Studied by 32 peopleOrganizational Behavior
A field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improve an organization’s effectiveness.
Systematic Study
Looking at relationships, attempting to attribute causes and effects, and drawing conclusions based on scientific evidence.
Evidence-based management (EBM)
The basing of managerial decisions on the best available scientific evidence.
Intuition
An instinctive feeling not necessarily supported by research.
Psychology
The science that seeks to measure, explain, and sometimes change the behavior of humans and other animals.
Social Psychology
An area of psychology that blends concepts from psychology and sociology to focus on the influence of people on one another.
Sociology
The study of people in relation to their social environment or culture.
Anthropology
The study of societies to learn about human beings and their activities.
Contingency variables
Situational factors or variables that moderate the relationship between two or more variables.
Globalization
The process in which worldwide integration and interdependence is promoted across national borders.
Workforce Diversity
The concept that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other characteristics.
Positive organizational scholarship (POS)
An area of OB research that concerns how organizations develop human strengths, foster vitality and resilience, and unlock potential.
Ethical dilemmas and ethical choices
Situations in which individuals are required to define right and wrong conduct.
Model
An abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of some real-world phenomenon.
Inputs
Variables like personality, group structure, and organizational culture that lead to processes.
Processes
Actions that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in as a result of inputs and that lead to certain outcomes.
Outcomes
Key factors that are affected by some other variables.
Attitudes
Evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people, or events.
Stress
A psychological process in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, demand, or resource related to what the individual desires and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important (e.g., stressors).
Task performance
The combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing core job tasks.
Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB)
Discretionary behavior that contributes to the psychological and social environment of the workplace.
Withdrawal behavior
The set of actions employees take to separate themselves from the organization.
Group cohesion
The extent to which members of a group support and validate one another while at work.
Group functioning
The quantity and quality of a group’s work output.
Productivity
The combination of the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization.
Effectiveness
The degree to which an organization meets the needs of its clientele or customers.
Efficiency
The degree to which an organization can achieve its ends at a low cost.
Organizational survival
The degree to which an organization is able to exist and grow over the long term.
Employability Skills
Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, Knowledge Application and Analysis, Social Responsibility
Person-job fit theory
A theory that identifies six personality types and proposes that the fit between personality type and occupational environment determines satisfaction and turnover.
Person-organization fit
A theory that people are attracted to and selected by organizations that match their values and leave when there is no compatibility.
Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
A personality test that taps four characteristics and classifies people into 1 of 16 personality types.
Big Five Model
A personality model that proposes five basic dimensions encompass most of the differences in human personality.
Conscientiousness
A personality dimension that describes someone who is responsible, dependable, persistent, and organized.
Emotional stability
A personality dimension that characterizes someone as calm, self-confident, and secure (positive) versus nervous, anxious, and insecure (negative).
Extraversion
A personality dimension describing someone who is sociable, gregarious, and assertive.
Openness to experience
A personality dimension that characterizes someone in terms of imagination, artistic sensitivity, and curiosity.
Agreeableness
A personality dimension that describes someone who is good natured, cooperative, and trusting.
Dark Triad
A constellation of negative personality traits consisting of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.
Machiavellianism
The degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means.
Narcissism
The tendency to be arrogant, have a grandiose sense of self-importance, require excessive admiration, and have a sense of entitlement.
Psychopathy
The tendency for a lack of concern for others and a lack of guilt or remorse when actions cause harm.
corecore self-evaluations (CSEs)
bottom-line conclusions individuals have about their capabilities, competence, and worth as a person.
Self-monitoring
A personality trait that measures an individual’s ability to adjust their behavior to external, situational factors.
Proactive personality
People who identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until meaningful change occurs.
Situation strength theory
A theory indicating that the way personality translates into behavior depends on the strength of the situation.
Components of Situation Strength
Clarity, consistency, constraints, consequences
Trait Activation Theory (TAT)
A theory that predicts that some situations, events, or interventions “activate” a trait more than others.
Value
Basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence.
Value system
A hierarchy based on a ranking of an individual’s values in terms of their intensity.
Terminal values
Desirable end-states of existence; the goals a person would like to achieve during their lifetime.
Instrumental values
Preferable modes of behavior or means of achieving one’s terminal values.
Power distance
A national culture attribute that describes the extent to which a society accepts that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.
Individualism
A national culture attribute that describes the degree to which people prefer to act as individuals rather than as members of groups.
Collectivism
A national culture attribute that describes a tight social framework in which people expect others in groups of which they are a part to look after them and protect them. Collectivistic countries/cultures are those in which people see themselves as interdependent and seek community and group goals. Collectivistic values are found in Asia, Africa, and South America, for example.
Masculinity
A national culture attribute that describes the extent to which the culture favors traditional masculine work roles of achievement, power, and control. Societal values are characterized by assertiveness and materialism.
Feminism
A national culture attribute that indicates little differentiation between male and female roles; a high rating indicates that women are treated as the equals of men in all aspects of the society.
Uncertainty avoidance
A national culture attribute that describes the extent to which a society feels threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations and tries to avoid them.
