Week 3 Lecture - Organisational Psychology 2

Question 1

What is organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB)

Answer 1

Exceeding expectations

• altruism (helpful behaviour toward other people or groups)
• generalised compliance (general help to the workplace)

Question 2

How did Robertson and Bennett define counterproductive Work Behaviours (CWBs)?

Answer 2

Behaviours that violate the norms of an organisation and threaten the wellbeing of the organisation and/or its members

Question 3

Describe Sacketts and colleagues hierarchy of counterproductive work behaviours (CWBS)?

Answer 3

Broken into two parts:

Interpersonal deviance: aggression and incivility

Organisational deviance:

• property deviance (theft, property damage or sabotage)
• production deviance (absence, lateness, long breaks and poor work)

Question 4

Describe interpersonal deviance with more detail:

Answer 4

Aggression:

Antisocial behaviour intended to harm others
Workplace bullying
Verbal abuse
Fighting

Incivility:

low-level rudeness and disrespectful behaviour toward others
Subtle unhelpful less
Excluding other from social events
Gossiping

Question 5

What is aggression in workplace bullying?

Answer 5

Repeatedly subjecting a victim to being harassed, offended, socially excluded or assigned to humiliating tasks.
Figures suggest widespread in workplace and leads to physical and mental stress, burnout and lower job satisfaction. May arrive to work late or lead early because wanting to avoid situation. Little control and needs third party intervention from boss, manager etc to solve because research shows not often gets solved when tried to “talk it out”. Solving it may lead to separation psychically.
-cyber bullying
-mobbing

Question 6

Workplace incivility with more detail:

Answer 6

Intent to harm others more ambiguous. Estimated that 98% or workers experience this, with 50% on weekly basis.
When Anderson and Pearson, 1999 defined workplace incivility, the potential for incivility to spiral into incredibly aggressive behaviour was also highlighted. Can increase in aggressiveness over time.

Question 7

What are the potential consequences for workplace incivility?

Answer 7

Affective:
-negative affect in depression
-increased stress
-decreased wellbeing
Some studies suggest that it also results in:
- decreased marital satisfaction, and increased family conflict for victims.

Attitudinal

• lower commitment to organisation
• less motivated or satisfied than non victims

Behavioural
-May reciprocate incivility and deviant work behaviours, withdrawal from work, turnover intentions, reduced task performance and higher absenteeism May follow for victims.

Question 8

What’re some consequences that may occur as a result of organisational deviance?

Answer 8

Absenteeism:
Failure to attend or remain at work

Sabotage:
Damaging an organisations operations

Theft:
Encompasses theft of goods or time banditry
Time banditry:
Classic like arriving mate or leaving early, breaks or less effort
Technology included “cyber loafing” (sending or receiving non work related messages, social media) but this has been shown to produce positive mood
Social included chatting or making personal phone calls

Question 9

What’re some predictors of CWB?

Answer 9

Personality factors:

• conscientiousness
• agreeableness

The ‘dark triad’

• narcissism
• Machiavellianism
• psychopathy (lack of empathy)

Question 10

How should we go about reducing CWB?

Answer 10

Organisational justice enhancement?
When felt like grated fairly CWB may reduce
Should reward good behaviour as can be contagious

Boredom related to CWB. Maybe use CWB to cope

Other suggestions include punishment, apologies, training in social and communication skills, use humour and empathy to deal with negative behaviour, modelling good behaviour. However these are only suggestions and their ethics need to be approved before implementation.

Question 11

Define motivation:

Answer 11

The conditions responsible for changes in intensity, persistence, quality, and direction of ongoing behaviour.
Modelled simply:

Performance = (motivation X ability) - (situational constraints Eg stress)

Question 12

Enhancing motivation

Answer 12

Contingent rewards: research suggest when told certain behaviour reward resulted in better performance in these behaviours

Job enrichment

Feedback programs: goal setting, rewards

Positive work environments
Eg google definition: providing perks and freedom to enhance motivation and productivity

Gamification: using characteristics and design features from games in non gaming contexts. Can and motivate ‘players’ to behave in a particular way. These techniques have been shown to improve performance in schools, and now looking into the workplace. May include team competitions, rewards, badges etc. future research needed