Adms 2400 Final Exam Review
Chapter 1 – What is organizational behavior?
The best V.S. The worst co-worker. Understanding why the worst co-worker acts the way they do, enables us to interact with such employees more effectively. Ultimately, making our work more pleasant. Without understanding why employees act a certain way, it is difficult to find a way to change their attitudes and behaviors at work Organizational Behavior (OB): Field of study devoted to understanding, explaining, and ultimately improving attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups in organizations. Example: Explore the relationship between learning and job performance.
Human Resource Management: Field of study that focuses on the applications of OB theories and principles in organizations. Example: Examine the best ways to structure training programs and promote employee learning.
Strategic Management: Field of study devoted to exploring the product choices and industry characteristics that affect an organization’s profitability. Example: Examine the relationship between firm diversification (when a firm expands into a new product segment) and firm profitability.
The Role of Management Theory: Scientific Management: Using scientific methods to design optimal and efficient work processes and tasks. Example: Study how to optimize performance of any task. (Brick layers) Bureaucracy: An organizational form that emphasizes the control and coordination of its members through a strict chain of command, formal rules and procedures, high specialization, and centralized decision making. A) Division of labor with a high level of technical specialization B) Strict chain of command (authority hierarchy) where every member reported to someone at a higher level in the organization
C) A system of formal rules and procedures that ensured consistency, impartiality and impersonality throughout the organization D) Decision making at the top of the organization. Example: Rather than specifics, the concentration was on the entire organization. Human Relations Movement: Field of study that recognizes that the psychological attributes of individual workers and the social forces within work groups have important effects on work behaviors. The Hawthorn Studies revealed importance of many topics. Contemporary Management Theory recognizes the dependencies between the classical approach and the human relations approach. Individual Outcomes: Two primary outcomes: Job performance and Organizational Commitment. Employee who performs well and stays with the company is a solid employee. Individual Mechanisms: Factors that directly affect the individual outcomes (job performance and organizational commitment). These include: Job satisfaction – Captures what employees feel when thinking about their jobs and doing their day-today work. Stress – Reflect employees’ psychological responses to job demands that tax or exceed their capacities. Motivation – Captures the energetic forces that drive employees’ work effort Trust, justice, and ethics – Reflect the degree to which employees feel that their company conducts business with fairness, honesty and integrity. Learning and Decision Making – Deals with how employees gain job knowledge and how they use that knowledge to make accurate judgments on the job. Individual, Group, and Organizational Context: If Individual mechanisms are key drivers of the primary outcomes, it is important to understand that the mechanisms are influenced by several important contexts. Personality, cultural values, and ability – how such context influences the way we behave at work and the kinds of tasks that interest us, and might account for our responses to events that happen on the job.
Team Characteristics and Processes – Employees typically do not work alone, they work in teams led by some formal/informal leader. These group factors shape stress, satisfaction, motivation, trust and learning. Power and Influence – Summarize the process by which individuals attain authority over others. Leadership styles and behaviors – How leaders act and behave in their roles. Organizational Structure – How units within the firm link to other units. Organizational Culture – Captures the way things are in the organization – shared knowledge about the rules, norms and values that shape employee attitudes and behaviors.
THE VALUE OF AN INTEGRATIVE MODEL: Serves as a guide to where you are in the book, and illustrates the topics discussed and how they relate to one another. Does OB Matter? OB can help keep a product good over the long term. OB can also help a product get better in the long term. Rule of One-Eighth: The belief that at best one-eighth, or 12 percent, or organizations will actually do what is required to build profits by putting people first. ½ of organizations won’t believe the connection between how they manage their people and the profits they earn. ½ of those people who do see the connection will do what many organizations have done – try to make a single change to solve their problems, not realizing that the effective management of people requires a more comprehensive and systematic approach. Of the firms that make comprehensive changes, only ½ will persist with their practices long enough to actually derive economic benefits.
HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT OB? Scientific Method: Theory: A collection of verbal and symbolic assertions that specify how and why variables are related, as well as the conditions in which they should (and should not) be related. Hypotheses: Written predictions that specify relationships between variables.
Data: Obtain data Correlation: The statistical relationship between two variables; abbreviated r, it can be positive or negative and range from 0 (no statistical relationship) to +/-1 (a perfect statistical relationship) 0.5 Strong 0.3 Moderate 0.1 Weak Verification: Verify Meta-Analysis: A method that combines the results of multiple scientific studies by essentially calculating a weighted average correlation across studies (with larger studies receiving more weight).
Chapter 2 – Job Performance
Job Performance: Employee behaviors that contribute either positively or negatively to the accomplishment of organizational goals.
Task Performance: Employee behaviors that are directly involved in the transformation of organizational resources into the goods and services that the organization produces. o Tasks, duties, and responsibilities that are a core part of the job. Job Ad. o Routine Task Performance: Well-known or habitual responses by employees to predictable task demands. Watching a flight attendant show you to insert the belt tongue into the seatbelt buckle. o Adaptive Task Performance: Thoughtful responses by an employee to unique or unusual task demands. Respond quickly to emergency situations, ambulance. Although they are trained, executing in a real emergency is different. Adaptation is becoming increasingly important to do globalization, technological advances, and the greater prevalence of knowledge-intensive work. o Job Analysis: A process by which an organization determines requirements of specific jobs. List of activities involved in the job generated Involves data from several sources Each activity is rated by “subject matter experts” according to frequency and importance. Subject matter experts: have experience performing the job or managing people who perform the job Activities that are rated highest in terms of frequency and importance are used to establish the task performance of a job. o National Occupational Classification (NOC): A national database of occupations in Canada, organizing over 30,000 job titles into 520 occupational group descriptions.
Citizenship Behavior: Voluntary employee behaviors that contribute to organizational goals by improving the context in which work takes place. o Going the “extra-mile.” o Interpersonal Citizenship Behavior: Going beyond normal job expectations to assist, support, and develop co-workers and colleagues. Helping: Assisting co-workers who have heavy workloads, aiding them with personal matters, and showing new employees the ropes when they are first on the job.
Courtesy: Sharing important information with co-workers. Help others stay in the loop of things Sportsmanship: Maintaining a positive attitude with co-workers through good and bad times. Whining and complaining are contagious. Good citizens avoid being the squeaky wheel that frequently makes mountains out of molehills. Interpersonal citizenship behavior fosters trust among employees and teams or groups. Behaviors in teamwork fall under interpersonal citizenship behavior.
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Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Going beyond normal expectations to improve operations of the organization, as well as defending the organization and being loyal to it. Voice: When an employee speaks up to offer constructive suggestions for change, often in reaction to a negative work event. Good citizens react to bad rules or policies by constructively trying to change them as opposed to passively complaining about them. Civic Virtue: Participation in company operations at a deeper-than-normal level through voluntary meetings, readings, and keeping up with news that affects the company. Boosterism: Positively representing the organization when in public. Restaurant, kitchen horror stories? No they keep it to themselves.
Counterproductive Behavior: Employee behaviors that intentionally hinder organizational goal accomplishment. o Organizational: Property Deviance (SERIOUS): Behaviors that harm the organization’s assets and possessions. Sabotage: Purposeful destruction of equipment, organizational processes, or company products. Theft: Stealing company products or equipment from the organization. Production Deviance (MINOR): Intentionally reducing organizational efficiency of work output. Wasting Resources: Using too many materials or too much time to do too little work. Substance Abuse: The abuse of drugs or alcohol before coming to work or while on the job. Personal Aggression (SERIOUS): Hostile verbal and physical actions directed toward other employees. Harassment: Unwanted physical contact or verbal remarks from a colleague.
Abuse: Employee assault or endangerment from which physical and psychological injuries may occur. Political Deviance (MINOR): Behaviors that intentionally disadvantage other individuals. Gossiping: Casual conversations about other people in which the facts are not confirmed as true. Incivility: Communication that is rude, impolite, discourteous, and lacking in good manners.
Being a good performer, what does it mean?
One that is great at accomplishing his tasks (task performance) and performs citizenship behavior both at interpersonal and organizational levels. In addition, avoids being part of counterproductive behavior.
Performance Management
How organizations manage employee performance?
Management by Objectives (MBO): A management philosophy that bases employee evaluations on whether specific performance goals have been met. Employee and manager meet and develop mutually agreed –upon objectives that are measureable and specific. Agree on time period to complete such tasks. Works well in jobs where objective measures of performance can be quantified. o Example: Reduce waste by 35 percent in a factory.
Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS): Use of examples of critical incidents to evaluate an employee’s job performance behaviors directly. Directly access job performance behaviors. Uses critical incidences – short descriptions of effective and ineffective employee performance. 5 Excellent, 4, 3, 2, 1 Poor. Compliments MBO, which is less capable of providing specific feedback about why an objective might have been missed.
360-Degree Feedback: A performance evaluation system that uses ratings provided by supervisors, coworkers, subordinates, customers, and the employees themselves. Raters remain anonymous to employee. The hope is it will be a more balanced and comprehensive examination of performance. Problems arise if system is used for promotion or raises o Which source is most correct? How much weight should go on supervisors’ ratings vs. employees own rating? o Biased evaluations result 360-Degree Feedback is more suitable to improving or developing employee talent, especially if the feedback is accompanied by coaching about how to improve the areas identified as points of concern.
Chapter 3 – Organizational Commitment
Organizational Commitment: An employee’s desire to remain a member of an organization. Withdrawal Behavior: Employee actions that are intended to avoid work situations. One might respond in one of the four general ways to negative work events: o Exit: A response to a negative work event by which one becomes often absent from work or voluntarily leaves the organization. You might want to remove yourself first from the situation. Either by being absent from work more frequently or by voluntarily leaving the organization. o Voice: When an employee speaks up to offer constructive suggestions for change, often in reaction to a negative work event. You might attempt to change the circumstances by meeting with the new team member to attempt to work out the situation. o Loyalty: A passive response to a negative work event in which one publicly supports the situation but privately hoes for improvement. You might just “grin and bear it” maintaining your effort level despite your unhappiness. o Neglect: A passive, destructive response to a negative work event in which one’s interest and effort in work decline. You might just go through the motions, allowing your performance to deteriorate slowly as you mentally “check out.” Neglect may be more dangerous to an organization than exit, due to the neglect aspect may not be noticed right away. o Walkerton Case. Organizations commitment should decrease the likelihood that an individual will respond to a negative work event with exit or neglect (2 destructive responses). Affective and Normative commitment increase the likelihood of voice and loyalty in a negative work event, and decrease exit and neglect. Comes in 2 forms: o Psychological Withdrawal: (Neglect) Mentally escaping the work environment Least to Most Serious: Daydreaming: A form of psychological withdrawal in which one’s work is interrupted by random thoughts or concerns. Socializing: A form of psychological withdrawal in which one verbally chats with co-workers about non-work topics. Looking Busy: A form of psychological withdrawal in which one attempts to appear consumed with work when not performing actual work tasks.
Moonlighting: A form of psychological withdrawal in which employees use work time and resources to do non-work-related activities. Cyberloafing: A form of psychological withdrawal in which employees surf the internet, e-mail, and instant message to avoid doing workrelated activities.
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Physical Withdrawal: (Exit) A physical escape from the work environment Least to most serious: Tardiness: A form of physical withdrawal in which employees arrive late to work or leave work early. Long Breaks: A form of physical withdrawal in which employees take longer-than-normal lunches or breaks to spend less time at work. Missing Meetings: A form of physical withdrawal in which employees neglect important work functions while away from the office. Absenteeism: A form of physical withdrawal in which employees do not show up for an entire day of work. Quitting: A form of physical withdrawal in which employees voluntarily leave the organization.
3 Forms of Organizational Commitment: Affective (affection) Commitment: An employee’s desire to remain a member of an organization to a feeling of emotional attachment. “You stay because you want to” (Emotion Based Reasons – Friends work there, enjoying atmosphere, rewarding job duties) Managers would choose affective commitment to instill on their employees Tend to involve them in more citizenship behavior. o Sportsmanship, helping, boosterism Emotional bond to the organization Erosion Model: A model that suggests that employees with fewer bonds with co-workers are more likely to quit the organization. The Social Influence Model: A model that suggests that employees with direct linkages to coworkers who leave the organization will themselves becomes more likely to leave. If you leave organization with an affective commitment, you would feel a sense of sadness.
Continuance Commitment: An employee’s desire to remain a member of an organization due to awareness of the costs of leaving.
“You stay because you have to” (Cost-Based Reasons – Promotion coming up, Salary + Benefits allow affording a luxurious lifestyle, put down family roots where one works) If you leave the organization with continuance commitment you would feel a sense of anxiety. Benefit associated with staying and a cost associated with leaving. A factor that increases continuance commitment is the total time an employee invested in terms of time, effort, energy and has made in mastering his or her work role or fulfilling his or her organizational duties. If you leave, you start over the learning-curve again. High continuance is also occurred in employees that have nowhere to go. Lack of employment alternatives. Factors depend on economic conditions, unemployment rate, and the marketability of a person’s skills and abilities. Embeddedness: An employee’s connection to and sense of fit in the organization and community. If you leave you sacrifice something. The mob is an example of continuance commitment. You stay because you have no other choice.
Normative Commitment: An employee’s desire to remain a member of an organization due to a feeling of obligation. “You stay because you ought to” (Obligation-Based Reasons – Boss invested so much time, mentoring and training, Organization provided a start, Employer helped me out of a jam on a number of occasions). If you left the organization with normative commitment, you would feel a sort of guilt. Sense of staying is the right or moral thing to do. Cause an employee a sense of debt to employer. Example, spend money on employee to train them. Employee will feel obligated to repay the organization for the training received. Employees stay because it is the right thing to do.
Focus (Foci) of Commitment: The people, places, and things that inspire a desire to remain a member of an organization.
Strategies that Maximize Commitment: From affective commitment organizations can tie the bonds between employees together to make them stronger.
Examples include allowing employee’s time to play, social events that encourage employees to interact and develop friendships). In result, helps reduce voluntary turn over or at least makes leaving more difficult. From a continuance commitment organizations should develop a salary and benefits package that creates a financial need to stay. o Continuance behavior does not foster citizenship behavior or job performance From a normative commitment organizations should provide various training and development opportunities for employees. Invest in them to create the sense that they owe further service to the organization. What to do, when withdrawal begins to occur? o Investigate the issue to stop the progression. Whether at the psychological level or physical exit interview level.
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Chapter 4 – Job Satisfaction
Job Satisfaction: A pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences; representing how a person feels and thinks about his or her job. In other words, it represents how you feel about your job and what you think about your job. Values: Things that people consciously or unconsciously want to seek or attain.
Value-percept Theory: A theory that argues that job satisfaction depends on whether the employee perceives that his or her job supplies those things that he or she values. Dissatisfaction = (Value Want – Value Have) X (Value importance) Categories (Satisfaction) Pay Promotions Supervision Co-workers Work Itself Specific Values High salary, Secure salary Frequent promotions, Promotions based on ability Good supervisory relations, Praise for good work Enjoyable co-workers, Responsible co-workers Utilization of ability, Freedom of independence, Intellectual stimulation, Creative expression, Sense of achievement Helping others, Moral causes Prestige, Power over others, Fame Comfort, Safety Which of these things are most important to you?
Altruism (Selflessness) Status Environment
In addition, Value-precept theory suggests that people evaluate job satisfaction according to specific aspects of the job. Pay Satisfaction: Employee’s feelings about the compensation for their jobs. As much as they deserve, secure, and adequate for both normal expenses and luxury items. How our pay compares to others matters in job satisfaction, rather than the total amount of pay desired. Promotion Satisfaction: Employee’s feelings about how the company handles promotions. Whether promotions are frequent, fair and based on ability. Unlike pay, where some employees may not want frequent promotions because promotions bring more responsibility and increased work hours. Promotions provide opportunities for more personal growth, a better wage and more prestige.
Supervision Satisfaction: Employee’s feelings about their boss, including his or her competency, communication and personality. Whether the boss is polite, competent and a good communicator V.S. lazy, annoying and too distant. Can they help me attain the things that I value? And Are they generally likable? Co-worker Satisfaction: Employee’s feelings about their co-workers, including their abilities and personalities. Whether co-workers are smart, responsible, helpful, fun and interesting as opposed to lazy, gossipy, unpleasant, and boring. Can they help me do my job? Do I enjoy being around them? Satisfaction with the work itself: Employee’s feelings about their actual work tasks. Whether tasks are challenging, interesting, respected and make use of key skills rather than being dull, repetitive, and uncomfortable. This aspect focuses on what employees actually do rather than the work and the people that surround work. Value-percept theory suggests that employees will be satisfied when they perceive that their job offers the pay, promotions, supervision, co-workers and work tasks that they value. Satisfaction with the work itself is the single strongest driver of overall job satisfaction. Supervision and co-worker satisfaction are also strong drivers. Promotion and Pay satisfaction are moderately strong effects.
SATISFACTION WITH THE WORK ITSELF CONTINUED:
Scientific Management focuses on increasing the efficiency of job tasks by making them more simplified and specialized and using time and motion studies to plan task movements an sequences carefully. Result was lower job satisfaction, due to simplified tasks. Boring jobs may be easier, but not necessarily better. 3 Psychological States make work satisfying: Meaningfulness of Work: A psychological state indicating the degree to which work tasks are viewed as something that counts in the employee’s system of philosophies and beliefs (making a difference in the organization).
Responsibility of Outcome: A psychological state indicating the degree to which employees feel they are key drivers of the quality of work output. Knowledge of Results: A psychological state indicating the extent to which employees are aware of how well or how poorly they are doing (many employees do not find out about their mistakes or have notice of times when they did particularly well). Job Characteristics Theory: A theory that argues that five core characteristics (variety, identity, significance, autonomy, and feedback) combine to result in high levels of satisfaction with the work itself. VISAF Core Job Characteristics (Job Characteristics Theory): Meaningfulness: Variety: The degree to which a job requires different activities and skills. o Low Variety: Repetition and Monotony o High Variety: Every day is different in some way Identity: The degree to which a job offers completion of a whole, identifiable piece of work. o Low Identity: Nothing to point to. No sense of closure. o High Identity: Feeling of a job complete. Sense of closure. Significance: The degree to which a job really matters and impacts society as a whole. o Low Significance: Work that is not necessary. Does not benefit society as a whole. o High Significance: Benefits society as a whole. If the job was taken away, society would be worse off.
Responsibility of Outcome: Autonomy: The degree to which a job allows individual freedom and discretion regarding how the work is to be done. o Low Autonomy: No freedom. Part of a system of procedures. Dull. o High Autonomy: Freedom in working. Jazz musician. No set of procedures.
Knowledge of Results: Feedback: In job characteristics theory, it refers to the degree to which the job itself provides information about how well the job holder is doing (obtained directly from the job, as opposed to feedback from co-workers or supervisors). o Low Feedback: No sense of feedback results in discouragement. o High Feedback: Waitress, when somebody says to me you’re great! Compliments on the job by customers results in instant feedback on the job.
Importance of core characteristics mentioned above, to satisfaction with work itself: Moderators: Influence the strength of the relationship in a theory rather than affecting the variables in the theory directly. Knowledge and Skill: The degree to which employees have the aptitude (ability) and competence needed to succeed on their job (have strong needs for personal accomplishment). Growth Need Strength: The degree to which employees desire to develop themselves further (develop themselves beyond where they currently are). The higher the growth need, the stronger the job characteristics effects are. Job enrichment: When job duties and responsibilities are expanded to provide increased levels of core job characteristics.
MOODS AND EMOTIONS:
Moods: States of feeling that are mild in intensity, last for an extended period of time, and are not directed at anything. Pleasantness: The degree to which an employee is in a good versus bad mood. Engagement: How active or sluggish a mood is. Emotions: Intense feelings, often lasting for a short duration, that are clearly directed at someone or some circumstance (always about something). Positive Emotions: Employee’s feelings of joy, pride, relief, hoe, love and compassion. Negative Emotions: Employee’s feelings of fear, guilt, shame, sadness, envy, and disgust. Emotional Labor: When employees manage their emotions to complete their job duties successfully. Emotional Contagion: The idea that emotions can be transferred from one person to another.
Why are some employees more satisfied with their jobs than others?
Job Descriptive Index (JDI): A facet (aspect) measure of job satisfaction that assesses an individual’s satisfaction with pay, promotion opportunities, supervision, co-workers, and the work itself (one of the most widely administered job satisfaction surveys). Questions are written in a very simple and straightforward fashion making it easy to understand by most employees.
Chapter 6 – Motivation
Motivation: A set of energetic forces that determine the direction, intensity, and persistence of an employee’s work effort. Internal force: Self-Confidence External force: Goals provided for employee to follow Motivation measures, what employees do at a given moment and the direction in which their effort is channeled. Direction of Effort: What are you going to do right now? Intensity of Effort: How hard are you going to work on it? Persistence of Effort: How long are you going to work on it?
Theories Expectancy Theory: The rational (cognitive) process that employees go through to make choices among different voluntary responses. Employees make choices based on 3 specific biased beliefs: -Expectancy – Belief that exerting high level of effort will result in the successful performance of some task Factors: Self-efficacy: belief that individual has required skills to complete task successfully Past accomplishments, various experiences (others who have performed some work task), verbal persuasion (get persuaded by others to get work done) and emotional cues (fear and anxiety creates doubt while pride and enthusiasm boosts confidence) -Instrumentality – Belief that successful performance will result in the attainment of some outcomes. -Valence – Anticipated value of the outcomes associated with successful performance Positively Valence includes promotions, salary increases and bonuses. Negatively Valence includes demotions, terminations and disciplinary actions.
Needs: Groupings or clusters of outcomes viewed as having critical psychological or physiological consequences. Need Label Existence Alternative Label Physiological, Safety Description The need for the food, shelter, safety and protection required for human existence The need to create and maintain lasting, positive, interpersonal relationships The need to be able to predict and control The need to hold a high evaluation of oneself and to feel effective and respected by others The need to perform tasks that one cares about and that appeal to ideals and sense of purpose
Relatedness
Love, Belongingness
Control Esteem
Autonomy, Responsibility Self-regard, Growth
Meaning
Self-actualization
Extrinsic Motivation: Desire to put forth work effort due to some (likelihood) contingency that depends on task performance. Ex. Things that winning a NASCAR race brings for the driver. Intrinsic Motivation: Desire to put forth work effort due to the sense that task performance serves as its own reward. Ex. The driver chooses to drive not for the winning, but the internal factors that it brings him. Like providing him with enjoyment and personal expression. Meaning of Money: The idea that money can have symbolic value (E.g., achievement, respect, freedom) in addition to economic value. Motivational Force (total motivation) – Motivational force = 0 if any one of the three beliefs is zero. Extrinsic Outcomes Pay Bonuses Promotions Benefits and Perks Spot Awards Praise (compliments) Job Security Support Free Time Intrinsic Outcomes Enjoyment Interestingness Accomplishment Knowledge Gain Skill Development Personal Expression Lack of Boredom Lack of Anxiety Lack of Frustration
Lack of Disciplinary Actions Lack of Demotions Lack of Terminations
Goal Setting Theory: A theory that views goals as the primary drivers of the intensity and persistence of effort. Specific and Difficult Goals: Goals that stretch an employee to perform at his or her maximum level while still staying with the boundaries of his or her ability. Ex. Specific goals are better than do your best goals. Self-Set goals: Internal goals that people use to monitor their own task progress Task Strategies: Learning plans and problem-solving approaches used to achieve successful performance. Moderators: Feedback: in goal setting theory, it refers to progress updates on work goals Task Complexity: The degree to which the information and actions needed to complete a task are complicated Goal Commitment: The degree to which a person accepts a goal and is determined to reach it Strategy to Fostering Goal Commitment: Strategy Rewards Publicity Support Participation Description Tie goal achievement to the receipt of monetary or non-monetary rewards. Publicize the goal to significant others and coworkers to create some social pressure to attain it. Provide supportive supervision to aid employees if they struggle to attain the goal. Collaborate on setting the specific proficiency level and due date for a goal so that employee feels a sense of ownership over the goal. Provide the resources needed to attain the goal and remove any constraints that could hold back task efforts.