Long-term orientation
A national culture attribute that emphasizes the future, thrift, and persistence.
Short-term orientation
A national culture attribute that emphasizes the present and accepts change.
Personality
The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others
The Trait Approach
“many trait” approach
Allport & Odbert (1936) identified 17,953 traits
“single trait” approach
Self-monitoring
Machiavellianism
“essential trait”
Big Five
Fundamental assumptions
unique (differentiation)
stable (consistent)
Person-situation Interactionist Approach
weak v. strong situations
If-then personality signatures
Trait approach looks at mean levels of personality variables averaged across situations
personality may be stable within situations but not across situations
SUMMER CAMP Study (Mischel et al., 2002)
Weak situation
A situation where any, or a wide variety of, behavior is considered appropriate; unstructured; ambiguous
projective tests
Rorschach Test
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Strong situation
A situation that “pulls” for particular behaviors; there is a clearly appropriate way to behave or interpret the situation; structured
Freshman roommate Study (Kammrath et al. 2007)
Columbia Roommate Study (2004-5)
Entity theory
Fixed traits and skills (the hand you’re dealt; either you have talent in an area or you don’t)
Incremental theory
Traits and skills can be changed through growth, learning, practice, hard work, education
Mueller & Dweck (1998)
5th Grade Children working on 10 Problems
Praised for ability/intelligence, effort, simply doing well (control) then failure; post-failure
performance
task persistence
enjoyment of task
Outcomes: Children praised for effort had higher scores on all three factors
Jeff Skilling of Enron
Entity Theorist (Carol Dweck)
“Talent Mindset”
Jack Welch’s Growth Mindset
GE turnaround
Domain-Specific Achievement Beliefs
2015 study asked 1,800 professors in 30 field
gender distribution in STEM & Philosophy
Leslie et. al (2015)
Surface-level diversity
Differences in easily perceived characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, or disability, that do not necessarily reflect the ways people think or feel but that may activate certain stereotypes.
Deep-level diversity
Differences in values, personality, and work preferences that become progressively more important for determining similarity as people get to know one another better.
Discrimination
Noting a difference between things; often we refer to unfair discrimination, which means making judgments about individuals based on stereotypes regarding their demographic group.
Stereotyping
Judging someone based on one’s perception of the group to which that person belongs.
Stereotype threat
The degree to which we are concerned with being judged by or treated negatively based on a certain stereotype.
Biographical characteristics
Personal characteristics—such as age, gender, race, and length of tenure—that are objective and easily obtained from personnel records. These characteristics are representative of surface-level diversity.
Ability
An individual’s capacity to perform the various tasks in a job.
Intellectual abilities
The capacity to do mental activities—thinking, reasoning, and problem solving.
General mental ability (GMA)
An overall factor of intelligence, as suggested by the positive correlations among specific intellectual ability dimensions.
Physical abilities
The capacity to do tasks that demand stamina, dexterity, strength, and similar characteristics.
Diversity management
The process and programs by which managers make everyone more aware of and sensitive to the needs and differences of others.
Faultlines
The perceived divisions that split groups into two or more subgroups based on individual differences such as sex, race, age, work experience, language, and education.
Stereotyping
The cognitive component
Beliefs about the typical characteristics of members of a group
Can be good, bad, or neutral
Can be individual or shared by a group or culture
Can be explicit or implicit
Prejudice
The emotional component
An affective (emotional, evaluative, visceral) disposition towards a distinguishable group of people based only on their membership in that group
Discrimination
The behavioral component
Unjustified (usually negative or harmful) action towards a member of a group because of his or her membership in that group
Putting someone at a disadvantage because of their group membership
Schemas
One of the primary tools of fast automatic judgment
A pattern imposed on complex reality or experience to help us interpret, explain, and predict
Allow us to interact effectively with the world
Brewer & Treyens, 1981
Office Study-Schema
Expectancy violations
Mendes et al. 2007
• Stereotype-inconsistent behavior threatens our
ability to make sense of the world
• Stereotypes are prescriptive, not just descriptive
• When a person’s behavior violates a stereotype
• Reinterpret the behavior in stereotype-consistent way when possible (“Yeah, well that job does require a lot of social skill”)
• When can’t reinterpret, can have a “boomerang effect”
• NON-communal becomes COUNTER-communal
EXPECTANCY VIOLATIONS
The Gender Double Bind
“Howard” v. “Heidi” Case Study (Flynn 2003)
Attitudes
Evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people, or events.
Cognitive component
The opinion or belief segment of an attitude.
Affective component
The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude.
Behavioral component
An intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something.
Cognitive dissonance
Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes.
Organizational identification
The extent to which employees define themselves by the same characteristics that define one’s organization, forming the basis for which attitudes are engendered.
Job satisfaction
A positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics.
Job involvement
The degree to which a person identifies with a job, actively participates in it, and considers performance important to their self-worth.
Psychological empowerment
Employees’ belief in the degree to which they affect their work environment, their competence, the meaningfulness of their job, and their perceived autonomy in their work.
Organizational commitment
The degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization.
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