Organizational Behavior Quiz #1

Chapters 1-4

Attitude

A person’s complexes of beliefs and feelings about specific ideas, situations, or other people, formed by personal values, experiences, and personality.

Cognition

The knowledge a person presumes to have about something; a structural component of attitudes.

Affect

A person’s feelings toward something; a structural component of attitudes.

Intention

Component of an attitude that guides a person’s behavior.

Cognitive Dissonance

An incompatibility or conflict between behavior and an attitude or between two different attitudes.

Organizational Commitment

The degree to which an employee identifies with the organization and its goals and wants to stay with the organization.

Affective Commitment

Positive emotional attachment to the organization and strong identification with its values and its goals; employees want to stay with the organization.

Normative Commitment

A feeling of moral or ethical obligation to the organization; employees stay because they believe it would be wrong to leave.

Continuance Commitment

Staying with the organization because of perceived high economic and/or social costs; employees stay because they feel they have to.

Employee Engagement

Heightened emotional and intellectual connection that an employee has for their job, organization, manager, or coworkers that, in turn, influences them to apply additional discretionary effort to their work.

Value

Way of behaving or end-state desirable to a person or group.

Terminal Values

Reflect long-term life goals such as prosperity, happiness, a secure family, and a sense of accomplishment.

Instrumental Values

Preferred means of achieving terminal values or preferred ways of behaving.

Intrinsic Work Values

Relate to the work itself.

Extrinsic Work Values

Relate to the outcomes of doing work.

Intrapersonal Value Conflict

Occurs when an individual experiences conflict between an instrumental value and a terminal value.

Interpersonal Value Conflict

Occurs when two different people hold conflicting values.

Individual–Organization Value Conflict

When an employee’s values conflict with those of the organization.

Emotion

Intense, short-term physiological, behavioral, and psychological reaction to a specific object, person, or event that prepares us to respond to it.

Mood

Short-term emotional state that is not directed toward anything in particular.

Affectivity

The tendency to experience a particular mood or to react to things with certain emotions.

Positive Affect

Reflects a combination of high energy and positive evaluation characterized by emotions like elation.

Negative Affect

Consists of feelings of being upset, fearful, and distressed.

Perception

The set of processes by which an individual becomes aware of and interprets information about the environment.

Selective Perception

The process of screening out information that we are uncomfortable with or that contradicts our beliefs.

Stereotyping

The process of categorizing or labeling people on the basis of a single attribute.

Categorization

The tendency to put things into groups and then exaggerate the similarities within and the differences among the groups

Halo Effect

Forming a general impression of something or someone based on a single (usually good) characteristic

Contrast Effect

Evaluating someone by comparing them with recently encountered people

Projection

Seeing one’s own characteristics in others

First Impression Bias

The inability to let go of first impressions, particularly negative ones

Self-fulfilling Prophecies

Treating people the way we categorize them and having them react accordingly

Attribution

The way we explain the causes of our own as well as other people’s behaviors and achievements, and understand why people do what they do

Self-handicapping

When people create obstacles for themselves that make success less likely

Organizational Fairness

Employees’ perceptions of organizational events, policies, and practices as being fair or not fair

Distributive Fairness

Perceived fairness of the outcome received, including resources distributions, promotions, hiring and layoff decisions, and raises

Procedural Fairness

Addresses the fairness of the procedures used to generate the outcome

Interactional Fairness

Perceived fairness of interpersonal treatment and explanations received during the decision-making process

Trust

Expectation that another person will not act to take advantage of us regardless of our ability to monitor or control them

Stress

A person’s adaptive response to a stimulus that places excessive psychological or physical demands on that person.

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

Identifies three stages of response to a stressor: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion

Eustress

Pleasurable stress that accompanies positive events

Distress

Unpleasant stress accompanies negative events

Organizational Stressor

A factor in the workplace that can cause stress

Task Demands

Stressors associated with the specific job a person performs

Physical Demands

Conditions associated with the job’s physical setting and requirements

Role Demands

Stressors associated with the expected behaviors of a particular position in a group or organization

Interpersonal Demands

Stressors deriving from group pressures, leadership, interpersonal conflicts

Life Stressor

Life change or trauma

Burnout

A general feeling of exhaustion that develops when an individual simultaneously experiences too much pressure and has too few sources of satisfaction

Work–Life Relationship

Interrelationship between a person’s work life and personal life

Diversity

The variety of observable and unobservable similarities and differences among people.

Surface-level diversity

Observable differences in people, including race, age, ethnicity, physical abilities, physical characteristics, and gender.

