RSM260 Midterm Notes

Organizational Behaviour

the field of behavioural science focused on understanding, explaining, and improving the attitudes and behaviours of individuals and group in organization → includes the study of how events in the external environment affects organizations

what is OB?

• how can you motivate others to deliver top performance?

• how do you do well in negotiations?

• how can you make the best decisions?

• how do you get those around you to implement those decisioins

labour-based roles

• focus on the division of labour (that we take on equal work)

• driven by the preference for fairness

• may increase team learning

outcome-based

• focus on how to get the best result (work is based on roles and expertise)

• may decrease feelings of fairness (if not clearly understook)

• can lead to better outcomes

goals should be

• data driven

• ambitious, but attainable

• well-defined and shared by all (is everyone on the same page)

successful teams…

communicate effectively

illusion of transparency

we assume that others can read our minds and know what our intentions are

psychological safety

a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes

team dynamic examples

• experimentation

• coordination

• leveraging expertise

• navigating power & status dynamics

personality

relatively stable set of psychological characteristics that influences the way an individual interacts with their environment and how they feel, think, and behave → relatively consistent over time and situations

MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)

personality test that helps gain insights about how they work and learn

MBTI pros

• widely used

• helpful in getting people to recognize individual differences in ways of thinking and approaching work

MBTI cons

• “armchair” psychology → doesn’t fully capture known dimensions of personality and cognitive style

• little evidence supporting the predictive ability of MBTI results

• forces bi-modality (“either/or”) → from research, we know traits are normally distributed and continuous

• creates “false opposites”

  • thinking (IQ) and feeling (EQ)

    • positively correlated (r = 0.45)

big five personality dimensions

CANOE

conscientiousness

• dependable

• organized

• reliable

• ambitious

• hardworking

• persevering

agreeableness

• warm

• kind

• cooperative

• sympatheic

• helpful

• courteous

neuroticism

• nervous

• moody

• emotional

• insecure

• jealous

• sometimes called emotional stability or emotional edjustment

openness to experience

• curious, imaginative, creative

• beneficial to jobs that are dynamic → curiosity gives them a built-in desire to learn new things

extraversion

• sociable and talkative

• solitary reversed

approaches to personality

• dispositional approach

• situational approach

• interactionist approach

dispositional approach

• individuals possess stable traits or characteristic that influence their attitudes and behaviours

• people are “predisposed to be certain ways”

situational approach

• organizational setting (rewards and punishments) influence people’s feelings, attitudes, and behaviours

interactionist approach

• we need to know something about an individual’s personality and the setting in which they work

• most widely accepted perspective in OB

personality heritability

40-60%

what does the role of personality depends on?

strength of the situation and when the situation is relevant to the role

weak situations are…

ambiguous → no obvious way to behave (e.g. work group just formed and no one knows each other well)

strong situations are…

concrete → it is expected that you behave in specific ways (e.g. assembly line working following basic protocol)

locus of control

reflects whether people attribute the causes of events to themselves or their environment

external locus of control

believe events caused by environment

internal locus of control

believe events are caused by themselves/from within