Organizational Behavior: Chapters 9–12 Lecture Notes

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering organizational behavior concepts from Chapters 9 through 12, including personality, cultural values, cognitive and physical ability, team types and interdependence, team processes, and communication.

Personality

The structures and propensities inside a person that explain his or her characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior. Personality reflects what people are like and creates their social reputation.

Traits

Recurring trends in people's responses to their environment.

Cultural Values

Shared beliefs about desirable end states or modes of conduct in a given culture that influence the expression of traits.

Conscientiousness

A Big Five personality dimension describing people who are dependable, organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking, and persevering.

Agreeableness

A Big Five personality dimension describing people who are kind, cooperative, sympathetic, helpful, courteous, and warm.

Neuroticism

A Big Five personality dimension describing people who are nervous, moody, emotional, insecure, jealous, and unstable.

Openness to Experience

A Big Five personality dimension describing people who are curious, imaginative, creative, complex, refined, and sophisticated.

Extraversion

A Big Five personality dimension describing people who are talkative, sociable, passionate, assertive, bold, and dominant.

Conscientiousness prioritizes…

accomplishment striving (accomplishing task-related gaols)

Agreeableness prioritizes…

communion striving (obtaining acceptance in social relationships)

Neuroticism is associated with…

negative affectivity and stress

Positive Affectivity

A dispositional tendency to experience pleasant, engaging moods such as enthusiasm, excitement, and elation.

Negative Affectivity

A dispositional tendency to experience unpleasant moods such as hostility, nervousness, and annoyance.

Differential Exposure

Being more likely to appraise day-to-day situations as stressful, thereby feeling that stressors are encountered more frequently.

Differential Reactivity

Being less likely to believe that one can cope with the stressors experienced on a daily basis.

Locus of Control

Whether one believes the events that occur around him or her are self-driven or driven by the external environment.

Culture

The shared values, beliefs, motives, identities, and interpretations that result from common experiences of members of a society and are transmitted across generations.

Individualism–Collectivism

The degree to which a culture has a loosely knit social framework (individualism) or a tight social framework (collectivism).

Power Distance

The degree to which a culture prefers equal power distribution (low power distance) or an unequal power distribution (high power distance).

Uncertainty Avoidance

The degree to which a culture tolerates ambiguous situations (low uncertainty avoidance) or feels threatened by them (high uncertainty avoidance).

Masculinity–Femininity

The degree to which a culture values stereotypically male traits (masculinity) or stereotypically female traits (femininity).

Short-Term versus Long-Term Orientation

The degree to which a culture stresses values that are past and present oriented (short-term orientation) or future-oriented (long-term orientation).

Restraint versus Indulgence

The degree to which a culture advocates for regulating the gratification of needs (restraint) or freely gratifying human desires that relate to having fun and enjoying life (indulgence).

Ethnocentrism

One who views his or her cultural values as 'right' and values of other cultures as 'wrong'.

Typical Performance

Performance in the routine conditions that surround daily job tasks, which is primarily driven by conscientiousness.

Maximum Performance

Performance in brief, special circumstances that demand a person's best effort, which is primarily driven by ability.

Situational Strength

The degree to which situations have clear behavioral expectations, incentives, or instructions that make differences between individuals less important.

Trait Activation

The degree to which situations provide cues that trigger the expression of a given personality trait.

Clear Purpose Tests

Integrity tests that ask directly about attitudes toward dishonesty, beliefs about the frequency of dishonesty, desire to punish dishonesty, and confession of past dishonesty.

Veiled Purpose Tests

Integrity tests that do not directly ask about dishonesty, instead assessing more general personality traits associated with dishonest acts.

Faking

Exaggerating responses to a personality test in a socially desirable fashion.

Ability

Relatively stable capabilities of people for performing a particular range of related activities

its a function of genes (nature) and the environment (nurture).

Cognitive Ability

Capabilities related to the use of knowledge to make decisions and solve problems.

Ex. ACT, SAT

Verbal Ability

Various capabilities associated with understanding and expressing oral and written communication.

Quantitative Ability

Capabilities associated with doing basic mathematical operations and selecting and applying formulas to solve mathematical problems.

Reasoning Ability

A diverse set of abilities associated with sensing and solving problems using insight, rules, and logic.

Spatial Ability

Capabilities associated with visual and mental representation and manipulation of objects in space.

Perceptual Ability

The capacity to perceive, understand, and recall patterns of information.

Problem Sensitivity

The ability to sense that there is a problem right now or likely to be one in the near future.

Deductive Reasoning

The use of general rules to solve problems.

Inductive Reasoning

The ability to consider several specific pieces of information and then reach a general conclusion regarding how those pieces of information are related.

Originality

The ability to develop clever and novel ways to solve problems.

General Cognitive Ability

The general level of cognitive ability (often designated as $g$ or the $g\text{-factor}$) that plays an important role in determining the narrow cognitive abilities.

Emotional Intelligence

A set of abilities related to the understanding and use of emotions that affect social functioning.

Self-Awareness

The ability to recognize and understand the emotions in oneself.

Other Awareness

The ability to recognize and understand the emotions that other people are feeling.

Emotion Regulation

The ability to recover quickly from emotional experiences.

Use of Emotions

The degree to which people can harness emotions and employ them to improve their chances of being successful in whatever they are seeking to do.

