Organizational Behaviour II
Terms
undefined, object
copy deck
- What is motivation and its basic characteristics?
-
The extent to which persistent effort is directed toward a goal.
- Effort
- Persistence
- Direction (quality)
- Goals - Contrast extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
- Intrinsic stems from the direct relationship between the worker and the task, usually self applied. While extrinsic stems from the work environment external to the task, usually applied by others.
- What are two important forms of intelligence?
-
General cognitive ability: Information processing capacity and cognitive resources (verbal, numerical, spatial, reasoning)
Emotional Intelligence: Ability to understand and manage one's own and other's feelings and emotions. - Outline Salovey and Mayer's EI model.
-
- Perception of emotions
- Integration and assimilation of emotions
- Knowledge and understanding of emotions
- Management of emotions - List Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
-
- Physiological needs
- Safety needs
- Belongingness needs
- Esteem needs
- Self-actualization needs - Describe Alderfer's ERG theory.
-
Existence needs: Satisfied by some material substance or condition.
Relatedness needs: Satisfied by open communication and the exchange of thoughts and feelings with other organizational members.
Growth needs: Fulfilled by strong personal involvement in the work setting. - What are the major differences between Maslow's hierarchy and Alderfer's ERG theory?
-
Unlike need hierarchy, ERG theory does not assume a lower-level need MUST be gratified first.
ERG theory assumes that if high-level needs are ungratified, individuals will increase desire for low-level, while Maslow's says fulfilled low-level lose all motivational properties. - What are the three needs in McClelland's theory of needs?
-
Need for achievement - n Ach
Need for affiliation - n Aff
Need for power - n Pow
Note: Motivation comes from learned needs. People will be motivated at work to the extent that their job matches their needs. - What research support exists for need theory?
-
Because of the rigidity of Maslow's hierarchy, little research support exists.
Several tests indicate good support for Alderfer's ERG and recently, for McClelland's need theory. - What is the research support for expectancy theory?
-
Moderately favourable support - in particular, good evidence that valence of first-level outcomes depends on the extent that they lead to favourable second-level consequences.
However, complexity of the theory makes it difficult to test. - What are some implications of expectancy theory?
-
- Boost expectancies
- Clarify reward contingencies
- Appreciate diverse needs - How can one modify the equity relationship?
-
Psychologically:
- Perceptually distort one's own inputs or outcomes.
- Perceptually distory the inputs or outcomes of the comparison.
- Choose another comparison.
Behaviourally:
- Alter one's inputs or alter one's outcomes.
- Leave the exchange relationship. - What kinds of goals are motivational?
-
- Specific goals
- Challenging goals
- Goals that are committed to
- Goals that give feedback - List some methods to enhance goal committment.
-
- Encourage participation in goal setting
- Offer rewards for goal acheivement
- Act in a supportive manner - What are the mechanisims in which goal setting improves performance?
-
- Direct attention toward goal-relevent activities (direction)
- Lead to greater effort (effort)
- Increase and prolong persistence (persistence)
- Lead to discovery and use of task-relevant strategies for goal attainment (task strategies) - What are the cultural limitations of motivation theories?
-
- Individualistic vs. collectivist societies will view self-actualization and esteem needs differently, as well as fairness (equity vs. equality)
- Expectancy theory is very flexible and effective applied cross-culturally.
- Goal setting is also effective cross-culturally, but care must be taken in selecting appropriate goals and reward contingencies. - What are some potential problems of wage incentives?
-
Wage incentives: Production jobs.
- Lowered quality
- Differential opportunity
- Reduced cooperation
- Incompatible job design
- Restriction of productivity - What are some potential problems with merit pay plans?
-
Merit pay plans: White-collar jobs.
- Low discrimination
- Small increases
- Pay secrecy - How can pay be used to motivate teamwork? What is necessary in each methods and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
-
- Profit sharing & Stock ownership plans
- Employees must be able to influence profits and owners must value contribution.
- Simple and easy, guaranteed affordability, unites interest of owners and employees.
- Employers may ignore long-term performance, force majeure may influence profits, private companies must open books to employees.
- Gainsharing
- Objectives must be measureable, management must encourage involvement, employees must trust management.
- Enhances coordination and teamwork, employees learn about business focus on objectives, work harder and smarter.
- Employees may ignore other objectives like quality, may have to pay bonuses even when unprofitable.
- Skill-based pay
- Skills must be identified and assigned pay grade, company must develop employee assessment and training.
- Company operates with leaner flexible staff, worker have holistic perspective better at problem solving.
- Most employees will learn all skills dramatically raising labour costs, training costs are high. - Describe Hackman & Oldham's job characteristics model.
-
Core job characteristics
------------------------
- Skill variety
- Task identity
- Task significance
- Autonomy
- Feedback from job
------------------------
Lead to:
Critical psychological states
------------------------
- Experienced meaningfulness of work
- Experienced responsibility for outcomes
- Knowledge of actual results
Moderators: KSA, Growth need, Context satisfactions
Outcomes
--------
- High internal work motivation
- High growth satisfaction
- High general job satisfaction
- High work effectiveness - How can jobs be enriched? What are some potential problems with job enrichment?
-
Enriched by:
- Combining tasks
- Establishing ext/int client relationships
- Reducing supervision/reliance on others
- Forming work teams
- Making feedback more direct
Problems:
- Poor diagnosis
- Lack of desire or skill
- Demand for rewards
- Supervisory resistance - What is the MBO cycle?
-
- Meet and set objectives
- Monitor progress
- Evaluate
- Repeat - Differentiate between the job of a leader and of a manager.
