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Organizational Behaviour

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For an organization to survive, people must:
- be motivated to join and remain in the organization,
- carry out basic work reliabliy,
- be willing to learn,
- be flexible and innovative.
What is organizational behaviour and why do we study it?
It is the attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups in organizations and we systematically study them to provide insight about effective management techniques and organizational structures.
What are the goals of OB?
Predict, explain, and manage organizational behaviour.
Describe the classical viewpoint of management.
- high specialization,
- intense coordination,
- centralization.
Describe scientific management.
A classical system developed by Frederick Taylor to use research to determine optimum degree of specialization and standardization of work tasks.
Describe beureaucracy.
Max Weber's ideal system with a strict chain of command, detailed rules, high specialization, centralized power and selection/promotion based on technical competence.
What sparked the human relations movement?
Hawthorne studies.
What does the contingency approach say?
Appropriate management style depends on the situation.
What are the different managerial roles?
- Interpersonal (figurehead, leader, liason),
- Informational (monitor, disseminator, spokesperson),
- Decisional (entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, negotiator).
What are the managerial activities?
- Routine communication,
- Traditional management,
- Networking,
- HRM.
What are the goals of research?
Description, prediction, explanation.
What are the steps to performing research?
- State the problem,
- Develop the hypothesis,
- Design a study,
- Measure variables,
- Analyze data,
- Make conclusions.
What composes a research question?
- The sample,
- The variables,
- Form of relationship (casual or correlational),
- The unit of analysis.
Describe the observational study.
Direct or participant. No random assignment, no manipulation. Observe the DV and get qualitative data.
Define personality.
The stable set of psychological characteristics that influence the way one interacts with the environment.
What are the five-factors of personality?
Five broad traits including:
- Extroversion
- Neuroticism
- Agreeableness
- Conscientiousness
- Openness to experience
What are different types of things one can learn?
- Practical (technical competence)
- Intrapersonal (problem solving, critical thinking)
- Interpersonal (teamwork, conflict resolution)
- Cultural awareness
What are 3 reinforcement errors?
- Confusing rewards with reinforcers
- Neglecting diversity in preferences for reinforcers
- Neglecting important sources of reinforcement
What are 4 things to remember when using punishment?
- Make sure punishment is truly aversive
- Dont reward unwanted behaviour before or after punishment
- Punish immediately
- Dont punish desirable behaviour
What are the parts to an employee recognition program?
- How the person will be recognized,
- The type of behaviour to encourage,
- The manner of public acknowledgment,
- A token or icon of the event.
What are the steps to a successful formal training program?
- Identify the problem
- Establish a baseline
- Define KSA: Knowledge, Skills, Abilities
- Define a training environment
- Perform the training
- Sustain the training back to work (transfer of training, social learning)
What are the three factors of perception and what affects them?
- Perceiver (experience, motivational state, emotional state)
- Situation
- Target (ambiguity)
What is Bruner's model of the perceptual process?
- Unfamiliar target encountered
- Openness to target cues
- Familiar cues encountered
- Target categorized
- Cue selectivity
- Categorization strengthened
Contrast the primacy and recency effects.
Primacy effects are those of first impressions and early cues, while recency effects are those of recent, last impressions.
What are the steps to creating stereotypes?
- Distinguish a category
- Assume certain traits belong to that category
- Perceive everyone in that category as having those traits
What is attribution and why is it important?
Attribution assigns causes and motives to explain people's behaviour. It is important because many rewards and punishments are based on judgments about what really caused some behaviour.
Contrast dispositional and situational attribution.
Dispositional attribution is based on actor's personality or intellect. Situational is based on actor's external situation.
What are the three Attributional Cues?
- Consistency: how consistent a behaviour is across time,
- Consensus: how a behaviour compares to those of different people,
- Distinctiveness: how unique behaviour is to a specific situation.
What are some organizational benefits to encouraging diversity?
- Easier to win best personnel when you have a good reputation for managing diversity,
- Gain insight about cultural sensitivity when marketing,
- Less conformity and more creativity,
- Better decisions from wider perspectives.
What are some strategies to reduce stereotypes?
- Select enough people from minority groups to go beyond token status,
- Encourage teamwork that brings together minority and majority groups,
- Ensure that those making career decisions about employees have accurate information,
- Train people to be aware of steretypes.
Defined Perceived Organizational Support (POS).
The general belief that your organization values your contribution and cares about your well-being.
How can the selection process be structured?
- Standardized questions AND probes,
- Precoded response scheme.
How can we reduce rater error?
- Rater error training,
- Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scales,
- Frame of Reference Training,
- 360' feedback.
What things are important when managing diversity?
- Measure attitudes regarding different groups,
- Provide training to diminish stereotypes,
- Ensure that HR processes allow for diversity,
- Provide support for diversity-friendly policies.
What are values?
Broad motivational tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over others.
What are Hofstede's basic work-related values?
- Power distance
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Masculinity/Femininity
- Individualism/Collectivism
- Longterm/Shortterm orientation
What are attitudes and what is the new model for attitude change?
Attitudes are stable evaluative tendencies to respond consistently to some specific object, situation, person or category.

Modelling + Role Playing + Social Reinforcement (Behaviour Change) -> Attitude Change through consistency
What is job satisfaction?
A collection of facet and overall attitudes about the job.
What are the 5 JDI facets?
Yes/No questions from:
- Work
- People
- Promotions
- Supervision
- Pay
Define Discrepency Theory.
Job satisfaction stems from size of discrepency between desired job outcomes and perceived job outcomes.
Contrast Distributive and Procedural Justice.
Distributive justice comes when people receive atleast what they think they deserve, while procedural justice results when the process used to determine the result is perceived as reasonable.
How can Procedural Justice be increased?
- Give adequate reasons for decisions,
- Follow consistent procedures over time and across people,
- Use accurate info and appear unbiased,
- Allow for two-way communication and welcome appeals.
What are the contributors and consequences of Job Satisfaction?
Contributors: mentally challenging work, adequate compensation, career opportunities, people.

Consequences: Absenteeism, Turnover, Performance, OCB, customer satisfaction and profit, ORB
What is the criteria for a behaviour to be classed as Organizational Citizenship Behaviour?
- Voluntary
- Spontaneous
- Contributes to organizational effectiveness
- Unlikely to be recognized or rewarded
What are 4 forms of OCB?
- Helping
- Conscientiousness
- Good Sport
- Courtest and Cooperation
Constrast the different types of organizational commitment. Which is the best and how can it be encouraged?
Affective (I want to stay)
Normative (I should stay)
Continuance (I need to stay)

Affective commitment can be encouraged by meeting expectations, fairness, enriching the job, earning trust, and providing role clarity.

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