Psychomotor Abilities

Capabilities associated with manipulating and controlling objects.

Sensory Abilities

Capabilities associated with vision and hearing

Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test

A 12-minute, 50-question test of general cognitive ability used to hire job applicants, where a score of 21 is average for high school graduates and corresponds to an IQ of about 100.

Team

Two or more people who work interdependently over some time period to accomplish common goals related to some task-oriented purpose.

Group

A collection of two or more people.

Work Team

A relatively permanent team in which members work together to produce goods and/or provide services.

Management Team

A relatively permanent team that participates in managerial-level tasks that affect the entire organization.

Parallel Team

A team composed of members from various jobs within the organization that meets to provide recommendations about important issues.

Project Team

A team formed to take on one-time tasks, most of which tend to be complex and require input from members from different functional areas.

Action Team

A team of limited duration that performs complex tasks in contexts that tend to be highly visible and challenging.

Virtual Team

A team in which the members are geographically dispersed, and interdependent activity occurs through e-mail, web conferencing, and instant messaging.

Punctuated Equilibrium

A model of team development in which a team establishes an initial pattern of behavior (inertia) and maintains it until approximately the midpoint, where it undergoes process revision.

Task Interdependence

The degree to which team members interact with and rely on other team members for information, materials, and resources needed to accomplish work for the team.

Pooled Interdependence

A form of task interdependence in which group members complete their work assignments independently, and their work is simply added together to represent the group's output.

Sequential Interdependence

A form of task interdependence in which group members perform different tasks in a prescribed sequence, depending only on the member who comes before them.

Reciprocal Interdependence

A form of task interdependence in which group members interact with only a limited subset of other members to complete the team's work.

Comprehensive Interdependence

A form of task interdependence in which team members have a great deal of discretion in terms of what they do and with whom they interact in the course of the collaboration involved in accomplishing the team’s work.

Goal Interdependence

The degree to which team members have a shared goal and align their individual goals with that vision.

Outcome Interdependence

The degree to which team members share equally in the feedback and rewards that result from the team achieving its goals.

Disjunctive Tasks

Tasks with an objectively verifiable best solution for which the member with the highest level of ability has the most influence on team effectiveness.

Conjunctive Tasks

Tasks for which the team's performance depends on the abilities of the team's weakest link.

Additive Tasks

Tasks for which the contributions from every member add up to determine team performance.

Value in Diversity Problem-Solving Approach

A theory that supports team diversity because it provides a larger pool of knowledge and perspectives.

Similarity-Attraction Approach

A theory explaining that team diversity can be counterproductive because people tend to avoid interacting with others who are unlike them.

Surface-Level Diversity

Diversity of observable attributes such as race, gender, ethnicity, and age.

Deep-Level Diversity

Diversity of attributes that are inferred through observation or experience, such as one's values or personality.

Team Viability

Team commitment; the likelihood that a team can work together effectively into the future.

Hybrid Outcome Interdependence

A compensation structure where team members receive rewards based on both their individual performance and that of the team to which they belong.

Team Processes

The different types of activities and interactions that occur within a team as the team works toward its goals.

Process Gain

When team outcomes are greater than expected based on the capabilities of the individual members (often termed 'synergy').

Process Loss

When team outcomes are less than expected based on the capabilities of the individual members.

Coordination Loss

Process loss due to the time and energy it takes to coordinate work activities with other team members.

Production Blocking

A type of coordination loss resulting from team members having to wait on each other before completing their own part of the team task.

Motivational Loss

Process loss due to team members' tendency to put forth less effort on team tasks than they could.

Social Loafing

A type of motivational loss resulting from members feeling less accountable for team outcomes relative to independent work that results in individually identifiable outcomes.

Taskwork Processes

The activities of team members that relate directly to the accomplishment of team tasks.

Decision Informity

The degree to which team members possess adequate information about their own task responsibilities.

Staff Validity

The degree to which team members make good recommendations to the team leader.

Hierarchical Sensitivity

The degree to which the team leader effectively weighs the recommendations of the members.

Boundary Spanning

Interactions among team members and individuals or groups who are not part of the team.

Ambassador Activities

Boundary-spanning activities intended to protect the team, persuade others to support the team, or obtain important resources for the team.

Task Coordinator Activities

Boundary-spanning activities intended to coordinate task-related issues with people or groups in other functional areas.

Scout Activities

Boundary-spanning activities intended to obtain information about technology, competitors, or the broader marketplace.

Teamwork Processes

The interpersonal activities that promote the accomplishment of team tasks but do not involve task accomplishment itself.

Transition Processes

Teamwork processes, such as mission analysis and planning, that focus on preparation for future work in the team.

Action Processes

Teamwork processes, such as helping and coordination, that aid in the accomplishment of teamwork as the work is actually taking place.

Interpersonal Processes

Teamwork processes, such as motivating and confidence building, that focus on the management of relationships among team members.

Relationship Conflict

Disagreements among team members with regard to interpersonal relationships or incompatibilities in personal values or preferences.

Task Conflict

Disagreements among members about the team's task.

Communication

The process by which information and meaning is transferred from a sender to a receiver.

Information Richness

The amount and depth of information that is transmitted in a message.

Cohesion

A team state that occurs when members of the team develop strong emotional bonds to other members of the team and to the team itself.