Deep-level diversity

Individual differences that cannot be seen directly, including goals, values, personalities, decision-making styles, knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes.

Intersectionality

Simultaneous membership in more than one demographic category.

Separation diversity

Differences in position or opinion among group members reflecting disagreement or opposition—dissimilarity in an attitude or value, for example, especially with regard to group goals or processes.

Variety diversity

Differences in a certain type or category, including group members’ expertise, knowledge, or functional background.

Disparity diversity

Differences in the concentration of valuable social assets or resources—dissimilarity in rank, pay, decision-making authority, or status.

Reverse mentoring

Pairing a junior employee with a senior employee to transfer technical/computer skills from the junior employee to the senior one.

The “like me” bias

People prefer to associate with others they perceive to be like themselves.

Stereotypes

A belief about an individual or a group based on the idea that everyone in a particular group will behave the same way or have the same characteristics.

Prejudice

Outright bigotry or intolerance for other groups.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one’s own language, native country, and cultural rules and norms are superior to all others.

Reciprocal mentoring

Matches senior employees with diverse junior employees to allow both individuals to learn more about a different group.

Globalization

The internationalization of business activities and the shift toward an integrated global economy.

Culture

The set of shared values, often taken for granted, that help people in a group, organization, or society understand which actions are considered acceptable and which are deemed unacceptable.

Cultural competence

The ability to interact effectively with people of different cultures.

Individualism

Exists to the extent that people in a culture define themselves primarily as individuals rather than as part of one or more groups or organizations.

Collectivism

Characterized by tight social frameworks in which people tend to base their identities on the group or organization to which they belong.

Power distance

The extent to which people accept as normal an unequal distribution of power.

Uncertainty avoidance

The extent to which people feel threatened by unknown situations and prefer to be in clear and unambiguous situations (also called the preference for stability).

Masculinity

The extent to which the dominant values in a society emphasize aggressiveness and acquisition of money/possessions as opposed to concern for people and relationships (also called assertiveness or materialism).

Long-term values

Include focusing on the future, working on projects that have a distant payoff, persistence, and thrift.

Short-term values

More oriented toward the past and the present and include respect for traditions and social obligations.

Technology

Refers to the methods used to create products, including both physical goods and intangible services.

Manufacturing

A form of business that combines and transforms resources into tangible outcomes that are then sold to others.

Service organization

One that transforms resources into an intangible output and creates time or place utility for its customers.

Cycle times

The time it takes a firm to accomplish some recurring activity or function, e.g., making deliveries, processing credit payments.

Ethics

A person’s beliefs regarding what is right or wrong in a given situation.

Corporate governance

Refers to the oversight of a public corporation by its board of directors.

Corporate social responsibility

Businesses living and working together for the common good and valuing human dignity.

Outsourcing

The practice of hiring other firms to do work previously performed by the organization itself; when this work is moved overseas, it is often called offshoring.

Offshoring

Outsourcing to workers in another country.

Contingency worker

A person who works for an organization on something other than a permanent or full-time basis.

Psychological contract

A person’s set of expectations regarding what he or she will contribute to an organization and what the organization, in return, will provide to the individual.

Organizational Behavior

The field that attempts to understand human behavior in organizational settings, the organization itself, and the individual-organization interface.

Management Functions

The basic functions include planning, organizing, leading, and controlling resources to efficiently and effectively attain organizational goals.

Planning

Determining an organization’s desired future position and the best means of getting there.

Organizing

Designing jobs, grouping jobs into units, and establishing patterns of authority between jobs and units.

Leading

Getting the organization’s members to work together toward the organization’s goals.

Controlling

Monitoring and correcting the actions of the organization and its members to keep them directed toward their goals.

Technical Skills

The skills necessary to accomplish specific tasks within the organization.

Interpersonal Skills

The ability to effectively communicate with, understand, and motivate individuals and groups.

Conceptual Skills

The ability to think in the abstract and to consider the “big picture”.

Diagnostic Skills

The ability to understand cause-and-effect relationships and to recognize the optimal solutions to problems.

Human Resource Management (HRM)

The set of organizational activities directed at attracting, developing, and maintaining an effective workforce.

Competitive Advantage

An organization’s edge over rivals in attracting customers and defending itself against competition.

Cost Leadership

Striving to be the lowest-cost producer for a particular level of product quality.

Differentiation

Developing a product or service that has unique characteristics valued by customers.

Specialization

Focusing on a narrow market segment or niche and pursuing either differentiation or cost leadership within that segment.