Organizational Behavior exam 1

Independent Variable

What get changed in an experiment (presumed causes)

Dependent Variable

Outcomes of practical value and interest

Field Studies

Studies in real-life organizational settings

Meta analyses

Using statistics to pool results of different empirical studies

Survey studies

Using questionnaires and interviews in sample populations

Case studies

Looking in depth at single situations

Laboratory studies

Studies in simulated and controlled settings

Mintzberg’s roles of effective managers

Planning, organizing, leading, Controlling

Planning

Defining goals, setting performance objectives, and identifying the actions needed to achieve them

Organizing

Creating work structures and systems, and arranging resources to accomplish goals and objectives

Leading

Instilling enthusiasm by communicating with others, motivating them to work hard, and maintaining good interpersonal relations

Controlling

Ensuring that things go well by monitoring performance and taking corrective action as necessary

Technical skills

Ability to perform specialized tasks

Human skills

Comprise the ability to work well with other people

Emotional intelligence

The ability to manage oneself and one’s relationships effectively

Immoral manager

chooses to behave unethically

Amoral manager

fails to consider the ethics of a decision or behavior

Moral manager

Makes ethical behavior a personal goal

Ethical mindfulness

An enriched awareness that causes one to consistently behave with ethical consciousness

Locus of control

Extent a person feels able to control his or her own life and is concerned with a person’s internal-external orientation

Authoritarianism

Tendency to adhere rigidly to conventional values and to obey recognized authority

Dogmatism

leads a person to see the world as a threatening place and to regard authority as absolute

Terminal values

Reflect a person’s preferences concerning the “ends” to be achieved

Instrumental values

reflect a person’s beliefs about the means to achieve desired ends

Schemas

cognitive frameworks that represent organized knowledge developed through experience about people, objects, or events

Prototypes

A bundle of features expected to be characteristic of people in certain categories or roles

Stereotype

Assigns attributes commonly associated with a group to an individual

Halo effect

Uses one attribute to develop an overall impression of a person or situation

Projection

Assigns personal attributes to other individuals

Contrast effect

Occurs when the meaning of something that takes place is based on a contrast with another recent event or situation

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Creating or finding in a situation that which you expected to find in the first place

Law of effect

Behavior followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated behavior followed by unpleasant consequences is not

Continuous Reinforcement

Administers a reward each time a desired behavior occurs

Emotions

Strong positive or negative feelings directed toward someone or something

Affect

range of feelings in the forms of emotions and moods that people experience

Moods

generalized positive and negative feelings or states of mind

Attitude

predisposition to respond positively or negatively to someone or something

Existence needs

desires for physiological and material well-being

Relatedness needs

desires for satisfying interpersonal relationships

Growth needs

Desires for continued personal growth and development

Acquired needs

Need for achievement (nAch), Need for affiliation (nAff), Need for power (nPower)

Equity

Posits that people will act to eliminate any felt inequity in the rewards for their work in comparison with others

Organizational justice

Concerns how fair and equitable people view workplace practices and outcomes

Expectancy theory

Argues that work motivation is determined by individual beliefs regarding effort-performance relationships and work outcomes

Expectancy

The probability that work effort will be followed by performance accomplishment

Goal setting

Process of developing, negotiating, and formalizing the targets or objectives that a person is responsible for accomplishing

Gainsharing

rewards employees in some proportion to productivity gains

Profit-sharing

Rewards employees in some proportion to changes in organizational profits

Stock plans

Gives the right to purchase shares at a fixed price in the future

Paired comparison

Appraisal compares each person with every other one

Forced distribution

Appraisals forces a set percentage of persons into predetermined rating categories

Graphic rating scales

Performance appraisal assign scores to specific performance dimensions

360 review

Assessment gathers feedback from a jobholder’s bosses, peers, and subordinates, internal and external customers, and self-ratings

Organizational culture

System of shared actions, values, and beliefs that develops within an organization and guides the behavior of its members

External adaptation

Deals with reaching goals, the tasks to be accomplished, the methods used to achieve the goals, and the methods of coping with the success and failure

Internal integration

Deals with the creation of a collective identity and with ways of working and living together

Countercultures

Groups in which the patterns of values and philosophies outwardly reject those of the organization or social system

Multicultural organizations

A firm that values diversity but systematically works to block the transfer of societally based subcultures into the fabric of the organization

Observable culture

The way things are done in an organization

Shared values

turn routine activities into valuable and important actions, tie the corporation to the important values of society, and possibly provide a distinctive source of competitive everyday problems

Exploitation

focuses on refinement and reuse of existing products and processes

Exploration

calls for the organization and its managers to stress freedom and radical thinking and opens the firm to big changes- or what some call radical innovations