Resources
SMART goals: Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Results-based, and Time-Sensitive.
Equity Theory: A theory that suggests that employees create a mental ledger of the outcomes they receive for their job inputs, relative to some comparison other. Acknowledges that motivation doesn’t just depend on your own beliefs and circumstances but also on what happens to other people. Theory suggests that employee create a “mental ledger” of the outcomes (rewards) they get from their job duties. Employees also create a mental ledger of the inputs (contributions and investments) they put into their job duties. Outcomes Pay Seniority Benefits Fringe Benefits Status Symbols Satisfying supervision Workplace perks Intrinsic Rewards Inputs Effort Performance Skills and Abilities Education Experience Training Seniority
You compare the ratio of outcomes and inputs to the ratio of some comparison other. Comparison Other: Another person who provides a frame of reference for judging equity. Equity Distress: An internal tension that results from being over rewarded or under rewarded relative to some comparison other. Under reward Inequity: The ratio of outcomes to inputs is lower than some comparison other’s ratio Over reward Inequity: The ratio of outcomes to inputs is greater than some comparison other’s ratio Cognitive Distortion: A re-evaluation of inputs an employee brings to a job, often occurring in response to equity distress. Allows you to restore balance mentally, without altering your behavior in any way. Internal Comparison: Comparison made using someone in the same company. External Comparison: Comparison made using someone in a different company. Equity with Different Comparison Others: Job (Same job, same company), Company (Same company, different job), Occupational (different company same job), Educational (Same education level) and Age Equity (same age). Psychological Empowerment: An energy rooted in the belief that work tasks are contributing to some larger purpose.
Serves as its own reward and supplies many of the intrinsic outcomes. 4 Concepts: Meaningfulness: A psychological state reflecting one’s feelings about work tasks, goals and purposes and the degree to which they contribute to society and fulfill ones ideals and passions. Self-determination: A sense of choice in the initiation and continuation of work tasks. Competence: The capability to perform work tasks successfully. Impact: The sense that a person’s actions “make a difference” – that progress is being made towards fulfilling some important purposes. Opposite of impact is “learned helplessness” – the Sense that it doesn’t matter what a person does, nothing will make a difference. Psychologically Empowered employees believe their work has a meaningful purpose, they have chosen to pursue that purpose in the way they see fit, that they are capable of succeeding in their work tasks and that they are making progress toward achieving their work goals. Motivation strong positive effect on Job Performance Motivation has moderate positive effect on Organizational Commitment Strongest performance effects are in the motivating force Self-efficacy and competence and goals. The next most powerful is the high levels of valence, instrumentality and expectancy on task performance. Perceptions and equity have somewhat a weaker effect on task performance. Equity has the strongest effects on commitment.
Chapter 7 – Trust, Justice, & Ethics
Trust: The willingness to be vulnerable to another based on positive expectations about another’s actions and intentions. Put ourselves out there, when we trust Trust reflects the willingness for an individual to take a risk with an authority Trust comes from people and organizations o Organizational trust is based on reputation of company
Factors of Trust:
Disposition-based Trust: Trust that is rooted in one’s own personality, as opposed to a careful assessment of the trustee’s trustworthiness. o Trust Propensity: A general expectation that the words, promises, and statements of individuals can be relied upon. “faith in human nature” Less to do with authority and more to do with the trustor. High in trust propensity may allow someone to trust one that is not worthy of it. Low in trust propensity may allow someone to distrust one that deserves it. Product of both nature (genetics) and nurture (how we are raised). Cognition-based Trust: Trust that is rooted in a rational assessment of the authority’s trustworthiness. o Trustworthiness: Characteristics or attributes of a person that inspire trust, including competence, character, and benevolence. Competence: The skills, abilities, and areas of expertise that enable an authority to be successful in some specific area. Doctor trust to perform surgery, mechanic trust to fix car, etc. Character: The perception that an authority adheres to a set of values and principles that the trustor finds acceptable. Have integrity – honest motives and intentions. Words and deeds – keep their promises
Benevolence: The belief that an authority wants to do good for an employee, apart from any selfish or profit-centered motives. Care for employees, concerned about their well-being, and feel a sense of loyalty to them. The best mentors would never do anything to hurt their protégés
Affect-based Trust: Trust that depends on feelings toward the authority that go beyond any rational assessment of trustworthiness. o Emotional than rational. o We really like the person, thus we trust them o Acts as a supplement to the others. o Feeling toward trustee New relationships = Disposition-Based Trust Most Relationships = Cognition-Based Trust Few Relationships = Affect-Based Trust
How do we gauge those trustworthiness forms?
Justice: The perceived fairness of an authority’s decision making High level of justice decision outcomes to be fair and decisions making conducted in fair manner. Can be used to explain why some employees judge some authorities more trustworthy than others. Four dimensions that employees can judge fairness of an authority: o Distributive Justice: The perceived fairness of decision-making outcomes. If the allocation of pay, promotions, evaluations, work assignments are using proper norms. In most businesses the proper norm is equity, more outcomes allocated to those who contribute more inputs. In a team, it is fair that the team received equality rather than the individuals on the team. Equity vs. Equality vs. Need Are rewards allocated according to the proper norm? Procedural Justice: The perceived fairness of decision-making processes. Process that led to the outcome. When authorities adhere to rules of fair process. Voice is one of the rules, which enables the employee with an opportunity to express their opinions and views during the course of decision making. Provides a sense of ownership for employees for decisions that occur at work.
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Correctability is a related rule to voice. Provides employees to request an appeal when a procedure seems to have worked ineffectively. Also fostered when authorities adhere to four rules that serve to create equal employment opportunity. Consistency, Bias Suppression, Representativeness, and Accuracy. o Enables neutral and objective as opposed to biased and discriminatory hiring. o Accurate measures of job performance for promotional use. When distributive justice is high, procedural justice has little impact on reactions. When outcomes are good, people do not look at processes. When outcomes are bad, procedural justice becomes enormously important. Outcomes come and go, while processes stay for a longer time. Thus, procedural justice was a stronger predictor of satisfaction with supervision, overall job satisfaction and organizational commitment than distributive justice.
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Interpersonal Justice: The perceived fairness of the interpersonal treatment received by employees from authorities. How authorities treat employees as procedures are implemented. Fostered when authorities adhere to two particular rules: Respect: pertains to whether authorities treat employees in a dignified and sincere manner. Propriety (Politeness): reflect whether authorities refrain from making improper or offensive remarks. Employee injustice: Authorities bad-mouth employees; criticize, berate, embarrass, or humiliate them in public; or refer to them with racist or sexist labels. Violations of interpersonal justice reduce employees’ job satisfaction, life satisfaction, and organizational commitment while increasing feelings of depression, anxiety, and burnout. Informational Justice: The perceived fairness of the communications provided to employees from authorities. Fostered when authorities adhere to 2 particular rules: Justification Rule: mandates that authorities explain decision-making procedures and outcomes in a comprehensive (complete) and reasonable manner. Truthfulness Rule: requires that those communications be honest and candid.
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Graph on effects of informational and interpersonal justice on theft during pay cut.
Why are some authorities more trusted than other?
Trust is based on dispositions, cognitions, and affect. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to gauge trustworthiness accurately, so employees instead look to more observable behaviors that can be used as indirect evidence of trustworthiness. Those behaviors may center on the justice of authorities, with employees considering the distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice experienced at work.
How important is trust?
Job performance: Moderately correlated with task performance. Ability to focus: o The degree to which employees can devote their attention to work. More trusted employees towards their authorities were better able to focus on the work tasks as opposed to “covering their backside,” “playing politics,” and “keeping an eye on the boss.”
Citizenship behavior and Counterproductive behavior: The willingness to accept vulnerability changes the nature of the employee-employer relationship. o Employees who don’t trust their authorities have economic exchange. Economic Exchange: Work relationships that resemble a contractual agreement by which employees fulfill job duties in exchange for financial compensation. Relationships that are based on narrowly defined, quid pro quo obligations that are specified in advance and have an explicit repayment schedule. o As trust increases, social exchange relationships develop. Social Exchange: Work relationships that are characterized by mutual investment, with employees willing to engage in “extra mile” sort of behaviors because they trust that their efforts will eventually be rewarded. Relationships develop that are based on vaguely defined obligations that are open-ended and long term in their repayment schedule. Characterized by mutual investment, such that employees agree to go above and beyond their duties in exchange for fair and proper treatment by authorities.
Organizational Commitment: Trust is strongly related to organizational commitment. Trusting an authority increases the likelihood that an emotional bond will develop. Trusting an authority increases the likelihood that a sense of obligation will develop, because employees feel more confident that the authority deserves that obligation. o When negative events occur, employees who trust the authority are willing to accept the vulnerability that comes with continued employment. Remain confident in their belief that the situation will eventually improve.
Application: Social Responsibility
How to change the negative reputation of a corporation to become more trusting. o One start is to focus the organization’s attention on corporate social responsibility.
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Corporate Social Responsibility: A perspective that acknowledges that the responsibility of a business encompasses the economic, legal, ethical, and citizenship expectations of society. Foundation is profitability, as opposed to profit maximization.
Chapter 8 – Decision Making
Learning: A relatively permanent change in an employee’s knowledge or skill that results from experience. Learning has a significant impact on decision making The more knowledge employees have prior to work, the more they bring to the table.
Decision Making: The process of generating and choosing from a set of alternatives to solve a problem. The more knowledge and skills one possess, the more likely they are to make accurate and sound decisions.
Expertise: The knowledge and skills that distinguish experts from novices. The different between the two is a function of learning. True learning is when changes in behaviors become relatively permanent.
Types of Knowledge
Explicit Knowledge: Knowledge that is easily communicated and available to everyone. Example: someone sitting down at a desk to learn. Information that is relatively easily communicated and a large part of what companies teach during training sessions. Reading the manual.
Tacit Knowledge: Knowledge that employees can only learn through experience. Not easily communicated but could very well be the most important aspect of what we learn in organizations. “Know-how,” “know-what,” and “know who” acquired solely through experience. Intuition, skills, insight, beliefs, mental models, and practical intelligence. Tacit Knowledge Very difficult, if not impossible, to articulate to others Highly personal to nature Based on experience Sometimes holders don’t even recognize that they possess it Typically job- and/or situation-specific
Explicit Knowledge Easily transferred through written or verbal communication Readily available to most Can be learned through books Always conscious and accessible information General Information
Methods of Decision Making
Programmed Decisions: Decisions that are somewhat automatic because the decision maker’s knowledge allows him or her to recognize the situation and the course of action to be taken. See the problems more easily and recognize and implement solutions more quickly. o Does not say that the decisions are necessarily easy. Comes across as intuition or a “gut feeling.” o Intuition: An emotional judgment based on quick, unconscious, gut feelings. Difficulty arises when to trust such gut feeling and when not to. Rule of thumb, ask yourself how much experience you have in that on which you are making a judgment. Example: Don’t lay down your life savings on a spin of the roulette wheel because your intuition tells you “red!” Effective intuition results, when people have a certain amount of tacit knowledge.
Non-Programmed Decisions: Decisions made by employees when a problem is new, complex, or not recognized. Rational Decision-Making Model: A step-by-step approach to making decisions that is designed to maximize outcomes by examining all available alternatives. Assumes that people are perfectly rationale.
1) Identify the criteria that are important in making the decision, all involved parties. 2) List all alternatives that might be potential solutions to the problem. a. Evaluating alternatives at this point is not necessary b. Come up with as many solutions as possible 3) Evaluate alternatives against criteria laid out in step 1. 4) Select alternative with best outcome. 5) Implement the alternative.
Decision-Making Problems
Factors affecting the rational decision-making model: Limited Information Bounded Rationality: The notion (belief) that people do not have the ability or resources to process all available information and alternatives when making a decision. To be rational decision makers, we should . . . Identify the problem by thoroughly examining the situation and considering all interested parties Develop an exhaustive list of alternatives to consider as solutions Evaluate all the alternatives simultaneously Use accurate information to evaluate alternatives Pick the alternative that maximizes value Bounded rationality says we are likely to . . . Boil the problem down to something that is easily understood Come up with a few solutions that tend to be straightforward, familiar, and similar to what is currently being done Evaluate each alternative as soon as we think of it Use distorted and inaccurate information during the evaluation process Pick the first acceptable alternative (satisfice)
Satisficing: When a decision maker chooses the first acceptable alternative considered.
Faulty Perceptions Selective Perception: The tendency for people to see their environment only as it affects them and as it is consistent with their expectations. Perceptual shortcuts we take when dealing with people and situations: Projection Bias: The faulty perception by decision makers that others think, feel, and act the same way as they do. Social Identity Theory: A theory that people identify themselves based on the various groups to which they belong and judge others based on the groups they associate with. Stereotype: Assumptions made about others based on their social group membership. o Inaccurate generalizations become faulty in a decision-making process. Heuristics: Simple and efficient rules of thumb that allow one to make decisions more easily. Availability Bias: The tendency for people to base their judgments on information that is easier to recall.
Faulty Attributions Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency for people to judge others’ behaviors as being due to internal factors such as ability, motivation, or attitudes. Self-Serving Bias: When one attributes one’s own failures to external factors and success to internal factors. When people have a level of familiarity of the person being judged, they’ll use a more detailed decision framework. Consensus: Used by decision makers to attribute cause; whether other individuals behave the same way under similar circumstances. Did others act the same way under similar situations? In other words, did other arrive late on the same day?
Distinctiveness: Used by decision makers to attribute cause; whether the person being judged acts in a similar fashion under different circumstances. Does this person tend to act differently in other circumstances? In other words, is Joe responsible when it comes to personal appointments, not just work appointments?
Consistency: Used by decision makers to attribute cause; whether this individual has behaved this way before under similar circumstances. Does this person always do this when performing this task? In other words, has Joe arrived late for work before?
Escalation of Commitment Escalation of Commitment: A common decision-making error in which the decision maker continues to follow a falling course of action. Feel that they should stick with their decision, even though it is a failure, to avoid looking incompetent. Avoid admitting they have made a mistake.
Learning is moderately related to job performance, and has a weak correlation with organizational commitment. What steps can organizations take to foster learning? Training: A systematic effort by organizations to facilitate the learning of job-related knowledge and behavior. Knowledge Transfer: The exchange of knowledge between employees. From older, experiences workers, to their younger employees. Mentoring programs are popular today.
Communities of Practice: Groups of employees who learn from one another through collaboration over an extended period of time. Transfer of Training: Occurs when employees retain and demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and behaviors required for their job after training ends. Transfer of training can be fostered if organizations create a climate for transfer. o Climate for Transfer: An organizational environment that supports the use of new skills.
Chapter 9 – Personality, Cultural Values and Ability
Capture what people are like: Personality: The structures and propensities inside a person that explain his or her characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior; personality reflects what people are like and creates their social reputation. Personality is also a collection of multiple specific traits. Traits: Recurring trends in people’s responses to their environment. (Adjectives such as responsible, critical, organized, or achievement-oriented are all examples of traits). Cultural Values: Shared beliefs about desirable end states or modes of conduct in a given culture that influence the expression of traits. Capture what people can do: Ability: Relatively stables capabilities of people for performing a particular range of related activities.
The Big Five Taxonomy
Big Five: The five major dimensions of personality including CANOE. Conscientiousness: Dimension of personality reflecting traits like being dependable, organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking and persevering (determined). Has the biggest influence on job performance Accomplishment Striving: A strong desire to accomplish task-related goals as a means of expressing one’s personality. Moderate positive correlation with job performance and organizational commitment
Agreeableness: Dimension of personality reflecting traits like being kind, cooperative, sympathetic, helpful, courteous, and warm. Communion Striving: A strong desire to obtain acceptance in personal relationships as a means of expressing one’s personality.
Neuroticism: Dimension of personality reflecting traits like being nervous, moody, emotional, insecure, jealous, and unstable. Negative Affectivity: A dispositional tendency to experience unpleasant moods, such as hostility, nervousness, and annoyance. Differential Exposure to Stressors: Being more likely to appraise day-to-day situations as stressful, thereby feeling that stressors are encountered more frequently.
Differential Reactivity to Stressors: Being less likely to believe that one can cope with the stressors experienced on a daily basis.
Openness to Experience: Dimensions of personality reflecting traits like being curious, imaginative, creative, complex, refined, and sophisticated. Beneficial in some jobs but not others. Jobs that need innovative thing benefit from employees that carry an openness to experience dimension of traits with them.
Extraversion: Dimension of personality reflecting traits like being talkative, sociable, passionate, assertive, bold, and dominant. Easiest to judge In zero acquaintance situations o Zero Acquaintance Situations: Situations in which two people have just met. Status Striving: A strong desire to obtain power and influence within a social structure as a means of expressing one’s personality. Tend to be high in positive affectivity. o Positive Affectivity: A dispositional tendency to experience pleasant, engaging moods such as enthusiasm, excitement, and elation.
Cultural Values
Ethnocentrism: One who views his or her cultural values as “right” and values of other cultures as “wrong.” Geert Hofstede’s Dimensions of Cultural Values Individualism-Collectivism: The degree to which a culture has a loosely knit social framework (individualism) or a tight social framework (collectivism) Power Distance: The degree to which a culture prefers equal power distribution (low power distance) or an unequal power distribution (high power distance) Uncertainty Avoidance: The degree to which a culture tolerates ambiguous situations (low uncertainty avoidance) or feels threatened by them (high uncertainty avoidance) Masculinity-Femininity: The degree to which a culture values stereotypically male traits (masculinity) or stereotypically female traits (femininity) Short-term vs. Long-term Orientation: The degree to which a culture stresses values that are past-and present-oriented (short-term orientation) or future-oriented (long-term orientation)
Ability
Can be grouped into 3 general categories: Cognitive Ability: Capabilities related to the use of knowledge to make decisions and solve problems. Positive strong correlations with job performance due to smart employees fulfill the requirements of their job descriptions more effectively than do less smart employees. Weak correlation with organizational commitment. Verbal Ability o Oral and written comprehension – ability to understand spoken and written words o Oral and written expression – ability to communicate ideas by speaking and writing. Police, Fire and Ambulance Dispatchers Quantitative Ability o Number Facility – Capability to do simple math operations such as adding/subtracting. o Mathematical Reasoning – Ability to choose and apply formulas to solve problems that involve numbers. Treasurers, Financial Managers and Statisticians Reasoning Ability o Problem Sensitivity – Ability to sense that there is or will be a problem o Deductive Reasoning - Ability to solve problems applying general rules o Inductive Reasoning – Ability to consider several pieces of information and then reach a more general conclusion regarding how those pieces are related. o Originality – Ability to develop clever and novel ways to solve problems.
Anesthesiologists, surgeons, business executives and fire inspectors Spatial (3D) Ability o Spatial Orientation – A good understanding of where one is relative to other things in the environment o Visualization – Ability to imagine how separate things will look if they were put together in a particular way Pilots, Drivers, Boat Captains Perceptual Ability o Speed and Flexibility of Closure – Ability to pick out a pattern of information quickly in the presence of distractions, even without all the information present o Perceptual Speed – Ability to examine and compare numbers, letters, and objects quickly. Musicians, Fire Fighters, Police officers and Pilots General Mental Ability (g or g factor): The general level of cognitive ability that plays an important role in determining the more narrow cognitive abilities.
Emotional Ability: Emotional Intelligence: A set of abilities related to the understanding and use of emotions that affect social functioning Self-Awareness: The ability to recognize and understand the emotions in oneself. o Willingness to acknowledge them and capability to express them naturally. Example: Low – New job, employee will not show himself as anxious to others. Other Awareness: The ability to recognize and understand the emotions that other people are feeling. Example: High – People who are sensitive to the feelings of others but also can anticipate the emotions that people will experience in different situations. Low – Professor does not sense that students did not understand the material covered in class. Emotional Regulation: The ability to recover quickly from emotional experiences Example: High – If driver cuts you off and throws a beer can that hits your car, a person with high emotional regulation will be able to recover quickly and go back to driving the way he or she was. By the time they get to work the situation encountered may be all forgotten. Low – Same situation, but the driver might lose his temper and tailgate the aggressive driver and then ram into her vehicle at the next spot light.. Use of Emotions: The degree to which people can harness emotions and employ them to improve their chances of being successful in whatever they are seeking to do. Example: High – Writer of a book is under a serious time crunch and pressure to get the book done. Writer would likely psych herself up for the challenge and encourage herself to work hard through any bouts of writer’s block.
Low – Writer would doubt her competence as a writer and think about different things she could do with her life.
Physical: Strength Static Strength – Ability to lift, push, or pull very heavy objects such as boxes or heavy equipment. Explosive Strength – Ability to move or move things in short bursts of energy. Dynamic Strength – Ability exert force for prolonged period of time without becoming overly fatigued and giving out.
Stamina Ability to work effectively while engaging in physical activity
Flexibility and Coordination Extent Flexibility – Ability to execute extreme ranges of bends, twists, stretches, or reaches to complete a job. o Speaker Installer in Car Audio Dynamic Flexibility – Ability to quickly and repeatedly execute bends, twists, stretches, or reaches to complete a job. o House painter Gross Body Coordination – Ability to synchronize the movements of the body, arms, and legs to do something while the whole body is in motion. o Jumping Rope Gross Body Equilibrium – Ability to maintain the balance of the body in unstable contexts or when changing directions. o Walking on balance beam
Psychomotor Abilities Fine Manipulative Abilities – Ability to keep the arms and hands steady while using the hands to do precise work. o Doctors Control Movement Abilities – Ability to make precise adjustments using machinery to complete work effectively. o Drills things for a living, wood workers, carpenters Response Orientation – Ability to choose the right action quickly in response to several different signals. o Pilots Response Time – Ability to respond to signaling information after it occurs.
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Sensory Abilities Near and Far Vision – Ability to see things up close and at a distance. o Watch repairer, pilot fighter and astronauts. Night Vision – Ability to see things in low light. Visual Color Discrimination – Ability to perceive colors accurately. Depth Perception – Ability to judge relative distances between things accurately. Hearing Sensitivity – Ability to discriminate sounds that vary in terms of loudness and pitch. Auditory Attention – Ability to focus on a single sound in the presence of many other sounds. Speech Recognition – Ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
Typical Performance: Performance in the routine conditions that surround daily job tasks. Conscientiousness is a key driver of typical performance
Maximum Performance: Performance in brief, special circumstances that demand a person’s best effort. Employees’ ability is a key driver of maximum performance.
Situational Strength: Degree to which situations have clear behavioral expectations, incentives, or instructions that make differences between individuals less important. Strong situations have clear behavioral exceptions, incentives or instructions that make differences between individuals less important. Weak Situations lack those cues
Personality variables tend to be more significant drivers of behavior in weak situations than in strong situations. Trait Activation: The degree to which situations provide cues that trigger the expression of a given personality trait. A cry for help, can activate a trait for empathy.
Wonderlic Personal Test: A 12-minute test of general cognitive ability used to hire job applicants.
Chapter 10 – Team Characteristics
Team: Two or more people who work interdependently over some time period to accomplish common goals related to some task-oriented purpose. Group: Collection of 2 or more people Team vs. Group Interactions within teams revolve around a deeper dependence on one another than the interactions within groups. Members of a team depend on one another for critical information, materials, and actions that are needed to accomplish their purpose.
Surgeon, Anesthesiologist, and a Nurse work together to accomplish a successful surgery on a patient.
Team Types
Work Teams: A relatively permanent team in which members work together to produce goods and/or provide services. Vary in the degree in which members have autonomy in defining theirs roles and decision making. o Example: MBA Program at University of Alberta
Management Teams: A relatively permanent team that participates in managerial-level tasks that affect the entire organization. Participate in managerial-level tasks that affect the entire organization o Example: Typically departments or functional areas–to help the organization achieve its long-term goals.
