MGMT 3000 - Midterm

What is organizational behavior?

A field of study investigating the impact individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations.

Why do we study Organizational Behavior?

To take knowledge on what we learned about individuals, groups, and the effect of structure on behavior to make organizations work more efficiently.

What major fields of study/disciplines contribute to OB?

Psychology, social psychology, sociology, anthropology.

What is systemic study?

Looking at relationships, attempting to attribute causes and effects, and drawing conclusions based on scientific evidence.

How do we apply systemic studies?

By adding to intuition and making data-driven decisions.

What is Context Specificity?

When the same situation or event is interpreted differently depending on the context.

What are contingency variables?

Situational factors or variables that moderate the relationship between two or more variables.

Why are contingency variables important to the study of OB?

General effects do not apply the same way to everyone and contingencies must be considered to think about what guides behavior.

What are the practical applications of OB?

Critical thinking, communication, collaboration, knowledge application and analysis, social responsibility.

What is an attitude?

Evaluative statements or judgements concerning objects, people, or events.

What is the first component of an attitude?

Cognitive - The opinion/belief

What is the second component of an attitude?

Affective - The associated emotion/feeling

What is the third component of an attitude?

Behavioral - The intended behavior

What is cognitive dissonance?

The incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between a behavior and an attitudes.

What is the first factor we can use to deal with cognitive dissonance?

Including the importance of the elements creating dissonance and the degree of influence we believe we have over them.

What is the second factor we can use to deal with cognitive dissonance?

When the attitudes are important or when we believe we have control over the cause of the dissonance.

What is the third factor we can use to deal with cognitive dissonance?

High rewards accompanying dissonance can reduce its inherent tension.

What are the major job attitudes?

Job satisfaction, job involvement, psychological empowerment, organizational commitment, perceived organizational support, and employee engagement.

What is job satisfaction?

A positive feeling about the job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics.

What is Job Involvement?

the degree to which a person identifies with a job, actively participates in it, and considers performance important to self-worth

What is Psychological Empowerment?

Employee's belief in the degree to which they affect their work environment, competence, and meaningfulness of their job, and their perceived autonomy at work.

Organizational Commitment

the degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization

Perceived Organizational Support

The degree to which employees believe that the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being

Employee Engagement

The degree enthusiasm an employee feels for their job.

What are the causes of job satisfaction?

Job conditions, personality, pay, corporate social responsibility

What are the outcomes of job satisfaction?

Improved job performance, organizational citizenship behavior, customer satisfaction, and life satisfaction.

What is corporate social responsibility (CSR)?

An organization's self-regulated actions to benefit society or the environment beyond what is required by law.

How does CSR impact job satisfaction?

Allows workers to serve a higher purpose or contribute to a mission. Helps people view their work for higher purposes.

What is the difference between emotions and moods?

Emotions are more likely to be caused by a specific event and are more fleeting than moods.

What different factors influence emotions and moods?

Personality, time of day, day of the week, weather, sleep, exercise, and gender.

What is emotional dissonance?

The disparity between employees having to project one emotion while feeling another.

What is emotional intelligence?

The ability to detect and to manage emotional cues and information.

What is the first component of emotional intelligence?

Conscientiousness - Perceiving emotions in self and others.

What is the second component of emotional intelligence?

Cognitive - Understand the meaning of emotions.

What is the third component of emotional intelligence?

Emotional stability - regulate emotions.

What are different ways managers can improve employees' moods?

Hiring selection, positive decision making, display creativity, encourage motivation positively, share positive leadership, interrupt negative contagion and foster positive moods, work-life satisfaction, stay connected with employees, safety and inquiry.

What is motivation?

The process that account for an individual's intensity, direction, and persistence.

What is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?

The theory that humans are motivated to meet five needs.

What are the needs in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?

Physiological, safety-security, social-belonging, esteem, self-actualization.

What is the two-factor theory?

Intrinsic factors relate to job satisfaction and extrinsic factors relate to job dissatisfaction.

What is McCelland's Theory of Needs?

Different needs are the motivating factors than strict needs for survival.

What are intrinsic factors according to the two-factor theory?

Advancement, recognition, responsibility, and achievement relate to job satisfaction

What are extrinsic factors according to the two-factor theory?

Supervision, pay, company policies, and work conditions.

What are McCelland's three needs?

Need for achievement, power, and affiliation.

What does S.M.A.R.T. stand for?

Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound.

What does the S stand for in SMART?

Specific - the goal must be specific to the person.

What does the M stand for in SMART?

Measurable - The goal must have some sort of measurement.

What does the A stand for in SMART?

Achievable - The goal must be realistic.

