Individual Behavior in Organizations: Sessions 1-4

Flashcards covering the foundational concepts of Organizational Behavior, including management roles, self-awareness archetypes, the Johari Window, social perception barriers, and Attribution Theory.

Organization

A consciously coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals.

Organizational Behavior (OB)

A field of study that investigates the impact the individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge towards improving the organizational effectiveness.

Management Functions

The core tasks of management consisting of Planning, Organizing, Leading, Controlling, and Staffing.

Three Determinants of Behavior

The internal components focused on in OB: Individuals, Groups, and Structure.

Administrative Theory and Scientific Management

The two primary schools of thought that comprised The Classical Era of Organizational Behavior (1880-1930).

The Systems Perspective

A perspective where an organization is viewed as an interrelated set of elements that receives inputs from the environment, transforms them, returns outputs, and receives feedback.

The Situational Perspective

A viewpoint that rejects 'one best way' universal answers, recognizing that appropriate behavior depends on the elements and variables of the specific situation.

Interactionalism

A perspective focusing on how individual behavior results from a continuous and multidirectional interaction between characteristics of the person and characteristics of the situation.

Internal Self-Awareness

How clearly we see our own values, passions, aspirations, reactions (thoughts, feelings, behaviors), and our impact on others.

External Self-Awareness

Understanding how other people view us in terms of factors like values, passions, aspirations, and reactions.

Introspectors

A self-awareness archetype characterized by high internal self-awareness but low external self-awareness.

Seekers

A self-awareness archetype characterized by low internal self-awareness and low external self-awareness.

Pleasers

A self-awareness archetype characterized by low internal self-awareness and high external self-awareness.

Aware Archetype

Individuals who possess both high internal self-awareness and high external self-awareness.

Johari Window

A psychological tool created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955 to improve self-awareness and mutual understanding within groups.

Open Area (Johari Window)

Information about a person, such as behaviors, skills, and views, that is known to both the person and their peers.

Blind Spot (Johari Window)

Information about a person that is known to their peers but not known to the individual themselves.

Hidden Area (Johari Window)

Information known to the individual but kept secret from their peers.

Unknown (Johari Window)

Information that is not known to the individual and not known to their peers.

Perception

A process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.

Three Steps of Perception

The sequential process consisting of the selection of stimuli, organization of information, and interpretation of stimuli.

Selective Perception

The tendency to prefer or selectively interpret information that supports our viewpoints, interests, background, and experience.

Stereotype

Judging someone or assigning attributes to them solely on the basis of the class, category, or group to which they belong.

First-impression error

Occurs when an observer uses a very brief encounter to infer a person's entire character or what they are really like.

Projection

The tendency to attribute one’s own beliefs, feelings, tendencies, motives, and needs to other people.

Self-fulfilling prophecy (Pygmalion Effect)

A situation where our expectations about people affect our interactions with them in a way that causes those expectations to be fulfilled.

Attribution Theory

A theory dealing with how social perceivers gather and combine information to arrive at causal explanations for events and behaviors.

Internally caused behavior

Behaviors that an observer believes to be under the personal behavioral control of the individual.

Externally caused behavior

Behaviors that an observer believes to be caused by outside situations rather than the individual.

Distinctiveness

An attribution factor determining if an individual displays different behaviors in different situations or tasks.

Consensus

An attribution factor where everyone facing a similar situation responds in the same way.

Consistency

An attribution factor measuring if a person responds the same way in a situation over time.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to underestimate external factors and overestimate internal factors when judging the behaviors of others.

Self-serving Bias

The tendency for individuals to attribute their successes to internal factors while blaming failures on external factors.

Halo Effect

The tendency to draw a general impression about an individual based on a single characteristic.

Contrast Effect

Evaluation of a person’s characteristics that is affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower in those same traits.