Parallel Teams: A team composed of members from various jobs within the organization that meets to provide recommendations about important issues. Part-time commitment from members required May be permanent or temporary, depending on their aim o Examples: Committees often form to deal with unique issues or issues that arise only periodically.
Project Teams: A team formed to take on one-time tasks, most of which tend to be complex and require input from members from different functional areas. Exist as long as it takes to finish a project o Some projects are complex and may take years to complete
Work full-time o Example: Pixar has characteristics of project teams.
Action Teams: A team of limited duration that performs complex tasks in contexts that tends to be highly visible and challenging. Example: Sport teams remain for at least one season, Musical groups like the Rolling Stones may stick together for decades.
Variations within Team Types
Virtual Team: A team in which the members are geographically dispersed and interdependent activity occurs through e-mail, Web conferencing, and instant messaging. Predictable Sequence Forming: The first stage of team development, during which members try to get a feel for what is expected of them, what types of behaviors are out of bounds, and who’s in charge. Storming: The second stage of team development, during which conflict occurs due to members’ ongoing commitment to ideas they bring with them to the team. Norming: The third stage of team development, during which members realize that they need to work together to accomplish team goals and consequently begin to cooperate. Performing: The final stage of team development, during which members are comfortable working with their roles, and the teams makes progress toward goals. Aircraft flight crew does not have to go through the forming, storming, norming, and performing stages to figure out that the pilot flies the plane and the flight attendant serves the beverages. o The predictable sequence of team development does not apply to all types of teams. One situation in which this developmental sequence is less applicable is when teams are formed with clear expectations regarding what is expected from the team and its members. Second situation in which it is less applicable may be in certain types of project teams that follow a pattern of development called punctuated equilibrium. Punctuated Equilibrium: A sequence of team development during which not much gets done until the halfway point of a project, after which teams make necessary changes to complete the project on time. o Forming and Pattern Creation: Members make assumptions and establish a pattern of behavior that lasts the first half of its life.
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Inertia (Inactivity): That pattern of behavior continues to dominate the team’s behavior as it settles into a sort of inertia. At mid-point of the project something remarkable happens. Process Revision: Members realize that they have to change their task paradigm fundamentally to complete it on time. People that change, do well, people that do not change, sink in the ocean.
Team Interdependence
Task Interdependence: The degree to which team members interact with and rely on other team members for information, materials, and resources needed to accomplish work for the team. Lowest to Highest Required Coordination Pooled Interdependence: A form of task interdependence in which group members complete their work assignments independently, and then their work is simply added together to represent the group’s output. Example: Tug of War
Sequential Interdependence: A form of task interdependence in which group members perform different tasks in a prescribed sequence, and members only depend on the member who comes before them in the sequence. Example: Assembly Line
Reciprocal Interdependence: A form of task interdependence in which group members interact with only a limited subset of other members to complete the team’s work. Example: Hospital
Comprehensive Interdependence: A form of task interdependence in which team members have a great deal of discretion in terms of what they do and with whom they interact in the course of the collaboration involved in accomplishing the team’s work Highest level of interaction and coordination among members as they try to accomplish work. o Example: Appolo-13
Goal Interdependence: The degree to which team members have a shared goal and align their individual goals with that vision. Example: Row-boat Mission Statements increase goal interdependence
Outcome Interdependence: The degree to which team members share equality in the feedback and rewards that result from the team achieving its goals. High degree of outcome interdependence exists when team members share in the rewards that the team earns. o Example: pay, bonuses, formal feedback and recognition, pats on the back, extra time off, and continued team survival. Low degree of outcome interdependence occurs when members receive rewards and punishments on the basis of their own performance, without regard to the performance of the team.
Team Composition
Team Composition: The mix of the various characteristics that describe the individuals who work in the team. Member Roles Role: The behavior a person is generally expected to display in a given context. o Leader-staff Teams: A type of team that consists of members who make recommendations to the leader who is ultimately responsible for team decisions. o Team Task Roles: Behaviors that directly facilitate the accomplishment of team tasks. Orienter: Who establishes the direction for the team Devil’s Advocate: Who offers constructive challenges to the team’s status quo (current situation) Energizer: Who motivates team members to work harder toward team goals o Team Building Roles: Behaviors that influence the equality of the team’s social climate Harmonizer: Who steps in to resolve differences among teammates Encourager: Who praises the work of teammates Compromiser: Who helps the team see alternative solutions that teammates can accept. o Individualistic Roles: Behaviors that benefit the individual at the expense of the team. Aggressor: “Puts down” or deflates fellow teammates Recognition Seeker: Takes credit for team successes. Dominator: Manipulates teammates to acquire control and power. Having to deal with members who take on individualistic roles is dissatisfying.
Member Ability Disjunctive Tasks: Tasks with an objectively verifiable best solution for which the member with the highest level of ability has the most influence on team effectiveness. Conjunctive Tasks: Tasks for which the team’s performance depends on the abilities of the team’s weakest link.
Additive Tasks: Tasks for which the contributions from every member add up to determine team performance. Member Personality o Conscientiousness is important to teams. o A strong negative effect on the team of having even one member who is particularly low on conscientiousness. o Agreeableness also important consideration. o Agreeableness may be more important than conscientiousness in teams Reason is due to agreeable people tend to be more cooperative and trusting There is a caveat, agreeable people may not speak up for team to improve High agreeableness will enhance harmony at the expense of task accomplishment. o Extraverted people tend to perform more effectively in interpersonal contexts. o Beneficial to the social climate of the group. Too many members that are extraverted can harm the team. Reason for this can be attributed to extraverts’ tendency to be assertive and dominant. Power struggles and unproductive conflict occur with greater frequency. Member Diversity Team Diversity: The degree to which team members are different from one another. Value in Diversity Problem-Solving Approach: A theory that supports team diversity because it provides a larger pool of knowledge and perspectives. o Teams that engage in work that is relatively complex and requires creativity benefit most from diversity. o Ethnicity, expertise, personality, attitudes–supports this idea.
Similarity-Attraction Approach: A theory explaining that team diversity can be counter-productive because people tend to avoid interacting with others who are unlike them. o Diversity on attributes such as cultural background, race, and attitudes are associated with communication problems and ultimately poor team effectiveness.
Surface-Level Diversity: Diversity of observable attributes such as race, gender, ethnicity, and age. o Has negative impact on teams early in their existence because of similarity-attraction issues, those effects dissolve as members become more knowledgeable about one another.
Deep-Level Diversity: Diversity of attributes that are inferred through observation or experience, such as one’s values or personality. o o Differences in attitudes, values, and personality are good examples of deep-level diversity. As time passes, the bad effects increase.
Team Size: o o o Having a greater number of members is beneficial for management and project teams, but not for teams engaged in productions tasks. Management and project teams engage in work that is complex and knowledge intensive, thus benefit from additional resources and expertise. Production teams tend to engage in routines tasks that are less complex. Additional members beyond what is necessary to accomplish the work tends to result in unnecessary coordination and communication problems. Additional members may create more socializing and they feel less accountable for team outcomes.
Team Process: The different types of activities and interactions that occur within a team as the team works toward its goals. o Strong impact on team effectiveness.
Process Gain: When team outcomes are greater than expected based on the capabilities of the individual members. o o Synonymous to synergy and is most critical in situations in which the complexity of the work is high or tasks require combinations of members’ knowledge, skills, and efforts to solve problems. Getting more from the team, than you would expect from getting form individual members
Process Loss: When team outcomes are less than expected based on the capabilities of the individual members. o o o Getting less from the team than you would expect based on the capabilities of its individual members. Coordination Loss: Process loss due to the time and energy it takes to coordinate work activities with other team members. Motivational Loss: Process loss due to team members’ tendency to put forth less effort on team tasks than they could. o Hard to gauge how much each team member contributes to the team, thus motivational loss occurs. Feel less accountable for team outcomes, due to uncertainty regarding who contributes what. o Social Loafing: A type of motivational loss resulting from members feeling less accountable for team outcomes relative to independent work that results in individually identifiable outcomes.
Taskwork Processes
Taskwork Processes: The activities of team members that relate directly to the accomplishment of team tasks. o Creative Behavior: o The best known activity that teams use to foster creative behavior is brainstorming. Brainstorming: A team process used to generate creative ideas. Express all ideas that come to mind Go for quantity of ideas rather than quality Don’t criticize or evaluate the ideas of others Build on the ideas of others. o 3 Reasons why brainstorming does not work well. Tendency for members to social loaf in group brainstorming contexts.
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Members might be hesitant to release ideas that are silly or not well-thoughtout. Members are typically requires that they wait their turn to express their ideas. o Why do organizations continue to use it? Well-known idea. Common sense leads to people thinking it works as advertised. Brainstorming builds moral and results in the sharing of knowledge that might be otherwise be locked inside the minds of the individual team members. Decision Making: o 3 Factors account for a team’s ability to make effective decisions. Decision Informity: The degree to which team members possess adequate information about their own task responsibilities. Staff Validity: The degree to which team members make good recommendations to the team leader. Hierarchical Sensitivity: The degree to which the team leader effectively weighs the recommendations of the members. Boundary Spanning: Interactions among team members and individuals and groups who are not part of the team. o Ambassador Activities: Boundary-spanning activities that are intended to protect the team persuade others to support the tea, or obtain important resources for the team. Marketing team member meets with people who are higher up in the organization. o Task Coordinator Activities: Boundary-spanning activities that are intended to coordinate task-related issues with people or groups in other functional areas. Marketing team member meets with manufacturing department for find out how a coupon might fit into the packaging materials. o Scout Activities: Boundary-spanning activities that are intended to obtain information about technology, competitors, or the broader marketplace. Marketing team member who meets with an engineer to seek information about new materials is engaging in scout activities.
Teamwork Processes
Teamwork Processes: The interpersonal activities that promote the accomplishment of team tasks but do not involve task accomplishment itself. o Create the setting or context in which taskwork can be carried out.
Transition Processes: Teamwork processes, such as mission analysis and planning that focus on preparation for future work in the team. o o Teamwork processes become important right when teams first begin their work. Important between periods of taskwork as well.
Action Processes: Teamwork processes, such as helping and coordination, that aid in the accomplishment of teamwork as the work is actually taking place. o Important as the task is being accomplished. o Example: Monitoring progress toward goals.
Interpersonal Processes: Teamwork processes, such as motivating and confidence building that focus on the management of relationships among team members. o o Important before, during or in between periods of taskwork. Relationship Conflict: Disagreements among team members with regard to interpersonal relationships or incompatibilities in personal values or preferences. o Reduces team’s performance. Task Conflict: Disagreements among members about the team’s task. o May be beneficial to a team if it stimulates conversations that result in the development and expression of new ideas. o Tends to reduce team effectiveness unless 2 conditions are met. For task conflict to be productive, team members must feel free to express their opinions and know how to manage conflict effectively.
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Team States
Team States: Specific types of feelings and thoughts that coalesce (merge) in the minds of team members as a consequence of their experience working together. Cohesion: A team state that occurs when members of the team develop strong emotional bonds to other members of the team and to the team itself. o o High levels of motivation and commitment to the team is fostered by cohesion. o High level of team performance Not the greatest team, as cohesive teams maintains harmony by striving toward consensus on issues without ever offering, seeking, or seriously considering alternative viewpoints and perspectives. Groupthink: Behaviors that support conformity and team harmony at the expense of other tea priorities. o Overconfidence about a team’s capabilities. o Devil’s advocate could help with avoiding high cohesion and groupthink from developing in the team.
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Potency: A team state reflecting the degree of confidence among team members that the team can be effective across situations and tasks. o Strong positive impact on team performance.
Mental Models: The degree to which team members have a shared understanding of important aspects of the team and its task. o o Share in their understanding of ones capabilities. Know where to go for help when needed. Anticipate when another member needs help to do his or her work.
Transactive Memory: The degree to which team members’ specialized knowledge is integrated into an effective system of memory for the team. o o o Specialized knowledge is relevant to the team and how their knowledge should be combined with the knowledge of other members to accomplish team goals. If one is slow to respond, the team fails. If one leaves, you lose and important node.
Why are some teams more than the sum of their parts? o o Teams become more than the sum of their parts if their team process achieves process gain rather than process loss. Teams can accomplish that goal by engaging in activities that are involved in taskwork, teamwork processes and team states.
How important are team characteristics and processes?
Team Viability: Team commitment; the likelihood a team can work together effectively into the future. o Task interdependence and team performance is moderately positive. o Significantly stronger in teams that are responsible for completing complex knowledge work rather than simple tasks. Task interdependence and team commitment is weaker. Teamwork Processes and team performance is moderately positive. Teamwork Processes and team commitment is strong positive.
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Application: Team Compensation
Hybrid Outcome Interdependence: When team members receive rewards based on both their individual performance and that of the team to which they belong.
Chapter 11 – Power and Influence
Power: The ability to influence the behavior of others and resist unwanted influence in return. o 2 types of power exist; organizational and personal power. Organizational Power o Legitimate Power: A form of organizational power based on authority or position. Sometimes referred to as “formal authority” Manager tells an employee what to do. Legitimate power has its limited If an inappropriate request is made, it is not considered legitimate power. If manager asks to wash his car, it is outside the scope of the employee’s job. When used ineffectively legitimate power can be a very weak form. o Reward Power: A form of organizational power based on the control of resources or benefits. Intertwined with legitimate power. Managers have control over raises, performance evaluations, awards, more desirable job assignments, and the resources an employee might require performing a task effectively. Those with reward power have the ability to influence others if those being o influenced believe they will get the rewards by behaving in a certain way. Coercive Power: A form of organizational power based on the ability to hand out punishment.
Operates on the principle of fear. Exists when one believes that another has the ability to punish him or her and is willing to use that power. Manager might have the right to fire, demote, suspend, or lower the pay of an employee.
Personal Power o Expert Power: A form of organizational power based on expertise or knowledge. More likely to influence others who need that expertise. o Referent Power: A form of organizational power based on the attractiveness and charisma of the leader. Others want to emulate them. Possible for a person to possess all of the forms of power at the same time.
Contingency Factors o The more dependent an individual is on you, the more influential you become to them. o A person can have high levels of expert and referent power, but if they work alone, the ability to influence others is greatly reduced. o Strength of an individual’s ability to use power has four factors. Substitutability: The degree to which people have alternatives in accessing the resources that a leader controls. There are no substitutes for the rewards or resources the individual controls. Discretion: The degree to which managers have the right to make decisions on their own. If your boss is forced to follow organizational policies and rules, her ability to influence your actions is reduced.
Centrality: How important a person’s job is and how many people depend on that person to accomplish their tasks. An individual who performs critical tasks and interacts with others regularly has a greater ability to use his or her power to influence others. Visibility: How aware others are of a leader and the resources that leader can provide. Influence: The use of behaviors to cause behavioral or attitudinal changes in others. o Directional: Managers influencing employees o Lateral: Peers influencing peers or employees influencing managers Influence Tactics o Most Effective Rational Persuasion: The use of logical arguments and hard facts to show someone that a request is worthwhile. Most effective when proposal is important and feasible. Constantly successful in upward influence. Inspirational Appeal: An influence tactic designed to appear to one’s values and ideals, thereby creating an emotional or attitudinal reaction. Know what’s important to the target. Consultation: An influence tactic whereby the target is allowed to participate in deciding how to carry out or implement a request. Increases commitment from the target, which now has a stake in seeing that his or her opinions were right. Collaboration: An influence tactic whereby the leader makes it easier for the target to complete a request by offering to work with and help the target. Leader may help complete the task, providing required resources, or removing obstacles that make task completion difficult. o Moderately Effective (Sometimes effective, sometimes not) Ingratiation: The use of favors, compliments, or friendly behavior to make the target feel better about the influencer. “Sucking Up,” especially when used in an upward influence sense. More effective when used as a long-term strategy. Not as effective when used immediately. Personal Appeals: An influence tactic in which the requester asks for something based on personal friendship or loyalty. The stronger the friendship, the more successful the attempt is likely to be. Exchange Tactic: An influence tactic in which the requestor offers a reward in return for performing a request. Requires that the requestor have something of value to offer.
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Appraising: An influence tactic in which the requestor clearly explains why performing the request will benefit the target personally. Differs from rational persuasion in that it focuses solely on the benefit to the target as opposed to simple logic or benefits to the group or organization. It differs from exchange in that the benefit is not necessarily something that the requestor provides to the target, but rather something that results from the action. Least Effective (Could result in resistance from that target) Does not mean they are not used or not effective at times.
Pressure: An influence tactic in which the requestor attempts to use coercive power through threats and demands. Coalitions: An influence tactic in which the influencer enlists other people to help influence the target. Could be peers, subordinates, or one of the target’s superiors. Typically used with other tactics. o If rational persuasion does not work, the influencer might bring another person to show that, that person agrees with the logic of the argument. Influence tactics tend to be most successful when used in combination. Most effective tactics tend to be the ones that are more “softer” in nature. Influencers will rely on softer tactics, make appropriate requests, and ensure the tactics they use match the types of power they have. Responses to Influence Tactics o Engagement: In the context of influence tactics, occurs when one agrees and becomes committed to an influencer’s request. Best outcome for a leader Reflects a shift in employee behaviors and attitudes. o Compliance: When targets of influence are willing to do what the leader asks but do it with a degree of ambivalence. Reflects a shift in employee behaviors, but not attitudes. Most common response to influence attempts in organizations. Does not bring out highest levels of employee effort and dedication. o Resistance: When a target refuses to perform a request and puts forth an effort to avoid having to do it. Form from making excuses, trying to influence the requestor in return, or simply refusing to carry out such request. Resistance is likely when influencer’s power is low relative to the target or when the request itself is inappropriate or unreasonable.
Organizational Politics: Individual actions directed toward the goal of furthering a person’s own self-interests. o Political Skill: The ability to understand others and use of that knowledge to influence them to further personal or organizational objectives. Two Aspects: Networking Ability and Social Astuteness (Intelligence) Two Capabilities: Interpersonal influence o Involves having an unassuming and convincing personal style that is flexible enough to adapt to different situations. Apparent sincerity o Involves appearing to others us having high levels of honesty and genuineness. Together these four skills provide a distinct advantage when navigating the political environments in organizations.
Conflict Resolution o Competing: A conflict resolution style by which one party attempts to get his or her own goals met without concern for the other party’s results. Win-lose approach. May use legitamate or coercive power to settle the conflict. Involves the hard forms of influence, pressure and coaltion. Won’t win an individual many friends. o Avoiding: A conflict resolution style by which one party wants to remain neutral, stay away from conflict, or postpone the conflict to gather information or let things cool down. Lose-lose approach. Results in an unfavorable outcome for everyone. Never resolves the conflict. o Accommodating: A conflict resolution style by which one party provides in to the other and acts in a completely unselfish way. Lose-win approach. Individuals will use accommodating strategy when the issue is not important to them, but is important to the other party. Also important when individual has less power than the other party. o Collaboration: A conflict resolution style whereby both parties work together to maximize outcomes. Win-win approach. Most effective, yet most difficult to come around to. Equal power between parties must exist. A lot of time investment to arrive at a resolution. Best outcome and reactions of both parties. o Compromise: A conflict resolution style by which conflict is resolved through provideand-take concessions. Each part’s losses are offset by gains and vice versa. Favorable evolutions for the leader.
Power and Influence have a moderate effect on job performance. o Increase engagement and compliance, facilitates task performance. o The engagement and compliance facilitated by power and influence can also increase citizenship behavior and decrease counterproductive behavior. Power and Influence have a moderate effect on organizational commitment. o Use of personal forms of power, such as expert and referent, is associated with increased affective commitment. o More organizational forms of power, or hard influence tactics, decrease that form of commitment. Negotiation: A process in which two or more interdependent individuals discuss and attempt to reach agreement about their differences. o Takes place inside the organization or when dealing with organizational outsiders. o Involve settling a contract dispute between labor and management, determining a purchasing price for products, haggling over a performance review rating, or determining the starting salary for a new employee. o Two strategies that individuals must choose between when it comes to negotiations. Distributive Bargaining: A negotiation strategy in which one person gains and the other person loses. Win-lose negotiating over a “fixed-pie” of resources. “Zero-sum game” o Example: purchasing of a car Similar to competing approach in conflict resolution. Integrative Bargaining: A negotiation strategy that achieves an outcome that is satisfying for both parties. Win-win scenario. Collaboration part of the conflict resolution process, are likely to thrive in these types of negotiations. Whenever possible, it is preferable strategy in negotiations. o Enables a long-term relationship to form between the parties. Neither side feels like the loser. Integrative bargaining is most appropriate in situations in which multiple outcomes are possible, there is an adequate level of trust, and parties are willing to be flexible.
Chapter 12 – Leadership
Leadership: The use of power and influence to direct the activities of followers toward goal achievement. Leader-member Exchange Theory: A theory describing how leader-member relationships develop over time on a dyadic basis. o New leader-member relationships are marked by a phase called role taking. Role Taking: The phase in a leader-follower relationship when a leader provides an employee with job expectations and the follower tries to meet those expectations. During such period the leader gets a feel for the employee’s talents and motivation levels. Often this phase is supplemented by role making. o Role Making: The phase in a leader-follower relationship when a follower voices his or her own expectations for the relationship, resulting in a free-flowing exchange of opportunities and resources for activities and effort. Leader offers more opportunities and resources, and the employee contributes more activities and effort. o High-Quality Exchange: Frequent exchange of information, influence, latitude, support, and attention. Form the leader’s “in-group” and characterized by higher levels of mutual trust, respect, and obligation. o Low-Quality Exchange: Limited exchange of information, influence, latitude, support, and attention. Form the leader’s “out-group” and characterized by lower levels of mutual trust, respect, and obligation. Leader Effectiveness: The degree to which the leader’s actions result in the achievement of the unit’s goals, the continued commitment of the unit’s employees, and the development of mutual trust, respect, and obligation in leader-member dyads. o Traits do not predict leader effectiveness (how well people actually do in a leadership role). Leader Emergence: The process of becoming a leader in the first place. o Traits are more predictive of leader emergence.
Leader Decision-Making Styles
Capture how a leader decides rather what a leader decides. In order from High Leader Control to High Follow Control: o Autocratic Style: A leadership style where the leader makes the decision alone without asking for opinions or suggestions of the employees in the work unit. o Consultative Style: A leadership style where the leader presents the problem to employees asking for their opinions and suggestions before ultimately making the decision him-or herself. Ultimate decision is made with the leader, not employee. o Facilitative Style: A leadership style where the leader presents the problem to a group of employees and seeks consensus on a solution, making sure that his or her own opinion receives no more weight than anyone else’s. In this style, the leader is more of a facilitator rather than a decision maker. o Delegative Style: A leadership style where the leader gives the employee the responsibility for making decisions within some set of specified boundary conditions. Leader plays no role in the deliberations unless asked, though he or she may offer encouragement and provide necessary resources behind the scenes. Example: Professor describes her expectations with respect to a final product, but allows the project teams to decide how best to achieve this outcome.
Time-Driven Model of Leadership: A model that suggests that seven factors, including the importance of the decision, the expertise of the leader, and the competence of the followers, combine to make some decision-making styles more effective than others in a provided situation. o The model suggests that the focus should shift away from leaders to situations in the various styles (autocratic, consultative, facilitative, and delegative). o Seven factors combine to make some decision-making styles more effective in a provided situation and other styles less effective: Decision Significance: Is the decision significant to the success of the project or the organization? Importance of Commitment: Is it important that employees “buy in” to the decision? Leader Expertise: Does the leader have significant knowledge of expertise regarding the problem? Likelihood of Commitment: How likely is it that employees will trust the leader’s decision and commit to it? Shared Objectives: Do employees share and support the same objectives, or do they have an agenda of their own? Employee Expertise: Do the employees have significant knowledge or expertise regarding the problem? Teamwork Skills: Do the employees have the ability to work together to solve the problem, or will they struggle with conflicts or inefficiencies?
