Understanding Individual Behavior Flashcards
Study of the actions of people at work.
Organizational Behavior
Organizational Behavior focuses on three major areas:
Individual behavior
Group behavior
organizational aspects
Attitudes, personality, perception, learning, and motivation
Individual behavior
Norms, roles, team building, leadership, and conflict
Group behavior
Structure, culture, and human resource policies and practices
Organizational aspects
Goals of Organizational Behavior
To explain, predict, and influence behavior.
A performance measure of both efficiency and effectiveness.
Employee productivity
The failure to show up for work.
Absenteeism
The voluntary and involuntary permanent withdrawal from an organization.
Turnover
Discretionary behavior that is not part of an employee’s formal job requirements, but which promotes the effective functioning of the organization.
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)
An employee’s general attitude toward his or her job.
Job satisfaction
Any intentional employee behavior that is potentially damaging to the organization or to individuals within the organization.
Workplace misbehavior
Evaluative statements, either favorable or unfavorable, concerning objects, people, or events.
Attitudes
The part of an attitude which is made up of the beliefs, opinions, knowledge, or information held by a person.
Cognitive component
The emotional part of an attitude.
Affective component
The part of an attitude that refers to an intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something.
Behavioral Component
The degree to which an employee identifies with his or her job, actively participates in it, and considers his or her job performance to the important to self-worth.
Job involvement
The degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in that organization.
Organizational commitment
Employees’ general belief that their organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being.
Perceived organizational support
When employees are connected to, satisfied with, and enthusiastic about their jobs.
Employee Engagement
Any incompatibility or inconsistency between attitudes or between behavior and attitudes.
Cognitive dissonance
Surveys that elicit responses from employees through questions about how they feel about their jobs, work groups, supervisors, or the organization.
Attitude Surveys
The unique combination of emotional, thought, and behavioral patterns that affect how a person reacts to situations and interacts with others.
Personality
Personality trait model that includes extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience.
The Big Five Model
The degree to which people believe they are masters of their own fate.
Locus of Control
A measure of the degree to which people are pragmatic, maintain emotional distance, and believe ends justify means.
Machiavellianism
An individual’s degree of like or dislike for himself or herself.
Self-esteem
People who identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until meaningful change occurs.
Proactive personality
An individual’s ability to overcome challenges and turn them into opportunities.
Resilience
Intense feelings that are directed at someone or something
Emotions
The ability to notice and to manage emotional cues and information.
Emotional Intelligence (IE)
A process by which we give meaning to our environment by organizing and interpreting sensory impressions.
Perception
A theory used to explain how we judge people differently depending on what meaning we attribute to a given behavior.
Attribution Theory
Fundamental Attribution error
The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behavior of others.
The tendency for individuals to attribute their own successes to internal factors while putting the blame for failures on external factors.
Self-serving bias
The assumption that others are like oneself.
Assumed similarity
Judging the person on the basis of one’s perception of a group to which he or she belongs.
Stereotyping
A general impression of an individual based on a single characteristic
Halo effect
Any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience.
Learning
A theory of learning that says behavior is a function of its consequences.
Operant conditioning
A theory of learning that says people can learn through observation and direct experience
Social learning theory
The process of guiding learning in graduated steps using reinforcement or lack of reinforcement.
Shaping behavior