-
Leader: - Establish organizational mission
- Formulate strategy for implementing mission
Manager:- Implement organizational strategy - What are two types of leaders?
-
Task leader- Concerned with accomplishing a task by organizing others, planning strategy, dividing labour.
Social-emotional leader- Concerned with reducing tension, patching up disagreements, settling arguments, maintaining morale. - What is Fiedler's contingency theory?
- It states that the association between leadership orientation and group effectiveness is contingent on how favourable the situation is for exerting influence.
- What affects the situational favourableness of leadership?
-
- Leader-member relations: Better relationship leads to favourable leadership situation.
- Task structure: Highly structured task allows leader to exert considerable influence of group.
- Position power: The greater formal authority of a leader, the more favourable is the leadership situation. - What is Path-Goal theory?
-
House's theory concerned with the situations in which various leader behaviours:
- directive
- supportive
- participative
- achievement oriented
...are most effective. - Which situational factors affect Path-Goal theory?
-
Employee characteristics:
- Need achievement? Achievement-oriented.
- Prefer being told what to do. Directive.
- Feel low task ability. Directive, coaching.
Environmental factors:
- Task clear and routine? NO directive & supportive.
- Task challenging and abiguous? Participative & Directive.
- Task frustrating or dissatisfying? Supportive - What are the advantages and problems of participative leadership?
-
Advantages:
- Motivation
- Quality
- Acceptance
Problems:
- Time and Energy
- Loss of Power
- Lack of Receptivity or Knowledge - What is LMX theory?
- Leader-Member Exchange is a theory of leadership focused on the quality of the relationship that develops between leader and employee.
- What are characteristics of high LMX? Low LMX?
-
High Leader-Member Exchange is characterized by mutual influence, obligation, trust, loyalty, respect.
Low Leader-Member Exchange is marked by low trust, respect, obligation, and mutual support. Leader provides less attention and latitude to employees and employees on do their job descriptions. - What are the components of transformational leadership?
-
- Intellectual stimulation
- Individualized consideration
- Charisma - What are the stages in developing charisma?
-
- Evaluate status quo for opportunities for change.
- Formulate vision or mission that challenges status quo. Ability to change is emphasized.
- Influence followers to achieve the new vision. - What is developmental leadership and its components?
-
A style of leadership that involves working with organizational members as partners and using persuasion and negotiation to acheive committment rather than compliance.
- Self-management: lead others to lead themselves.
- Empowerment.
- Persuasion and negotiation. - What is strategic leadership and its components?
-
Ability to anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility, thing strategically, and work with others to initiate changes.
- Determine purpose or vision
- Exploit core competencies
- Develop human capital
- Sustain effective organizational culture
- Emphasize ethical practices
- Establish balanced organizational controls - What is global leadership? What characteristics belong to global leaders?
-
Leadership capabilities require to function effectively in different cultures and the ability to cross language, social, economic, and political boundaries.
- Unbridled inquisitiveness
- Personal character
- Duality
- Savvy - Contrast perfect and bounded rationality.
-
Perfect rationality - can gather info about problems and solutions without cost and is completely informed; is perfectly logical; has only one criterion for decision making: economic gain.
Bounded rationality - relies on limited information and reflects time constraints and political considerations. - What is the rational decision making process?
-
1. Identify problem
2. Search for relevant information
3. Develop alternative solutions
4. Evaluate alternative solutions
5. Choose best solution
6. Implement chosen solution
7. Monitor and evaluate chosen solution - What problems can bounded rationality have for problem identification?
-
- Perceptual defense
- Problem defined in terms of functional specialty
- Problem defined in terms of solution
- Problem defined in terms of symptoms - What problems can irrational decision making have during the development, evaluation and choice of alternatives?
-
- People avoid incorporating known existing data (base rates)
- People use small samples
- Decision makers overestimate the odds of complex chains of events
- People are poor at revising estimates of probabilities (anchoring effect) - How can we prevent the tendency to escalate committment to a failing course of action?
-
- Encourage continuous experimentation with reframing the problem: shift frame to saving rather than spending.
- Set specific goals for the project in advance.
- Place emphasis in evaluating on HOW decisions are made not on outcomes.
- Seperate initial and subsequent decision making roles. - How does mood affect decision making?
-
- Positive mood: remember positive information and vice-versa.
- Positive mood: evaluate objects, people, and events more positively, and vise-versa.
- Good mood: overestimate likelihood of good events, underestimate bad events.
- Good mood: adopt simplified short cut decision making strategies.
- Positive mood promotes creative, intuitive decision making. - Why use groups?
-
- Decision quality
- More vigilant
- Generate more ideas
- Evaluate ideas better
- Decision acceptance and commitment
- Wish to be involved in decisions affecting them
- Better understanding
- More committed after investing time and energy
- Diffusion of responsibility - When do groups make better decisions?
-
When
- group members differ in KSAs
- some division of labour can occur
- memory for facts is important
- individual judgments can be combined by weighting to expertise - What are disadvantages to group decision making?
-
- Time
- Conflict
- Domination
- Groupthink - What are symptoms of groupthink?
-
- Illusion of invulnerability
- Rationalization
- Illusion of morality
- Stereotypes of outsiders
- Pressure for conformity
- Self-censorship
- Illusion of unanimity
- Mindguards - How can decision making be improved?
-
- Train discussion leaders to be nondefensive, objective, and to not suggest solutions or preferences and to supply essential facts and clarify constraints.
- Stimulate and manage controversy (devil's advocates).
- Use traditional and electronic brainstorming.
- Nominal group technique
- Delphi technique