Day-to-Day Leadership Behaviors
Initiating Structure: A pattern of behavior where the leader defines and structures the roles of employees in pursuit of goal attainment. Consideration: A pattern of behavior where the leader creates job relationships characterized by mutual trust, respect for employee ideas, and consideration of employee feelings.
Life-Cycle Theory of Leadership (Situational Model of Leadership): A theory stating that the optimal combination of initiating structure and consideration depends on the readiness of the employees in the work unit. o Readiness: The degree to which employees have the ability and the willingness to accomplish their specific tasks. Varies from: R1 (unable and unwilling) o Telling: When the leader provides specific instructions and closely supervises performance. R2 (unable but willing) o Selling: When the leader explains key issues and provides opportunities for clarification. R3 (able but unwilling)
Participating: When the leader shares ideas and tries to help the group conduct its affairs. R4 (able and willing) o Delegating: When the leader turns responsibility for key behaviors over to employees. o All is needed is monitoring and some degree of observation from the leader, to make sure that the group’s efforts stay on track. Unwilling due to lack of commitment, or insecure due to a lack of experience.
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Theory is more effective for low readiness situations. o Theory more effective when ability, motivation, or confidence are lacking. o When readiness is greater, these tests suggest that leader behaviors simply matter less, regardless of their particular combinations.
Transformational Leadership Behaviors
Transformational Leadership: A pattern of behavior where the leader inspires followers to commit to a shared vision that provides meaning to their work while also serving as a role model who helps followers develop their own potential and view problems from new perspectives. o Viewed as a motivational approach to leadership Laiseez-Faire (hands-off): When the leader avoids leadership duties altogether. o Leaders avoids getting involved when important issues arise.
Transactional Leadership: A pattern of behavior where the leader rewards or disciplines the follower based on performance. Passive Management-by-Exception: When the leader waits around for mistakes and errors, then takes corrective action as necessary. o “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” o Leader takes no action, until complaints are received. Active Management-by-Exception: When the leader arranges to monitor mistakes and errors actively and takes corrective action when required. o “The leader directs attention toward failures to meet standards” Contingent Reward: When the leader attains follower agreement on what needs to be done using rewards in exchange for adequate performance. o “The leader makes clear what one can expect to receive when performance goals are achieved” The Four I’s of Transformational Leadership: o Idealized Influence: When the leader behaves in ways that earn the admiration, trust, and respect of followers, causing followers to wants to identify with and emulate the leader. Synonymous with charisma Example: Steve Jobs o Inspirational Motivation: When the leader behaves in ways that foster an enthusiasm for and commitment to a shared vision of the future. o Intellectual Stimulation: When the leader behaves in ways that challenge followers to be innovative and creative by questioning assumptions and reframing old situations in new ways. Leader enables followers to look at problems at different angles. o Individualized Consideration: When the leader behaves in ways that help followers achieve their potential through coaching, development, and mentoring. Treating employees as unique individuals with specific needs, abilities, and aspirations that need to be tied into the unit’s mission. “The leader spends time teaching and coaching.”
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Transformational Leadership has moderate relationship with Job Performance o Tend to have higher levels of task performance, are more likely to engage in citizenship behavior. Transformational Leadership has strong effects on organizational commitment. o Employees with transformational leaders tend to have higher levels of affective commitment and higher levels of normative commitment. No effect with continuance commitment exists. The Substitutes of Leadership Model: A model that suggests that characteristics of the situations can constrain the influence of the leader, which makes it more difficult for the leader to influence employee performance.
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Situational characteristics come in 2 varieties: Substitutes: Situational characteristics that reduce the importance of the leader while simultaneously providing a direct benefit to employee performance. A cohesive work group is an example that fosters its own source of motivation and job satisfaction making the leader less relevant. Neutralizers: Situational characteristics that reduce the importance of the leader and do not improve employee performance in any way. Spatial distance lessens the impact of a leader’s behaviors and styles, but distance itself has no direct benefit for employee job performance.
Chapter 14 – Organizational Culture
Organizational Culture: The shared social knowledge within an organization regarding the rules, norms, and values that shapes the attitudes and behaviors of its employees.
Culture Components
Observable Artifacts: Aspects of an organization’s culture that employees and outsiders can easily see or talk about. o Symbols: The images an organization uses, which generally convey messages. o Physical Structures: The organization’s buildings and internal office designs. o Language: The jargon, slang, and slogans used within an organization. o Stories: Anecdotes, accounts, legends, and myths passed down from cohort (unit) to cohort within an organization. o Rituals: The daily or weekly planned routines that occur in an organization. Casual Fridays. o Ceremonies: Formal events generally performed in front of an audience of organizational members. Espoused Values: The beliefs, philosophies, and norms that a company explicitly states. Basic Underlying Assumptions: The ingrained beliefs and philosophies of employees. o Least observable part of a culture and may not be consciously apparent, even to organizational veterans.
General Culture Types
Solidarity: Degree to which group members think or act alike. Sociability: How friendly employees are to one another o Fragmented Culture (low on both): An organizational culture type in which employees are distant and disconnected from one another. o Mercenary Culture (high on solid, low on social): An organizational culture type in which employees think alike but are not friendly to one another. o Networked Cultures (high on social, low on solid): An organizational culture type in which employees are friendly to one another, but everyone thinks differently and does his or her own thing. o Command Culture: An organizational culture type in which employees are friendly to one another and all think alike.
Specific Culture Types
Customer Service Culture: A specific culture type focused on service quality. o The Service Culture Process Service-oriented leadership behavior Service culture Service-oriented employee behaviors - Customer satisfaction Unit Sales Safety Culture: A specific culture type focused on the safety of employees. Diversity Culture: A specific culture type focused on fostering or taking advantage of a diverse group of employees. Creativity Culture: A specific culture type focused on fostering a creative atmosphere.
Culture Strength
Culture Strength: The degree to which employees agree about how things should happen within the organization and behave accordingly.
Subcultures: A culture created within a small subset of the organization’s employees. Countercultures: When a sub-culture’s values do not match those of the organization. o Sometimes countercultures are useful, by challenging the values of the overall organization or signifying the need for change. o Other times, countercultures can split the organization’s culture right down the middle, resulting in the differentiated culture.
Maintaining an Organizational Culture
ASA Framework: A theory (Attraction-Selection-Attribution) that states that employees will be drawn to organizations with cultures that match their personality, organizations will select employees that match, and employees will leave or be forced out when they are not a good fit. Socialization: The primary process by which employees learn the social knowledge that enables them to understand and adapt to the organization’s culture. o 3 Distinct Phases: Anticipatory Stage: A stage of socialization that begins as soon as a potential employee develops an image of what it would be like to work for a company. Encounter Stage: A stage of socialization beginning the day an employee starts work, during which the employee compares the information as an outsider to the information learned as an insider. Reality Shock: A mismatch of information that occurs when an employee finds that aspects of working at a company are not what the employee expected it to be. Understanding and Adaptation: The final stage of socialization, during which newcomers come to learn the content areas of socialization and internalize the norms and expected behaviors of the organization.
Changing an Organizational Culture
Two primary ways to change a culture; change in leadership and mergers or acquisitions. o Changes in Leadership: Leaders are the driving force for change. o Mergers and Acquisitions: Merging two companies with two distinct cultures is a surefire way to change the culture in an organization. Issue is that there is just no way to know what the culture will look like after the merger takes place.
Person-Organization Fit: The degree to which a person’s values and personality match the culture of the organization. o Weak relation with performance. Employees who fit with their organization tend to have slightly higher levels of task performance, with effects on citizenship behavior slightly stronger, not much is known about the impact of counterproductive behavior. o Strong relation on commitment. Employees who fit with their organization tend to have higher levels of Affective Commitment. Not much is known about the impact of fit on Continuance or Normative Commitment.
Realistic Job Previews: The process of ensuring that a potential employee understands both the positive and negative aspects of the potential job. o Reduces early turnover. New comer Orientation: The process of ensuring that a potential employee understands both the positive and negative aspects of the potential job. o Effective way to start the socialization process. Mentoring: The process by which a junior-level employee develops a deep and long-lasting relationship with a more senior-level employee within the organization. o Popular method.
Chapter 2 – Kreitner Social Perception & Attribution Factors Influencing Individual Behavior
Kreitner Perception: The process of interpreting one’s environment. A rational process that enables us to interpret and understand our surroundings.
Social Cognition: How people perceive one another (social information processing). Process underlying perception involves a 4 STAGE SEQUENCE: Stage 1: Selective Attention/Comprehension Attention: Being consciously aware of something or someone. Comes in 2 forms, information from the environment or from memory. Salient (Noticeable) Stimuli: Something that stands out from its context. Example: A driver with his gas gauge on empty, a Petro-Canada sign is more salient (noticeable) than a McDonald’s or Tim Horton’s. People have the tendency to pay more attention to negative than positive information. Stage 2: Encoding and Simplification Information is not stored in its original form. Encoding is required. Schema: Mental picture of an event of object. To make a schema meaningful, rational category labels are needed. Example: Sports car, if you picture a 2 door, small red colors vehicle a sports car. That is your schema, means you will interpret all red, small 2 door cars sports cars. Varying interpretations of what we observe occur due to four key reasons: 1) Different information in the schema 2) Moods and Emotions influence our focus of attention and evaluations of others 3) People tend to apply recently-used rational categories during encoding. a. You would more likely interpret a natural behavior exhibited as positive if you were recently thinking about positive categories and events. 4) Individual differences influence encoding. a. Pessimistic or depress individuals tend to interpret their surroundings more negatively than optimistic and happy people do.
Stage 3: Storage and Retention This stage involves storage of information in long-term memory. Event Memory; Contains information about specific and general events. Going to a restraint, going to job interview, going to a food store or going to a movie. Semantic Memory; General knowledge about the world. Functions as a mental dictionary of concepts. Each concept contains a definition and associated traits. Person Memory; Contain information about a single individual or groups of people. Stage 4: Retrieval and Response People retrieve information from memory when they make judgments and decisions. Based on either: The process of drawing on, interpreting, and integrating categorical information stored in longterm memory. Retrieving a summary judgment that was already made. Example: New boss was accused but not found guilty of workplace bullying.
Managerial Implications Hiring Interviewers make hiring decisions based on their impression of how an applicant fits the perceived requirements of a job. Implicit Cognition: Any thought or belief that is automatically activated without conscious awareness. o Many hiring decisions are made by implicit cognition Enables people to make biased decisions without understanding that such is occurring. To reduce implicit cognition experts recommend 2 solutions: o Train managers to understand and reduce this type of hidden bias o Use structured as opposed to unstructured interviews. Rely on multiple interviewers.
Performance Appraisal Faulty perception about what constitutes good versus poor performance can lead to inaccurate performance appraisals, which erode work motivation, commitment and loyalty. Evaluate employee in the beginning of the review cycle to serve as a benchmark. Objective, quantifiable (attendance records) are better than Subjective, qualitative (bias).
Individuals can be trained to more accurately rate performance.
Leadership Employees’ evaluations of leader effectiveness are influenced strongly by their schemata of good and poor leaders. Good Leaders o Assigning specific tasks to group members o Telling others that they had done well o Setting specific goals for the group o Letting other group members make decisions o Trying to get the group to work as a team o Maintaining definite standards of performance Poor Leaders o Telling others that they had performed poorly o Insisting on having their own way o Doing things without explaining themselves o Expressing worry over the group members’ suggestions o Frequently changing plans o Letting the details of the task become overwhelming
Communication and Interpersonal Influence Avoid these 4 behavioral tendencies that are negatively perceived when trying to influence others: o Being a pushover Giving up on an idea rather than defending it. o Being a robot Communication style and approach that is too rigid. Provide a specific answer that responds to the persons concerns. o Being a used-car sales associate Too pushy, close-minded, and argumentative. o Being a charity case Desperation and pleading
Workplace Aggression, Bullying, and Antisocial Behavior Such behaviors are based on employee’s perceptions of the work environment. o When treated unfairly.
Physical and Psychological Well-Being Negativity bias can lead to both physical and psychological problems. o Linked to asthma and depression.
Attempt to avoid the tendency of giving negative thoughts too much attention.
STEREOTYPES AND OTHER PERCEPTUAL ERRORS: Commonly found perceptual errors Forms an overall impression about the object to bias ratings about the object. Personal characteristic that leads an individual to consistently evaluate other people or objects in an extremely positive fashion. Avoid all extreme judgments and rate objects as average or natural Tendency to remember recent information. If information is negative the person or object is evaluated poorly. Tendency to evaluate people or objects by comparing them with characteristics of recently observed people or objects.
Halo
Leniency
Teacher is punctual in getting to class, thus rating the teacher high on many dimensions. Rating teacher high on all dimensions regardless of his or her actual performance. Rating teacher average on all dimensions regardless of his or her actual performance. Although most lectures are great. Last 2 lectures were done poorly, thus teacher is rated poorly. Rating a good professor as average because you compared his or her performance with three of the best professors you have ever had in university, from whom you are currently taking courses.
Central Tendency
Recency Effects
Contrast Effects
Person perception: Stereotypes. Stereotype: Beliefs about the characteristics of a group. Are shortcuts to processing our perceptions of others. 4 Step process: Categorizing people into groups according to various criteria, such as gender, age, race, and occupation. We infer that all people within a particular category possess the same traits or characteristics. o Example: All women are nurturing, older people have more job-related accidents) Form expectations of others, and interpret their behavior according to our stereotypes. Stereotypes are maintained by overestimating the frequency of stereotypic behavior exhibited by others.
It is hard to stop stereotyping, but there is several ways to break the chain. People less apt to stereotype if to judge others when they encounter salient information that is highly inconsistent with a stereotype.
Motivation lessens the stereotypic behaviors in others
4 Common Types of Stereotypes: Sex-Role Stereotypes: Beliefs about appropriate roles for men and women. Age Stereotypes: Belief about older individuals tends to be poor candidates than younger individuals in workplace. This stereotype is based on more fiction than fact. Racial and Ethnic Stereotypes: Belief that certain groups contain certain traits. Example: Asians are quiet, introverted, smarter and more quantitatively oriented. Hispanics as family-oriented and religious. And Arabs as angry. Disability Stereotypes: Face negative stereotypes which affects their employability as well as can be branded by the general public.
CASUAL ATTRIBUTIONS Attributions: Perceptions regarding the causes of observed behavior. Casual Attributions: Suspected or perceived causes of behavior. Behavior can be attributed to internal factors (ability) or external factors (difficult task). Casual attributions are made after gathering information’s about three dimensions of behavior. Consensus (PEOPLE): Compare behavior to peers. High: Acts like the rest of the peers Low: Acts differently from the rest of the peers Distinctiveness (TASKS): Compare behaviors on one task with behaviors on another task. High: Performed task significantly different than other tasks. Low: Stable performance from one task to another Consistency (TIME): Judgment on an individual’s performance on a given task is consistent overtime. High: Performs tasks the same time, after time. Low: Unstable performance of a task over time. EXTERNAL CAUSES (Environmental Factors): High consensus, high distinctiveness, and low consistency. INTERNAL CAUSES (Personal Factors): Low consensus, low distinctiveness. high consistency.
Attribution Tendencies: Two attribution tendencies that distort one’s interpretation of observed behavior: Fundamental Attribution Bias: Ignoring environmental factors that affect behavior. Example: When all employees are absent except one. That one employee picks up the slack to do the best they can. If manager evaluates that employees performance as poor, due being ignorant of the environmental factors, he or she processes a fundamental attribution bias. Ultimately, it is not an accurate judgment of the situation. Self-serving Bias: Taking more personal responsibility for success than failure. Example: You go for a job interview and do not get the job. You blame the questions being too difficult, the timing of the interview disadvantages you. Especially after partying the night before. If this happened, you would be using self-serving bias to explain such situation. You believe you were a victim of someone else’s bias. Contrary, if you got a job and promotion, when someone told you no one else wanted the job, you would use self-serving bias to say it’s because of your competence you got the job
Chapter 7 – Effective Communication - Kreitner
Kreitner
Communication: Interpersonal exchange of information and understanding. Perceptual Model of Communication: Process in which receivers create their own meaning. Sender: Individual, group, or organization that desires or attempts to communicate with a particular receiver. Encoding: Communication begins when a sender encodes an idea or thought. Encoding using words, numbers, gestures, non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, or pictures.
The Message: The output of encoding is a message. Messages may trigger emotional or affective reactions Messages need to match the medium used to transmit them Selecting a Medium: People may communicate through a variety of media o Face-to-face o Telephone calls o Electronic mail or email o Voice mail o Video conferencing o Written memos or letters o Photographs or drawings o Meetings o Bulletin boards o Computer output
o Receiver:
Charts or graphs
Decoding: Receiver’s version of encoding. Translating verbal, oral, or visual aspects of a message into a form that can be interpreted. Creating Meaning: Receivers create the meaning of a message in their head. Receivers act to their own interpretations not the communicators. Feedback: The receiver becomes the encoder.
Noise: Interference with the transmission and understanding of a message.
Barriers to Communication with the Communication Process
Sender Barrier: No message gets sent (Sender afraid to voice opinion) Encoding Barrier: The message is not expressed correctly (Thinking of a word of how to express how you feel about something) Medium Barrier: The communication channel is blocked (You never get through to someone via the phone) Decoding Barrier: The recipient doesn’t understand the message (You do not understand the figure of speech your boss tells you, due to English not being your first language) Receive Barrier: No message gets received (Did not listen to your supervisor due to you socializing with a co-worker) Feedback Barrier: The recipient doesn’t respond enough (Provide directions for someone, but they do not listen or repeat it back to you)
Barriers to Effective Communication
Personal Barriers: Any individual attribute that hinders communication Variable skills in communicating effectively o Some are better communicators than others o Communication can be enhanced with training Variations in how information is processed and interpreted Variations in interpersonal trust o Instead of focusing on the message, a lack of trust is likely to cause people to be defensive and question the accuracy of what is being said. Stereotypes and prejudices o The use of stereotypes causes people to misperceive and recall information. Big Egos
o Egos can cause political battles, turf wars, and pursuit of power, credit, and resources. Poor Listening Skills o Student asking the same questions asked minutes earlier Natural tendency to evaluate other’s messages o Natural tendency to evaluate messages from our own point of view Inability to listen with understanding Non-verbal communication o When facial expression and gestures are consistent with the intent of a message.
Physical Barriers: Distance between employees can interfere with effective communication. Work and office noise are additional barriers. Quality of telephone lines or crashed computer represents physical barriers that impact our ability to communicate with information technology. Semantic Barriers: Semantics: Study of words. We need to complete this right away. Means you and your coworkers, just you or you, your co-workers and your boss to? Jargon: Language or terminology that is specific to a particular profession, group, or company.
Choosing Media: Contingency Perspective
Information Richness: Information-carrying capacity of data. New understanding means Rich, little understanding means low in richness.
Overload Zone: Medium provides more information than necessary. District sales managers would fall into the overload zone, if they communicated monthly sales reports through richer media. Conducting face-to-face meetings or telephoning each salesperson would provide excessive information and take more time than necessary. Oversimplification Zone: Medium does not provide necessary information. Lay off workers via email.
Interpersonal Communication
Assertive Style (Assertiveness): Expressive and self-enhancing behavior, but does not take advantage of others. WALL STREET – GREED IS GOOD SPEECH Aggressive Style (Aggressiveness): Expressive and self-enhancing behavior, but takes unfair advantage of others. BOILER ROOM – SPEECH TO EMPLOYEES Non-Assertive Style (Non-Assertiveness): Timid and self-denying behavior. Provides the other person an unfair advantage. Improve their communication competence by trying to be more assertive and less aggressive or non-assertive. This can be done by using non-verbal or verbal behaviors listed: Non-Verbal Behavior Patterns: o Managers should attempt to use the non-verbal behaviors of good eye contact, comfortable firm posture, strong, steady and audible voice, facial expressions matched to message. o Avoid: Glaring eye contact, moving or leaning too close, threatening gestures, loud voice, and frequent interruptions. Verbal Behavior Patterns: o Managers should include direct and unambiguous language and the use of I messages instead you statements.
Sources of Non-Verbal Communication
Non-Verbal Communication: Messages sent or received through means other than spoken words. Body Movements and Gestures: Leaning forward or backward, and gestures, such as pointing, provides additional non-verbal information. Touch: Touching is another powerful non-verbal cue. People tend to touch those they like. Facial Expressions: Convey a wealth of information. Smiling, for instance, typically represents warmth, happiness, or friendship. Frowning conveys dissatisfactions or anger. Eye Contact: Strong non-verbal cue that varies across cultures. Westerners are taught to look at the person you are speaking to. Asians are taught to avoid eye contact with their superior to show obedience and subservience.
Practical Tips: Avoid: Licking your lips or playing with your hair or moustache Turning away from the person you are communicating with Closing your eyes and displaying uninterested facial expressions such as yawning Excessively moving in your chair or tapping your feet Using an unpleasant tone and speaking too quickly or too slowly Biting your nails, picking your teeth, or constantly adjusting your glasses. Maintain eye-contact Occasionally use affirmative nods to indicate agreement Smiling and showing interest Leaning slightly toward the speaker Keeping your voice low and relaxed Being aware of your facial expressions
Active Listening
Listening: Actively decoding and interpreting verbal messages. Listening Styles: Appreciative: Listen in a relaxed manner, preferring to listen for pleasure, entertainment, or inspiration. Empathetic: Interpret messages by focusing on the emotions and body language being displayed by the speaker. Discerning: Attempt to understand the main message and determine important points. Prefer taking notes and logical presentations. Evaluative: Listen analytically and continually formulate arguments and challenges to what is being said. Tend to accept or reject messages based on personal beliefs.
You may improve your listening skills by first becoming aware of the various listening styles used in various situations. This awareness allows you to modify your style to a specific situation. Attend closely to what’s being said, not to what you want to say next Allow other to finish speaking before taking your turn Repeat back what you’ve heard to give the speaker the opportunity to clarify the message
There are two types of communication channels with an organization. Formal: Channels authorized and used by all employees in a common and open manner. o Follow structural etiquette in a public manner, as a result the process takes time to get the message out. Staff notices, public forums, minutes of meetings, client briefing reports, and all other types of documents approved and/or written by management. Informal: Does not follow the chain of command or legitimate organizational structure. o Grapevine: Unofficial communication system that follows no chain of authority or formal structure People can just as easily pass along information with email, face-to-face conversations, or telephone calls. May contain a source of inaccurate rumors. Functions as an early warning signal for organizational changes. Liaison Individuals: Those who consistently pass along grapevine information to others. Organizational Moles: Those who use the grapevine to enhance their power and status.
Internet/Intranet/Extranet
Internet: Global network of computer networks. Intranet: An organization’s private internet. Extranet: Connects internal employees with selected customers, suppliers, and strategic partners. Ford motor company has an extranet that connects its dealers worldwide.
Electronic Mail
Electronic Mail: Uses the internet/intranet to send computer-generated text and documents. Benefits: Reduced cost of distributing information to large number employees Tool for increasing teamwork. Enables employees to quickly send messages to colleagues on the next floor, in another building, or in another country. Reduces time and cost associated with print. Fosters flexibility. Can send email whenever wherever they want with a portable computer with internet connection.
Drawbacks: Lead to time wasted and distraction Overestimate their ability to effectively communicate via email
Tendency to write things in an email that they would not say in person. Lead to negative interactions and defensiveness. Information overload. People use email when they should use other media, resulting in reduced communication effectiveness.
Blogs and Social Networking
Blogs: Online journal in which people comment on any topic. Social Networking: Virtual communities of individuals who share common interests and personal information on web sites open to all or by invitation only. Teleworking: Doing office work from a remote location using different information technologies.
