored in our long-term memory. Mental models - knowledge structures that we develop to describe, explain and predict the world around us - also help us make sense of incoming stimuli.

Question 30

Stereotyping and the influence on the perceptual process

Answer 30

Stereotyping occurs when people assign traits based on their membership in a social category. This assignment economises mental effort, fills in missing info and enhances our self-concept, but it also lays the foundation for prejudice and systemic discrimination.

Question 31

attribution process and the influence on the perceptual process

Answer 31

The attribution process involves deciding whether an observed behaviour or event is caused mainly by the person (internal factors) or the environment (external factors)/ Attributions are decided by perceptions of the consistency, distinctiveness and consensus of the behaviour. This process is subject o self-serving bias and fundamental attribution error.

Question 32

self-fulfilling prophecy and the influence on the perceptual process

Answer 32

A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when our expectations about another person cause that person to act in a way that is consistent with those expectations. This effect is stronger when employees first join the work unit, when several people hold expectations, and when the employee has a history of low achievement.

Question 33

4 perceptual errors

Answer 33

halo effect - influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality
false-consensus effect - This kind of cognitive bias leads people to believe that their own values and ideas are “normal” and that the majority of people share these same opinions.
primacy effect - refers to the tendency to recall information presented at the start of a list better than information at the middle or end.
recency effect - occurs when more recent information is better remembered and receives greater weight in forming a judgment than does earlier-presented information.

Question 34

3 ways to improve perceptions with specific application to organisational situations

Answer 34

• be aware of their existence, makes people more mindful of their thoughts and actions
• training sometimes reinforces bias / can be ineffective
• Formal tests such as IAT and applying Johari window, which is a process in which others provide feedback to you about your behaviour, and you offer disclosure to them about yourself.
• Meaningful interaction which applies the contact hypothesis that people who interact will be less prejudiced or perceptually biased towards one another. Working together/sharing a meaningful task. Improves empathy.

Question 35

Global mindset

Answer 35

individuals ability to perceive, know about and process info across cultures. Includes:
1 - awareness of, openness to and respect for other views and practices the world
2 - able to empathise and affect effectively across cultures
3 - able to process complex info about novel environments and comprehend and reconcile intercultural matters with multiple levels of thinking.

Question 36

Explain how emotions and cognition influence attitudes and behaviour

Answer 36

Emotions have an influence on behaviour that is equal to or greater than that of cognition. This dual process is apparent when we experience a conflict between what logically seems good or bad and what we emotionally feels good or bad in a situation. Emotions also affect behaviour directly. Behaviour sometimes influences our subsequent attitudes through cognitive dissonance.

Question 37

Emotions, attitudes, beliefs, feelings and behavioural intentions

Answer 37

• Emotions are physiological, behavioural and psychological episodes experienced towards an object, person or event that create a state of readiness.
• Emotions differ from attitudes, which represent a cluster of beliefs, feelings and behavioural intentions towards a person, object or event.
• Beliefs are a person’s established perceptions about the attitude object. Feelings are positive or negative evaluations of the attitude object. Behavioural intentions represent a motivation to engage in a particular behaviour towards the target.