Organizational Behaviour: Foundations, Job Performance, Personality, and Trust

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering fundamental organizational behaviour concepts, performance dimensions, commitment models, personality traits, cultural dimensions, trust, justice, and business ethics based on the lecture notes.

Organizational Behaviour

A field of study devoted to understanding, explaining, and improving the attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups in an organization.

The Rule of One-Eighth

The principle stating that at best roughly $\frac{1}{8}$ ($12.5\%$) of organizations will build profitability via people management, because only $\frac{1}{2}$ see the connection, only $\frac{1}{2}$ of those make comprehensive changes rather than a single fix, and only $\frac{1}{2}$ of those persist long enough to derive economic benefits.

Job Performance

The value of the set of employee behaviours that contribute, either positively or negatively, to organizational goal accomplishment, rather than the consequences or results of behaviour.

Task Performance

The action of transforming organizational resources into goods and services and organizational outputs, typically outlined as the requirements in a job description.

Routine Task Performance

Well-known, habitual responses to demands that occur in a normal, routine, or predictable manner (e.g., a server taking orders, delivering food, and collecting payment).

Adaptive Task Performance

Employee responses to task demands that are novel, unusual, or at least unpredictable (e.g., managing time effectively during an unexpected rush of customers).

Creative Task Performance

The degree to which individuals develop ideas or physical outcomes that are both novel and useful (e.g., developing unique bonds with customers or suggesting tailored food choices).

Citizenship Behaviour

Voluntary employee activities that may or may not be rewarded but contribute to the organization by improving the overall quality of the setting where work occurs.

Counterproductive Behaviour

Employee behaviours that intentionally hinder organizational goal accomplishment (e.g., intentionally delaying an organizational goal).

Production Deviance

A form of counterproductive behaviour focused on reducing the efficiency of work output, specifically including wasting resources and substance abuse.

Property Deviance

A severe category of counterproductive behaviour directed against organizational assets, specifically involving sabotage and theft.

Political Deviance

Behaviours that intentionally disadvantage other individuals rather than the larger organization, specifically including gossiping and incivility.

Personal Aggression

Hostile and aggressive verbal and physical actions directed toward other employees, specifically including harassment and abuse.

Incivility

Rude, disrespectful, unsociable behaviour that violates social norms for mutual respect, ranging from rolling eyes and interrupting to civic attack actions.

Theory of Selective Incivility

A theory suggesting that because overt and blatant forms of mistreatment are easily managed, mistreatment goes below the management radar, resulting in more frequent subtle rudeness toward employees who hold marginalized identities.

Knowledge Work

Work that places a primary cognitive emphasis on problem-solving, intellectual tasks, and information processing, being fluid and dynamic in nature.

Service Work

A growing work segment providing intangible goods to customers that requires direct customer interaction and demands high citizenship behaviour with low counterproductive behaviour.

Organizational Commitment

A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member of an organization, which can be grounded in want, need, or feeling of obligation.

Affective Commitment

An emotion-based form of organizational commitment characterized by staying with the company because you want to (e.g., due to friendships and an enjoyable environment).

Continuous Commitment

A cost-based form of organizational commitment characterized by staying with the company because you need to (e.g., due to salary, benefits, or residential roots).

Normative Commitment

An obligation-based form of organizational commitment characterized by staying with the company because you ought to (e.g., due to feeling indebted for hiring or development).

Exit

An active, destructive response to negative work events characterized by ending or restricting organizational membership.

Voice

An active, constructive response to negative work situations where individuals attempt to improve conditions.

Loyalty

A passive, constructive response to a negative work situation where an employee remains supportive while hoping for improvement.

Neglect

A passive, destructive response where an employee's interest and effort in the job are reduced, manifested through psychological withdrawal.

Perceived Organizational Support

The degree to which employees believe that the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being, fostered when authorities reward performance, protect job security, improve work conditions, and minimize politics.

Personality

The structures and propensities inside people that explain their characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behaviour, determining their social reputation.

Traits

Recurring trends and regularities in people's behavioural and psychological responses to their environment.

The Big Five Taxonomy

The five broad personality factors summarizing human traits: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience.

Conscientiousness

A Big Five dimension characterized by being dependable, organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking, and persevering; has the largest influence on job performance.

Accomplishment Striving

A strong desire to accomplish task-related goals as a means of expressing personality, strongly associated with conscientiousness.