The best V.S. The worst co-worker. Understanding why the worst co-worker acts the way they do, enables us to interact with such employees more effectively. Ultimately, making our work more pleasant. Without understanding why employees act a certain way, it is difficult to find a way to change their attitudes and behaviors at work Organizational Behavior (OB): Field of study devoted to understanding, explaining, and ultimately improving attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups in organizations. Example: Explore the relationship between learning and job performance.
Human Resource Management: Field of study that focuses on the applications of OB theories and principles in organizations. Example: Examine the best ways to structure training programs and promote employee learning.
Strategic Management: Field of study devoted to exploring the product choices and industry characteristics that affect an organization’s profitability. Example: Examine the relationship between firm diversification (when a firm expands into a new product segment) and firm profitability.
The Role of Management Theory: Scientific Management: Using scientific methods to design optimal and efficient work processes and tasks. Example: Study how to optimize performance of any task. (Brick layers) Bureaucracy: An organizational form that emphasizes the control and coordination of its members through a strict chain of command, formal rules and procedures, high specialization, and centralized decision making. A) Division of labor with a high level of technical specialization B) Strict chain of command (authority hierarchy) where every member reported to someone at a higher level in the organization
C) A system of formal rules and procedures that ensured consistency, impartiality and impersonality throughout the organization D) Decision making at the top of the organization. Example: Rather than specifics, the concentration was on the entire organization. Human Relations Movement: Field of study that recognizes that the psychological attributes of individual workers and the social forces within work groups have important effects on work behaviors. The Hawthorn Studies revealed importance of many topics. Contemporary Management Theory recognizes the dependencies between the classical approach and the human relations approach. Individual Outcomes: Two primary outcomes: Job performance and Organizational Commitment. Employee who performs well and stays with the company is a solid employee. Individual Mechanisms: Factors that directly affect the individual outcomes (job performance and organizational commitment). These include: Job satisfaction – Captures what employees feel when thinking about their jobs and doing their day-today work. Stress – Reflect employees’ psychological responses to job demands that tax or exceed their capacities. Motivation – Captures the energetic forces that drive employees’ work effort Trust, justice, and ethics – Reflect the degree to which employees feel that their company conducts business with fairness, honesty and integrity. Learning and Decision Making – Deals with how employees gain job knowledge and how they use that knowledge to make accurate judgments on the job. Individual, Group, and Organizational Context: If Individual mechanisms are key drivers of the primary outcomes, it is important to understand that the mechanisms are influenced by several important contexts. Personality, cultural values, and ability – how such context influences the way we behave at work and the kinds of tasks that interest us, and might account for our responses to events that happen on the job.
Team Characteristics and Processes – Employees typically do not work alone, they work in teams led by some formal/informal leader. These group factors shape stress, satisfaction, motivation, trust and learning. Power and Influence – Summarize the process by which individuals attain authority over others. Leadership styles and behaviors – How leaders act and behave in their roles. Organizational Structure – How units within the firm link to other units. Organizational Culture – Captures the way things are in the organization – shared knowledge about the rules, norms and values that shape employee attitudes and behaviors.
THE VALUE OF AN INTEGRATIVE MODEL: Serves as a guide to where you are in the book, and illustrates the topics discussed and how they relate to one another. Does OB Matter? OB can help keep a product good over the long term. OB can also help a product get better in the long term. Rule of One-Eighth: The belief that at best one-eighth, or 12 percent, or organizations will actually do what is required to build profits by putting people first. ½ of organizations won’t believe the connection between how they manage their people and the profits they earn. ½ of those people who do see the connection will do what many organizations have done – try to make a single change to solve their problems, not realizing that the effective management of people requires a more comprehensive and systematic approach. Of the firms that make comprehensive changes, only ½ will persist with their practices long enough to actually derive economic benefits.
HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT OB? Scientific Method: Theory: A collection of verbal and symbolic assertions that specify how and why variables are related, as well as the conditions in which they should (and should not) be related. Hypotheses: Written predictions that specify relationships between variables.
Data: Obtain data Correlation: The statistical relationship between two variables; abbreviated r, it can be positive or negative and range from 0 (no statistical relationship) to +/-1 (a perfect statistical relationship) 0.5 Strong 0.3 Moderate 0.1 Weak Verification: Verify Meta-Analysis: A method that combines the results of multiple scientific studies by essentially calculating a weighted average correlation across studies (with larger studies receiving more weight).
Chapter 2 – Job Performance
Job Performance: Employee behaviors that contribute either positively or negatively to the accomplishment of organizational goals.
Task Performance: Employee behaviors that are directly involved in the transformation of organizational resources into the goods and services that the organization produces. o Tasks, duties, and responsibilities that are a core part of the job. Job Ad. o Routine Task Performance: Well-known or habitual responses by employees to predictable task demands. Watching a flight attendant show you to insert the belt tongue into the seatbelt buckle. o Adaptive Task Performance: Thoughtful responses by an employee to unique or unusual task demands. Respond quickly to emergency situations, ambulance. Although they are trained, executing in a real emergency is different. Adaptation is becoming increasingly important to do globalization, technological advances, and the greater prevalence of knowledge-intensive work. o Job Analysis: A process by which an organization determines requirements of specific jobs. List of activities involved in the job generated Involves data from several sources Each activity is rated by “subject matter experts” according to frequency and importance. Subject matter experts: have experience performing the job or managing people who perform the job Activities that are rated highest in terms of frequency and importance are used to establish the task performance of a job. o National Occupational Classification (NOC): A national database of occupations in Canada, organizing over 30,000 job titles into 520 occupational group descriptions.
Citizenship Behavior: Voluntary employee behaviors that contribute to organizational goals by improving the context in which work takes place. o Going the “extra-mile.” o Interpersonal Citizenship Behavior: Going beyond normal job expectations to assist, support, and develop co-workers and colleagues. Helping: Assisting co-workers who have heavy workloads, aiding them with personal matters, and showing new employees the ropes when they are first on the job.
Courtesy: Sharing important information with co-workers. Help others stay in the loop of things Sportsmanship: Maintaining a positive attitude with co-workers through good and bad times. Whining and complaining are contagious. Good citizens avoid being the squeaky wheel that frequently makes mountains out of molehills. Interpersonal citizenship behavior fosters trust among employees and teams or groups. Behaviors in teamwork fall under interpersonal citizenship behavior.
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Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Going beyond normal expectations to improve operations of the organization, as well as defending the organization and being loyal to it. Voice: When an employee speaks up to offer constructive suggestions for change, often in reaction to a negative work event. Good citizens react to bad rules or policies by constructively trying to change them as opposed to passively complaining about them. Civic Virtue: Participation in company operations at a deeper-than-normal level through voluntary meetings, readings, and keeping up with news that affects the company. Boosterism: Positively representing the organization when in public. Restaurant, kitchen horror stories? No they keep it to themselves.
Counterproductive Behavior: Employee behaviors that intentionally hinder organizational goal accomplishment. o Organizational: Property Deviance (SERIOUS): Behaviors that harm the organization’s assets and possessions. Sabotage: Purposeful destruction of equipment, organizational processes, or company products. Theft: Stealing company products or equipment from the organization. Production Deviance (MINOR): Intentionally reducing organizational efficiency of work output. Wasting Resources: Using too many materials or too much time to do too little work. Substance Abuse: The abuse of drugs or alcohol before coming to work or while on the job. Personal Aggression (SERIOUS): Hostile verbal and physical actions directed toward other employees. Harassment: Unwanted physical contact or verbal remarks from a colleague.
Abuse: Employee assault or endangerment from which physical and psychological injuries may occur. Political Deviance (MINOR): Behaviors that intentionally disadvantage other individuals. Gossiping: Casual conversations about other people in which the facts are not confirmed as true. Incivility: Communication that is rude, impolite, discourteous, and lacking in good manners.
Being a good performer, what does it mean?
One that is great at accomplishing his tasks (task performance) and performs citizenship behavior both at interpersonal and organizational levels. In addition, avoids being part of counterproductive behavior.
Performance Management
How organizations manage employee performance?
Management by Objectives (MBO): A management philosophy that bases employee evaluations on whether specific performance goals have been met. Employee and manager meet and develop mutually agreed –upon objectives that are measureable and specific. Agree on time period to complete such tasks. Works well in jobs where objective measures of performance can be quantified. o Example: Reduce waste by 35 percent in a factory.
Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS): Use of examples of critical incidents to evaluate an employee’s job performance behaviors directly. Directly access job performance behaviors. Uses critical incidences – short descriptions of effective and ineffective employee performance. 5 Excellent, 4, 3, 2, 1 Poor. Compliments MBO, which is less capable of providing specific feedback about why an objective might have been missed.
360-Degree Feedback: A performance evaluation system that uses ratings provided by supervisors, coworkers, subordinates, customers, and the employees themselves. Raters remain anonymous to employee. The hope is it will be a more balanced and comprehensive examination of performance. Problems arise if system is used for promotion or raises o Which source is most correct? How much weight should go on supervisors’ ratings vs. employees own rating? o Biased evaluations result 360-Degree Feedback is more suitable to improving or developing employee talent, especially if the feedback is accompanied by coaching about how to improve the areas identified as points of concern.
Chapter 3 – Organizational Commitment
Organizational Commitment: An employee’s desire to remain a member of an organization. Withdrawal Behavior: Employee actions that are intended to avoid work situations. One might respond in one of the four general ways to negative work events: o Exit: A response to a negative work event by which one becomes often absent from work or voluntarily leaves the organization. You might want to remove yourself first from the situation. Either by being absent from work more frequently or by voluntarily leaving the organization. o Voice: When an employee speaks up to offer constructive suggestions for change, often in reaction to a negative work event. You might attempt to change the circumstances by meeting with the new team member to attempt to work out the situation. o Loyalty: A passive response to a negative work event in which one publicly supports the situation but privately hoes for improvement. You might just “grin and bear it” maintaining your effort level despite your unhappiness. o Neglect: A passive, destructive response to a negative work event in which one’s interest and effort in work decline. You might just go through the motions, allowing your performance to deteriorate slowly as you mentally “check out.” Neglect may be more dangerous to an organization than exit, due to the neglect aspect may not be noticed right away. o Walkerton Case. Organizations commitment should decrease the likelihood that an individual will respond to a negative work event with exit or neglect (2 destructive responses). Affective and Normative commitment increase the likelihood of voice and loyalty in a negative work event, and decrease exit and neglect. Comes in 2 forms: o Psychological Withdrawal: (Neglect) Mentally escaping the work environment Least to Most Serious: Daydreaming: A form of psychological withdrawal in which one’s work is interrupted by random thoughts or concerns. Socializing: A form of psychological withdrawal in which one verbally chats with co-workers about non-work topics. Looking Busy: A form of psychological withdrawal in which one attempts to appear consumed with work when not performing actual work tasks.
Moonlighting: A form of psychological withdrawal in which employees use work time and resources to do non-work-related activities. Cyberloafing: A form of psychological withdrawal in which employees surf the internet, e-mail, and instant message to avoid doing workrelated activities.
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Physical Withdrawal: (Exit) A physical escape from the work environment Least to most serious: Tardiness: A form of physical withdrawal in which employees arrive late to work or leave work early. Long Breaks: A form of physical withdrawal in which employees take longer-than-normal lunches or breaks to spend less time at work. Missing Meetings: A form of physical withdrawal in which employees neglect important work functions while away from the office. Absenteeism: A form of physical withdrawal in which employees do not show up for an entire day of work. Quitting: A form of physical withdrawal in which employees voluntarily leave the organization.
3 Forms of Organizational Commitment: Affective (affection) Commitment: An employee’s desire to remain a member of an organization to a feeling of emotional attachment. “You stay because you want to” (Emotion Based Reasons – Friends work there, enjoying atmosphere, rewarding job duties) Managers would choose affective commitment to instill on their employees Tend to involve them in more citizenship behavior. o Sportsmanship, helping, boosterism Emotional bond to the organization Erosion Model: A model that suggests that employees with fewer bonds with co-workers are more likely to quit the organization. The Social Influence Model: A model that suggests that employees with direct linkages to coworkers who leave the organization will themselves becomes more likely to leave. If you leave organization with an affective commitment, you would feel a sense of sadness.
Continuance Commitment: An employee’s desire to remain a member of an organization due to awareness of the costs of leaving.
“You stay because you have to” (Cost-Based Reasons – Promotion coming up, Salary + Benefits allow affording a luxurious lifestyle, put down family roots where one works) If you leave the organization with continuance commitment you would feel a sense of anxiety. Benefit associated with staying and a cost associated with leaving. A factor that increases continuance commitment is the total time an employee invested in terms of time, effort, energy and has made in mastering his or her work role or fulfilling his or her organizational duties. If you leave, you start over the learning-curve again. High continuance is also occurred in employees that have nowhere to go. Lack of employment alternatives. Factors depend on economic conditions, unemployment rate, and the marketability of a person’s skills and abilities. Embeddedness: An employee’s connection to and sense of fit in the organization and community. If you leave you sacrifice something. The mob is an example of continuance commitment. You stay because you have no other choice.
Normative Commitment: An employee’s desire to remain a member of an organization due to a feeling of obligation. “You stay because you ought to” (Obligation-Based Reasons – Boss invested so much time, mentoring and training, Organization provided a start, Employer helped me out of a jam on a number of occasions). If you left the organization with normative commitment, you would feel a sort of guilt. Sense of staying is the right or moral thing to do. Cause an employee a sense of debt to employer. Example, spend money on employee to train them. Employee will feel obligated to repay the organization for the training received. Employees stay because it is the right thing to do.
Focus (Foci) of Commitment: The people, places, and things that inspire a desire to remain a member of an organization.
Strategies that Maximize Commitment: From affective commitment organizations can tie the bonds between employees together to make them stronger.
Examples include allowing employee’s time to play, social events that encourage employees to interact and develop friendships). In result, helps reduce voluntary turn over or at least makes leaving more difficult. From a continuance commitment organizations should develop a salary and benefits package that creates a financial need to stay. o Continuance behavior does not foster citizenship behavior or job performance From a normative commitment organizations should provide various training and development opportunities for employees. Invest in them to create the sense that they owe further service to the organization. What to do, when withdrawal begins to occur? o Investigate the issue to stop the progression. Whether at the psychological level or physical exit interview level.
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Chapter 4 – Job Satisfaction
Job Satisfaction: A pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences; representing how a person feels and thinks about his or her job. In other words, it represents how you feel about your job and what you think about your job. Values: Things that people consciously or unconsciously want to seek or attain.
Value-percept Theory: A theory that argues that job satisfaction depends on whether the employee perceives that his or her job supplies those things that he or she values. Dissatisfaction = (Value Want – Value Have) X (Value importance) Categories (Satisfaction) Pay Promotions Supervision Co-workers Work Itself Specific Values High salary, Secure salary Frequent promotions, Promotions based on ability Good supervisory relations, Praise for good work Enjoyable co-workers, Responsible co-workers Utilization of ability, Freedom of independence, Intellectual stimulation, Creative expression, Sense of achievement Helping others, Moral causes Prestige, Power over others, Fame Comfort, Safety Which of these things are most important to you?
Altruism (Selflessness) Status Environment
In addition, Value-precept theory suggests that people evaluate job satisfaction according to specific aspects of the job. Pay Satisfaction: Employee’s feelings about the compensation for their jobs. As much as they deserve, secure, and adequate for both normal expenses and luxury items. How our pay compares to others matters in job satisfaction, rather than the total amount of pay desired. Promotion Satisfaction: Employee’s feelings about how the company handles promotions. Whether promotions are frequent, fair and based on ability. Unlike pay, where some employees may not want frequent promotions because promotions bring more responsibility and increased work hours. Promotions provide opportunities for more personal growth, a better wage and more prestige.
Supervision Satisfaction: Employee’s feelings about their boss, including his or her competency, communication and personality. Whether the boss is polite, competent and a good communicator V.S. lazy, annoying and too distant. Can they help me attain the things that I value? And Are they generally likable? Co-worker Satisfaction: Employee’s feelings about their co-workers, including their abilities and personalities. Whether co-workers are smart, responsible, helpful, fun and interesting as opposed to lazy, gossipy, unpleasant, and boring. Can they help me do my job? Do I enjoy being around them? Satisfaction with the work itself: Employee’s feelings about their actual work tasks. Whether tasks are challenging, interesting, respected and make use of key skills rather than being dull, repetitive, and uncomfortable. This aspect focuses on what employees actually do rather than the work and the people that surround work. Value-percept theory suggests that employees will be satisfied when they perceive that their job offers the pay, promotions, supervision, co-workers and work tasks that they value. Satisfaction with the work itself is the single strongest driver of overall job satisfaction. Supervision and co-worker satisfaction are also strong drivers. Promotion and Pay satisfaction are moderately strong effects.
SATISFACTION WITH THE WORK ITSELF CONTINUED:
Scientific Management focuses on increasing the efficiency of job tasks by making them more simplified and specialized and using time and motion studies to plan task movements an sequences carefully. Result was lower job satisfaction, due to simplified tasks. Boring jobs may be easier, but not necessarily better. 3 Psychological States make work satisfying: Meaningfulness of Work: A psychological state indicating the degree to which work tasks are viewed as something that counts in the employee’s system of philosophies and beliefs (making a difference in the organization).
Responsibility of Outcome: A psychological state indicating the degree to which employees feel they are key drivers of the quality of work output. Knowledge of Results: A psychological state indicating the extent to which employees are aware of how well or how poorly they are doing (many employees do not find out about their mistakes or have notice of times when they did particularly well). Job Characteristics Theory: A theory that argues that five core characteristics (variety, identity, significance, autonomy, and feedback) combine to result in high levels of satisfaction with the work itself. VISAF Core Job Characteristics (Job Characteristics Theory): Meaningfulness: Variety: The degree to which a job requires different activities and skills. o Low Variety: Repetition and Monotony o High Variety: Every day is different in some way Identity: The degree to which a job offers completion of a whole, identifiable piece of work. o Low Identity: Nothing to point to. No sense of closure. o High Identity: Feeling of a job complete. Sense of closure. Significance: The degree to which a job really matters and impacts society as a whole. o Low Significance: Work that is not necessary. Does not benefit society as a whole. o High Significance: Benefits society as a whole. If the job was taken away, society would be worse off.
Responsibility of Outcome: Autonomy: The degree to which a job allows individual freedom and discretion regarding how the work is to be done. o Low Autonomy: No freedom. Part of a system of procedures. Dull. o High Autonomy: Freedom in working. Jazz musician. No set of procedures.
Knowledge of Results: Feedback: In job characteristics theory, it refers to the degree to which the job itself provides information about how well the job holder is doing (obtained directly from the job, as opposed to feedback from co-workers or supervisors). o Low Feedback: No sense of feedback results in discouragement. o High Feedback: Waitress, when somebody says to me you’re great! Compliments on the job by customers results in instant feedback on the job.
Importance of core characteristics mentioned above, to satisfaction with work itself: Moderators: Influence the strength of the relationship in a theory rather than affecting the variables in the theory directly. Knowledge and Skill: The degree to which employees have the aptitude (ability) and competence needed to succeed on their job (have strong needs for personal accomplishment). Growth Need Strength: The degree to which employees desire to develop themselves further (develop themselves beyond where they currently are). The higher the growth need, the stronger the job characteristics effects are. Job enrichment: When job duties and responsibilities are expanded to provide increased levels of core job characteristics.
MOODS AND EMOTIONS:
Moods: States of feeling that are mild in intensity, last for an extended period of time, and are not directed at anything. Pleasantness: The degree to which an employee is in a good versus bad mood. Engagement: How active or sluggish a mood is. Emotions: Intense feelings, often lasting for a short duration, that are clearly directed at someone or some circumstance (always about something). Positive Emotions: Employee’s feelings of joy, pride, relief, hoe, love and compassion. Negative Emotions: Employee’s feelings of fear, guilt, shame, sadness, envy, and disgust. Emotional Labor: When employees manage their emotions to complete their job duties successfully. Emotional Contagion: The idea that emotions can be transferred from one person to another.
Why are some employees more satisfied with their jobs than others?
Job Descriptive Index (JDI): A facet (aspect) measure of job satisfaction that assesses an individual’s satisfaction with pay, promotion opportunities, supervision, co-workers, and the work itself (one of the most widely administered job satisfaction surveys). Questions are written in a very simple and straightforward fashion making it easy to understand by most employees.
Chapter 6 – Motivation
Motivation: A set of energetic forces that determine the direction, intensity, and persistence of an employee’s work effort. Internal force: Self-Confidence External force: Goals provided for employee to follow Motivation measures, what employees do at a given moment and the direction in which their effort is channeled. Direction of Effort: What are you going to do right now? Intensity of Effort: How hard are you going to work on it? Persistence of Effort: How long are you going to work on it?
Theories Expectancy Theory: The rational (cognitive) process that employees go through to make choices among different voluntary responses. Employees make choices based on 3 specific biased beliefs: -Expectancy – Belief that exerting high level of effort will result in the successful performance of some task Factors: Self-efficacy: belief that individual has required skills to complete task successfully Past accomplishments, various experiences (others who have performed some work task), verbal persuasion (get persuaded by others to get work done) and emotional cues (fear and anxiety creates doubt while pride and enthusiasm boosts confidence) -Instrumentality – Belief that successful performance will result in the attainment of some outcomes. -Valence – Anticipated value of the outcomes associated with successful performance Positively Valence includes promotions, salary increases and bonuses. Negatively Valence includes demotions, terminations and disciplinary actions.
Needs: Groupings or clusters of outcomes viewed as having critical psychological or physiological consequences. Need Label Existence Alternative Label Physiological, Safety Description The need for the food, shelter, safety and protection required for human existence The need to create and maintain lasting, positive, interpersonal relationships The need to be able to predict and control The need to hold a high evaluation of oneself and to feel effective and respected by others The need to perform tasks that one cares about and that appeal to ideals and sense of purpose
Relatedness
Love, Belongingness
Control Esteem
Autonomy, Responsibility Self-regard, Growth
Meaning
Self-actualization
Extrinsic Motivation: Desire to put forth work effort due to some (likelihood) contingency that depends on task performance. Ex. Things that winning a NASCAR race brings for the driver. Intrinsic Motivation: Desire to put forth work effort due to the sense that task performance serves as its own reward. Ex. The driver chooses to drive not for the winning, but the internal factors that it brings him. Like providing him with enjoyment and personal expression. Meaning of Money: The idea that money can have symbolic value (E.g., achievement, respect, freedom) in addition to economic value. Motivational Force (total motivation) – Motivational force = 0 if any one of the three beliefs is zero. Extrinsic Outcomes Pay Bonuses Promotions Benefits and Perks Spot Awards Praise (compliments) Job Security Support Free Time Intrinsic Outcomes Enjoyment Interestingness Accomplishment Knowledge Gain Skill Development Personal Expression Lack of Boredom Lack of Anxiety Lack of Frustration
Lack of Disciplinary Actions Lack of Demotions Lack of Terminations
Goal Setting Theory: A theory that views goals as the primary drivers of the intensity and persistence of effort. Specific and Difficult Goals: Goals that stretch an employee to perform at his or her maximum level while still staying with the boundaries of his or her ability. Ex. Specific goals are better than do your best goals. Self-Set goals: Internal goals that people use to monitor their own task progress Task Strategies: Learning plans and problem-solving approaches used to achieve successful performance. Moderators: Feedback: in goal setting theory, it refers to progress updates on work goals Task Complexity: The degree to which the information and actions needed to complete a task are complicated Goal Commitment: The degree to which a person accepts a goal and is determined to reach it Strategy to Fostering Goal Commitment: Strategy Rewards Publicity Support Participation Description Tie goal achievement to the receipt of monetary or non-monetary rewards. Publicize the goal to significant others and coworkers to create some social pressure to attain it. Provide supportive supervision to aid employees if they struggle to attain the goal. Collaborate on setting the specific proficiency level and due date for a goal so that employee feels a sense of ownership over the goal. Provide the resources needed to attain the goal and remove any constraints that could hold back task efforts.