What does the R stand for in SMART?

Relevant - The goal must relate to what you're hoping to accomplish.

What does the T stand for in SMART?

Time-bound - The goal must have a timeframe and that timeframe must be reasonable.

What is self-determination theory?

A meta-theory of motivation at work that is concerned with autonomy, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and satisfaction of psychological work needs.

What is the first theory associated with self-determination theory?

Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET) - Extrinsic rewards will reduce intrinsic interest in a task.

What is the second theory associated with self-determination theory?

Self concordance - considers how strongly people's reasons for pursuing goals are consistent with their interests and core values.

What is the third theory associated with self-determination theory?

Basic Psychological Needs - Several basic psychological needs that affect work motivation.

What is goal-setting theory?

A theory that specific and difficult goals, with feedback, lead to higher performance.

What are the components of goal-setting theory?

Specificity, difficulty, feedback, goal commitment, task characteristics, and national culture.

What is self-efficacy theory?

An individual's belief of being capable of performing a task.

What is reinforcement theory?

A theory that behavior is a function of its consequences.

What is expectancy theory?

A theory that strength of a tendency to act a certain way depends on the strength of an expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome.

What is the Job Characteristics Model (JCM)?

A model that proposes that any job can be described in terms of five core job dimensions.

What are the different job dimensions of the JCM?

Skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.

What are ways jobs can be redesigned?

job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment.

What is job rotation?

The periodic shifting of an employee from one task to another.

What is job enlargement?

broadening the types of tasks performed in a job

What is job enrichment?

adding high-level responsibilities to a job to increase intrinsic motivation

When do we apply job redesign?

If employees suffer from over-routinization

What are the different alternative work arrangements?

Flextime, job sharing, and telecommuting.

What is flextime?

Flexible work hour policy.

What is job sharing?

An arrangement that allows two or more individuals to split a traditional full-time job.

How do we apply job sharing?

Based on financial policy.

What is telecommuting?

Working from home at least two days a week through virtual devices that are linked to the employer's office.

How can we apply telecommuting?

When it is ideal for the employee.

What is employee involvement?

A participative process that uses the input of employees to increase employee commitment to the organization.

Why is employee involvement important?

Workers engaged in decisions that increase their autonomy and control over their lives will become more motivated, committed, productive, and satisfied.

What are the different types of pay plans?

Pierce-rate pay, merit-based pay, bonus, profit-sharing plan, and employee stock ownership plan.

What are flexible benefits?

A benefits plan that allows each employee to put together a benefits package individually tailored to their own needs and situation.

What are intrinsic motivators?

A person's internal desire to do something, due to such things as interest, challenge, and personal satisfaction.

What are extrinsic motivators?

rewards that we get for accomplishments from outside ourselves

What is a group?

Two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve certain objectives.

What kinds of groups are there?

Formal (a designated organization's work group) and informal (friends, fam, etc)

What are the impacts of norms on groups?

Affects group behaviors based on context such as culture, conformity, and emotions.

What are the five stages of group development?

forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning

What is the first stage of group development?

Forming - Initial introductions and getting to know

What is the second stage of group development?

Storming - conflict and establishing roles

What is the third stage of group development?

Norming - Group building cohesion and developing norms

What is the fourth stage of group development?

Performing - team achieves goals efficiently.

What is the fifth stage of group development?

Adjourning - group disbands and reflects on the experience.

What are the Hawthorne studies?

Three experiments for three different factors to increase productivity (environment, isolation, wages)

What was the impact of the Hawthorne studies?

While changes were occurring in the physical environment, the people in a group, and the incentives working, productivity changed as a group and not individually.

What is deviant workplace behavior?

Voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and, in doing so, threatens the well-being of the organization or its members

What is the importance of deviance?

It can reduce productivity and influence other people to participate in deviance.

What are the main reasons people join groups?

Belonging, learning, and social connections.

What is Social Loafing?

The tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than when alone.

How can we prevent social loafing?

Group goals, intergroup competition, peer evaluations, high motivated members, group rewards on each individual's contributions.

What are the advantages of group decision making?

Complete info and knowledge, increase of diversity of views, acceptance of a solution

What are the disadvantages of group decision making?

Conformity, domination of one or a few members, ambiguous responsibility.

What is groupthink?

a phenomenon in which the norm for consensus overrides the realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action

How do we prevent groupthink?

Monitoring group size, impartial leader role, devil's advocate, use exercises and discuss diverse alternatives

What is groupshift?

a change between a group's decision and an individual decision that a member within the group would make

How do we recognize groupshift?

Discussing more persuasive, members are comfortable, group diffuses responsibility, demonstrate differences between outgroups