Agreeableness

A Big Five personality dimension characterized by traits such as warm, kind, cooperative, sympathetic, helpful, and courteous, driven by communion striving.

Extraversion

A Big Five dimension marked by being talkative, sociable, passionate, assertive, bold, and dominant, which is easiest to judge in zero acquaintance situations.

Status Striving

A strong desire to obtain power and influence within a social structure as a means of expressing personality, characteristic of extraverted individuals.

Positive Affectivity

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

Neuroticism

A Big Five dimension characterized by being nervous, moody, emotional, insecure, and jealous; it is the second most important factor for job performance.

Negative Affectivity

A dispositional tendency to experience unpleasant moods such as hostility, nervousness, and annoyance, closely associated with neuroticism.

Openness to Experience

A Big Five dimension characterized by being curious, imaginative, creative, complex, refined, and sophisticated; beneficial in dynamic or artistic jobs.

Culture

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

Cultural Values

Shared beliefs about desirable end states or modes of conduct in a given culture that provide societies with their distinctive personalities.

Individualism–Collectivism

A cultural value dimension contrasting loosely knit frameworks where individuals care primarily for themselves and immediate family (individualistic) with tight social frameworks emphasizing loyalty to a broader in-group (collectivistic).

Power Distance

A cultural dimension contrasting preferences for power to be distributed uniformly in an egalitarian fashion (low) against acceptance that power is distributed unequally within organizations (high).

Value-Percept Theory

A theory arguing that job satisfaction depends on whether you perceive that your job supplies what you value, expressed as $\text{Dissatisfaction} = (V_{\text{want}} - V_{\text{have}}) \times (V_{\text{importance}})$.

Job Characteristics Theory

A theory stating that jobs are more intrinsically enjoyable when work tasks are challenging and fulfilling, driven by variety, identity, significance, autonomy, and feedback.

Trust

The willingness to be vulnerable to a trustee based on positive expectations about the trustee's actions and intentions.

Justice

The perceived fairness of an authority's decision-making across outcomes, processes, and interpersonal communications.

Ethics

The study of why people behave in a manner consistent with generally accepted norms of morality and why they sometimes violate those norms.

Disposition-Based Trust

A form of trust rooted in the trustor's personality traits and natural propensity to trust others, shaped by genetics and early childhood experiences.

Trust Propensity

A general dispositional expectation that the words, promises, and statements of individuals and groups can be relied upon.

Cognition-Based Trust

Trust rooted in a rational assessment of an authority's track record, evaluated along the dimensions of ability, benevolence, and integrity.

Ability

The skills and competencies that enable an authority to be successful in a given specific area.

Benevolence

The belief that an authority wants to do good for the trustor, separate from any personal profit-centered or selfish motives.

Integrity

The perception that an authority adheres to a set of values and principles that the trustor finds acceptable.

Affect-Based Trust

Trust rooted in emotional bonds and feelings toward the trustee rather than rational evaluations of their trustworthiness.

Distributive Justice

The perceived fairness of decision-making outcomes, typically evaluated against norms of equity for rewards like pay, promotions, and assignments.

Procedural Justice

The perceived fairness of decision-making processes, fostered when authorities adhere to rules of fair process.

Interpersonal Justice

The perceived fairness of the treatment received by employees from authorities, fostered by treating workers with dignity, sincerity, and respect while avoiding offensive remarks.

Informational Justice

The perceived fairness of the communications provided by authorities, fostered when explanations are comprehensive, reasonable, honest, and candid.

Moral Awareness

The stage in ethical decision-making that occurs when an authority recognizes that a moral issue exists in a situation or that an ethical principle is relevant.

Moral Intensity

The degree to which an ethical issue has urgency, driven by the potential for harm and social pressure.

Moral Attentiveness

The degree to which people chronically perceive and consider issues of morality in their day-to-day experiences.

Moral Judgment

The process people use to determine whether a particular course of action is ethical or unethical, influenced by cognitive moral development.

Moral Intent

An authority's degree of commitment to choose and execute the moral course of action over other competing options.

Economic Exchange Relationships

Narrowly defined, impersonal work relationships that lack trust and are grounded strictly in transactional, quid pro quo obligations.

Social Exchange Relationships

Work relationships characterized by mutual investment, high trust, and obligations that go above and beyond expectations.

Corporate Social Responsibility

A concept acknowledging that organizations must account for the economic, legal, ethical, and citizenship expectations of society when conducting business.