Resources
SMART goals: Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Results-based, and Time-Sensitive.
Equity Theory: A theory that suggests that employees create a mental ledger of the outcomes they receive for their job inputs, relative to some comparison other. Acknowledges that motivation doesn’t just depend on your own beliefs and circumstances but also on what happens to other people. Theory suggests that employee create a “mental ledger” of the outcomes (rewards) they get from their job duties. Employees also create a mental ledger of the inputs (contributions and investments) they put into their job duties. Outcomes Pay Seniority Benefits Fringe Benefits Status Symbols Satisfying supervision Workplace perks Intrinsic Rewards Inputs Effort Performance Skills and Abilities Education Experience Training Seniority
You compare the ratio of outcomes and inputs to the ratio of some comparison other. Comparison Other: Another person who provides a frame of reference for judging equity. Equity Distress: An internal tension that results from being over rewarded or under rewarded relative to some comparison other. Under reward Inequity: The ratio of outcomes to inputs is lower than some comparison other’s ratio Over reward Inequity: The ratio of outcomes to inputs is greater than some comparison other’s ratio Cognitive Distortion: A re-evaluation of inputs an employee brings to a job, often occurring in response to equity distress. Allows you to restore balance mentally, without altering your behavior in any way. Internal Comparison: Comparison made using someone in the same company. External Comparison: Comparison made using someone in a different company. Equity with Different Comparison Others: Job (Same job, same company), Company (Same company, different job), Occupational (different company same job), Educational (Same education level) and Age Equity (same age). Psychological Empowerment: An energy rooted in the belief that work tasks are contributing to some larger purpose.
Serves as its own reward and supplies many of the intrinsic outcomes. 4 Concepts: Meaningfulness: A psychological state reflecting one’s feelings about work tasks, goals and purposes and the degree to which they contribute to society and fulfill ones ideals and passions. Self-determination: A sense of choice in the initiation and continuation of work tasks. Competence: The capability to perform work tasks successfully. Impact: The sense that a person’s actions “make a difference” – that progress is being made towards fulfilling some important purposes. Opposite of impact is “learned helplessness” – the Sense that it doesn’t matter what a person does, nothing will make a difference. Psychologically Empowered employees believe their work has a meaningful purpose, they have chosen to pursue that purpose in the way they see fit, that they are capable of succeeding in their work tasks and that they are making progress toward achieving their work goals. Motivation strong positive effect on Job Performance Motivation has moderate positive effect on Organizational Commitment Strongest performance effects are in the motivating force Self-efficacy and competence and goals. The next most powerful is the high levels of valence, instrumentality and expectancy on task performance. Perceptions and equity have somewhat a weaker effect on task performance. Equity has the strongest effects on commitment.
Chapter 7 – Trust, Justice, & Ethics
Trust: The willingness to be vulnerable to another based on positive expectations about another’s actions and intentions. Put ourselves out there, when we trust Trust reflects the willingness for an individual to take a risk with an authority Trust comes from people and organizations o Organizational trust is based on reputation of company
Factors of Trust:
Disposition-based Trust: Trust that is rooted in one’s own personality, as opposed to a careful assessment of the trustee’s trustworthiness. o Trust Propensity: A general expectation that the words, promises, and statements of individuals can be relied upon. “faith in human nature” Less to do with authority and more to do with the trustor. High in trust propensity may allow someone to trust one that is not worthy of it. Low in trust propensity may allow someone to distrust one that deserves it. Product of both nature (genetics) and nurture (how we are raised). Cognition-based Trust: Trust that is rooted in a rational assessment of the authority’s trustworthiness. o Trustworthiness: Characteristics or attributes of a person that inspire trust, including competence, character, and benevolence. Competence: The skills, abilities, and areas of expertise that enable an authority to be successful in some specific area. Doctor trust to perform surgery, mechanic trust to fix car, etc. Character: The perception that an authority adheres to a set of values and principles that the trustor finds acceptable. Have integrity – honest motives and intentions. Words and deeds – keep their promises
Benevolence: The belief that an authority wants to do good for an employee, apart from any selfish or profit-centered motives. Care for employees, concerned about their well-being, and feel a sense of loyalty to them. The best mentors would never do anything to hurt their protégés
Affect-based Trust: Trust that depends on feelings toward the authority that go beyond any rational assessment of trustworthiness. o Emotional than rational. o We really like the person, thus we trust them o Acts as a supplement to the others. o Feeling toward trustee New relationships = Disposition-Based Trust Most Relationships = Cognition-Based Trust Few Relationships = Affect-Based Trust
How do we gauge those trustworthiness forms?
Justice: The perceived fairness of an authority’s decision making High level of justice decision outcomes to be fair and decisions making conducted in fair manner. Can be used to explain why some employees judge some authorities more trustworthy than others. Four dimensions that employees can judge fairness of an authority: o Distributive Justice: The perceived fairness of decision-making outcomes. If the allocation of pay, promotions, evaluations, work assignments are using proper norms. In most businesses the proper norm is equity, more outcomes allocated to those who contribute more inputs. In a team, it is fair that the team received equality rather than the individuals on the team. Equity vs. Equality vs. Need Are rewards allocated according to the proper norm? Procedural Justice: The perceived fairness of decision-making processes. Process that led to the outcome. When authorities adhere to rules of fair process. Voice is one of the rules, which enables the employee with an opportunity to express their opinions and views during the course of decision making. Provides a sense of ownership for employees for decisions that occur at work.
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Correctability is a related rule to voice. Provides employees to request an appeal when a procedure seems to have worked ineffectively. Also fostered when authorities adhere to four rules that serve to create equal employment opportunity. Consistency, Bias Suppression, Representativeness, and Accuracy. o Enables neutral and objective as opposed to biased and discriminatory hiring. o Accurate measures of job performance for promotional use. When distributive justice is high, procedural justice has little impact on reactions. When outcomes are good, people do not look at processes. When outcomes are bad, procedural justice becomes enormously important. Outcomes come and go, while processes stay for a longer time. Thus, procedural justice was a stronger predictor of satisfaction with supervision, overall job satisfaction and organizational commitment than distributive justice.
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Interpersonal Justice: The perceived fairness of the interpersonal treatment received by employees from authorities. How authorities treat employees as procedures are implemented. Fostered when authorities adhere to two particular rules: Respect: pertains to whether authorities treat employees in a dignified and sincere manner. Propriety (Politeness): reflect whether authorities refrain from making improper or offensive remarks. Employee injustice: Authorities bad-mouth employees; criticize, berate, embarrass, or humiliate them in public; or refer to them with racist or sexist labels. Violations of interpersonal justice reduce employees’ job satisfaction, life satisfaction, and organizational commitment while increasing feelings of depression, anxiety, and burnout. Informational Justice: The perceived fairness of the communications provided to employees from authorities. Fostered when authorities adhere to 2 particular rules: Justification Rule: mandates that authorities explain decision-making procedures and outcomes in a comprehensive (complete) and reasonable manner. Truthfulness Rule: requires that those communications be honest and candid.
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Graph on effects of informational and interpersonal justice on theft during pay cut.
Why are some authorities more trusted than other?
Trust is based on dispositions, cognitions, and affect. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to gauge trustworthiness accurately, so employees instead look to more observable behaviors that can be used as indirect evidence of trustworthiness. Those behaviors may center on the justice of authorities, with employees considering the distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice experienced at work.
How important is trust?
Job performance: Moderately correlated with task performance. Ability to focus: o The degree to which employees can devote their attention to work. More trusted employees towards their authorities were better able to focus on the work tasks as opposed to “covering their backside,” “playing politics,” and “keeping an eye on the boss.”
Citizenship behavior and Counterproductive behavior: The willingness to accept vulnerability changes the nature of the employee-employer relationship. o Employees who don’t trust their authorities have economic exchange. Economic Exchange: Work relationships that resemble a contractual agreement by which employees fulfill job duties in exchange for financial compensation. Relationships that are based on narrowly defined, quid pro quo obligations that are specified in advance and have an explicit repayment schedule. o As trust increases, social exchange relationships develop. Social Exchange: Work relationships that are characterized by mutual investment, with employees willing to engage in “extra mile” sort of behaviors because they trust that their efforts will eventually be rewarded. Relationships develop that are based on vaguely defined obligations that are open-ended and long term in their repayment schedule. Characterized by mutual investment, such that employees agree to go above and beyond their duties in exchange for fair and proper treatment by authorities.
Organizational Commitment: Trust is strongly related to organizational commitment. Trusting an authority increases the likelihood that an emotional bond will develop. Trusting an authority increases the likelihood that a sense of obligation will develop, because employees feel more confident that the authority deserves that obligation. o When negative events occur, employees who trust the authority are willing to accept the vulnerability that comes with continued employment. Remain confident in their belief that the situation will eventually improve.
Application: Social Responsibility
How to change the negative reputation of a corporation to become more trusting. o One start is to focus the organization’s attention on corporate social responsibility.
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Corporate Social Responsibility: A perspective that acknowledges that the responsibility of a business encompasses the economic, legal, ethical, and citizenship expectations of society. Foundation is profitability, as opposed to profit maximization.
Chapter 8 – Decision Making
Learning: A relatively permanent change in an employee’s knowledge or skill that results from experience. Learning has a significant impact on decision making The more knowledge employees have prior to work, the more they bring to the table.
Decision Making: The process of generating and choosing from a set of alternatives to solve a problem. The more knowledge and skills one possess, the more likely they are to make accurate and sound decisions.
Expertise: The knowledge and skills that distinguish experts from novices. The different between the two is a function of learning. True learning is when changes in behaviors become relatively permanent.
Types of Knowledge
Explicit Knowledge: Knowledge that is easily communicated and available to everyone. Example: someone sitting down at a desk to learn. Information that is relatively easily communicated and a large part of what companies teach during training sessions. Reading the manual.
Tacit Knowledge: Knowledge that employees can only learn through experience. Not easily communicated but could very well be the most important aspect of what we learn in organizations. “Know-how,” “know-what,” and “know who” acquired solely through experience. Intuition, skills, insight, beliefs, mental models, and practical intelligence. Tacit Knowledge Very difficult, if not impossible, to articulate to others Highly personal to nature Based on experience Sometimes holders don’t even recognize that they possess it Typically job- and/or situation-specific
Explicit Knowledge Easily transferred through written or verbal communication Readily available to most Can be learned through books Always conscious and accessible information General Information
Methods of Decision Making
Programmed Decisions: Decisions that are somewhat automatic because the decision maker’s knowledge allows him or her to recognize the situation and the course of action to be taken. See the problems more easily and recognize and implement solutions more quickly. o Does not say that the decisions are necessarily easy. Comes across as intuition or a “gut feeling.” o Intuition: An emotional judgment based on quick, unconscious, gut feelings. Difficulty arises when to trust such gut feeling and when not to. Rule of thumb, ask yourself how much experience you have in that on which you are making a judgment. Example: Don’t lay down your life savings on a spin of the roulette wheel because your intuition tells you “red!” Effective intuition results, when people have a certain amount of tacit knowledge.
Non-Programmed Decisions: Decisions made by employees when a problem is new, complex, or not recognized. Rational Decision-Making Model: A step-by-step approach to making decisions that is designed to maximize outcomes by examining all available alternatives. Assumes that people are perfectly rationale.
1) Identify the criteria that are important in making the decision, all involved parties. 2) List all alternatives that might be potential solutions to the problem. a. Evaluating alternatives at this point is not necessary b. Come up with as many solutions as possible 3) Evaluate alternatives against criteria laid out in step 1. 4) Select alternative with best outcome. 5) Implement the alternative.
Decision-Making Problems
Factors affecting the rational decision-making model: Limited Information Bounded Rationality: The notion (belief) that people do not have the ability or resources to process all available information and alternatives when making a decision. To be rational decision makers, we should . . . Identify the problem by thoroughly examining the situation and considering all interested parties Develop an exhaustive list of alternatives to consider as solutions Evaluate all the alternatives simultaneously Use accurate information to evaluate alternatives Pick the alternative that maximizes value Bounded rationality says we are likely to . . . Boil the problem down to something that is easily understood Come up with a few solutions that tend to be straightforward, familiar, and similar to what is currently being done Evaluate each alternative as soon as we think of it Use distorted and inaccurate information during the evaluation process Pick the first acceptable alternative (satisfice)
Satisficing: When a decision maker chooses the first acceptable alternative considered.
Faulty Perceptions Selective Perception: The tendency for people to see their environment only as it affects them and as it is consistent with their expectations. Perceptual shortcuts we take when dealing with people and situations: Projection Bias: The faulty perception by decision makers that others think, feel, and act the same way as they do. Social Identity Theory: A theory that people identify themselves based on the various groups to which they belong and judge others based on the groups they associate with. Stereotype: Assumptions made about others based on their social group membership. o Inaccurate generalizations become faulty in a decision-making process. Heuristics: Simple and efficient rules of thumb that allow one to make decisions more easily. Availability Bias: The tendency for people to base their judgments on information that is easier to recall.
Faulty Attributions Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency for people to judge others’ behaviors as being due to internal factors such as ability, motivation, or attitudes. Self-Serving Bias: When one attributes one’s own failures to external factors and success to internal factors. When people have a level of familiarity of the person being judged, they’ll use a more detailed decision framework. Consensus: Used by decision makers to attribute cause; whether other individuals behave the same way under similar circumstances. Did others act the same way under similar situations? In other words, did other arrive late on the same day?
Distinctiveness: Used by decision makers to attribute cause; whether the person being judged acts in a similar fashion under different circumstances. Does this person tend to act differently in other circumstances? In other words, is Joe responsible when it comes to personal appointments, not just work appointments?
Consistency: Used by decision makers to attribute cause; whether this individual has behaved this way before under similar circumstances. Does this person always do this when performing this task? In other words, has Joe arrived late for work before?
Escalation of Commitment Escalation of Commitment: A common decision-making error in which the decision maker continues to follow a falling course of action. Feel that they should stick with their decision, even though it is a failure, to avoid looking incompetent. Avoid admitting they have made a mistake.
Learning is moderately related to job performance, and has a weak correlation with organizational commitment. What steps can organizations take to foster learning? Training: A systematic effort by organizations to facilitate the learning of job-related knowledge and behavior. Knowledge Transfer: The exchange of knowledge between employees. From older, experiences workers, to their younger employees. Mentoring programs are popular today.
Communities of Practice: Groups of employees who learn from one another through collaboration over an extended period of time. Transfer of Training: Occurs when employees retain and demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and behaviors required for their job after training ends. Transfer of training can be fostered if organizations create a climate for transfer. o Climate for Transfer: An organizational environment that supports the use of new skills.
Chapter 9 – Personality, Cultural Values and Ability
Capture what people are like: Personality: The structures and propensities inside a person that explain his or her characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior; personality reflects what people are like and creates their social reputation. Personality is also a collection of multiple specific traits. Traits: Recurring trends in people’s responses to their environment. (Adjectives such as responsible, critical, organized, or achievement-oriented are all examples of traits). Cultural Values: Shared beliefs about desirable end states or modes of conduct in a given culture that influence the expression of traits. Capture what people can do: Ability: Relatively stables capabilities of people for performing a particular range of related activities.
The Big Five Taxonomy
Big Five: The five major dimensions of personality including CANOE. Conscientiousness: Dimension of personality reflecting traits like being dependable, organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking and persevering (determined). Has the biggest influence on job performance Accomplishment Striving: A strong desire to accomplish task-related goals as a means of expressing one’s personality. Moderate positive correlation with job performance and organizational commitment
Agreeableness: Dimension of personality reflecting traits like being kind, cooperative, sympathetic, helpful, courteous, and warm. Communion Striving: A strong desire to obtain acceptance in personal relationships as a means of expressing one’s personality.
Neuroticism: Dimension of personality reflecting traits like being nervous, moody, emotional, insecure, jealous, and unstable. Negative Affectivity: A dispositional tendency to experience unpleasant moods, such as hostility, nervousness, and annoyance. Differential Exposure to Stressors: Being more likely to appraise day-to-day situations as stressful, thereby feeling that stressors are encountered more frequently.
Differential Reactivity to Stressors: Being less likely to believe that one can cope with the stressors experienced on a daily basis.
Openness to Experience: Dimensions of personality reflecting traits like being curious, imaginative, creative, complex, refined, and sophisticated. Beneficial in some jobs but not others. Jobs that need innovative thing benefit from employees that carry an openness to experience dimension of traits with them.
Extraversion: Dimension of personality reflecting traits like being talkative, sociable, passionate, assertive, bold, and dominant. Easiest to judge In zero acquaintance situations o Zero Acquaintance Situations: Situations in which two people have just met. Status Striving: A strong desire to obtain power and influence within a social structure as a means of expressing one’s personality. Tend to be high in positive affectivity. o Positive Affectivity: A dispositional tendency to experience pleasant, engaging moods such as enthusiasm, excitement, and elation.
Cultural Values
Ethnocentrism: One who views his or her cultural values as “right” and values of other cultures as “wrong.” Geert Hofstede’s Dimensions of Cultural Values Individualism-Collectivism: The degree to which a culture has a loosely knit social framework (individualism) or a tight social framework (collectivism) Power Distance: The degree to which a culture prefers equal power distribution (low power distance) or an unequal power distribution (high power distance) Uncertainty Avoidance: The degree to which a culture tolerates ambiguous situations (low uncertainty avoidance) or feels threatened by them (high uncertainty avoidance) Masculinity-Femininity: The degree to which a culture values stereotypically male traits (masculinity) or stereotypically female traits (femininity) Short-term vs. Long-term Orientation: The degree to which a culture stresses values that are past-and present-oriented (short-term orientation) or future-oriented (long-term orientation)
Ability
Can be grouped into 3 general categories: Cognitive Ability: Capabilities related to the use of knowledge to make decisions and solve problems. Positive strong correlations with job performance due to smart employees fulfill the requirements of their job descriptions more effectively than do less smart employees. Weak correlation with organizational commitment. Verbal Ability o Oral and written comprehension – ability to understand spoken and written words o Oral and written expression – ability to communicate ideas by speaking and writing. Police, Fire and Ambulance Dispatchers Quantitative Ability o Number Facility – Capability to do simple math operations such as adding/subtracting. o Mathematical Reasoning – Ability to choose and apply formulas to solve problems that involve numbers. Treasurers, Financial Managers and Statisticians Reasoning Ability o Problem Sensitivity – Ability to sense that there is or will be a problem o Deductive Reasoning - Ability to solve problems applying general rules o Inductive Reasoning – Ability to consider several pieces of information and then reach a more general conclusion regarding how those pieces are related. o Originality – Ability to develop clever and novel ways to solve problems.
Anesthesiologists, surgeons, business executives and fire inspectors Spatial (3D) Ability o Spatial Orientation – A good understanding of where one is relative to other things in the environment o Visualization – Ability to imagine how separate things will look if they were put together in a particular way Pilots, Drivers, Boat Captains Perceptual Ability o Speed and Flexibility of Closure – Ability to pick out a pattern of information quickly in the presence of distractions, even without all the information present o Perceptual Speed – Ability to examine and compare numbers, letters, and objects quickly. Musicians, Fire Fighters, Police officers and Pilots General Mental Ability (g or g factor): The general level of cognitive ability that plays an important role in determining the more narrow cognitive abilities.
Emotional Ability: Emotional Intelligence: A set of abilities related to the understanding and use of emotions that affect social functioning Self-Awareness: The ability to recognize and understand the emotions in oneself. o Willingness to acknowledge them and capability to express them naturally. Example: Low – New job, employee will not show himself as anxious to others. Other Awareness: The ability to recognize and understand the emotions that other people are feeling. Example: High – People who are sensitive to the feelings of others but also can anticipate the emotions that people will experience in different situations. Low – Professor does not sense that students did not understand the material covered in class. Emotional Regulation: The ability to recover quickly from emotional experiences Example: High – If driver cuts you off and throws a beer can that hits your car, a person with high emotional regulation will be able to recover quickly and go back to driving the way he or she was. By the time they get to work the situation encountered may be all forgotten. Low – Same situation, but the driver might lose his temper and tailgate the aggressive driver and then ram into her vehicle at the next spot light.. Use of Emotions: The degree to which people can harness emotions and employ them to improve their chances of being successful in whatever they are seeking to do. Example: High – Writer of a book is under a serious time crunch and pressure to get the book done. Writer would likely psych herself up for the challenge and encourage herself to work hard through any bouts of writer’s block.
Low – Writer would doubt her competence as a writer and think about different things she could do with her life.
Physical: Strength Static Strength – Ability to lift, push, or pull very heavy objects such as boxes or heavy equipment. Explosive Strength – Ability to move or move things in short bursts of energy. Dynamic Strength – Ability exert force for prolonged period of time without becoming overly fatigued and giving out.
Stamina Ability to work effectively while engaging in physical activity
Flexibility and Coordination Extent Flexibility – Ability to execute extreme ranges of bends, twists, stretches, or reaches to complete a job. o Speaker Installer in Car Audio Dynamic Flexibility – Ability to quickly and repeatedly execute bends, twists, stretches, or reaches to complete a job. o House painter Gross Body Coordination – Ability to synchronize the movements of the body, arms, and legs to do something while the whole body is in motion. o Jumping Rope Gross Body Equilibrium – Ability to maintain the balance of the body in unstable contexts or when changing directions. o Walking on balance beam
Psychomotor Abilities Fine Manipulative Abilities – Ability to keep the arms and hands steady while using the hands to do precise work. o Doctors Control Movement Abilities – Ability to make precise adjustments using machinery to complete work effectively. o Drills things for a living, wood workers, carpenters Response Orientation – Ability to choose the right action quickly in response to several different signals. o Pilots Response Time – Ability to respond to signaling information after it occurs.
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Sensory Abilities Near and Far Vision – Ability to see things up close and at a distance. o Watch repairer, pilot fighter and astronauts. Night Vision – Ability to see things in low light. Visual Color Discrimination – Ability to perceive colors accurately. Depth Perception – Ability to judge relative distances between things accurately. Hearing Sensitivity – Ability to discriminate sounds that vary in terms of loudness and pitch. Auditory Attention – Ability to focus on a single sound in the presence of many other sounds. Speech Recognition – Ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
Typical Performance: Performance in the routine conditions that surround daily job tasks. Conscientiousness is a key driver of typical performance
Maximum Performance: Performance in brief, special circumstances that demand a person’s best effort. Employees’ ability is a key driver of maximum performance.
Situational Strength: Degree to which situations have clear behavioral expectations, incentives, or instructions that make differences between individuals less important. Strong situations have clear behavioral exceptions, incentives or instructions that make differences between individuals less important. Weak Situations lack those cues
Personality variables tend to be more significant drivers of behavior in weak situations than in strong situations. Trait Activation: The degree to which situations provide cues that trigger the expression of a given personality trait. A cry for help, can activate a trait for empathy.
Wonderlic Personal Test: A 12-minute test of general cognitive ability used to hire job applicants.
Chapter 10 – Team Characteristics
Team: Two or more people who work interdependently over some time period to accomplish common goals related to some task-oriented purpose. Group: Collection of 2 or more people Team vs. Group Interactions within teams revolve around a deeper dependence on one another than the interactions within groups. Members of a team depend on one another for critical information, materials, and actions that are needed to accomplish their purpose.
Surgeon, Anesthesiologist, and a Nurse work together to accomplish a successful surgery on a patient.
Team Types
Work Teams: A relatively permanent team in which members work together to produce goods and/or provide services. Vary in the degree in which members have autonomy in defining theirs roles and decision making. o Example: MBA Program at University of Alberta
Management Teams: A relatively permanent team that participates in managerial-level tasks that affect the entire organization. Participate in managerial-level tasks that affect the entire organization o Example: Typically departments or functional areas–to help the organization achieve its long-term goals.
