Learning, Decision Making, Personality, and Leadership

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts from chapters on Learning, Decision Making, Personality, Teams, and Leadership.

Learning

A relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge due to experience.

Decision Making

The process of generating and choosing from alternatives to solve a problem.

Operant Conditioning

The components include Antecedent → Behavior → Consequence (reinforcement or punishment).

Types of Knowledge

Explicit (easy to teach) and Tacit (experience-based, harder to communicate).

Rational Decision-Making Model

A method of decision making that involves systematic analysis of alternatives.

Bounded Rationality

The concept that decision making is limited by the information available, cognitive limitations, and time constraints.

Common Decision-Making Problems

Limited information, faulty perceptions, attribution errors, escalation of commitment.

Job Performance (JP)

Strongly linked to learning, specifically task performance.

Organizational Commitment (OC)

Moderately linked to learning through development opportunities.

Personality

Structures and propensities that explain characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior.

Sources of Personality

Genetics and environment.

Cultural Values

Shared beliefs about what is good or desirable in a culture.

Big Five Personality Traits

Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, Extraversion.

Locus of Control

Internal: You control outcomes; External: Outside forces control outcomes.

MBTI Framework

Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving.

Holland's RIASEC Model

Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional.

Impact of Conscientiousness

Most positively linked to job performance and organizational commitment (via engagement and fit).

Issues in Assessing Personality at Work

Faking, bias, fairness, and situation strength.

Group vs. Team

A group is just individuals; a team works interdependently toward a goal.

Types of Teams

Work, management, parallel, project, action teams.

Team Interdependence

Ways team members rely on each other such as task, goal, and outcome interdependence.

Team Composition Elements

Roles, size, member ability, diversity, and personality.

Social Identity Theory

People derive part of their identity from group membership.

Stereotypes

Oversimplified ideas about groups that can bias team dynamics.

Team Viability

The likelihood that a team can work effectively over time.

Leadership

Using power and influence to direct the activities of others.

Power

The ability to influence others.

Types of Power

Organizational (legitimate, reward, coercive) and Personal (expert, referent).

Effective Influence Tactics

Rational persuasion, consultation, inspirational appeals, collaboration.

Common Response to Influence

Compliance, though commitment is most desired.

Leader Effectiveness vs Emergence

Effectiveness is performance-based; emergence is about who becomes a leader.

Leader Decision-Making Styles

Autocratic, Consultative, Facilitative, Delegative.

Day-to-Day Leadership Behaviors

Initiating structure (task-focused) and Consideration (people-focused).

Types of Leadership Styles

Transformational, Transactional, Laissez-faire.

Most Effective Leadership Style

Transformational leadership.