Parallel Teams: A team composed of members from various jobs within the organization that meets to provide recommendations about important issues. Part-time commitment from members required May be permanent or temporary, depending on their aim o Examples: Committees often form to deal with unique issues or issues that arise only periodically.
Project Teams: A team formed to take on one-time tasks, most of which tend to be complex and require input from members from different functional areas. Exist as long as it takes to finish a project o Some projects are complex and may take years to complete
Work full-time o Example: Pixar has characteristics of project teams.
Action Teams: A team of limited duration that performs complex tasks in contexts that tends to be highly visible and challenging. Example: Sport teams remain for at least one season, Musical groups like the Rolling Stones may stick together for decades.
Variations within Team Types
Virtual Team: A team in which the members are geographically dispersed and interdependent activity occurs through e-mail, Web conferencing, and instant messaging. Predictable Sequence Forming: The first stage of team development, during which members try to get a feel for what is expected of them, what types of behaviors are out of bounds, and who’s in charge. Storming: The second stage of team development, during which conflict occurs due to members’ ongoing commitment to ideas they bring with them to the team. Norming: The third stage of team development, during which members realize that they need to work together to accomplish team goals and consequently begin to cooperate. Performing: The final stage of team development, during which members are comfortable working with their roles, and the teams makes progress toward goals. Aircraft flight crew does not have to go through the forming, storming, norming, and performing stages to figure out that the pilot flies the plane and the flight attendant serves the beverages. o The predictable sequence of team development does not apply to all types of teams. One situation in which this developmental sequence is less applicable is when teams are formed with clear expectations regarding what is expected from the team and its members. Second situation in which it is less applicable may be in certain types of project teams that follow a pattern of development called punctuated equilibrium. Punctuated Equilibrium: A sequence of team development during which not much gets done until the halfway point of a project, after which teams make necessary changes to complete the project on time. o Forming and Pattern Creation: Members make assumptions and establish a pattern of behavior that lasts the first half of its life.
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Inertia (Inactivity): That pattern of behavior continues to dominate the team’s behavior as it settles into a sort of inertia. At mid-point of the project something remarkable happens. Process Revision: Members realize that they have to change their task paradigm fundamentally to complete it on time. People that change, do well, people that do not change, sink in the ocean.
Team Interdependence
Task Interdependence: The degree to which team members interact with and rely on other team members for information, materials, and resources needed to accomplish work for the team. Lowest to Highest Required Coordination Pooled Interdependence: A form of task interdependence in which group members complete their work assignments independently, and then their work is simply added together to represent the group’s output. Example: Tug of War
Sequential Interdependence: A form of task interdependence in which group members perform different tasks in a prescribed sequence, and members only depend on the member who comes before them in the sequence. Example: Assembly Line
Reciprocal Interdependence: A form of task interdependence in which group members interact with only a limited subset of other members to complete the team’s work. Example: Hospital
Comprehensive Interdependence: A form of task interdependence in which team members have a great deal of discretion in terms of what they do and with whom they interact in the course of the collaboration involved in accomplishing the team’s work Highest level of interaction and coordination among members as they try to accomplish work. o Example: Appolo-13
Goal Interdependence: The degree to which team members have a shared goal and align their individual goals with that vision. Example: Row-boat Mission Statements increase goal interdependence
Outcome Interdependence: The degree to which team members share equality in the feedback and rewards that result from the team achieving its goals. High degree of outcome interdependence exists when team members share in the rewards that the team earns. o Example: pay, bonuses, formal feedback and recognition, pats on the back, extra time off, and continued team survival. Low degree of outcome interdependence occurs when members receive rewards and punishments on the basis of their own performance, without regard to the performance of the team.
Team Composition
Team Composition: The mix of the various characteristics that describe the individuals who work in the team. Member Roles Role: The behavior a person is generally expected to display in a given context. o Leader-staff Teams: A type of team that consists of members who make recommendations to the leader who is ultimately responsible for team decisions. o Team Task Roles: Behaviors that directly facilitate the accomplishment of team tasks. Orienter: Who establishes the direction for the team Devil’s Advocate: Who offers constructive challenges to the team’s status quo (current situation) Energizer: Who motivates team members to work harder toward team goals o Team Building Roles: Behaviors that influence the equality of the team’s social climate Harmonizer: Who steps in to resolve differences among teammates Encourager: Who praises the work of teammates Compromiser: Who helps the team see alternative solutions that teammates can accept. o Individualistic Roles: Behaviors that benefit the individual at the expense of the team. Aggressor: “Puts down” or deflates fellow teammates Recognition Seeker: Takes credit for team successes. Dominator: Manipulates teammates to acquire control and power. Having to deal with members who take on individualistic roles is dissatisfying.
Member Ability Disjunctive Tasks: Tasks with an objectively verifiable best solution for which the member with the highest level of ability has the most influence on team effectiveness. Conjunctive Tasks: Tasks for which the team’s performance depends on the abilities of the team’s weakest link.
Additive Tasks: Tasks for which the contributions from every member add up to determine team performance. Member Personality o Conscientiousness is important to teams. o A strong negative effect on the team of having even one member who is particularly low on conscientiousness. o Agreeableness also important consideration. o Agreeableness may be more important than conscientiousness in teams Reason is due to agreeable people tend to be more cooperative and trusting There is a caveat, agreeable people may not speak up for team to improve High agreeableness will enhance harmony at the expense of task accomplishment. o Extraverted people tend to perform more effectively in interpersonal contexts. o Beneficial to the social climate of the group. Too many members that are extraverted can harm the team. Reason for this can be attributed to extraverts’ tendency to be assertive and dominant. Power struggles and unproductive conflict occur with greater frequency. Member Diversity Team Diversity: The degree to which team members are different from one another. Value in Diversity Problem-Solving Approach: A theory that supports team diversity because it provides a larger pool of knowledge and perspectives. o Teams that engage in work that is relatively complex and requires creativity benefit most from diversity. o Ethnicity, expertise, personality, attitudes–supports this idea.
Similarity-Attraction Approach: A theory explaining that team diversity can be counter-productive because people tend to avoid interacting with others who are unlike them. o Diversity on attributes such as cultural background, race, and attitudes are associated with communication problems and ultimately poor team effectiveness.
Surface-Level Diversity: Diversity of observable attributes such as race, gender, ethnicity, and age. o Has negative impact on teams early in their existence because of similarity-attraction issues, those effects dissolve as members become more knowledgeable about one another.
Deep-Level Diversity: Diversity of attributes that are inferred through observation or experience, such as one’s values or personality. o o Differences in attitudes, values, and personality are good examples of deep-level diversity. As time passes, the bad effects increase.
Team Size: o o o Having a greater number of members is beneficial for management and project teams, but not for teams engaged in productions tasks. Management and project teams engage in work that is complex and knowledge intensive, thus benefit from additional resources and expertise. Production teams tend to engage in routines tasks that are less complex. Additional members beyond what is necessary to accomplish the work tends to result in unnecessary coordination and communication problems. Additional members may create more socializing and they feel less accountable for team outcomes.
Team Process: The different types of activities and interactions that occur within a team as the team works toward its goals. o Strong impact on team effectiveness.
Process Gain: When team outcomes are greater than expected based on the capabilities of the individual members. o o Synonymous to synergy and is most critical in situations in which the complexity of the work is high or tasks require combinations of members’ knowledge, skills, and efforts to solve problems. Getting more from the team, than you would expect from getting form individual members
Process Loss: When team outcomes are less than expected based on the capabilities of the individual members. o o o Getting less from the team than you would expect based on the capabilities of its individual members. Coordination Loss: Process loss due to the time and energy it takes to coordinate work activities with other team members. Motivational Loss: Process loss due to team members’ tendency to put forth less effort on team tasks than they could. o Hard to gauge how much each team member contributes to the team, thus motivational loss occurs. Feel less accountable for team outcomes, due to uncertainty regarding who contributes what. o Social Loafing: A type of motivational loss resulting from members feeling less accountable for team outcomes relative to independent work that results in individually identifiable outcomes.
Taskwork Processes
Taskwork Processes: The activities of team members that relate directly to the accomplishment of team tasks. o Creative Behavior: o The best known activity that teams use to foster creative behavior is brainstorming. Brainstorming: A team process used to generate creative ideas. Express all ideas that come to mind Go for quantity of ideas rather than quality Don’t criticize or evaluate the ideas of others Build on the ideas of others. o 3 Reasons why brainstorming does not work well. Tendency for members to social loaf in group brainstorming contexts.
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Members might be hesitant to release ideas that are silly or not well-thoughtout. Members are typically requires that they wait their turn to express their ideas. o Why do organizations continue to use it? Well-known idea. Common sense leads to people thinking it works as advertised. Brainstorming builds moral and results in the sharing of knowledge that might be otherwise be locked inside the minds of the individual team members. Decision Making: o 3 Factors account for a team’s ability to make effective decisions. Decision Informity: The degree to which team members possess adequate information about their own task responsibilities. Staff Validity: The degree to which team members make good recommendations to the team leader. Hierarchical Sensitivity: The degree to which the team leader effectively weighs the recommendations of the members. Boundary Spanning: Interactions among team members and individuals and groups who are not part of the team. o Ambassador Activities: Boundary-spanning activities that are intended to protect the team persuade others to support the tea, or obtain important resources for the team. Marketing team member meets with people who are higher up in the organization. o Task Coordinator Activities: Boundary-spanning activities that are intended to coordinate task-related issues with people or groups in other functional areas. Marketing team member meets with manufacturing department for find out how a coupon might fit into the packaging materials. o Scout Activities: Boundary-spanning activities that are intended to obtain information about technology, competitors, or the broader marketplace. Marketing team member who meets with an engineer to seek information about new materials is engaging in scout activities.
Teamwork Processes
Teamwork Processes: The interpersonal activities that promote the accomplishment of team tasks but do not involve task accomplishment itself. o Create the setting or context in which taskwork can be carried out.
Transition Processes: Teamwork processes, such as mission analysis and planning that focus on preparation for future work in the team. o o Teamwork processes become important right when teams first begin their work. Important between periods of taskwork as well.
Action Processes: Teamwork processes, such as helping and coordination, that aid in the accomplishment of teamwork as the work is actually taking place. o Important as the task is being accomplished. o Example: Monitoring progress toward goals.
Interpersonal Processes: Teamwork processes, such as motivating and confidence building that focus on the management of relationships among team members. o o Important before, during or in between periods of taskwork. Relationship Conflict: Disagreements among team members with regard to interpersonal relationships or incompatibilities in personal values or preferences. o Reduces team’s performance. Task Conflict: Disagreements among members about the team’s task. o May be beneficial to a team if it stimulates conversations that result in the development and expression of new ideas. o Tends to reduce team effectiveness unless 2 conditions are met. For task conflict to be productive, team members must feel free to express their opinions and know how to manage conflict effectively.
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Team States
Team States: Specific types of feelings and thoughts that coalesce (merge) in the minds of team members as a consequence of their experience working together. Cohesion: A team state that occurs when members of the team develop strong emotional bonds to other members of the team and to the team itself. o o High levels of motivation and commitment to the team is fostered by cohesion. o High level of team performance Not the greatest team, as cohesive teams maintains harmony by striving toward consensus on issues without ever offering, seeking, or seriously considering alternative viewpoints and perspectives. Groupthink: Behaviors that support conformity and team harmony at the expense of other tea priorities. o Overconfidence about a team’s capabilities. o Devil’s advocate could help with avoiding high cohesion and groupthink from developing in the team.
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Potency: A team state reflecting the degree of confidence among team members that the team can be effective across situations and tasks. o Strong positive impact on team performance.
Mental Models: The degree to which team members have a shared understanding of important aspects of the team and its task. o o Share in their understanding of ones capabilities. Know where to go for help when needed. Anticipate when another member needs help to do his or her work.
Transactive Memory: The degree to which team members’ specialized knowledge is integrated into an effective system of memory for the team. o o o Specialized knowledge is relevant to the team and how their knowledge should be combined with the knowledge of other members to accomplish team goals. If one is slow to respond, the team fails. If one leaves, you lose and important node.
Why are some teams more than the sum of their parts? o o Teams become more than the sum of their parts if their team process achieves process gain rather than process loss. Teams can accomplish that goal by engaging in activities that are involved in taskwork, teamwork processes and team states.
How important are team characteristics and processes?
Team Viability: Team commitment; the likelihood a team can work together effectively into the future. o Task interdependence and team performance is moderately positive. o Significantly stronger in teams that are responsible for completing complex knowledge work rather than simple tasks. Task interdependence and team commitment is weaker. Teamwork Processes and team performance is moderately positive. Teamwork Processes and team commitment is strong positive.
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Application: Team Compensation
Hybrid Outcome Interdependence: When team members receive rewards based on both their individual performance and that of the team to which they belong.
Chapter 11 – Power and Influence
Power: The ability to influence the behavior of others and resist unwanted influence in return. o 2 types of power exist; organizational and personal power. Organizational Power o Legitimate Power: A form of organizational power based on authority or position. Sometimes referred to as “formal authority” Manager tells an employee what to do. Legitimate power has its limited If an inappropriate request is made, it is not considered legitimate power. If manager asks to wash his car, it is outside the scope of the employee’s job. When used ineffectively legitimate power can be a very weak form. o Reward Power: A form of organizational power based on the control of resources or benefits. Intertwined with legitimate power. Managers have control over raises, performance evaluations, awards, more desirable job assignments, and the resources an employee might require performing a task effectively. Those with reward power have the ability to influence others if those being o influenced believe they will get the rewards by behaving in a certain way. Coercive Power: A form of organizational power based on the ability to hand out punishment.
Operates on the principle of fear. Exists when one believes that another has the ability to punish him or her and is willing to use that power. Manager might have the right to fire, demote, suspend, or lower the pay of an employee.
Personal Power o Expert Power: A form of organizational power based on expertise or knowledge. More likely to influence others who need that expertise. o Referent Power: A form of organizational power based on the attractiveness and charisma of the leader. Others want to emulate them. Possible for a person to possess all of the forms of power at the same time.
Contingency Factors o The more dependent an individual is on you, the more influential you become to them. o A person can have high levels of expert and referent power, but if they work alone, the ability to influence others is greatly reduced. o Strength of an individual’s ability to use power has four factors. Substitutability: The degree to which people have alternatives in accessing the resources that a leader controls. There are no substitutes for the rewards or resources the individual controls. Discretion: The degree to which managers have the right to make decisions on their own. If your boss is forced to follow organizational policies and rules, her ability to influence your actions is reduced.
Centrality: How important a person’s job is and how many people depend on that person to accomplish their tasks. An individual who performs critical tasks and interacts with others regularly has a greater ability to use his or her power to influence others. Visibility: How aware others are of a leader and the resources that leader can provide. Influence: The use of behaviors to cause behavioral or attitudinal changes in others. o Directional: Managers influencing employees o Lateral: Peers influencing peers or employees influencing managers Influence Tactics o Most Effective Rational Persuasion: The use of logical arguments and hard facts to show someone that a request is worthwhile. Most effective when proposal is important and feasible. Constantly successful in upward influence. Inspirational Appeal: An influence tactic designed to appear to one’s values and ideals, thereby creating an emotional or attitudinal reaction. Know what’s important to the target. Consultation: An influence tactic whereby the target is allowed to participate in deciding how to carry out or implement a request. Increases commitment from the target, which now has a stake in seeing that his or her opinions were right. Collaboration: An influence tactic whereby the leader makes it easier for the target to complete a request by offering to work with and help the target. Leader may help complete the task, providing required resources, or removing obstacles that make task completion difficult. o Moderately Effective (Sometimes effective, sometimes not) Ingratiation: The use of favors, compliments, or friendly behavior to make the target feel better about the influencer. “Sucking Up,” especially when used in an upward influence sense. More effective when used as a long-term strategy. Not as effective when used immediately. Personal Appeals: An influence tactic in which the requester asks for something based on personal friendship or loyalty. The stronger the friendship, the more successful the attempt is likely to be. Exchange Tactic: An influence tactic in which the requestor offers a reward in return for performing a request. Requires that the requestor have something of value to offer.
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Appraising: An influence tactic in which the requestor clearly explains why performing the request will benefit the target personally. Differs from rational persuasion in that it focuses solely on the benefit to the target as opposed to simple logic or benefits to the group or organization. It differs from exchange in that the benefit is not necessarily something that the requestor provides to the target, but rather something that results from the action. Least Effective (Could result in resistance from that target) Does not mean they are not used or not effective at times.
Pressure: An influence tactic in which the requestor attempts to use coercive power through threats and demands. Coalitions: An influence tactic in which the influencer enlists other people to help influence the target. Could be peers, subordinates, or one of the target’s superiors. Typically used with other tactics. o If rational persuasion does not work, the influencer might bring another person to show that, that person agrees with the logic of the argument. Influence tactics tend to be most successful when used in combination. Most effective tactics tend to be the ones that are more “softer” in nature. Influencers will rely on softer tactics, make appropriate requests, and ensure the tactics they use match the types of power they have. Responses to Influence Tactics o Engagement: In the context of influence tactics, occurs when one agrees and becomes committed to an influencer’s request. Best outcome for a leader Reflects a shift in employee behaviors and attitudes. o Compliance: When targets of influence are willing to do what the leader asks but do it with a degree of ambivalence. Reflects a shift in employee behaviors, but not attitudes. Most common response to influence attempts in organizations. Does not bring out highest levels of employee effort and dedication. o Resistance: When a target refuses to perform a request and puts forth an effort to avoid having to do it. Form from making excuses, trying to influence the requestor in return, or simply refusing to carry out such request. Resistance is likely when influencer’s power is low relative to the target or when the request itself is inappropriate or unreasonable.
Organizational Politics: Individual actions directed toward the goal of furthering a person’s own self-interests. o Political Skill: The ability to understand others and use of that knowledge to influence them to further personal or organizational objectives. Two Aspects: Networking Ability and Social Astuteness (Intelligence) Two Capabilities: Interpersonal influence o Involves having an unassuming and convincing personal style that is flexible enough to adapt to different situations. Apparent sincerity o Involves appearing to others us having high levels of honesty and genuineness. Together these four skills provide a distinct advantage when navigating the political environments in organizations.
Conflict Resolution o Competing: A conflict resolution style by which one party attempts to get his or her own goals met without concern for the other party’s results. Win-lose approach. May use legitamate or coercive power to settle the conflict. Involves the hard forms of influence, pressure and coaltion. Won’t win an individual many friends. o Avoiding: A conflict resolution style by which one party wants to remain neutral, stay away from conflict, or postpone the conflict to gather information or let things cool down. Lose-lose approach. Results in an unfavorable outcome for everyone. Never resolves the conflict. o Accommodating: A conflict resolution style by which one party provides in to the other and acts in a completely unselfish way. Lose-win approach. Individuals will use accommodating strategy when the issue is not important to them, but is important to the other party. Also important when individual has less power than the other party. o Collaboration: A conflict resolution style whereby both parties work together to maximize outcomes. Win-win approach. Most effective, yet most difficult to come around to. Equal power between parties must exist. A lot of time investment to arrive at a resolution. Best outcome and reactions of both parties. o Compromise: A conflict resolution style by which conflict is resolved through provideand-take concessions. Each part’s losses are offset by gains and vice versa. Favorable evolutions for the leader.
Power and Influence have a moderate effect on job performance. o Increase engagement and compliance, facilitates task performance. o The engagement and compliance facilitated by power and influence can also increase citizenship behavior and decrease counterproductive behavior. Power and Influence have a moderate effect on organizational commitment. o Use of personal forms of power, such as expert and referent, is associated with increased affective commitment. o More organizational forms of power, or hard influence tactics, decrease that form of commitment. Negotiation: A process in which two or more interdependent individuals discuss and attempt to reach agreement about their differences. o Takes place inside the organization or when dealing with organizational outsiders. o Involve settling a contract dispute between labor and management, determining a purchasing price for products, haggling over a performance review rating, or determining the starting salary for a new employee. o Two strategies that individuals must choose between when it comes to negotiations. Distributive Bargaining: A negotiation strategy in which one person gains and the other person loses. Win-lose negotiating over a “fixed-pie” of resources. “Zero-sum game” o Example: purchasing of a car Similar to competing approach in conflict resolution. Integrative Bargaining: A negotiation strategy that achieves an outcome that is satisfying for both parties. Win-win scenario. Collaboration part of the conflict resolution process, are likely to thrive in these types of negotiations. Whenever possible, it is preferable strategy in negotiations. o Enables a long-term relationship to form between the parties. Neither side feels like the loser. Integrative bargaining is most appropriate in situations in which multiple outcomes are possible, there is an adequate level of trust, and parties are willing to be flexible.
Chapter 12 – Leadership
Leadership: The use of power and influence to direct the activities of followers toward goal achievement. Leader-member Exchange Theory: A theory describing how leader-member relationships develop over time on a dyadic basis. o New leader-member relationships are marked by a phase called role taking. Role Taking: The phase in a leader-follower relationship when a leader provides an employee with job expectations and the follower tries to meet those expectations. During such period the leader gets a feel for the employee’s talents and motivation levels. Often this phase is supplemented by role making. o Role Making: The phase in a leader-follower relationship when a follower voices his or her own expectations for the relationship, resulting in a free-flowing exchange of opportunities and resources for activities and effort. Leader offers more opportunities and resources, and the employee contributes more activities and effort. o High-Quality Exchange: Frequent exchange of information, influence, latitude, support, and attention. Form the leader’s “in-group” and characterized by higher levels of mutual trust, respect, and obligation. o Low-Quality Exchange: Limited exchange of information, influence, latitude, support, and attention. Form the leader’s “out-group” and characterized by lower levels of mutual trust, respect, and obligation. Leader Effectiveness: The degree to which the leader’s actions result in the achievement of the unit’s goals, the continued commitment of the unit’s employees, and the development of mutual trust, respect, and obligation in leader-member dyads. o Traits do not predict leader effectiveness (how well people actually do in a leadership role). Leader Emergence: The process of becoming a leader in the first place. o Traits are more predictive of leader emergence.
Leader Decision-Making Styles
Capture how a leader decides rather what a leader decides. In order from High Leader Control to High Follow Control: o Autocratic Style: A leadership style where the leader makes the decision alone without asking for opinions or suggestions of the employees in the work unit. o Consultative Style: A leadership style where the leader presents the problem to employees asking for their opinions and suggestions before ultimately making the decision him-or herself. Ultimate decision is made with the leader, not employee. o Facilitative Style: A leadership style where the leader presents the problem to a group of employees and seeks consensus on a solution, making sure that his or her own opinion receives no more weight than anyone else’s. In this style, the leader is more of a facilitator rather than a decision maker. o Delegative Style: A leadership style where the leader gives the employee the responsibility for making decisions within some set of specified boundary conditions. Leader plays no role in the deliberations unless asked, though he or she may offer encouragement and provide necessary resources behind the scenes. Example: Professor describes her expectations with respect to a final product, but allows the project teams to decide how best to achieve this outcome.
Time-Driven Model of Leadership: A model that suggests that seven factors, including the importance of the decision, the expertise of the leader, and the competence of the followers, combine to make some decision-making styles more effective than others in a provided situation. o The model suggests that the focus should shift away from leaders to situations in the various styles (autocratic, consultative, facilitative, and delegative). o Seven factors combine to make some decision-making styles more effective in a provided situation and other styles less effective: Decision Significance: Is the decision significant to the success of the project or the organization? Importance of Commitment: Is it important that employees “buy in” to the decision? Leader Expertise: Does the leader have significant knowledge of expertise regarding the problem? Likelihood of Commitment: How likely is it that employees will trust the leader’s decision and commit to it? Shared Objectives: Do employees share and support the same objectives, or do they have an agenda of their own? Employee Expertise: Do the employees have significant knowledge or expertise regarding the problem? Teamwork Skills: Do the employees have the ability to work together to solve the problem, or will they struggle with conflicts or inefficiencies?
Day-to-Day Leadership Behaviors
Initiating Structure: A pattern of behavior where the leader defines and structures the roles of employees in pursuit of goal attainment. Consideration: A pattern of behavior where the leader creates job relationships characterized by mutual trust, respect for employee ideas, and consideration of employee feelings.
Life-Cycle Theory of Leadership (Situational Model of Leadership): A theory stating that the optimal combination of initiating structure and consideration depends on the readiness of the employees in the work unit. o Readiness: The degree to which employees have the ability and the willingness to accomplish their specific tasks. Varies from: R1 (unable and unwilling) o Telling: When the leader provides specific instructions and closely supervises performance. R2 (unable but willing) o Selling: When the leader explains key issues and provides opportunities for clarification. R3 (able but unwilling)
Participating: When the leader shares ideas and tries to help the group conduct its affairs. R4 (able and willing) o Delegating: When the leader turns responsibility for key behaviors over to employees. o All is needed is monitoring and some degree of observation from the leader, to make sure that the group’s efforts stay on track. Unwilling due to lack of commitment, or insecure due to a lack of experience.
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Theory is more effective for low readiness situations. o Theory more effective when ability, motivation, or confidence are lacking. o When readiness is greater, these tests suggest that leader behaviors simply matter less, regardless of their particular combinations.
Transformational Leadership Behaviors
Transformational Leadership: A pattern of behavior where the leader inspires followers to commit to a shared vision that provides meaning to their work while also serving as a role model who helps followers develop their own potential and view problems from new perspectives. o Viewed as a motivational approach to leadership Laiseez-Faire (hands-off): When the leader avoids leadership duties altogether. o Leaders avoids getting involved when important issues arise.
Transactional Leadership: A pattern of behavior where the leader rewards or disciplines the follower based on performance. Passive Management-by-Exception: When the leader waits around for mistakes and errors, then takes corrective action as necessary. o “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” o Leader takes no action, until complaints are received. Active Management-by-Exception: When the leader arranges to monitor mistakes and errors actively and takes corrective action when required. o “The leader directs attention toward failures to meet standards” Contingent Reward: When the leader attains follower agreement on what needs to be done using rewards in exchange for adequate performance. o “The leader makes clear what one can expect to receive when performance goals are achieved” The Four I’s of Transformational Leadership: o Idealized Influence: When the leader behaves in ways that earn the admiration, trust, and respect of followers, causing followers to wants to identify with and emulate the leader. Synonymous with charisma Example: Steve Jobs o Inspirational Motivation: When the leader behaves in ways that foster an enthusiasm for and commitment to a shared vision of the future. o Intellectual Stimulation: When the leader behaves in ways that challenge followers to be innovative and creative by questioning assumptions and reframing old situations in new ways. Leader enables followers to look at problems at different angles. o Individualized Consideration: When the leader behaves in ways that help followers achieve their potential through coaching, development, and mentoring. Treating employees as unique individuals with specific needs, abilities, and aspirations that need to be tied into the unit’s mission. “The leader spends time teaching and coaching.”
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Transformational Leadership has moderate relationship with Job Performance o Tend to have higher levels of task performance, are more likely to engage in citizenship behavior. Transformational Leadership has strong effects on organizational commitment. o Employees with transformational leaders tend to have higher levels of affective commitment and higher levels of normative commitment. No effect with continuance commitment exists. The Substitutes of Leadership Model: A model that suggests that characteristics of the situations can constrain the influence of the leader, which makes it more difficult for the leader to influence employee performance.
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Situational characteristics come in 2 varieties: Substitutes: Situational characteristics that reduce the importance of the leader while simultaneously providing a direct benefit to employee performance. A cohesive work group is an example that fosters its own source of motivation and job satisfaction making the leader less relevant. Neutralizers: Situational characteristics that reduce the importance of the leader and do not improve employee performance in any way. Spatial distance lessens the impact of a leader’s behaviors and styles, but distance itself has no direct benefit for employee job performance.
Chapter 14 – Organizational Culture
Organizational Culture: The shared social knowledge within an organization regarding the rules, norms, and values that shapes the attitudes and behaviors of its employees.
Culture Components
Observable Artifacts: Aspects of an organization’s culture that employees and outsiders can easily see or talk about. o Symbols: The images an organization uses, which generally convey messages. o Physical Structures: The organization’s buildings and internal office designs. o Language: The jargon, slang, and slogans used within an organization. o Stories: Anecdotes, accounts, legends, and myths passed down from cohort (unit) to cohort within an organization. o Rituals: The daily or weekly planned routines that occur in an organization. Casual Fridays. o Ceremonies: Formal events generally performed in front of an audience of organizational members. Espoused Values: The beliefs, philosophies, and norms that a company explicitly states. Basic Underlying Assumptions: The ingrained beliefs and philosophies of employees. o Least observable part of a culture and may not be consciously apparent, even to organizational veterans.
General Culture Types
Solidarity: Degree to which group members think or act alike. Sociability: How friendly employees are to one another o Fragmented Culture (low on both): An organizational culture type in which employees are distant and disconnected from one another. o Mercenary Culture (high on solid, low on social): An organizational culture type in which employees think alike but are not friendly to one another. o Networked Cultures (high on social, low on solid): An organizational culture type in which employees are friendly to one another, but everyone thinks differently and does his or her own thing. o Command Culture: An organizational culture type in which employees are friendly to one another and all think alike.
Specific Culture Types
Customer Service Culture: A specific culture type focused on service quality. o The Service Culture Process Service-oriented leadership behavior Service culture Service-oriented employee behaviors - Customer satisfaction Unit Sales Safety Culture: A specific culture type focused on the safety of employees. Diversity Culture: A specific culture type focused on fostering or taking advantage of a diverse group of employees. Creativity Culture: A specific culture type focused on fostering a creative atmosphere.
Culture Strength
Culture Strength: The degree to which employees agree about how things should happen within the organization and behave accordingly.
Subcultures: A culture created within a small subset of the organization’s employees. Countercultures: When a sub-culture’s values do not match those of the organization. o Sometimes countercultures are useful, by challenging the values of the overall organization or signifying the need for change. o Other times, countercultures can split the organization’s culture right down the middle, resulting in the differentiated culture.
Maintaining an Organizational Culture
ASA Framework: A theory (Attraction-Selection-Attribution) that states that employees will be drawn to organizations with cultures that match their personality, organizations will select employees that match, and employees will leave or be forced out when they are not a good fit. Socialization: The primary process by which employees learn the social knowledge that enables them to understand and adapt to the organization’s culture. o 3 Distinct Phases: Anticipatory Stage: A stage of socialization that begins as soon as a potential employee develops an image of what it would be like to work for a company. Encounter Stage: A stage of socialization beginning the day an employee starts work, during which the employee compares the information as an outsider to the information learned as an insider. Reality Shock: A mismatch of information that occurs when an employee finds that aspects of working at a company are not what the employee expected it to be. Understanding and Adaptation: The final stage of socialization, during which newcomers come to learn the content areas of socialization and internalize the norms and expected behaviors of the organization.
Changing an Organizational Culture
Two primary ways to change a culture; change in leadership and mergers or acquisitions. o Changes in Leadership: Leaders are the driving force for change. o Mergers and Acquisitions: Merging two companies with two distinct cultures is a surefire way to change the culture in an organization. Issue is that there is just no way to know what the culture will look like after the merger takes place.
Person-Organization Fit: The degree to which a person’s values and personality match the culture of the organization. o Weak relation with performance. Employees who fit with their organization tend to have slightly higher levels of task performance, with effects on citizenship behavior slightly stronger, not much is known about the impact of counterproductive behavior. o Strong relation on commitment. Employees who fit with their organization tend to have higher levels of Affective Commitment. Not much is known about the impact of fit on Continuance or Normative Commitment.
Realistic Job Previews: The process of ensuring that a potential employee understands both the positive and negative aspects of the potential job. o Reduces early turnover. New comer Orientation: The process of ensuring that a potential employee understands both the positive and negative aspects of the potential job. o Effective way to start the socialization process. Mentoring: The process by which a junior-level employee develops a deep and long-lasting relationship with a more senior-level employee within the organization. o Popular method.
Chapter 2 – Kreitner Social Perception & Attribution Factors Influencing Individual Behavior
Kreitner Perception: The process of interpreting one’s environment. A rational process that enables us to interpret and understand our surroundings.
Social Cognition: How people perceive one another (social information processing). Process underlying perception involves a 4 STAGE SEQUENCE: Stage 1: Selective Attention/Comprehension Attention: Being consciously aware of something or someone. Comes in 2 forms, information from the environment or from memory. Salient (Noticeable) Stimuli: Something that stands out from its context. Example: A driver with his gas gauge on empty, a Petro-Canada sign is more salient (noticeable) than a McDonald’s or Tim Horton’s. People have the tendency to pay more attention to negative than positive information. Stage 2: Encoding and Simplification Information is not stored in its original form. Encoding is required. Schema: Mental picture of an event of object. To make a schema meaningful, rational category labels are needed. Example: Sports car, if you picture a 2 door, small red colors vehicle a sports car. That is your schema, means you will interpret all red, small 2 door cars sports cars. Varying interpretations of what we observe occur due to four key reasons: 1) Different information in the schema 2) Moods and Emotions influence our focus of attention and evaluations of others 3) People tend to apply recently-used rational categories during encoding. a. You would more likely interpret a natural behavior exhibited as positive if you were recently thinking about positive categories and events. 4) Individual differences influence encoding. a. Pessimistic or depress individuals tend to interpret their surroundings more negatively than optimistic and happy people do.
Stage 3: Storage and Retention This stage involves storage of information in long-term memory. Event Memory; Contains information about specific and general events. Going to a restraint, going to job interview, going to a food store or going to a movie. Semantic Memory; General knowledge about the world. Functions as a mental dictionary of concepts. Each concept contains a definition and associated traits. Person Memory; Contain information about a single individual or groups of people. Stage 4: Retrieval and Response People retrieve information from memory when they make judgments and decisions. Based on either: The process of drawing on, interpreting, and integrating categorical information stored in longterm memory. Retrieving a summary judgment that was already made. Example: New boss was accused but not found guilty of workplace bullying.
Managerial Implications Hiring Interviewers make hiring decisions based on their impression of how an applicant fits the perceived requirements of a job. Implicit Cognition: Any thought or belief that is automatically activated without conscious awareness. o Many hiring decisions are made by implicit cognition Enables people to make biased decisions without understanding that such is occurring. To reduce implicit cognition experts recommend 2 solutions: o Train managers to understand and reduce this type of hidden bias o Use structured as opposed to unstructured interviews. Rely on multiple interviewers.
Performance Appraisal Faulty perception about what constitutes good versus poor performance can lead to inaccurate performance appraisals, which erode work motivation, commitment and loyalty. Evaluate employee in the beginning of the review cycle to serve as a benchmark. Objective, quantifiable (attendance records) are better than Subjective, qualitative (bias).
Individuals can be trained to more accurately rate performance.
Leadership Employees’ evaluations of leader effectiveness are influenced strongly by their schemata of good and poor leaders. Good Leaders o Assigning specific tasks to group members o Telling others that they had done well o Setting specific goals for the group o Letting other group members make decisions o Trying to get the group to work as a team o Maintaining definite standards of performance Poor Leaders o Telling others that they had performed poorly o Insisting on having their own way o Doing things without explaining themselves o Expressing worry over the group members’ suggestions o Frequently changing plans o Letting the details of the task become overwhelming
Communication and Interpersonal Influence Avoid these 4 behavioral tendencies that are negatively perceived when trying to influence others: o Being a pushover Giving up on an idea rather than defending it. o Being a robot Communication style and approach that is too rigid. Provide a specific answer that responds to the persons concerns. o Being a used-car sales associate Too pushy, close-minded, and argumentative. o Being a charity case Desperation and pleading
Workplace Aggression, Bullying, and Antisocial Behavior Such behaviors are based on employee’s perceptions of the work environment. o When treated unfairly.
Physical and Psychological Well-Being Negativity bias can lead to both physical and psychological problems. o Linked to asthma and depression.
Attempt to avoid the tendency of giving negative thoughts too much attention.
STEREOTYPES AND OTHER PERCEPTUAL ERRORS: Commonly found perceptual errors Forms an overall impression about the object to bias ratings about the object. Personal characteristic that leads an individual to consistently evaluate other people or objects in an extremely positive fashion. Avoid all extreme judgments and rate objects as average or natural Tendency to remember recent information. If information is negative the person or object is evaluated poorly. Tendency to evaluate people or objects by comparing them with characteristics of recently observed people or objects.
Halo
Leniency
Teacher is punctual in getting to class, thus rating the teacher high on many dimensions. Rating teacher high on all dimensions regardless of his or her actual performance. Rating teacher average on all dimensions regardless of his or her actual performance. Although most lectures are great. Last 2 lectures were done poorly, thus teacher is rated poorly. Rating a good professor as average because you compared his or her performance with three of the best professors you have ever had in university, from whom you are currently taking courses.
Central Tendency
Recency Effects
Contrast Effects
Person perception: Stereotypes. Stereotype: Beliefs about the characteristics of a group. Are shortcuts to processing our perceptions of others. 4 Step process: Categorizing people into groups according to various criteria, such as gender, age, race, and occupation. We infer that all people within a particular category possess the same traits or characteristics. o Example: All women are nurturing, older people have more job-related accidents) Form expectations of others, and interpret their behavior according to our stereotypes. Stereotypes are maintained by overestimating the frequency of stereotypic behavior exhibited by others.
It is hard to stop stereotyping, but there is several ways to break the chain. People less apt to stereotype if to judge others when they encounter salient information that is highly inconsistent with a stereotype.
Motivation lessens the stereotypic behaviors in others
4 Common Types of Stereotypes: Sex-Role Stereotypes: Beliefs about appropriate roles for men and women. Age Stereotypes: Belief about older individuals tends to be poor candidates than younger individuals in workplace. This stereotype is based on more fiction than fact. Racial and Ethnic Stereotypes: Belief that certain groups contain certain traits. Example: Asians are quiet, introverted, smarter and more quantitatively oriented. Hispanics as family-oriented and religious. And Arabs as angry. Disability Stereotypes: Face negative stereotypes which affects their employability as well as can be branded by the general public.
CASUAL ATTRIBUTIONS Attributions: Perceptions regarding the causes of observed behavior. Casual Attributions: Suspected or perceived causes of behavior. Behavior can be attributed to internal factors (ability) or external factors (difficult task). Casual attributions are made after gathering information’s about three dimensions of behavior. Consensus (PEOPLE): Compare behavior to peers. High: Acts like the rest of the peers Low: Acts differently from the rest of the peers Distinctiveness (TASKS): Compare behaviors on one task with behaviors on another task. High: Performed task significantly different than other tasks. Low: Stable performance from one task to another Consistency (TIME): Judgment on an individual’s performance on a given task is consistent overtime. High: Performs tasks the same time, after time. Low: Unstable performance of a task over time. EXTERNAL CAUSES (Environmental Factors): High consensus, high distinctiveness, and low consistency. INTERNAL CAUSES (Personal Factors): Low consensus, low distinctiveness. high consistency.
Attribution Tendencies: Two attribution tendencies that distort one’s interpretation of observed behavior: Fundamental Attribution Bias: Ignoring environmental factors that affect behavior. Example: When all employees are absent except one. That one employee picks up the slack to do the best they can. If manager evaluates that employees performance as poor, due being ignorant of the environmental factors, he or she processes a fundamental attribution bias. Ultimately, it is not an accurate judgment of the situation. Self-serving Bias: Taking more personal responsibility for success than failure. Example: You go for a job interview and do not get the job. You blame the questions being too difficult, the timing of the interview disadvantages you. Especially after partying the night before. If this happened, you would be using self-serving bias to explain such situation. You believe you were a victim of someone else’s bias. Contrary, if you got a job and promotion, when someone told you no one else wanted the job, you would use self-serving bias to say it’s because of your competence you got the job
Chapter 7 – Effective Communication - Kreitner
Kreitner
Communication: Interpersonal exchange of information and understanding. Perceptual Model of Communication: Process in which receivers create their own meaning. Sender: Individual, group, or organization that desires or attempts to communicate with a particular receiver. Encoding: Communication begins when a sender encodes an idea or thought. Encoding using words, numbers, gestures, non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, or pictures.
The Message: The output of encoding is a message. Messages may trigger emotional or affective reactions Messages need to match the medium used to transmit them Selecting a Medium: People may communicate through a variety of media o Face-to-face o Telephone calls o Electronic mail or email o Voice mail o Video conferencing o Written memos or letters o Photographs or drawings o Meetings o Bulletin boards o Computer output
o Receiver:
Charts or graphs
Decoding: Receiver’s version of encoding. Translating verbal, oral, or visual aspects of a message into a form that can be interpreted. Creating Meaning: Receivers create the meaning of a message in their head. Receivers act to their own interpretations not the communicators. Feedback: The receiver becomes the encoder.
Noise: Interference with the transmission and understanding of a message.
Barriers to Communication with the Communication Process
Sender Barrier: No message gets sent (Sender afraid to voice opinion) Encoding Barrier: The message is not expressed correctly (Thinking of a word of how to express how you feel about something) Medium Barrier: The communication channel is blocked (You never get through to someone via the phone) Decoding Barrier: The recipient doesn’t understand the message (You do not understand the figure of speech your boss tells you, due to English not being your first language) Receive Barrier: No message gets received (Did not listen to your supervisor due to you socializing with a co-worker) Feedback Barrier: The recipient doesn’t respond enough (Provide directions for someone, but they do not listen or repeat it back to you)
Barriers to Effective Communication
Personal Barriers: Any individual attribute that hinders communication Variable skills in communicating effectively o Some are better communicators than others o Communication can be enhanced with training Variations in how information is processed and interpreted Variations in interpersonal trust o Instead of focusing on the message, a lack of trust is likely to cause people to be defensive and question the accuracy of what is being said. Stereotypes and prejudices o The use of stereotypes causes people to misperceive and recall information. Big Egos
o Egos can cause political battles, turf wars, and pursuit of power, credit, and resources. Poor Listening Skills o Student asking the same questions asked minutes earlier Natural tendency to evaluate other’s messages o Natural tendency to evaluate messages from our own point of view Inability to listen with understanding Non-verbal communication o When facial expression and gestures are consistent with the intent of a message.
Physical Barriers: Distance between employees can interfere with effective communication. Work and office noise are additional barriers. Quality of telephone lines or crashed computer represents physical barriers that impact our ability to communicate with information technology. Semantic Barriers: Semantics: Study of words. We need to complete this right away. Means you and your coworkers, just you or you, your co-workers and your boss to? Jargon: Language or terminology that is specific to a particular profession, group, or company.
Choosing Media: Contingency Perspective
Information Richness: Information-carrying capacity of data. New understanding means Rich, little understanding means low in richness.
Overload Zone: Medium provides more information than necessary. District sales managers would fall into the overload zone, if they communicated monthly sales reports through richer media. Conducting face-to-face meetings or telephoning each salesperson would provide excessive information and take more time than necessary. Oversimplification Zone: Medium does not provide necessary information. Lay off workers via email.
Interpersonal Communication
Assertive Style (Assertiveness): Expressive and self-enhancing behavior, but does not take advantage of others. WALL STREET – GREED IS GOOD SPEECH Aggressive Style (Aggressiveness): Expressive and self-enhancing behavior, but takes unfair advantage of others. BOILER ROOM – SPEECH TO EMPLOYEES Non-Assertive Style (Non-Assertiveness): Timid and self-denying behavior. Provides the other person an unfair advantage. Improve their communication competence by trying to be more assertive and less aggressive or non-assertive. This can be done by using non-verbal or verbal behaviors listed: Non-Verbal Behavior Patterns: o Managers should attempt to use the non-verbal behaviors of good eye contact, comfortable firm posture, strong, steady and audible voice, facial expressions matched to message. o Avoid: Glaring eye contact, moving or leaning too close, threatening gestures, loud voice, and frequent interruptions. Verbal Behavior Patterns: o Managers should include direct and unambiguous language and the use of I messages instead you statements.
Sources of Non-Verbal Communication
Non-Verbal Communication: Messages sent or received through means other than spoken words. Body Movements and Gestures: Leaning forward or backward, and gestures, such as pointing, provides additional non-verbal information. Touch: Touching is another powerful non-verbal cue. People tend to touch those they like. Facial Expressions: Convey a wealth of information. Smiling, for instance, typically represents warmth, happiness, or friendship. Frowning conveys dissatisfactions or anger. Eye Contact: Strong non-verbal cue that varies across cultures. Westerners are taught to look at the person you are speaking to. Asians are taught to avoid eye contact with their superior to show obedience and subservience.
Practical Tips: Avoid: Licking your lips or playing with your hair or moustache Turning away from the person you are communicating with Closing your eyes and displaying uninterested facial expressions such as yawning Excessively moving in your chair or tapping your feet Using an unpleasant tone and speaking too quickly or too slowly Biting your nails, picking your teeth, or constantly adjusting your glasses. Maintain eye-contact Occasionally use affirmative nods to indicate agreement Smiling and showing interest Leaning slightly toward the speaker Keeping your voice low and relaxed Being aware of your facial expressions
Active Listening
Listening: Actively decoding and interpreting verbal messages. Listening Styles: Appreciative: Listen in a relaxed manner, preferring to listen for pleasure, entertainment, or inspiration. Empathetic: Interpret messages by focusing on the emotions and body language being displayed by the speaker. Discerning: Attempt to understand the main message and determine important points. Prefer taking notes and logical presentations. Evaluative: Listen analytically and continually formulate arguments and challenges to what is being said. Tend to accept or reject messages based on personal beliefs.
You may improve your listening skills by first becoming aware of the various listening styles used in various situations. This awareness allows you to modify your style to a specific situation. Attend closely to what’s being said, not to what you want to say next Allow other to finish speaking before taking your turn Repeat back what you’ve heard to give the speaker the opportunity to clarify the message
There are two types of communication channels with an organization. Formal: Channels authorized and used by all employees in a common and open manner. o Follow structural etiquette in a public manner, as a result the process takes time to get the message out. Staff notices, public forums, minutes of meetings, client briefing reports, and all other types of documents approved and/or written by management. Informal: Does not follow the chain of command or legitimate organizational structure. o Grapevine: Unofficial communication system that follows no chain of authority or formal structure People can just as easily pass along information with email, face-to-face conversations, or telephone calls. May contain a source of inaccurate rumors. Functions as an early warning signal for organizational changes. Liaison Individuals: Those who consistently pass along grapevine information to others. Organizational Moles: Those who use the grapevine to enhance their power and status.
Internet/Intranet/Extranet
Internet: Global network of computer networks. Intranet: An organization’s private internet. Extranet: Connects internal employees with selected customers, suppliers, and strategic partners. Ford motor company has an extranet that connects its dealers worldwide.
Electronic Mail
Electronic Mail: Uses the internet/intranet to send computer-generated text and documents. Benefits: Reduced cost of distributing information to large number employees Tool for increasing teamwork. Enables employees to quickly send messages to colleagues on the next floor, in another building, or in another country. Reduces time and cost associated with print. Fosters flexibility. Can send email whenever wherever they want with a portable computer with internet connection.
Drawbacks: Lead to time wasted and distraction Overestimate their ability to effectively communicate via email
Tendency to write things in an email that they would not say in person. Lead to negative interactions and defensiveness. Information overload. People use email when they should use other media, resulting in reduced communication effectiveness.
Blogs and Social Networking
Blogs: Online journal in which people comment on any topic. Social Networking: Virtual communities of individuals who share common interests and personal information on web sites open to all or by invitation only. Teleworking: Doing office work from a remote location using different information technologies.
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